US in Venezuela: Painful silence and scattered order

Editor's note: Wan Dai, a special commentator for CGTN, is a columnist on international affairs. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

From January 3, 2026, justice and principle in the global order turned from necessities into luxuries. 

The Western Hemisphere has reverted to the law of the jungle – distinguishing only between the strong and the weak, not between right and wrong.

The order that Latin America depended on for its development has collapsed completely, leaving the region's future clouded in uncertainty.

At a press conference in Mar-a-Lago, US President Donald Trump "proudly" announced to the world that US forces had launched a "televised" strike on Caracas just hours earlier and forcibly took Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife to the United States.

International media focused on Trump's boasting of American might, running headlines quoting his declaration: "This was one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history."

Yet his preceding words were far more chilling: "It was an assault like people have not seen since World War II."

What the world had not seen was not Trump's ambition or America's power, but the disbelief that one of the founding nations of the postwar peace order, without any legal mandate, could violate another country's sovereignty, detain its legitimate president, and parade this as an achievement before the world.

If history offers an analogy, it would be the tale of Lü Meng's crossing the river in disguise in the late Eastern Han dynasty – a dazzling victory purchased by exhausting universal consensus, at the price of centuries of suffering and infamy.

This is not merely an invasion; it marks the leading global power breaking through the bottom line of international conduct – a destruction cutting across time and space.

First to fall victim is the very postwar order the United States once helped to build. 

As written in the UN Charter, "To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace …"

That clause was not designed for powerful nations to flex their fists. It was written for small states unable to defend themselves alone. Under this principle, the world enjoyed 80 years of precarious peace after 1945, even amid regional conflicts. 

Small Latin nations – Uruguay, Costa Rica, and others – dared to take part in global governance, negotiating with larger powers and achieving their own development miracles.

It was the kind of world the US once wanted: aligned with the Monroe Doctrine's original promise of hemispheric stability. Yet driven by expediency and greed, Washington has tossed that doctrine aside whenever it conflicted with economic or geopolitical needs.

Cuba in 1961, Chile in 1973, Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989 – for Washington, the Monroe Doctrine expanded without limit while sovereignty shrank to nothing.

Even with this disgraceful history of intervention, the present moment feels uniquely barefaced.

"We have to be surrounded by safe, secure countries, and we also have to have energy, very important," Trump said on Saturday.

At Mar-a-Lago, Trump and his aides mentioned "oil" more than twenty times – far more than "narcotics," their official pretext. The word "democracy," long a standby in Washington's moral vocabulary, never appeared once.

Any doubt about motives has vanished. Venezuela's "crime" is having what America wants.

Its proven reserves are the world's largest, and its heavy crude perfectly complements US domestic output. Hungry American refineries can now replace costly Canadian imports with cheap Venezuelan oil.

Even without counting the financial leverage such access brings, the immediate profit is irresistible. As Trump put it, "It's going to make a lot of money.”

Behind the gunfire lies something greater than regime change: the collapse of an entire development model for Latin America and other small nations.

As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned, "Independently of the situation in Venezuela, these developments constitute a dangerous precedent."

Jose Marti once put it, "Our republics of the Americas were born from the silence of the indigenous, the clamor of foreign gospels against native faiths, and the bleeding arms of hundreds of pioneers."

Since Marti's time, Latin American leaders, economists, and thinkers have struggled to find their path – using statecraft, natural resources, and industry to modernize. Many small nations achieved remarkable successes in poverty reduction and human development.

Now all that patient work is swept aside by carrier groups and economic coercion.

Regional intellectuals face despair.

Faced with the crimes committed by the United States, many small nations cannot speak out as major powers do; whether it is through tariffs, trade disputes, or even open warfare, they are powerless to confront Washington directly and can only retreat into silence. As Central American economist Viria Govaere said in an interview, it is a silence too painful to speak of.

That silence hides beneath the noise of information and crisis.

For decades of peace, Latin nations had built distinct, peaceful growth strategies: reducing military spending to fund welfare, replacing cheap crops with high-value exports, opening social sectors to international investment, and so forth.

These once-practical formulas now appear as targets. 

As Chilean President Gabriel Boric put it bluntly: Today Venezuela – tomorrow, any of us.

If the "Trump Doctrine" continues to reverberate, the region will lose any space for good governance.

Under economic and military intimidation, smaller Latin American and Caribbean nations may find no choice but to cooperate – voluntarily or not – providing resources and policies to satisfy "America First," at the expense of their sovereignty and dignity.

"The United States and its 'help' have turned these nations into madhouses and cemeteries," Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano said in his masterpiece Open Veins of Latin America. The book, once presented by former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Barack Obama in 2009, chronicled centuries of exploitation by great powers.

Galeano, who mocked American hypocrisy, could never have imagined that a decade after his death, the U.S. would abandon even that hypocrisy – displaying raw dominance without disguise.

At that same press conference, Trump threatened not only Colombia and Cuba but even Mexico, a supposed ally, for criticizing US actions.

Washington is now racing to crush or co-opt left-leaning governments across the region, forcing the Western Hemisphere to conform to its National Security Strategy and reviving its dream of an America for Americans.

Yet the Western Hemisphere is more than Latin America, and the world is more than the West.

Less than 24 hours after the strike, Trump again told American media: "We need Greenland,” shrugging off the fact that it belongs to NATO-ally Denmark.

Ideological alignment no longer guarantees safety from imperial logic. 

No matter how a nation retreats, silence won't spare it once its resources become desirable. 

Force can breed quiet, but lost legitimacy can never be recovered at gunpoint. History has already taught this lesson.

After widespread condemnation, the governments of Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, and Spain issued a joint statement emphasizing that Venezuela's future must be decided by its own people, free from external interference and in accordance with international law. They urged the UN and regional bodies to mediate the crisis.

The UN headquarters in Manhattan – symbol of the postwar order – now stands across the city from where the detained South American president awaits trial under "criminal charges."

Whether peace and justice can bridge those few miles depends not on silence or spectatorship, but on the courage of those who still believe in them. In a world meant to be shared, where nations are equal in right if not in power, the call for true courage has never been clearer.

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