The Moral Bankruptcy of the West Can No Longer Be Ignored
January 6, 2026
Image by Getty and Unsplash+.
After months of thinly veiled threats, disregard for international law, and the brutal murder of fishermen in the Caribbean Sea, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio have achieved what they set out to do – what many on the Left had been warning about for months. On January 3, the US bombed sites across Venezuela and kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro in a special operation, killing at least 40 Venezuelans in the process. As repulsive as the imperialist kidnapping of the leader of a sovereign nation is, it is not surprising.
Throughout the 20th century, the US carried out coups across Latin America, driven by an unrelenting desire to siphon off resources to feed the belly of the beast. Among the many examples of US-backed right-wing coups are the overthrow of Salvador Allende’s government in Chile, which ushered in 17 years of tyranny under the US-backed Pinochet dictatorship, during which tens of thousands were tortured and disappeared. Or the overthrow of João Goulart in Brazil in 1964, leading to 21 years of military rule. Or Argentina in 1976; El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s. In fact, throw a dart at a map of Latin America, and chances are you’ll hit a country that US-backed missiles have struck in a successful bid for regime change within the last century.
What is unique this time, though, is the openness with which the recipient of the oh-so-coveted FIFA Peace Prize has flaunted his violation of international law and overthrow of a foreign leader. There has been no serious attempt to cloak this act in the language of liberation, though stenographers in corporate media and useful idiots masquerading as political analysts have eagerly taken on that role themselves. Trump has openly stated that the invasion of Venezuela – which, depending on developments in the coming days and weeks, could see the oil-rich Bolivarian Republic succumb to US military occupation (as Trump himself implied), the illegitimate rule of the far-right Zionist María Corina Machado, or descend into civil war – is about accessing Venezuela’s vast resources. These include the largest proven oil reserves in the world, accounting for roughly 17 per cent of global reserves.
“The oil companies are gonna go in, they’re gonna spend money and then we’re gonna take back the oil that frankly we should’ve taken back a long time ago,” Trump said following Maduro’s kidnapping. “A lot of money is coming out of the ground. We’re gonna get reimbursed for all of that. We’re gonna get reimbursed for everything that we spend.”
There is no longer even the façade of democracy or liberation. Only imperialism in its most naked, hypocritical form.
Like the coup itself, this moment should not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the rapid erosion of international law and the collapse of any meaningful “rules-based order” as a result of the Zionist apartheid state of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, backed by the US empire. So, the refusal to even gesture toward a humanitarian justification for this illegal, destabilising act in Venezuela is merely the latest confirmation of a pattern many have been shouting about for over two years: what is being done in Palestine is laying the groundwork for what will be done everywhere else.
Sultan Barakat, professor of public policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, put it succinctly in an interview with Al Jazeera: “This [Maduro’s kidnapping] is probably a nail in the coffin of any international agreement. The very principle of state sovereignty has now been dismantled,” he said. “[This is] in line with some of the operations that Israel has undertaken in Lebanon and Iran jointly with the United States. They are now moving the bar much, much higher than what we are used to – and far beyond international norms and international law.”
The permission structure has fundamentally changed. Its most recent manifestation is the imperialist overthrow of a sovereign leader inconvenient to US capital. Two decades ago, this required the fabrication of weapons of mass destruction. No longer. The US government can now carry out coups at will, with no scrutiny or consequence. It may do so in Cuba or Iran next. Eventually, this unaccountable tyranny will reach everyone, including those within the US itself. The greed of the ruling elite knows no bounds.
Especially dismaying, amid the chaos of recent days, has been the response of the US’s Western allies, particularly the European Union, which has uncritically embraced this unjustifiable act. It is now abundantly clear that the EU has chosen to contort itself entirely to appease the US and “Daddy” Trump, tethering itself to the sinking ship of the American empire – whether by backing Trump’s economic war with China, committing to militarism, facilitating genocide in Gaza, or now endorsing the overthrow of sovereign leaders. For an entity that prides itself even more than the US on the veneer of liberalism and international law, its refusal to offer even the mildest criticism is telling.
Rather than condemn or distance herself from the illegal actions of a rogue state, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas responded to Maduro’s kidnapping by stating: “The EU has repeatedly said that Mr Maduro lacks legitimacy and has defended a peaceful transition.”
Emmanuel Macron, France’s deeply unpopular president – who has repeatedly violated democratic norms by refusing to allow the Left to nominate a prime minister despite the Nouveau Front Populaire winning the most seats in the snap legislative elections he called in 2024 – went even further. “The Venezuelan people are today rid of Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship and can only rejoice. By seizing power and trampling on fundamental freedoms, Nicolás Maduro gravely undermined the dignity of his own people.” He then added, seemingly oblivious to his own conduct since 2024: “The upcoming transition must be peaceful, democratic, and respectful of the will of the Venezuelan people.” Not even a token reference to international law. The hypocrisy is staggering.
The same is true across Europe and among the US’s regional allies, from Keir Starmer to Giorgia Meloni; from Javier Milei to Daniel Noboa. What has been laid bare is not just a shift in the enactment of American imperialism but also the complete demolition of even its rhetorical boundaries. The US and its allies will depose, ravage, and kill with impunity. They will collaborate with war criminals, authoritarian leaders and dictatorships when convenient, and will overthrow “unsuitable” governments when desirable, too. They will sanction Russia for invading Ukraine, then celebrate the US for doing the same in Venezuela.
Omar El-Akkad’s searing words in his excellent book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This cut through the hypocrisy of this so-called Western rules-based order: “To preserve the values of the civilised world, it is necessary to set fire to a library. To blow up a mosque. To incinerate olive trees. To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled and then take pictures. To level universities. To loot jewellery, art, banks, food. To arrest children for picking vegetables. To shoot children for throwing stones. To parade the captured in their underwear. To break a man’s teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth. To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die. Otherwise, the uncivilised world might win.”
For anyone who truly believes all peoples and nations are equal, the moral bankruptcy of the West has been utterly exposed. If there was any doubt before, it is now undeniable. The neo-colonial division of the world into haves and have-nots can no longer be rationalised or ignored. The Left, and all people of conscience, must respond accordingly. If the international Left is serious about building a future in which the Global Majority can live with dignity and equality, it must categorically reject the status quo of Western intervention and supremacy.
Che Guevara famously said that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. Western imperialism has none – not for the proletariat within its borders, and certainly not for those beyond them. So we must centre a politics rooted in care and solidarity: movements that recognise the wretched of the earth, as Fanon described, as worthy of dignity and respect; as agents of their own futures; as human beings who deserve far more than destabilisation and exploitation by Western leaders in service of the profits of the corporations they are beholden to.
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