TO describe the United States’ Jan. 3 attack on Venezuela as a return to gunboat diplomacy would be giving President Donald Trump too much credit. There was no diplomacy involved in the US military operation in that country, which included large-scale air strikes and the capture of now-former president Nicolás Maduro. This was naked aggression.
At its most basic level, the US attack violates the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. There was no UN Security Council mandating military action, and Venezuela had not launched an armed attack on the US, so the American operation is a clear violation of international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty, and constitutes a crime of aggression.
With no armed provocation, over 150 US aircraft, including F-22s, F-35s and B-1B bombers, launched strikes across northern Venezuela, targeting airfields, barracks and antiaircraft units to suppress the Venezuelan military’s response. A fleet of warships, including the USS Iwo Jima and several carriers, was deployed to Venezuelan waters to enforce what was described as an “oil quarantine” and to monitor drug-trafficking routes.
The Trump administration framed the attack — dubbed Operation Absolute Resolve — as a defense against “narcoterrorism,” and the abduction of Maduro as a law enforcement action related to a 2020 drug trafficking indictment.
The hypocrisy was barely contained. After all, in late 2025, Trump pardoned Honduras’ former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 45 years in US prison just a year earlier. At that time, prosecutors described him as a “kingpin” who turned Honduras into a “narco-state,” facilitating the transit of over 400 tons of cocaine into the US.
In the wake of the US attack on Venezuela, legal scholars, such as those at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, argue that drug trafficking does not meet the “armed attack” threshold required for legal self-defense under international law, and that using the military for foreign arrests is an illegal expansion of domestic police powers.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres and other officials have warned that the US attack set a precedent where powerful nations can unilaterally abduct foreign leaders they dislike. The unlawful US action could encourage other global powers, such as Russia or China, to use similar justifications for invading neighboring countries, analysts said.
As odious as the American military action was, Trump’s statements about US intentions after Maduro’s capture were just as disturbing, harking back to the days of American imperialism. He repeatedly said the US would “run the country” until a transition he deemed “safe, proper and judicious” could be established, taking unto himself the white man’s burden of “benevolent” rule.
“Don’t ask me who’s in charge… We’re in charge,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One after US troops snatched Maduro and flew him to the US, presumably to stand trial.
Trump said he was willing to work with Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodriguez, but warned her that her position was contingent on her doing “what we want.” If she does not cooperate, she will pay a “very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” the US president added.
He also threatened further military action if the remaining Venezuelan leadership does not comply with US demands.
“If we don’t get what we want,” he said, there would be a “second wave of bigger attacks.”
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to have [them]… We’re going to make sure that country is run properly,” he added.
Then, Trump revealed perhaps the true reason for the US attack, promising that “very large United States oil companies” would “go in, spend billions of dollars [and] fix the badly broken infrastructure” of the Venezuelan oil industry that had been nationalized in 2007 by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez. The US, he added, would run Venezuela’s oil industry “properly” and “professionally” to return the country to its status as a major global producer.
It would be facile to simply pin all the blame on the convicted criminal in the White House, but the US has a tradition of invading other countries to oust leaders it did not like. In 2003, it invaded Iraq and captured its strongman Saddam Hussein on the false pretext that the country had weapons of mass destruction. There were none. In 1989, the US invaded Panama to oust its then-dictator Manuel Noriega, a former ally who, for many years, was a paid informant for the Central Intelligence Agency and a key partner in US anti-communist efforts in Central America. In the wake of America’s most recent aggression, it is difficult to give credence to its professed commitment to “a rules-based international order.
Source: Trump’s naked aggression
