The abduction of Venezuela’s elected president was not an aberration but the culmination of sanctions, lawfare, and militarised capitalism. What happened in Caracas reveals how U.S. imperial power now governs through courts, markets, and force—while hollowing out democracy at home and abroad.

At 2:00 a.m. on January 3, 2026, the global order crossed a line that even the most permissive readings of international law were meant to forbid. United States forces entered Caracas, disabled key infrastructure, bombed strategic locations, and abducted Venezuela’s elected president, Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife, transferring them to New York for detention and trial in a U.S. court.

This was not a conventional military intervention, nor merely another episode in Washington’s long history of coercive diplomacy. It marked the fusion of sanctions, courts, and force into a single imperial instrument—one that treats sovereignty as conditional and legality as an extension of power.

For policy and financial audiences accustomed to analysing geopolitics through risk, markets, and institutions, the Venezuelan episode demands a harder question: what happens to the global system when law itself becomes a tool of regime change?

From sanctions to seizure

The seizure of a sitting foreign president did not occur in a vacuum. It was the culmination of nearly two decades of escalating economic warfare. U.S. sanctions against Venezuela, intensified after 2015 and dramatically expanded during the presidency of Donald Trump, systematically isolated the country from global finance, trade, and credit.

The decisive blow came with measures targeting the state oil company, PDVSA, cutting off the principal source of foreign exchange for an economy in which oil accounted for the overwhelming share of export earnings. Production collapsed, imports of food and medicine became prohibitively difficult, and hyperinflation followed. By the early 2020s, Venezuela’s GDP had contracted by more than three-quarters, and millions had emigrated.

Sanctions are often described as a non-violent alternative to war. In practice, they function as slow-burning sieges. Their economic logic is explicit: degrade living standards, fracture social consent, and render political capitulation more attractive than resistance. That the human costs are borne overwhelmingly by workers and the poor is not an unintended consequence; it is the mechanism.

Lawfare as imperial method

What distinguishes the January operation is not merely its brutality but its juridical framing. The Trump administration presented the abduction of Maduro as law enforcement rather than invasion, relying on allegations of drug trafficking, arms accumulation, and electoral fraud. These claims may resonate domestically in the U.S., but their international significance lies elsewhere.

International law rests on sovereign equality and the immunity of heads of state from foreign jurisdiction. By asserting the right to arrest and try a foreign president, Washington effectively replaced multilateral norms with unilateral jurisdiction. Courts became instruments of foreign policy; indictments substituted for declarations of war.

This is lawfare in its most advanced form. Instead of occupying territory, imperial power extracts leadership. Instead of administering protectorates, it administers trials. The political objective—regime change—remains unchanged, but the method is cheaper, faster, and easier to legitimise in a media environment accustomed to criminal narratives.

Why Venezuela matters

Venezuela’s treatment cannot be explained by democratic concern alone. The country has long been central to global energy politics, possessing the world’s largest proven reserves of heavy crude as well as significant gold and mineral deposits. Control over these resources has shaped foreign interest for a century.

The political rupture came with the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998. His government nationalised strategic sectors, redirected oil revenues toward social programmes, and pursued an independent foreign policy. Poverty fell markedly, and political participation expanded. Just as importantly, the model challenged the assumption that resource-rich states must submit to neoliberal discipline.

From the standpoint of global capital, this was a dangerous precedent. After Chávez’s death, his successor inherited not only an oil-dependent economy but an increasingly hostile external environment. Sanctions, capital flight, and diplomatic isolation followed, culminating in the events of January 2026.

Democracy and its contradictions

Western commentary often frames Venezuela’s crisis as a struggle between authoritarianism and democracy. This binary obscures the deeper political economy at work. The opposition, supported financially and diplomatically by external powers, has been explicit in welcoming foreign intervention. Whatever one’s view of Maduro’s governance, a democracy installed by external force is accountable not to voters but to its sponsors.

The contradiction extends to the United States itself. Decisions with global consequences—sanctions that devastate economies, operations that abduct foreign leaders—are undertaken with minimal domestic debate and no international mandate. Imperial power operates beyond democratic constraint even as it invokes democratic rhetoric abroad.

International law on the margins

The muted response of multilateral institutions underscores a broader erosion of the legal order. The United Nations expressed concern but lacked enforcement capacity. The European Union aligned with Washington, citing allegations of electoral impropriety to justify extraordinary measures. Selective legality has become the norm: rules apply to the weak, exemptions to the powerful.

For middle powers and emerging economies, this sets a troubling precedent. If sovereignty can be suspended by indictment, then access to resources and alignment with dominant capital become the real guarantees of security.

A systemic warning

The Venezuelan episode should be read less as an isolated crisis than as a signal of systemic change. Under conditions of geopolitical rivalry and slowing growth, advanced capitalist states are increasingly willing to discard even the formal restraints of the post-war order. Sanctions, lawfare, and force are being recombined into a single toolkit of domination.

For global markets, this carries risks that extend beyond Venezuela. Energy security, investment stability, and the predictability of international law all depend on the assumption that rules constrain power. When that assumption erodes, uncertainty becomes structural.

The abduction of a foreign president and the presentation of that act as justice mark a decisive moment. It suggests a world in which law no longer limits empire but serves it—a world in which sovereignty survives not by right, but by permission.

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