What Maduro's abduction reveals about US imperial decline

Kua Kia Soong

According to US officials and their obedient media megaphones, Nicolás Maduro – the sitting president of Venezuela – has been seized in a US military operation involving air strikes on Caracas, forcibly removed from his country, and transported to a federal prison in New York.

The same narrative claims that the United States now intends to “oversee” Venezuela temporarily, while Venezuelan institutions scramble to preserve constitutional continuity by appointing Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez as acting president.

Such brazen thuggery represents one of the most naked acts of aggression in modern history: the abduction of a head of state by a foreign power, following military strikes on a capital city, and his display before the courts of the captor nation like a colonial trophy.

This is not law enforcement. It is empire by kidnapping.

This desperate act of cross-border aggression tells us everything we need to know about an imperialist power in terminal decline.

US threats no longer produce obedience

The US no longer bothers to cloak its violence in diplomacy or legality. It no longer pretends to respect sovereignty.

It speaks instead the language of the gangster: we will take your leader, we will run your country and we will decide your future. This is not strength. It is panic.

For decades, US imperial control over Latin America relied on a familiar toolkit — coups, sanctions, client elites and military intimidation.

That toolkit is rusting. Venezuela survived sanctions. Cuba survived blockades. Bolivia reversed a coup. Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Brazil and others have learned to manoeuvre beyond Washington’s grip.

The empire’s threats no longer produce obedience.

Failure to compete with China

The rise of a multipolar order has broken Washington’s monopoly on development, trade and finance.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative – whatever its contradictions – has exposed the hollowness of US imperial claims.

Where the US offers punishment, China offers ports. Where Washington offers starvation through sanctions, others offer infrastructure. Where the empire demands submission, the Global South increasingly demands choice.

Unable to compete economically, diplomatically or morally, the US reverts to what it knows best: violence and spectacle.

Trump’s political tradition – loud, lawless and theatrical – strips away even the last liberal fig leaves. Under this logic, international law is irrelevant. Borders are optional. Kidnapping is policy. Courts are weapons. Media becomes a drumbeat for domination.

The reported plan to “temporarily oversee” Venezuela is especially revealing. Empires always describe occupation as caretaking. Colonisation is sold as administration. Theft is rebranded as stability.

This vocabulary is not accidental – it is the language of imperial entitlement, updated for the 21st Century.

Latin America must defend sovereignty

Latin Americans should understand the message being sent. This is not about Maduro as an individual.

It is about a warning to all who dare to step outside Washington’s orbit. This is what we will do to you. This is the price of independence.

But history teaches another lesson. Empires that abandon consent and rule by fear have always lost.

Venezuela’s sovereignty does not vanish because it is denied by Washington. Dignity does not evaporate because it is mocked by imperial courts. A people’s right to self-determination cannot be bombed out of existence.

The peoples of Venezuela – and of Latin America – have faced empires before. They have buried them before.

The task now is clarity and courage: to reject imperial lies, refuse intimidation and stand firm in defence of sovereignty.

The US is no longer leading the world. It is thrashing against it. And history is not on the side of empires that kidnap, bomb and bluff their way into irrelevance.

Kua Kia Soong, a former MP, is the director of the human rights group Suaram.

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