Afrasianet - What happened in Caracas is not only about Latin America, but about everyone who still believes that there is a world governed by rules, that there is a difference between politics and robbery, between influence and aggression, between order and chaos.
From Gaza to Caracas, the scene is the same, albeit geographically: a major power suspending the law when it is hindered, invoking violence when other tools fail, and imposing a new reality in the name of the regime while undermining its foundations. What happened in Venezuela earlier this year is not an isolated event, but a new episode in a long chain of practices that no longer even cost to justify themselves.
Imperialism today no longer needs masks at all. It no longer hides behind slogans of "spreading democracy", does not embellish itself with the rhetoric of "human rights", and does not shy away from breaking the rules that it itself co-formulated. What we are witnessing is not an emergency aberration, but a structural shift: an explicit return of the logic of bullying to the heart of the international system.
When a sovereign state is bombed and its president is forcibly taken out of its territory, without a UN mandate, no legal path, and not even a serious attempt to confer convincing legitimacy, we are not facing a political crisis, but rather a full exposure to the nature of the historical moment: a moment in which the law is regressed in favor of power, sovereignty is eroded in favor of hegemony, and relations between states are managed according to the logic of those who have the right to it, not the logic of those who have the right.
Venezuela here is only the clearest example, not because it is the first case, but because it is the case in which all the powders fell at once. There is no longer heavy language about "international legitimacy", no claims of "global consensus", not even attempts to embellish the discourse. There is only an act of shameful force, a reality imposed, and an international order that is tested in its ability to be a regime in the first place.
In this sense, what happened in Caracas is not only about Latin America, but about all those who still believe that there is a world governed by rules, that there is a difference between politics and robbery, between influence and aggression, between order and chaos. That difference is eroding today.
From Politics to Coercion: How Has Intervention Changed Its Meaning?
American interference in Latin American affairs is not new. What is new this time is that it has moved from indirect influence to public coercive action, without equivocation.
For decades, Washington has used multiple tools to influence states' trajectories: sanctions, financial pressure, support for internal actors, diplomatic isolation, and media warfare. These tools, however blunt, have been presented as alternatives to direct military intervention.
What happened in the Venezuelan case is a coup against this same logic: an outright return to hard power as the decisive tool, not the last card.
This is a very significant shift, because it means that international law is no longer treated as a binding framework, but as a circumstantial option used when it serves interests and neglects when it impedes them.
International Law: From Base to Façade
The UN Charter is clear in its text, simple in its logic, and strict in principle: force may only be used against a sovereign State in the event of self-defence or with the express authorization of the Security Council.
The issue here is not technical, but political and moral in essence: when a major state uses force outside of this framework, it not only violates a legal text, but also delegitimizes the very idea of law.
The danger is not that the rule will be broken once, but that the rule will become an exception, and that the exception will become a rule.
Latin America: The Memory of the Open Wound
In Latin America, this event is not read as an isolated incident, but rather through a long memory of interventions, coups and foreign tutelage: from Guatemala and Chile, to Nicaragua and Panama.
Therefore, the events in Venezuela go beyond the event itself, rekindling an old feeling in the region: that sovereignty is not protected by law, but postponed by the consent of the major powers.
This threatens the stability of the continent more than any particular government.
The same logic of domination
At first glance, it may seem that what happened in Venezuela is a distant affair, located on another continent, in a different cultural context, and does not directly affect our Arab reality, which is already on fire with crises and wars. But this view is exactly what the powers that run the world are betting on with the logic of force rather than the logic of law: that each region will remain preoccupied with its wounds, unaware that the wound is one, the tools are the same, and the approach is the same.
Venezuela is not politically distant, but only geographically distant. In terms of the logic of targeting, it is at the heart of the same system that has targeted Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Palestine: a system that sees states as only rearrangeable units, and sees sovereignty as a concept that can be suspended when it conflicts with the supreme interests of the major powers.
From this point of view, what happened in Venezuela concerns us in the Arab world on three levels:
First, because it confirms that the logic of power has not been defeated, but has been rehabilitated. When soft tools fail, naked power returns without hesitation. This is a lesson that our region knows very well, and it pays for it to this day.
Second, because it directly affects global energy security, and thus the security of Arab economies. Venezuela is a major oil country, and any disruption in its stability is reflected on energy markets, and on both producing and importing countries, at a time when energy has become a political weapon.
Third, because the erosion of the concept of sovereignty anywhere accelerates its erosion everywhere. When the seizure of the power of a state by force becomes possible without accountability, every country becomes Venezuela's project postponed.
In this sense, defending Venezuela's sovereignty is not only moral solidarity, but also the very idea of the state.
The international system is at odds
The United Nations, and the Security Council in particular, face an existential test: either to demonstrate the ability to hold those who break the rules accountable, or to entrench the reality that rules apply only to the weak.
In the second case, we no longer have an international order, but a hierarchy of power that wears the mask of the regime.
When the law is suspended and force is released
What happened in Venezuela is not an emergency incident, nor an accidental slide in the behavior of a major power, but an indirect announcement that a new phase has begun: a phase in which rules are suspended when interests are hindered, and violence is called for when other tools fail.
We are not only witnessing the violation of a state's sovereignty, but the rapid collapse of the very idea of legal deterrence. The idea that there are no transgressive lines, boundaries that do not violate, rules that govern everyone—big before small. It is this idea that is cracking today, and with it the illusion that the international system is capable of protecting weaker states, or even protecting itself.
When force becomes a substitute for politics, violence a substitute for negotiation, and strike a substitute for decision, the world enters not only a phase of "instability," but also a phase of reproducing chaos in the name of order.
And that's exactly the most dangerous thing in the scene.
Because outright chaos can be resisted, but chaos that dresses up as legitimacy, speaks the language of the law while violating it, and claims to defend stability while undermining its foundations, is chaos without clear features, and without touchlines that can be grasped.
What happened in Venezuela is not only a warning to Caracas, but a warning to every country, every people, and every region that thinks that geography protects it, that alliances secure it, or that the law is sufficient for it.
The world is entering a new phase in which international relations are being reshaped on the basis of the balance of power rather than the balance of legitimacy, on the basis of ability rather than right, and on the basis of who imposes and not who persuades.
In such a world, the question is not: Who is next?
Rather, who remained outside of this logic in the first place and for how long?
