EDITORIAL: By the time Washington moved openly against Caracas, the pretexts had already begun to sound tired. Talk of corruption, narcotics and regional stability was wheeled out with familiar confidence, yet the underlying logic was never difficult to discern. Venezuela sits on the world’s largest proven oil reserves, at a moment when economic, especially energy, security has once again become a strategic obsession. Strip away the rhetoric and the centre of gravity is unmistakable. This was, principally, about oil. That matters because it places the episode squarely within a longer pattern of great-power behaviour that many assumed had been at least partially constrained by international law and multilateral norms. The action against Venezuela signals something more blunt. It suggests that a new world order is no longer being negotiated quietly but asserted openly, one in which international institutions, international opinion and even allied discomfort count for very little when set against US-defined interests. Policy is dictated, not debated. Friends are expected to align; opponents are expected to submit. It’s becoming clear why Venezuela offered Washington a uniquely convenient stage on which to demonstrate this shift. The country combines immense energy value with a government that had, over time, hollowed out its own domestic legitimacy. Years of corruption, mismanagement and repression under Nicolás Maduro turned Venezuela into a textbook example of a broken state. Hyperinflation, mass emigration and institutional collapse drained public capacity for resistance. When pressure came from outside, there was no meaningful popular mobilisation to meet it. That absence did not legitimise intervention, but it did make it easier. From Washington’s perspective, this convergence of factors was a double advantage. Control over energy flows and future access to reserves addresses material interests. At the same time, the use of force or coercion against a weakened state sends a message far beyond Latin America. It demonstrates reach, resolve and disregard for procedural restraint. In a single move, the United States reaffirmed its willingness to act unilaterally and reminded the rest of the world that power, not process, remains the final arbiter when it chooses to assert itself. The broader implications are troubling. Once a leading power treats sovereignty as conditional and international rules as optional, it lowers the threshold for others to do the same. States with regional ambitions and fewer scruples will read the signal clearly. If norms are enforced selectively, they are no longer norms at all. They become instruments to be invoked against rivals and ignored by those strong enough to bypass them. This is how precedents metastasise. What begins as an exceptional case becomes a permissive environment. The silence or fragmentation of international response only reinforces that danger. Multilateral forums, already weakened by geopolitical paralysis, have offered little beyond cautious language. Some governments have tacitly endorsed the outcome, others have confined themselves to procedural concern. None has mounted a serious challenge to the principle at stake. That reticence will not go unnoticed by actors elsewhere who are weighing their own options within spheres of influence. It is also worth confronting an uncomfortable reality. Venezuela’s internal decay dulled international outrage. A state that had systematically failed its own citizens struggled to attract defenders willing to separate condemnation of its leadership from defence of its sovereignty. This does not make the intervention lawful or wise. It simply explains why resistance was muted. The erosion of domestic legitimacy does not invite foreign coercion, but it does make it politically easier for outside powers to act without consequence. This episode should not be read narrowly as a Latin American crisis only. It is a stress test for the international system itself. If regime change can once again be pursued openly by a major power, justified by shifting narratives and underwritten by resource interest, then the language of a rules-based order becomes little more than decoration. Smaller states, watching closely, will adjust their assumptions accordingly. The lesson is stark. When power asserts itself without restraint, the damage is not confined to the immediate target. It ripples outward, weakening the very norms that were meant to protect all states from coercion. Venezuela may have been an easy case, isolated and exhausted, but the precedent it sets is anything but contained. In a world already thick with conflict, that is a risk few can afford, even if many now pretend they can. Copyright Business Recorder, 2026