One has to be very naive, very cynical, or very idiotic, to keep talking about International Law as if it were an unshakeable sacred dogma and not what it really is: a thin blanket that powers throw over themselves when they are cold and discard when it gets in their way. Especially after what Russia did to Ukraine. One also has to be a third-rate "know-it-all" to simplify the ultimate goal of military action to one thing: oil.
Any power acts according to its interests based on the logic of realpolitik. Russia did so with Ukraine and previously with Georgia, and D. Trump has done so by attacking Venezuela, violating any legal or moral norm we can think of, reminding both cases – as some needed reminding – that weapons carry more weight than the paragraphs in the UN Charter. And that no one can prevent it without responding with the same instruments: weapons
It is important that people begin to understand how our world currently works. A world built on a multipolar system where major powers divide spheres of influence and interests, and where the EU seems to be fishing – incidentally. International Law, without a strong power behind it, is simply and plainly pure literature. Waste paper. This is confirmed by the most basic logic that Webber already anticipated in his work ‘Politics as a Vocation’: a law that no one can enforce is not a law, it is a wish, a fantasy, a chimera that vanishes like smoke in the wind. Only fools believe in it. The entire history of humanity is summarized, with few exceptions, in this sad evidence, or have we already forgotten Chamberlain and his meeting with Hitler before the start of World War II? Any professor or specialized analyst will say that in the International Order, when there is no universal power to enforce the Law, force reigns as the primary diplomatic tool – what is known as ‘hard power’. The United States was the "police" of the globe for decades, but that role vanished with 9/11. Since then, the world has become a chessboard that, little by little, has seen its aggressiveness increase with increasingly bold moves.
D. Trump's priority objective is not Venezuelans. It never has been. Not their dead, not their prisoners, not their hungry, nor anything that has to do with them. Nor drug trafficking and the problems that drug entry through Latin routes generates in the United States. Or the migratory effect on its allies in the region, such as Colombia or Mexico, or on its southern border. The attack on Venezuela is a maneuver measured on a larger scale, on a geopolitical chessboard that carries a message written in fire directed at China and, incidentally, at Russia.
In a world that tends to be divided into blocs once again, the map tends to be configured as follows: part of Ukraine under Russian orbit, Taiwan and Southeast Asia for Beijing – China will end up invading Taiwan in the short to medium term – and South America within the sphere of influence of the United States, as determined by the Monroe Doctrine, which described it as: the old American "backyard" where no one enters without asking Washington's permission. How am I sure? The National Security Strategy of 2025, approved in November, is quite clear about this on pages 15-19 (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf).
It would also be advisable to stop repeating like parrots the slogan that "the United States is going to loot Venezuelan oil." Loot what, exactly. Almost all the infrastructure that the big oil companies left before the expropriation is, de facto, inoperative. At a time when oil prices have been fluctuating for years, when investing in deteriorated fields and destroyed structures is very expensive, thinking that the grand master plan is to "steal oil" reveals more ignorance than lucidity. The United States is the world's leading oil producer and ninth in reserves. What is at stake are not barrels, but strategic positions, ports, alliances, influence, and presence in what they have always considered their most important zone of influence.
Washington's real move is called the People's Republic of China. It's about cutting off its access to solid allies in South America and its mineral and energy resources, preventing the Asian giant from building a belt of friendly states —or clients— in what the geopolitical tradition of the United States continues to consider its natural area of influence. It's the Monroe Doctrine recycled for the 21st century: America for Americans, meaning, for them. Beijing, Moscow, and Washington are dividing the world with the swagger with which colonial powers once carved up Africa like a cake on a map. This is the harsh reality of our current International System, and where the "supposed" International Order that many insolent people still believe in has devolved into total disorder.
International Law only works when there is a power behind it willing to uphold it. When that power withdraws, what governs is the ancestral law of force. This has always been the case at every border drawn with blood and fire throughout the centuries. And it remains so today, no matter how much we insist on cloaking missiles with idealism and pretty words. The rest are tales for big children who still believe the world is governed by principles, not by force. Idealism always ends the same way, giving way to realism when words cease to have any value because there is no one strong enough to defend them
On the other hand, obtuse-minded and short-tempered sectarians must be made to understand that one can hold several positions at once without falling into inconsistency, as Juan Rallo stated on his X account. And it is that one can criticize in no uncertain terms that the United States has violated International Law and, probably, part of its own internal legal system. One can say, at the same time, that Maduro staged a de facto coup d'état against his own Constitution, falsified elections, and ruled for years through repression, hunger, and fear. And one can, despite all this, celebrate the collapse of a tyranny responsible for the largest exodus in recent Latin American history, for thousands of extrajudicial killings, and for a country plunged into the abyss. None of this is mutually exclusive; it only bothers those who need a single villain to sleep soundly
The sad thing is that these scum are the same ones who, on another occasion, didn't say much when Nicolás Maduro's regime turned Venezuela into a life-crushing machine. Let's remember that almost eight million people have been expelled from their own country due to hunger and ruin, more than eight thousand extrajudicial executions have been carried out by security forces acting as death squads, and more than 18,500 politically motivated detentions have occurred, according to human rights organizations. Back then, curiously, International Law didn't exist. Now, however, they suddenly discover that human rights and International Law exist. The ideological memory of some political elements, as is well known, is like a spotlight: it only illuminates where it's of interest, when it's of interest.
In the end, what remains of all this is a rather depressing moral landscape, and an increasingly terrifying future. An empire that bombs the sovereignty of another country when it suits it and for interests that go beyond what the rabble argues. A dictatorship that calls itself democratic while literally executing its own people, but which sells its riches to other interested powers. An extremist elite that only sees crimes when they can point to the United States, and a chorus of professional "know-it-alls" who pretend to be scandalized today by a missile and who yesterday remained silent about a tortured prisoner, demonstrating not having the slightest idea what they are talking about. All wrapped in a tortilla of immorality that will inevitably end up blowing up in all our facesMy recommendation is that, on matters of this magnitude, you read specialized authors and analysts and disregard self-interested politicians and uninformed "know-it-alls." The truth is harsher and more complicated, and it affects us all, even if some of us live in the middle of nowhere.