Operation Absolute Resolve is not an invasion of Venezuela, and Russia's special military operation is not an invasion of Ukraine either. What we are seeing is the powers playing their game in the face of an existential threat.
Nicolás Maduro is the president of Venezuela, even though the United States and the European Union refuse to recognize him. His status as head of state did not protect him from the charges brought against him in the United States.
Washington had the right to stop Venezuela's aid to Hezbollah, not because it dislikes the Lebanese resistance, but because that aid involved the entry of drugs into the United States, endangering the security of that country.
In any case, this operation is a serious insult to the people of Venezuela and will make the country's recovery more difficult.
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, was kidnapped by the US military on January 3, 2026, and taken to New York, where he was charged with “narco-terrorism” and smuggling cocaine into the United States.
To analyze this news, we have to move away from the usual interpretations in Latin America. This kidnapping is not necessarily related to the traditional opposition between descendants of indigenous peoples and descendants of colonizers, nor to the Roosevelt corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, nor to the struggle for oil.
I will draw on my knowledge of Venezuela. I was a personal friend of President Hugo Chávez Frías, who died in 2013. I do not believe that Maduro is a “Chavista,” although he was in the past.
In 2017, President Nicolás Maduro invited me to Caracas to participate in one of the many intellectual gatherings he used to organize. I traveled to Caracas, but not to participate in that gathering, rather with the intention of giving a lecture to the armed forces' general staff. At that time, the American Straussian Elliott Abrams was preparing an invasion of Venezuela—President Donald Trump, who was serving his first term, had entrusted him with the Venezuela issue. I wanted to organize a visit by high-ranking Venezuelan officers to Syria so that they could see for themselves the methods the Pentagon was using to manipulate the jihadists. Within a few hours, I realized that the intellectuals Nicolás Maduro had invited did not understand the geopolitical situation at all. President Maduro's entourage prevented me from meeting with the general staff. I was able to meet with diplomats and officers, all of whom I found to be very competent and dissatisfied with the president. When I saw Maduro, I had the impression that I was talking to an actor and not a politician. Nothing happened after that visit.
WHO IS NICOLÁS MADURO?
Nicolás Maduro is a trade unionist who fought alongside Hugo Chávez. He became president because Chávez's Cuban doctors said that, on his deathbed, President Chávez had designated him as his successor. At that time, Maduro was vice president and represented a faction of the party that Chávez had founded. There are no witnesses to what Chávez told his doctors, but the “Chavistas” did not want to contradict Cuba, the reference point for revolutionaries. They obeyed and elected Maduro. Despite not being a charismatic person, Maduro proved to be effective in many areas, including tactical issues such as maintaining order.
But his country plunged into crisis. Oil facilities were in ruins and he did nothing to restore them. Prices rose and inflation reached 130,000% in 2019. It became difficult to feed oneself. Millions of Venezuelans emigrated or fled the country. Some returned later, but most remained abroad. Maduro then liberalized the economy and set up casinos. The country, where Hugo Chávez had fostered a sense of national identity, had brought literacy even to the most remote villages, had created a genuine health service, and had established a level of equality unmatched anywhere else in Latin America, became, under Maduro's presidency, a hotbed for all kinds of traffickers and suffered an explosion of social inequalities. Many long-time Chavistas began to distance themselves from Maduro.
Nicolás Maduro established a police state, creating identity cards, the Carnets de la Patria, which linked social assistance to political affiliation. The years 2017 to 2019 were marked by harsh repression against domestic terrorism. Law enforcement agencies practiced torture, without it being possible to determine whether this was a state policy or individual initiatives.
In 2020, during Trump's first presidential term, Nicolás Maduro was indicted in the United States for narco-terrorism, a paradox given that Hugo Chávez's Venezuela had been declared a “drug-free state” by the United Nations.
WHAT IS OPERATION ABSOLUTE RESOLVE?
Not much is known about the US operation Absolute Resolve. We only know what we have been told, with no way of verifying it.
What is known is that the United States caused a massive power outage and bombed seven military targets in or near the capital, while an airborne special forces team entered the presidential residence and captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, lawyer Cilia Flores, who was president of the National Assembly, in their bedroom.
The only exchanges of fire reported took place between the group protecting the president, made up exclusively of Cubans. The Venezuelan forces, for their part, offered no resistance, suggesting that the army was colluding with the US attack.
It was not an invasion of Venezuela, nor was it regime change.
DID THE UNITED STATES VIOLATE INTERNATIONAL LAW?
Most commentators assert that the United States violated international law. But “international law” is not a legal code, it is not a universal regulation, it has no police, courts, or prisons. It is a series of commitments that only those who believe in them comply with.
The United States—and also the European Union—claim that the candidate elected in 2024 was Edmundo González Urrutia, not Nicolás Maduro Moros. There is much controversy surrounding that election, and not without reason. However, it is an indisputable fact that
Nicolás Maduro has the support of the majority in his country [1].
From the Venezuelan point of view, the United States kidnapped their elected president. From the US point of view, Washington kidnapped a drug trafficker, whom it also accuses of having usurped the presidency. More than a violation of international law, there is a conflict of viewpoints.
WHO IS DELCY RODRÍGUEZ?
The Vice President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez Gómez, is the daughter of revolutionary leader Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, who died under torture at the hands of the police in 1976. Closely linked to Hugo Chávez, Delcy Rodríguez worked as a member of his government, serving in the intelligence services and in his government secretariat. In 2002, President Hugo Chávez sent her to Europe to establish contact with us. That was when I had the opportunity to meet her personally.
Her brother, Jorge Rodríguez Gómez, was vice president under President Chávez and now presides over the National Assembly.
In the 2020s, Delcy Rodríguez came into conflict with Vice President Tareck el-Aissami, of Syrian origin, who had been indicted in the United States at the same time as Nicolás Maduro. The United States accused el-Aissami of corruption for providing passports to Lebanese Hezbollah militants and Syrian figures, including President Bashar al-Assad and members of his family. El-Aissami resigned in 2023 and was arrested in 2024 on the orders of Attorney General Tarek William Saab, brother of the former Venezuelan ambassador to Damascus. The Venezuelan justice system accuses el-Aissami of having organized a network of officials who embezzled public funds to finance election campaigns. There has been no mention of personal enrichment.
When I was in Venezuela in 2017, Delcy Rodríguez greeted me kindly but did not grant me a private meeting, probably because of the conflict with Tareck el-Aissami.
From the moment Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped, Delcy Rodríguez was considered the presumed interim president.
During the crisis surrounding Tareck el-Aissami, Delcy Rodríguez was in conflict with Diosdado Cabello, who had also been indicted in the United States in 2020, at the same time as Nicolás Maduro. Cabello is the strongman of Chavismo. Without the testimony of the doctors, Cabello would have been Hugo Chávez's successor.
DOES THE “CARTEL OF THE SUNS” REALLY EXIST?
On July 25, 2025, the United States designated the “Cartel of the Suns,” named after the insignia worn by Venezuelan military personnel on their uniforms, as responsible for drug trafficking and accused Nicolás Maduro of being its leader.
Experts familiar with the drug market are unanimous in their belief that this cartel does not exist.
In 2000, I was secretary general of the World Anti-Prohibition League, an organization whose members included more than 500 parliamentarians and more than 20 Nobel laureates. At that time, I was able to assess the extent of the harm caused by narco-states and the ineffectiveness of the war on drugs. The only way to clean up societies affected by drugs is to educate people on how to control their own addictions. Consequently, President Trump's efforts are not likely to bear fruit, even if he does manage to improve political relations with Latin America and the Middle East.
ARE WE FACING A RETURN TO THE AGE OF “EMPIRE”?
Most commentators are now talking about a possible return of empires. They claim that Donald Trump has just invaded Venezuela in the same way that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and that Xi Jinping will do the same in Taiwan. To say this reflects a total misunderstanding of what is happening. Trump has not invaded Venezuela; he considers that he has only captured a drug trafficker there. Putin did not invade Ukraine; he has only applied the Minsk Agreements and UN Security Council Resolution 2202. As for Xi Jinping, the Chinese president has repeatedly guaranteed that Taiwan will not be invaded as long as it does not declare independence.
Of course, we are facing the beginning of a new historical period, not a return to the times of empires but the creation of a multipolar world. But multipolarity implies the restoration of international law and, consequently, the abolition of the international rules imposed during the Cold War and after the dissolution of the USSR by the United States and the G7.
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