Venezuela, Oil, and Imperialism

The seizure of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro by the United States marks a profound rupture with the legal and normative constraints that have structured international order since 1945. Whatever the moral judgment of Maduro’s regime, the episode raises a far more consequential question: on what grounds can a sovereign head of state be forcibly removed by another country, and what follows when law is replaced by power?

The Stated Grounds and the Evidentiary Problem

The Trump administration has justified its actions primarily on criminal grounds, citing indictments alleging narco-terrorism and drug trafficking. Yet no international judicial process preceded the seizure, no extradition request was pursued, and no multilateral body endorsed the operation. The evidentiary standard thus remains entirely domestic and unilateral.

Under international law (UN Charter, Art. 2(4)), accusing a foreign leader of crimes does not give another country the right to use military force against them.

Moreover, even U.S. intelligence assessments have previously cast doubt on claims that Venezuela plays a central role in drug flows into the United States, particularly when compared with fentanyl supply chains originating elsewhere. The absence of transparent, independently tested evidence transforms the operation from law enforcement into coercive regime intervention.

Oil at the Core of the Matter

What removes any lingering ambiguity is the administration’s own rhetoric. President Trump has explicitly linked the operation to oil, stating that Venezuela’s resources were “taken from the United States” and should now be “reclaimed.” This matters because Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves in the world, estimated at over 300 billion barrels, roughly 17 percent of global proven reserves. By contrast, Venezuela currently produces only about 1 percent of global oil output, reflecting decades of mismanagement, sanctions, and capital withdrawal.

These figures reveal the underlying structure: Venezuela is not strategically significant because of current production, but because of future extractive potential. Control over political authority thus becomes inseparable from control over future oil revenues. When oil is openly acknowledged as a motive, claims of humanitarian or legal necessity lose credibility.

Illegality Under U.S. Law

From the standpoint of U.S. constitutional law, the operation is deeply problematic. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution assigns the war power to Congress. While presidents have frequently stretched this boundary, they have typically relied on congressional authorizations, most notably the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). In the Venezuelan case, there is no declaration of war, no AUMF, and no congressional approval.

Absent such authorization, sustained military action violates the constitutional separation of powers. Even the Iraq War, widely regarded as a legal and moral failure, proceeded with explicit congressional endorsement. Here, not even that minimal procedural legitimacy exists.

The Alien Enemies Act and the Reclassification of Crime as War

The legal logic underpinning the Venezuela operation did not emerge suddenly. It was foreshadowed in March, when Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime statute enacted during the Quasi-War with France.

The law authorizes the detention and removal of nationals of a hostile foreign power only in the context of a declared war or invasion.

In invoking this statute, the administration declared that the Venezuelan criminal group Tren de Aragua was perpetrating an “invasion” of the United States. On that basis, alleged gang members were summarily detained and deported without due process, bypassing ordinary criminal and immigration procedures.

This move is legally and conceptually significant for three reasons.

First, the Alien Enemies Act suspends core procedural protections precisely because it presumes a state of war.

Second, the administration’s framing of gang activity as an “invasion” performs a critical legal transformation. Once criminal conduct is reclassified as warfare, ordinary evidentiary standards no longer apply. Suspicion replaces proof. Executive discretion replaces judicial process.

Third, by explicitly naming Tren de Aragua as an invading force tied to Venezuela, the administration constructed a bridge between domestic emergency powers and external military action.

This matters because the Alien Enemies Act is constitutionally tolerable only under the assumption that war has been lawfully recognized. Absent such recognition, its use undermines the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process and the separation of powers that reserves war-making authority to Congress.

Illegality Under International Law

International law is even clearer. The UN Charter prohibits both the use and the threat of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. None of the recognized exceptions apply. There is no Security Council authorization, no credible self-defense claim under Article 51, and no valid consent from Venezuela’s lawful authorities.

Equally serious are reports of U.S. strikes on suspected drug-smuggling vessels. The Geneva Conventions of 1949, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and customary international law prohibit extrajudicial killings. Killing individuals based on suspicion, without imminent threat or judicial process, collapses the distinction between law enforcement and warfare, a distinction that international humanitarian law exists precisely to preserve. As legal scholars have long emphasized, the defining line between war and murder is the presence of law.

Historical Continuity: The Monroe Doctrine in Practice

The United States is not acting in a historical vacuum. Since the Monroe Doctrine (1823), Washington has claimed special prerogatives in the Western Hemisphere. Throughout the twentieth century, this doctrine justified interventions in Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Cuba (1961), Nicaragua (1981-1990), and Panama (1989). The pattern is consistent: governments were destabilized or removed in the name of order, security, or democracy, yet the outcomes were marked by institutional collapse, social trauma, and prolonged instability.

Beyond Latin America, similar logic governed U.S. nation-building efforts in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan. None produced stable, legitimate political orders. All generated humanitarian disasters and long-term insecurity. History thus offers no support for the claim that coercive regime change delivers justice or peace.

Escalating Threats and the Expansion of Coercive Posturing

The strategic logic unfolding around Venezuela has already extended beyond Caracas. President Trump has publicly threatened military action against Colombia, and characterized Cuba’s communist regime as “ready to fall on its own.”

International reactions further underscore the disruptive character of this discourse: France reaffirmed its support for the sovereignty of Greenland in response to renewed U.S. threats, explicitly backing Denmark’s authority over Greenland. Such diplomatic pushback from European capitals reflects global concern about the normalization of unilateral coercive threats.

Taken together, these developments provide evidence that the administration’s strategy is not limited to legal assertion but is escalating toward a broader pattern of military intimidation or intervention.

Spheres of Influence and the Return of Imperial Thinking

The language surrounding Venezuela signals a broader conceptual shift. The idea of “spheres of influence”, formalized during nineteenth-century imperial conferences—most notoriously in Europe’s partition of Africa and later reinforced at postwar settlements such as the Paris Peace Conference of 1919—rests on hierarchical sovereignty. Great powers claim privileged rights over regions, regardless of local consent.

By explicitly invoking hemispheric dominance and acting unilaterally, the United States is reviving this imperial grammar. This is not merely a regional issue. Once such logic is normalized, it cannot be selectively contained. If sovereignty is conditional in Caracas, it becomes conditional elsewhere. Under this precedent, objections to potential actions by other powers—such as a Chinese move against Taiwan—lose legal and moral force.

Conclusion

This article does not defend Nicolás Maduro or his model of governance. It defends law over power, sovereignty over entitlement, and peace over imperial reflex. The lesson of the past century is unambiguous: dismantling regimes through force does not yield justice, democracy, or stability. It yields chaos.

What we are witnessing in Venezuela is not an aberration, but the re-emergence of a colonial mentality in the second quarter of the twenty-first century. History suggests that the costs will not be borne by great powers alone.