By Mr Lee Jasper
If it is true that the United States has sent elite forces into the capital of Venezuela and removed its sitting president and his wife, then we are no longer talking about diplomacy, pressure, sanctions, or even covert destabilisation. We are talking about imperial abduction in plain sight.
This is not regime change by persuasion. It is regime change by kidnapping.
And no amount of media varnish can make that acceptable.
Let us strip away the fog. The language of “narco state,” “criminal president,” or “failed election” is not new. It is the same script the empire has read from for over a century. Delegitimise. Criminalise. Isolate. Then act as if international law were an optional accessory.
The closest historical parallel being offered is the US invasion of Panama in 1989 and the seizure of Manuel Noriega. That comparison is meant to reassure. It should terrify.
Panama was flattened to make a point. Thousands of civilians died. An entire neighbourhood, El Chorrillo, was burned to the ground. And the message was simple: defy Washington and your sovereignty becomes theoretical.
Panama was not an exception. It was a precedent.
Qoute: Brian Taylor Cohen
From Grenada to Haiti, from Guatemala to Chile, the Americas have been treated as a proving ground for domination. Governments toppled. Economies rewired. Societies destabilised. Always in the name of “order.” Always leaving disorder behind.
Venezuela’s problems are real. Its political failures are real. Its economic suffering is real. But they are Venezuelan problems, for Venezuelans to resolve. Sovereignty does not dissolve because a country is in crisis. If it did, half the world would be subject to occupation.
What makes this moment especially dangerous is the context.
The United States is economically strained, politically fractured, and strategically anxious. Its unipolar moment has ended. China is rising. The Global South is asserting itself. The old certainties are gone.
And sitting beneath Venezuelan soil are the largest proven oil reserves on Earth.
This is not coincidence. It is motive.
We have seen this pattern elsewhere. Iran was punished for daring to control its own resources. Libya was “liberated” into permanent collapse. Across Africa, pressure is intensifying around rare earths, lithium, cobalt, and strategic minerals essential to the green transition and digital economy.
The empire is not shrinking gracefully. It is lashing out.
And this action sends a chilling message to the world, especially to African, Caribbean, and Latin American nations: your leaders are removable. Your borders are negotiable. Your sovereignty exists only until it conflicts with US interests.
This is gunboat diplomacy updated for the special forces era.
Let us be absolutely clear. Democracies do not kidnap heads of state. Democracies do not bypass the United Nations and international law because they find them inconvenient. Democracies do not behave like cartels enforcing turf.
This is not about defending Nicolás Maduro as an individual. It is about defending the principle that no nation has the right to act as global police, court, and prison simultaneously.
If this action is allowed to stand, it will normalise a world in which power replaces law entirely. A world where aircraft carriers substitute for ballots. A world where international norms exist only for the weak.
That is why this moment demands maximum unity.
African leaders, Caribbean governments, Latin American states, and their diasporas across Europe and North America must speak with one voice. Silence will be read as consent. Division will be exploited. Ambiguity will be weaponised. This that oppose will now rush to arm themselves with nuclear weapons as the ultimate deterrent as in North Korea. That the relentless logic of this action. .
This is not a call for nostalgia or ideological alignment. It is a call for collective self respect.
Today it is Venezuela. Tomorrow it will be someone else. History teaches us that empires do not stop because they are satisfied. They stop because they are resisted.
The task of our generation is simple and heavy at the same time: to say that kidnapping presidents is not normal, not acceptable, and not something the world will shrug off.
Empire thrives on the belief that outrage will pass.
