When Donald Trump declares, “Nobody can stop us,” he is not issuing a threat alone—he is articulating the end of restraint as a governing principle of US power. What once required elaborate justifications, fabricated intelligence, and multilateral cover is now asserted openly: force creates legality, resources validate intervention, and sovereignty survives only at Washington’s discretion.
The significance of Trump’s posture toward Venezuela lies not in its novelty, but in its bluntness. Iraq in 2003 was wrapped in false intelligence and diplomatic theater. Venezuela today is framed through criminality, drugs, and economic “mismanagement,” with no serious attempt to invoke international consensus. The transition is revealing. It suggests that the United States no longer feels compelled to persuade the world—only to act.
This is not a departure from US strategy. It is its logical evolution.
From WMDs to Narco-States: The Recycling of Pretexts
The invasion of Iraq rested on the claim that Baghdad possessed weapons of mass destruction—an allegation later disproven and acknowledged as false. Yet the exposure of that lie did not delegitimize the war in institutional terms. No senior architects were held accountable, and no doctrine was abandoned. The lesson absorbed in Washington was not that deception fails, but that it carries no cost.
In Venezuela, the pretext has shifted from weapons to criminality. The language of “narco-terrorism,” cartels, and state collapse now performs the same function WMDs once did: transforming a political and economic target into a security threat. By branding the Venezuelan state itself as criminal, the United States manufactures a justification for extraordinary measures while bypassing international law.
This tactic has precedent. The so-called War on Drugs has long served as an intervention framework in Latin America, enabling US military presence, intelligence penetration, and political pressure against governments deemed insufficiently compliant. This persists despite extensive evidence that drug consumption, money laundering, and arms trafficking are overwhelmingly centered within the United States. The contradiction is not accidental—it is foundational.
Oil and Independence: The Structural Motive
In a 2009 interview, Hugo Chávez rejected claims that his warnings about US hostility were paranoid. He grounded them in material reality: Venezuela possesses some of the world’s largest proven oil reserves, while US long-term energy security remains structurally dependent on external supply.
Chávez’s argument echoed a broader Latin American experience. From the overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz following land reform in Guatemala, to the coup against Salvador Allende in Chile, to the removal of reformist governments across the region, US intervention consistently targeted states that pursued independent economic or political paths. Oil, land, and strategic geography—not ideology—were the constants.
Iraq followed the same logic. The collapse of the WMD narrative did not alter the strategic outcome: Iraqi oil was placed under a new political and economic order shaped by US power. Venezuela’s treatment fits squarely within this pattern. Independence, not failure, is the offense.
From Occupation to Extraction: The Iraq “Lesson” Reinterpreted
What distinguishes the Venezuelan case is not aggression, but efficiency. A recent segment on CBS News discussing Trump’s claim that the United States would “run Venezuela” after arresting its leader revealed a striking shift in imperial reasoning. Iraq was described as a failure not because it devastated a society or violated international law, but because it was costly.
Senior US officials contrasted Iraq’s prolonged occupation—hundreds of billions of dollars, large troop deployments, unstable governance—with Venezuela as a potential model of “strategic action”: access to resources without long-term military exposure or political responsibility. The language was unambiguous. The objective was no longer regime change for democracy, but extraction without entanglement.
Even the cautious analysis offered by Samantha Vinograd did not challenge the core assumption that the United States has the authority to seize control of another country if it deems it strategically valuable. The discussion focused on feasibility and precedent, not legality. That silence signals a profound erosion of normative limits.
Empire Without Apology: Trump as the Unfiltered Expression
It would be misleading to attribute this trajectory solely to Trump’s personality. He is not the cause but the symptom. What makes his presidency distinctive is not intent, but articulation. He says plainly what previous administrations cloaked in humanitarian language and legal memos.
Trump’s warlord rhetoric—reducing geopolitics to loot, threats, and spectacle—reflects an empire that no longer invests in persuasion. Iraq demonstrated that falsehood incurs no penalty. Venezuela tests whether justification itself is now unnecessary. The shift from nation-building to asset stripping, from legitimacy to force, marks not confidence but decay.
When an empire declares that “nobody can stop us,” it is not announcing strength. It is acknowledging that the systems designed to restrain power have failed.
Venezuela, like Iraq before it, is not an exception. It is a test case. And history suggests that empires which abandon even the language of law eventually discover that power alone is a fragile foundation.
Source: Al-Manar English Website