Trump’s Venezuela abduction shatters claims of Western moral authority

By kidnapping a foreign leader, the Trump Administration has stripped the West of any credibility on international law, writes Max Gross.

THE USA – and Israel – are the biggest threats to stability in the world. Having committed piracy and extrajudicial murder at sea, the Trump regime has now invaded Venezuela and abducted its President. This is U.S./Western gangsterism on a global scale.

The U.S. bombing and military incursion to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife killed at least 40 people.

It gives Russian President Vladimir Putin carte blanche. All international condemnations and sanctions against Russia can now be scrapped. Russia has permission to kidnap Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And China can invade and occupy Taiwan with impunity. Israel, of course, has had permission to kill anyone, anywhere, anytime for decades.

So, the crazy U.S. President kidnaps the president of Venezuela and Australia’s Prime Minister – my Prime Minister – just rolls over, tail wagging, tummy ready for a jolly rub like an obedient U.S. lapdog.

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Yes, as expected, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared his support for a “peaceful, democratic transition,” saying “we urge all parties to support dialogue and diplomacy in order to secure regional stability and prevent escalation,” apparently without any sense of irony.

We urge? Who are “we”? Truly a nauseatingly shameful spectacle. What he should do is firmly condemn Trump’s illegal acts of aggression and cancel AUKUS, but he won’t. “Albo” will never, ever rock the boat.

Journalist Chris Hedges said it best:

The kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife solidifies America’s role as a gangster state. Violence does not generate peace. It generates violence. The immolation of international and humanitarian law, as the U.S. and Israel have done in Gaza, and as took place in Caracas, generates a world without laws, a world of failed states, warlords, rogue imperial powers and perpetual violence and chaos.

If there is one lesson we should have learned in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, it is that regime change spawns Frankensteinian monsters of our own creation. The Venezuelan military and security forces will no more accept the kidnapping of their president and U.S. domination – done as in Iraq to seize vast oil reserves – than the Iraqi security forces and military or the Taliban. This will not go well for anyone, including the U.S.

Clearly, there is no “rules-based world order”, as the USA and Israel have demonstrated over and over and over again. All critics of Putin should now be silenced. As for Maria Machado, the woman whom Trump and his oily cronies prefer as Venezuela’s leader, anyone who thinks she is a beacon of democracy really doesn’t know anything about her.

In 2020, she signed a bipartisan agreement with Bibi the Butcher’s extremist, Far-Right Likud Party. She even invited Israel to attack Venezuela. But unlike Machado, Maduro is not an Israeli stooge, nor a U.S. sycophant.

From rules-based order to rule by fear: America’s democratic unravelling

As the Trump Administration weaponises state power against critics, America’s self-image as the guardian of a rules-based international order is collapsing in real time.

This attack by the USA on Venezuela obviously has nothing to do with “narco-terrorists” or “democracy”. This is about Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. This is the standard U.S. assault on anyone who refuses to subjugate themselves to American demands. And this is Trump doing anything and everything he can to distract from the full disclosure of the Epstein files.

As Robert Reich succinctly says:

‘That one person can drag us into a war without consulting or even notifying Congress, or our allies, or fully explaining to the American people why this is necessary, is absolutely bonkers.’

That one person can drag us into a war without consulting or even notifying Congress, or our allies, or fully explaining to the American people why this is necessary, is absolutely bonkers.

Reminder that Congress has the power to stop all of this. Where the hell are they?
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) January 3, 2026

But all is not lost for Maduro. All he has to do is pay Trump the usual bribe to be set free.

Trump’s raging, egocentric unilateralism has been obvious for at least a decade now. He only ran for president to spite Obama, who had mocked Trump at a White House Correspondents' dinner in 2011.

Since Trump became POTUS, common decency and normal standards have been abandoned. Institutions are undermined. Laws mean nothing. The Supreme Court is stacked. Congress is impotent. I expect the deranged President will suspend or delay elections by declaring martial law. Any excuse will do.