The scope of the US operation in Venezuela: a new blow to multilateralism and international law

“The United States has successfully carried out a large-scale attack against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolás Maduro, who has been captured and flown out of the country together with his wife.” With this message, the President of the United States (US), Donald Trump, made public the success of an unprecedented operation since the Cold War that opens up an uncertain scenario in Venezuela and, once again, highlights the fragility of international law.

The military action, ordered directly by the US president and carried out in less than 24 hours, began with selective bombings against key military infrastructures around Caracas to facilitate the entry of special forces. The operation culminated with the capture of the Venezuelan president, arrested in the capital and transferred to New York, where he faces charges of narco-terrorism and weapons possession. “I am innocent, I am still the president of Venezuela,” Maduro said before the federal court that will try him under US legislation.

With the operation already completed, questions are piling up about the meaning and scope of this attack. What are Trump’s real intentions? What position does international law now occupy? What does the intervention imply for Venezuela’s political future? What impact could it have at the regional and global level? Does the European Union (EU) have anything to say?

In order to try to understand what lies behind this operation and what consequences it may have, at Xarxanet we spoke with Anna Ayuso, senior researcher on Latin America at CIDOB, and with Kristian Herbolzheimer, researcher at the Catalan International Institute for Peace (ICIP). Their analyses point to the same core idea: the operation cannot be explained only by Venezuela, but by the global moment and by the way Washington seeks to reaffirm its position of power.

A new hemispheric policy with security at the centre

At the press conference following the operation, Trump did not hide that oil is a central piece of his move into Venezuela. On the contrary, he made a point of it and hastened to meet with major oil companies to begin outlining a strategy to exploit Venezuelan crude.

However, Ayuso places the intervention within a broader framework, which she describes as a “new hemispheric policy” of the US in which national security becomes the axis running through everything. An expanded concept of security that incorporates “all US interests within the region” and that implies control of the political context, the search for alliances with like-minded countries, and interference in those that are not.

In this context, there is a clear warning to powers with interests in the region, especially China. “Above all, what there is is a message from the US to China saying that this is its territory,” Ayuso points out. The relationship between Beijing and Caracas, she adds, is marked by Chinese investments during the early years of Chavismo and by a significant debt that Venezuela maintains with China, in a context in which US sanctions on oil have pushed Venezuela to seek loopholes to export crude. “In some way, it is telling them that this is over, that the oil is theirs, as Trump literally said, and that they are regaining control,” she sums up.

A demonstration of power inside and outside the US

Kristian Herbolzheimer adds another decisive element to understand the operation: the demonstration of power. “I think that Trump’s main intention with the intervention in Venezuela is to make a show of power,” he states.

Domestically, the researcher frames it within a chain of actions through which Trump seeks to project authority, from migration policies to other hard-line decisions, with the aim of strengthening support among his followers and, at the same time, “frightening those who are critical of him.”

At the international level, and in line with Ayuso, Herbolzheimer points out that the message is aimed at competitors such as Russia or China. He illustrates this with a contrast that gives an idea of the propaganda effect of the operation. “Trump has achieved in a few hours what Putin has been trying to do in Ukraine for four years,” he asserts, while noting that the underlying intention is to project himself “as the leader of the most powerful country in the world.”

A dangerous precedent that deepens the crisis of multilateralism

The intervention and the capture of Maduro open an inevitable debate on the foundations of international law. However, Herbolzheimer does not consider it a turning point, because international law “has been in crisis for a long time, from the moment when those primarily responsible for upholding it, the permanent members of the Security Council, violate it.” Even so, he admits that capturing a head of state “does not happen every day” and that, in recent times, it is a novelty with few comparable precedents.

Ayuso agrees on the risk of precedent, but adds an important nuance. Maduro was already a figure “with little international, national, and regional support,” which would explain why the criticisms have not been particularly forceful and why there are even “suspicions that within the regime itself there has been some complicity.”

The problem, she warns, is not only Venezuela, but what this operation legitimises from now on. “The most dangerous thing is that this establishes a precedent that one can intervene in another country.” At the regional level, the message Trump wants to convey is unequivocal: whoever does not cooperate with the US exposes themselves to intervention.

According to Ayuso, this way of acting is framed within a deep crisis of the multilateral system. The United Nations appear “completely denigrated,” the Security Council is “inoperative,” and regional bodies such as the OAS or CELAC show internal divisions that leave them without capacity to respond. For the researcher, this is not a one-off episode, but “the collapse of the entire multilateral structure that was built throughout the 20th century.”

This logic is reinforced by Trump’s own words. “I don’t need International Law,” he stated in a recent interview with The New York Times, in which he added that the only thing that can stop him is his “morality.”

Venezuela: stability over democracy

As for Venezuela’s immediate future, Ayuso admits that the situation is uncertain, but points to a clear idea: Washington is more concerned about stability than about a real democratic transition. “Trump prioritises stability, not democracy,” she sums up, and places business as the political priority.

This bet on stability has a direct impact on a worn-down and hardened Venezuelan population. According to Ayuso, after the latest elections “there was very significant repression and people are not willing to take to the streets unless they have a guarantee, and it does not seem that they do.”

Gestures of openness, such as the release of political prisoners, arrive surrounded by uncertainty. Several human rights organisations question their real scope and warn that there are no signs of significant political opening, but rather an operation to “clean up the regime’s image abroad,” while at the same time police and military deployments inside the country are being reinforced.

Beyond this, for Herbolzheimer, this operation is not an isolated episode, but the expression of an explicit imperialism without recent precedents. “The attack on Venezuela is the first time the US has militarily attacked a country in South America. And that is a major novelty,” he stresses. Unlike previous interventions, often indirect or delegated to local actors, Trump now opts for a direct demonstration of force that breaks historical limits and redefines the rules of the game on the continent.

Moreover, this shift is not limited to the Global South. According to the ICIP researcher, Trump’s message “is not only directed southwards, but also northwards,” with threats and pressures that have affected even allies such as Canada or Denmark. “Doing it in such a materialistic and imperialistic tone as Trump’s, in such an explicit way, this is new,” Herbolzheimer warns, predicting growing polarisation between governments and societies that accept this logic and those that try to defend their sovereignty.

The law of the strongest and the European mirror

In the background of all this, a world is emerging in which multilateralism retreats and force imposes itself as a language. The director of ICIP states bluntly that “Trump’s actions normalise the law of the strongest,” and illustrates it with a football comparison: “It’s like playing a match where the referee is blindfolded, without a whistle and lame, that is, with absolute incapacity to enforce the rules.”

This scenario does not imply only an abstract erosion of international norms. In this sense, Herbolzheimer warns that the normalisation of the unilateral use of force can have much more serious consequences. “In practical terms, this is a Third World War if measures are not taken to stop it and to strengthen multilateral systems again.”

Faced with this, the EU still appears “perplexed” by Trump’s way of acting. So far, it has reacted mainly in a reactive way, trying to protect its interests, as seen with the issue of tariffs. This lack of a clear position is aggravated because European credibility was already weakened by the double standard between the response to Ukraine and to Palestine, an erosion that has undermined its “soft power” as an actor defending human rights and the rule of law.

Even so, Herbolzheimer points out that the current moment also opens a window of opportunity. The room for manoeuvre exists, but it requires a rapid and coordinated response, as well as the capacity to weave alliances beyond the Atlantic axis. In this sense, he points especially to Latin America as a key space to build a common front in defence of global multilateral institutions.

Beyond the immediate conjuncture, the analyst argues that this context should serve for the EU to strengthen, both internally and externally, the political project that saw it born. “The EU is a peace project that emerged after the Second World War,” he recalls, and warns that defending democratic values and the multilateral order is not only a matter of foreign policy, but also of coherence with its own raison d’être. “The world needs rules in international relations to prevent and reduce armed conflicts and violence,” concludes the director of ICIP.