America’s attack on Venezuela—alongside threats to annex Greenland, incorporate Canada as its 51st state, attack Colombia, or seize control of the Panama Canal—raises existential concerns about America’s commitment to a rule-based order and the legitimacy of the prevailing system for global governance.
For months before the invasion, American officials described the naval buildup, including an aircraft carrier, warships, a nuclear submarine and an attack on Venezuelan boats as a response to a “narco-terrorist” threat to their homeland. President Trump claimed that at least 25,000 American lives had been saved by each strike, amounting to the equivalent of about eight years of U.S. overdoses.
America’s unilateral strikes on Venezuelan boats, however, were a false case for justifying ulterior interests. The true motive, revealed after the arrest of Nicolás Maduro, wasn’t narco-terrorism but constraining Chinese and Russian regional influence, regime change, establishing control of Venezuelan oil reserves, and securing Caribbean shipping lanes.
American interests in Venezuela are similar to those of Putin in Ukraine – prevent the expansion of adversaries (NATO), avoid the deployment of weapons near its borders, regime change, and control of Sevastopol as a naval base for its Black Sea Fleet.
Despite Nicolás Maduro’s failings, the attack on Venezuela violates Venezuelan sovereignty and the UN Charter. America’s intervention violates the fundamental international obligation not to intervene in the domestic affairs or threaten the use of armed force against another country—a violation condemned by the UN on 07 January. On the same day, the State Department announced its withdrawal from 66 international organisations, which it characterises as wasteful, ineffective, or harmful, signalling further unilateralism and the dismissal of a rule-based order.
Furthermore, the air strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats amounted to crimes against humanity under international law, according to Mr Moreno Ocampo, a former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, notes.
The rules-based international order has always been a work in progress, pitted with hypocrisy, self-interest and selective acceptance. For many, the United Nations Security Council is a club that privileges unilateralism, its members acting unilaterally and without accountability. In contrast, members of the General Assembly remain bound and restricted to the interests of those in the Security Council. For instance, neither the United States nor Russia is a signatory to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), or the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty.
Trump’s assertion that Ukraine must concede to Putin’s conditions because of Russia’s superiority amounts to the promotion of the “might makes right” order, foreshadowing America’s own interest in unilateralism, as David Rothkopf, an American foreign policy analyst, terms it: the “Putinization of US foreign policy”.
The Russo-Ukrainian War thrust the global order into three camps: the global West led by the United States and Europe, the global East aligned with China and Russia, and the global South comprising a grouping of non-Western ascending nations.
At the same time, marginalisation has accelerated the South’s preference for alternative systems for geopolitical cooperation. As G John Ikenberry notes, the South’s critique is not that the West offers the wrong pathway to modernity, but that it has not lived up to its principles or shared the material fruits of liberal modernity sufficiently. BRICS, for instance, has expanded to 11 economies, constituting nearly 49 per cent of the global population, 39 per cent of global GDP, and 23 per cent of international trade.
America’s pattern of manufacturing threats to justify unilateral action has eroded global trust in the West. A 1962 Joint Chiefs of Staff memorandum outlined plans to stage terrorist attacks and shoot down American planes to blame on Cuba. The 1964 Tonkin Gulf resolution, which gave President Johnson his war mandate in Vietnam, was based on false claims of unprovoked attacks when U.S. covert operations had in fact provoked North Vietnam. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush promoted congressional testimony from a Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter about Iraqi soldiers killing babies by removing them from incubators—a story coached by an American PR firm that was entirely fabricated. In 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell presented “proof” of Iraq’s weapons programs at the U.N.—programs that never existed. As retired Air Force lieutenant colonel William Astore observes: “Sadly, Americans have become remarkably tolerant of comfortable lies, generally preferring them to uncomfortable truths.
Those who contributed to the building of the international order and its systems and treaties must do more to hold everyone to the rules equally if those rules are to have legitimacy. This means using diplomatic channels to express concern when any nation—including the United States—violates established principles of sovereignty and non-intervention. Allies should work within existing institutions, such as the United Nations, to uphold the standards they’ve collectively agreed upon, ensuring that international law applies equally regardless of who violates it. They must also engage more actively with nations in the Global South, listening to their concerns and ensuring that the international system serves broader interests rather than narrow geopolitical agendas. The credibility of the rules-based order depends on whether its architects are willing to defend it consistently, not selectively.
Anil Anand is an independent Canadian policy researcher and author with extensive experience in law enforcement, security, and social justice.
This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.
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