THE January 3 attack by the United States on Venezuela and the reported capture of its President Nicolas Maduro is a shocking violation of international law and rules based international order. Our already deeply troubled and threatened world suffered extreme harm to the rules-based international order during the year 2025, particularly in the context of highly arbitrary decision-making by President Donald Trump. And now right in the beginning of the new year, the rules-based order has been devastated further by the attack on Venezuela.
The early days of a new year are supposed to be a time of hope and peace, but hope and peace have been gravely harmed by this attack.
This year had started with the humanitarian crisis situation being a very serious one, the single most important cause being various conflicts. Instead of thinking about providing urgent relief to these millions and millions of threatened people, President Trump has chosen instead to increase conflict and open new conflict zones.
It is no less shocking that some leading countries like Britain and France, responding at the highest level, have extended their support to this attack.
Even if all the charges levelled against Maduro were true, any aggressive action against him could have been planned only after due authorisation by the United Nations. As things stand today, several unbiased and respected commentators in the US have already stated that Venezuela does not play any major role in causing the drugs related problems in America.
The other serious allegations relate to rigged elections in Venezuela. If true, this is of course very wrong, but any action against this should have been taken only after the UN had confirmed this by transparent evidence gathering, also giving the other side the opportunity to present its version. Once the entire evidence was available and open for verification and comment, then the UN could have initiated action on this basis and the US as well as other countries could have contributed to this.
In such a situation, to be fair and unbiased, the UN should have also conducted an investigation into Venezuela’s various complaints of many hostile and highly unfair actions of the US against Venezuela which have resulted in increasing problems for the people and obstructed the country’s legitimate efforts to protect its resource base and use it in such ways as to bring more benefits to its own people.
However, highly arbitrary actions on its own by the US, ignoring all these other possible ways of correcting perceived wrongs, have been harmful to the world in several contexts.
Of course, this is very harmful for Venezuela in terms of new conflicts and huge uncertainties this creates, on top of the serious problems this country and its people already face.
At the same time, this action is not good also for the US in terms of further damaging its reputation and deepening its image of the county most associated with disruptive and aggressive attacks. President Trump won the election on promises of ending forever wars, but in his very first year he ordered air attacks on many countries including Iran, Syria, Yemen and others. Although he helped to bring a ceasefire in Gaza, this has been done on the note of a very unjust future denying the two-state solution or any other justice-based option for the people of Gaza. On top of this he has now attacked Venezuela and stated in a highly arrogant way that the US will ‘run’ this country during the transition period.
Such an extremely unjustifiable action, preceded by attacks on boats and other disruptive actions which had already killed a significant number of people before the bigger attack on January 3, does not even have the support of people within the US. A CBS news poll of November 19-21 2025 found that only 13% of respondents regard Venezuela as a major security threat and 70% said they are opposed to US military action here.
As this writer has argued repeatedly, trying to strengthen US with wars and aggression is counter-productive for the country and ruins the prospects of an enlightened leadership role, the only sustainable leadership role model based on trust and caring for all people of world.
For the already deeply troubled world, this aggression of the US not only deeply disturbs whatever remains of rules-based order, but in addition, Russia and China being committed to Venezuela, also increases greatly the prospects of great power rivalry, further increasing the possibility of the third world war and nuclear war, at a time when the greatest priority needs to be given to reducing these possibilities.
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Bharat Dogra writes extensively on environment, development and welfare issues. The views expressed here are the writer’s own, and Clarion India does not necessarily subscribe to them. He can be reached at: bharatdogra1956@gmail.com
