The would-be emperor is naked, finally, an openly predatory action by Donald Trump and his team—the treacherous kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro in a nighttime military attack on January 3, in Caracas—has launched 2026 into a crucial moment, not only for Latin America, but for world politics.
It is pathetic that some supposed defenders of human rights and the Charter of the United Nations, in the face of this heinous crime, look the other way and do not condemn these vile and dangerous acts, which threaten planetary stability and bring us closer to the holocaust. They are the same ones who did not blush in the face of the Israeli genocide, with Trump’s complacent approval, in Gaza.
From the point of view of Public International Law, the manu militari kidnapping of a sitting Head of State is neither a small anomaly nor an interpretable gray area: it is an absolute breach of the international legal order established after the Second World War. On January 7, 2026, United States President Donald Trump withdrew the country from 66 organizations, almost half of which are United Nations entities, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a treaty that underpins all international efforts to combat global warming.
Explaining the US foreign debt situation, Michael Peterson, president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said in a statement that “reaching $38 trillion in debt during a government shutdown is the latest worrying sign that lawmakers are failing to meet their basic fiscal obligations.”¹
However, the debt grew faster than expected due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which lasted for several years starting in 2020 and paralyzed much of the US economy. The federal government borrowed heavily during the terms of then-President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden to stabilize the national economy and boost the recovery.
Trump has several obstacles, among them, the so-called tariff war, whose results have not been as expected; the divergences with the Federal Reserve, the mid-term elections, which are presented with serious storm clouds, serious social tensions, among others.
In its study, the ASPI (Australian Strategic Policy Institute) indicates that China surpasses the United States and the rest of the countries in 37 of 44 key technologies for innovation and growth in areas such as defense, space exploration, robotics, biotechnology, quantum technology and artificial intelligence.
“In the long term, China’s leadership position in research means that it has positioned itself not only to excel in the development of current technology in almost every sector, but also in future technologies that do not yet exist,” says the report titled ASPI Key Technology Tracker: The Global Race for Future Power.²
Meanwhile, Russia is consolidating itself as the most advanced military power, with its hypersonic weapons and the strength of an economy that advances in the midst of a fierce hybrid war that the Global West has imposed on it and consolidates its alliance with China.
The anthropologist and demographer by training Emmanuel Todd has recently returned to be the topic of debate in the world by publishing his latest work, The Defeat of the West (published in Spanish by the AKAL publishing house), where he warns the nations of the world about the danger that Western nations, led by the United States, represent for the stability of the world. It describes a Western world mired in a serious internal social, political and religious crisis, which falls into nihilism and self-destruction, and consequently fosters the main armed conflicts that shake the world. Thus, Todd claims that NATO is responsible for the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, but is not capable of winning it, due to its economic, industrial and educational decline.
That is the backdrop that has led Donald Trump to the blow in Venezuela, which testifies to the weakness of the empire at the current moment, by slapping the world chessboard. I believe that the tendency to make oil transactions in yuan is what is at the root of this monumental miscalculation. Submission to Trump’s demand is the only variable that matters for the current Republican Administration. All masks have been removed. The Rubicon has been crossed.
Trump wants Venezuelan oil to be traded in dollars, not yuan, which is not within the freedom of trade, as the Trump Administration understands it. You don’t play with oil and the dollar. Donald Trump has demanded something from the Venezuela temporarily presided over by Delcy Rodríguez, which he can hardly satisfy: giving it between 30 and 50 million barrels of oil and cutting relations with its partners, with China, with Russia, with Iran and with Cuba.
By acting in this way, the United States not only ignores a norm, but deliberately undermines the principles that make coexistence possible between formally equal states. The logic that sustains the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations is thus dismantled and the principle of sovereign equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations is emptied of its content. The message is unequivocal: international law ceases to be a common framework and becomes a selective instrument, applicable only when it does not interfere with the interests of the power that invokes it.
The United States updates the validity of the Monroe Doctrine. According to the Spanish newspaper el País: “On December 4, 2025, the US Government published the National Security Strategy, which outlines the foreign policy priorities of Donald Trump’s administration. In this, Latin America once again plays a leading role, after, in May 2012, Hillary Clinton announced the Obama government’s intention to ‘Pivot to Asia’, making the Asian continent its foreign policy priority.”³
The only truth told by Donald Trump, in this process, is that María Corina Machado is not respected in Venezuela and, therefore, cannot be a replacement for Nicolás Maduro. But he has not explained the reasons for those words, meaning that it is difficult for the Chavista masses to accept a person in the government who has repeatedly requested North American military intervention in Venezuela.
The Trump Administration’s plan is for the current government of the newly inaugurated president, Delcy Rodríguez, to continue controlling the country, as long as she meets Trump’s wishes. If she or any of her ministers do not follow that plan, they will receive the “Maduro treatment,” or worse. Several journalistic sources report that the United States has already threatened the Minister of the Interior of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello. In my opinion, the United States has a situation full of unknowns in Venezuela, given the attitude adopted by Delcy Rodríguez and the Chavista team, in addition, Nicolás Maduro cannot be kept indefinitely imprisoned.
The Trump Administration is determined to take over Greenland, invoking its national security and affecting its military arm, NATO, and its relations with the European Union, which it warns is facing the “disappearance of civilization.” It also fuels tensions in the Middle East, rampantly fueling a conflict in Iran, along with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel. It smells of sulfur, as Hugo Chavez would say, because of Tehran’s oil links with Beijing, and the strategic partnership in Moscow. They also threaten Cuba, Mexico and anyone who defends their natural resources and national sovereignty. The North American political scientist John Mearsheimer⁴ has warned the North American Administration and I quote: “Any attempt to invade Cuba would end in a disaster that would make the Bay of Pigs look like a minor setback.”
When this happens, we are approaching defining moments in the conflict that the United States and NATO imposed on Russia in Ukraine, with all the consequences that a Russian military victory would bring.
I believe that what happened in Venezuela is embedded in this panorama, the new world order that is taking shape and that suggests that, although the situation is dangerous, Venezuela is anchored in the great changes that the old capitalist powers are trying, in extremis, to prevent.
* The author is a member of the UNEAC Writers Association.
Footnotes:
(1)https://www.univision.com/noticias/estados-unidos/la-deuda-del-gobierno-de-eeuu-alcanza-el-astronomico-record-de-38-billones-como-te-poder-afectar
(2)https://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/china-supera-a-eeuu-en-investigaci%C3%B3n-en-tecnolog%C3%ADa-del-futuro-seg%C3%BAn-informe/48327076
(3) Mario Carvajal Cabal. DEC 15, 2025 – 05:30 CET
(4) Born December 14, 1947, he is an American political scientist and international relations expert. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago.
By Oscar Oramas Oliva, Cuba en Debate, Resumen Latinoamericano, 18 January, 2026.