The criminal attack against Venezuela carried out by the United States effectively seals the fate of what little remained of international law. The bombing of Venezuelan military installations in the absence of any threats or dangers emanating from that country, and even more gravely, the kidnapping and forced removal of its Head of State—from a country against which no formal war has been declared—shifts the political and military initiative into the realm of outright crime.
What is evident is that any vestige, however small, of International Law – already mutilated in Gaza and confirmed by the inertia of the international community – has been definitively buried in Caracas.
The system of norms established in Yalta at the end of World War II, which was based on the principles of equality among states, respect for their sovereignty, and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, and which obligated the entire international community to adhere to these rules, has ceased to exist. The United Nations, as an instrument capable of preventing or suppressing disputes that violate this global pact of coexistence, using all available means, from diplomacy to the use of force, retains even less credibility.
The process of delegitimizing International Law is not only the product of a conspiracy of perverse individuals, but it began with the expansionist policy of American capitalism after the Second World War, which was unwilling to respect the agreements signed with Russia and China regarding respect for the respective spheres of influence foreseen in Yalta.
The lights of Yalta had barely gone out when American capitalism found a single driving force: the expansion of its interests through the military and geographical extension of its empire and total control of the continent’s resources and cheap labor. All in service of brutal economic growth for the exclusive benefit of the United States. This growth was based on control of maritime routes, subsoil resources, the military apparatus, and the energy cartel with which, from the mid-1960s onward, the hydrocarbon market was governed.
The organization of the international community was frequently confronted with faits accomplis; since 1945, US foreign policy has been based on dozens of invasions, coups d’état, and the organization of espionage networks that, through force or blackmail, obtained the operational complicity of dozens of governments. The plunder of entire continents constituted the necessary economic base for the construction, maintenance, and strengthening of an empire that clearly displayed the signs of its cynicism and immorality, even before those of its arrogance.
This Western bloc, driven by self-interest and absolute loyalty to the Atlantic, was tasked with representing the unified political facade of the so-called Collective West, while the United Nations, paralyzed by the veto system in the Security Council, watched any attempt to restore international law dissolve into time and sterile solutions. From Africa to Latin America, from Eastern Europe to Asia, US meddling in the plunder of the rest of the world was disguised as ideological warfare, obscuring the true North-South conflict beneath the false East-West confrontation.
The end of the socialist bloc was presented as “the end of history,” to use the expression of Fukuyama, the theorist of emptiness and permanent error. The arguments of Brzezinski and Donald Rumsfeld were clearer: different from each other, they agreed on one essential point: the world wants, can, and must be governed by the United States, whatever the cost.
The New World Order that emerged from the ruins of 1989 was, in reality, the final chapter of capital versus labor, of North versus South, euphemistically called the “clash of civilizations”.
The systematic destruction of reasons and historical truths had a key moment in the pouring of trillions of dollars into the international political arena to guarantee technological and scientific primacy, the domination of markets and the use of indebtedness as leverage, as well as – even more forcefully – the appropriation of what already exists and the control of new products in the information field.
Total control of the communications market implied cultural dominance and became the operational basis for a single, dominant ideology. The inversion of reality and the dismantling of the logic that underpinned the safeguards of the international system of rules led to the formation of a new common sense. Simultaneously, the use of international organizations for the exclusive benefit of Western supremacy ultimately destroyed the legal, political, institutional, and ethical framework that sustained the complexity of the world.
The United States has decided that the world is not a place for the just, but for the strong. Aware of its irreversible decline, it has chosen to retreat to its own continent, which it intends to subdue once again with an iron fist, knowing that it holds resources it lacks and that are essential to confronting the Chinese challenge and the emerging economies as a whole, in addition to constituting a geopolitical and strategic reserve that extends American control to both poles of the planet.
The US project of reconquering the world is shrinking territorially while becoming politically radicalized. It de facto recognizes the existence of three global actors—China, Russia, and India—and takes note of the growth of countries like Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, acknowledging their respective spheres of influence, but insists on forcing access to other countries’ resources wherever they are needed for the survival of its failing model.
From an ideological perspective rooted in the religious and messianic fanaticism, racial hatred, and machismo that characterize Trump’s ideology, the most evident shift in international relations is expressed in an interpretation of the world based on the political leanings of governments. In practice, wherever a fascist or a product of fascism governs, Trump is willing to extend a hand, identify with their ideology, and elevate them as an example of friendship. At the same time, he attacks those countries that practice sovereignty and independence, and even those, however lukewarm, where the right wing has been implicated in legal investigations, from Brazil to Colombia and Honduras, to name just a few in Latin America.
The shift from the law of equals to the Darwinian law of the strongest is accompanied by the disappearance of political relations between states: the criterion of gangs prevails, according to which there are friendly governments and enemy governments. The former are permitted everything by virtue of their blind obedience to the feudal lord; the latter are permitted nothing, precisely for the opposite reason.
The definitive collapse of any fascination with a sociopolitical model that, cornered, has hastily erased the legal and political principles upon which it claimed to be based demonstrates that these very principles have become an insurmountable obstacle to its power. Respecting them became obsolete and counterproductive to its interests. Hence the return to the brutal fury characteristic of colonial history, to the restriction of the free movement of people, capital, and goods, to the reappearance of piracy as a substitute for regulated trade. A new criminal profile that has dealt blows to an international community worthy of the name, which still insists—obstinately—on law and not on force.
As demonstrated in Gaza and confirmed in Caracas, we are witnessing the definitive loss of any supposed ethical superiority of a model that presented itself to the world proclaiming liberal-democratic principles. The kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro is, in a sense, comparable to the attempt to bomb Putin’s residence in Russia: we are facing the legitimization of the total absence of rules, of any aesthetic considerations in conflict, and of all decency in the use of force. The written rules and the unwritten ones that have always been considered respectable, based on the inviolability of heads of state and government, are being erased. Now we know that even this has disappeared.
The new fascism 2.0 that seems poised to take hold in early 2026 reveals the vulgarity and ignominy of its protagonists. A new autocracy with a criminal profile is the hallmark of a rotten model, devoid of legitimacy and utterly incapable of proposing a societal project other than a rehash of the worst imperial experiences. Any country aspiring to preserve its sovereignty must take into account this group of criminals who lead the West and act accordingly. They are owed no respect and no obedience to any rules in their confrontation. Like all empires, it is destined to perish under its own ruins, and much sooner than anyone imagines. The only question is when.