In the dead of night on the third of January 2026, the United States (U.S) launched an extensive operation to abduct the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, filling the skies with jet noises and the whistling sound of dropping bombs on an otherwise peaceful eve.
In the promise of an illusory freedom, the U.S bombed the capital city of Caracas, and it was burned to the ground, pounded by a series of aerial attacks, bringing hellfire to the streets, and resulting in the confirmed death toll of 80 at the moment this article is being written.
With Maduro’s abduction, he was formally indicted on the charges of narco-terrorism, in association with the region’s largest drug cartel, the Tren de Aragua gang, which allegedly pushed drug-trafficking and the flow of illegal immigration to the U.S. He will stand in trial in defense in front of an American judge and jury—in a land where he was extracted without any international treaties or agreements between two countries prior to the invasion.
In the process, the United States violated the United Nations Charter, Article 2 (4), which stated, “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State,” infringing Venezuela’s sovereignty, as well as breaching all of the international customs and norms every state in the world must follow for peace to be upheld.
Outrageous as it is, it is not without precedent. From its birth as a nation up to the present, the United States has consistently exhibited a habitual tendency towards imperialism and empire-building, driven by its capitalistic desires for wealth and power, under the guise of delivering democracy and promising emancipation from authoritarian rule. In its arrogance, it hails itself as the land of the free; however, history shows otherwise.
During the Cold War, the U.S supported reactionary dictatorships such as Ferdinand Marcos Sr. of the Philippines and General Suharto of Indonesia, resulting in a bloody authoritarian regime whose spectres haunted the countries until this day. It mercilessly bombed Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to assert control over socialist countries, killing millions of civilians during the process, and dropping megatons of bombs and mines to such an extent that, even to this day, in some places, civilians are not allowed to enter due to the threat of explosive remnants of war.
Threatening the country’s control in Latin America, the U.S launched multiple attempts of regime change on Cuba through the Bay of Pigs invasion in favor of Batista’s fascist state, supported the paramilitary group Contras in Nicaragua, backed the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and invaded Panama to oust former President Manuel Noriega for alleged drug trafficking, reminiscent of Maduro’s case.
Who could ever forget the U.S intervention in the Middle East, where the Bush administration invaded Iraq because it possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), which would later be proved false. In addition to constant foreign intervention in Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya, the U.S also directly fuels Israel’s state-sponsored genocide against the Palestinians in the Levant, for which financial aid would go as high as 3.8 billion dollars per year since 2019, as it continues to this day like a well-oiled machine.
In its desperate response to conceal its hideous fangs, it carefully creates a façade, playing the role of the global policeman—the harbinger of justice and propriety, like a theatrical play out of illusion and lies. In its own narrative, U.S. foreign intervention promises freedom, acting as a bulwark of democracy in the world; however, in reality, it’s a poor attempt to preserve and even empower the privileged, reactionary class of the current ultra-capitalist society, as evidenced by Trump’s promise of the entry of U.S oil tycoons into Venezuelan fields.
Through its own state propensity for power—exhibited in patterned aggression, continued imperialistic attitude, and attempts at a discreet neocolonial ownership over third-world countries—it continues to exploit different states across the globe. Where it promises liberty, it delivers bombs in turn. The U.S. case of expansionism and its imprudent transgression of Venezuela’s sovereignty is not only a matter of regional takeover but, gravely so, a direct threat to the current multilateral peace, serving as a hefty price in exchange for its aspiration for global supremacy.
As U.S.-Chinese tensions slowly reach a boiling point, the Philippines, as one of its primary allies in Asia, with multiple bases spread throughout the country under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), could always be the next piece of the pie for U.S. hegemony aspirations. It will not hesitate to resort to freedoms and bombs to make us do their bidding and employ their form of coercive diplomacy, as happened to Venezuela.
In just almost a century since we gained our Independence from the hands of the U.S., the memories of colonial exploitation and oppression have also been buried along the passage of time. With the current administration continuing to maintain close diplomatic ties with the U.S., it acts as if its former history of forced subjugation is nothing more than fragments of a distant colonial past. I issue a warning about this seemingly forgotten, yet important chapter of our history: to always remember the old aphorism, “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”
