The United States bombing of Venezuela and seizure of its sitting president is a naked act of aggression—illegal under international law, unconstitutional under U.S. law/constitution, and unmistakably imperial in intent.
Let’s be clear: there is NO UN Security Council authorization. Under the UN Charter, the use of force against a sovereign state is prohibited except in self-defense or with the Security Council’s explicit approval. Venezuela poses no armed threat to the United States. Hence, the military strike therefore constitutes a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and an act of war—full stop.
Nor is there a constitutional basis as far as the US Congress and the US Constitution are concerned. No declaration of war by the U.S. Congress—as required by the U.S. Constitution—would likely precede such an action. Instead, the military attack on Venezuela followed the now-familiar pattern: EXECUTIVE UNILATERALISM, post-hoc legal justifications, and the sidelining of democratic oversight. The US Congress has been reduced, once again, to a spectator to war.
Equally telling is the absence of a popular mandate. There is no groundswell of American public support for another foreign war. After Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, war fatigue is real. Americans are struggling with inflation, healthcare costs, and decaying infrastructure—not clamoring for another “forever war” in Latin America. When wars are launched without public consent, it is usually because their true purposes cannot survive public scrutiny. And those purposes are not hard to identify.
Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, along with gas, gold, and other strategic resources. History shows that when Washington speaks the language of “freedom” while deploying bombers, resources are never far from the calculation. Iraq was about “weapons of mass destruction” until it wasn’t. Libya was about “protecting civilians” until the state collapsed and its oil sector was pried open. Syria was about “terrorism” while U.S. forces guarded oil fields in the east.
A war on Venezuela fits this pattern precisely: regime change wrapped in moral rhetoric, enforced by “shock and awe,” and justified after the fact.
This is why many in the Global South no longer see such interventions as mistakes or miscalculations, but as a structural feature of American power. International law is invoked when it constrains rivals—and discarded when it constrains Washington. Sovereignty is sacred for allies, conditional for resource-rich states that resist alignment.
Let’s call it for what it is: A TERRORIST WAR FROM THE AIR, designed to intimidate, destabilize, and plunder, not to liberate. Terror does not require non-state actors; it can be delivered by cruise missiles just as effectively. When civilian populations are subjected to overwhelming force to achieve political ends, the moral distinction collapses.
The tragedy is not only what such a war would do to Venezuela, but what it would confirm about the international system: THAT BRUTE FORCE STILL TRUMPS LAW, that imperial control still masquerades as virtue, and that “never again” has quietly become “once more, with precision-guided munitions.”
Shock and awe is not a strategy. It is a confession. Indeed, the military strike on Venezuela and the capture of Maduro by the United States is an act that is illegal under international law. It constitutes regime change and aggression. It reinforces the perception—especially outside the West, insofar as the United States is concerned —that power, not law, governs the global order. And that, for Washington, sovereignty remains conditional when strategic resources and geopolitical dominance are at stake.
