Trump’s Venezuela Intervention Raises Questions of Legality and Colonial Oil Grab
In a dramatic escalation that has drawn widespread international condemnation, President Donald Trump announced the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro following a large-scale US military strike on Caracas. The operation, which involved extracting a sitting head of state from his own country, has raised fundamental questions about international law, sovereignty, and the true motivations behind American intervention.
Who Authorized This Action?
The capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro poses a significant challenge for international law, as it clearly represents a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and the UN Charter. International legal experts have been unequivocal in their assessment. There is no UN Security Council mandate that might authorize force, and this was not an instance of US self-defense triggered by a prior or ongoing armed attack by Venezuela.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated that the operation had “worrying implications for the region,” “constituted a dangerous precedent,” and expressed deep concern “that the rules of international law have not been respected”. The fundamental question remains: what legal authority does the United States possess to kidnap a foreign leader from his own country?
Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the operation to capture Maduro is “clearly illegal under international law”. International law expert Ryan Goodman noted that “international law is quite clear that one country cannot lawfully overthrow the leader of another, nor can it try them in its domestic courts”.
The Oil Motive: Plundering Venezuela’s Resources
Perhaps most revealing about the operation’s true purpose were Trump’s own statements regarding Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. Trump said the United States will “run” Venezuela for an unspecified period, stating: “We’ll run it properly. We’ll run it professionally. We’ll have the greatest oil companies in the world go in and invest billions”.
The president made no attempt to conceal the resource extraction agenda. Trump stated: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies — the biggest anywhere in the world — go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country”. Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves at 303 billion barrels, representing approximately 17% of global reserves.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez argued that the “war on drugs” was a pretext, claiming the United States’ true objective was regime change and control of the country’s “energy, mineral and natural resources”. Rodríguez denounced the capture as a “kidnapping” and declared that the Venezuelan people would be “nobody’s slave and nobody’s colony”.
Trump went further, asserting: “We built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive, skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country”. This extraordinary claim suggests the US believes it has ownership rights over another nation’s natural resources.
A Dangerous Precedent
The Guardian described the US operation as “unprovoked,” illegal, and “not so very different from” the Russian invasion of Ukraine, noting it created a precedent that could justify a future invasion of Taiwan by China. The New York Times condemned the attack as “dangerous and illegal,” describing it as an act of “latter-day imperialism” which lacked “any semblance of international legitimacy, valid legal authority or domestic endorsement”.
The implications extend far beyond Venezuela. When the world’s most powerful nation openly violates international law to seize another country’s leader and resources, it undermines the entire framework of global governance established after World War II.
Broader Regional Implications
Trump suggested the operation was not limited to Venezuela, stating that America has the right to intervene in any country in the Western Hemisphere that poses a threat or presents an economic opportunity. Trump issued a warning to Venezuelan interim leader Delcy Rodríguez, saying that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro”.
The strikes “seriously violate international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty, and threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean region,” Chinese officials stated. Russia similarly condemned what it called “armed aggression against Venezuela,” while Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel characterized the Trump administration’s military operation as “a criminal assault against our America” and “an unacceptable attack on international law”.
The Venezuelan operation represents a dangerous return to gunboat diplomacy and resource extraction through military force. As the international community grapples with this unprecedented action, the fundamental question persists: in a world governed by law rather than might, who gave the United States the authority to kidnap foreign leaders and plunder sovereign nations’ resources?
