THE US invasion of Venezuela — however it is ultimately justified in Washington — marks more than a regional rupture. It signals a deeper shift in how power is exercised and normalised in a world where climate stress, resource scarcity and geopolitical rivalry are converging. History will likely remember this moment not simply as another intervention, but as a test case for a new global logic: that in an era of shrinking resources and accelerating crises, raw power can once again override law, norms and restraint. The immediate political implications are obvious enough: destabilisation in Latin America, erosion of US credibility, and the hardening of global blocs. But beneath these headlines lies a far more consequential question. What does this approach licence in a world where climate change is transforming resources — oil, water, food, minerals — into strategic prizes? And what does it do to the fragile, hard-won rights architecture that was meant to protect the vulnerable from precisely this kind of power politics? Venezuela is not only a state in political crisis; it sits atop one of the world’s largest proven oil reserves. In an era where the energy transition is uneven, contested and geopoliticised, control over hydrocarbons remains a lever of global influence. The danger is not that Venezuela is unique, but that it is precedent-setting. If military force can be openly used to secure strategic resources under the banner of national interest, then the line separating competition from conquest dissolves. The risk is that climate stress becomes the silent accomplice of militarism — an unspoken justification for territorial grabs. Climate change makes this more dangerous, not less. As droughts intensify, glaciers retreat and arable land shrinks, resources that were once abundant become scarce, and scarcity sharpens incentives for coercion. Water, food systems, rare earths, and energy corridors will increasingly define security calculations. The risk is that climate stress becomes the silent accomplice of militarism — an unspoken justification for territorial grabs, economic sieges and interventions framed as ‘stability operations’. For decades, international law and multilateral institutions existed precisely to prevent this descent into the law of the jungle. They were imperfect, often violated, and frequently biased. But they represented an aspirational idea: that civilisation advances when power is constrained by rules, and when the strong accept limits for the sake of collective survival. The erosion of that idea carries consequences far beyond borders. One of the least examined impacts of such moments is psychological and normative. When powerful states openly disregard international law, they do more than break rules — they teach. They signal to other governments, elites and armed actors that restraint is optional and accountability negotiable. Over time, this corrodes not just global order but domestic norms as well. If international verdicts can be ignored with impunity, how long before court judgements at home are treated as inconveniences rather than obligations? When might becomes right, rights become fragile. The message received on the ground is: strength wins. For young men in conflict-prone societies, for elites resisting accountability, for armed groups seeking legitimacy, the lesson is corrosive. When behaviour follows belief that law is merely a tool of the powerful, violence becomes easier to rationalise, compromise harder to sustain, and solidarity weaker to defend. There is also a civilisational cost. The post-war rights-based order asserted that progress lay not in domination but in dignity, not in conquest but cooperation. To retreat from that, especially under the pressures of climate change, is to accept a more brutal future as inevitable rather than resistible. South Asia sits uneasily in this emerging landscape. It is already one of the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world. Rivers that cross borders — the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra — are lifelines for hundreds of millions, and potential flashpoints for conflict. If the global norm shifts towards unilateralism and force, water disputes risk becoming security crises rather than governance challenges. The region’s nuclearised status complicates this further. India, Pakistan and China possess nuclear weapons, which may deter full-scale war but do little to prevent coercion below the threshold of open conflict. History suggests that nuclear deterrence freezes some conflicts while intensifying others — proxy wars, economic strangulation, territorial salami-slicing. Climate stress adds fuel to these dynamics, turning environmental pressures into strategic vulnerabilities. In such a context, the normalisation of resource-driven intervention elsewhere is deeply destabilising. It lowers the moral and political costs of aggressive behaviour, even as the material stakes rise. It also narrows the space for democratic accountability. When security is framed as survival in a hostile world, dissent becomes suspect, and emergency becomes permanent. Democracy erodes not in a single coup, but through the steady justification of exceptional power. The invasion of Venezuela may be defended as an anomaly, or a limited action. But history is shaped less by intentions than by patterns. If this moment comes to represent a broader acceptance that money, power and military might can be used without consequence, then we are not merely witnessing a geopolitical shift — we are entering a new moral era. The question is not whether resources will shrink or crises will multiply. The question is whether humanity responds by reviving restraint or abandoning it. The answer will determine not only the fate of international law or democracy, but the everyday safety and dignity of those who have the least power to defend themselves. If civilisation chooses force over foresight, the future will be governed by the law of the jungle. The writer is chief executive of the Civil Society Coalition for Climate Change. aisha@csccc.org.pk Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2026