Venezuela and the limits of power in the world order

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OPINION

By Peter Yehangane

The spectre of a United States invasion of Venezuela, whether manifested through direct military force, proxy destabilisation or coercive regime change architectures, signals far more than an interstate/geopolitical confrontation. It represents a civilisational breach, a rupture in the ethical, legal and metaphysical order designed to restrain violence and harmonise human power with collective survival and existence. This moment is not merely about Venezuela; it is about whether humanity still recognises limits.

The modern international order was born from moral reckoning. The Peace of Westphalia of 1648, concluded through the Treaties of Münster and Osnabrück, emerged from the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War and affirmed a foundational principle that still underpins international law, the mutual recognition of sovereign equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of states. This settlement rejected the idea that any religious, imperial or ideological authority possessed a universal mandate to impose “higher truth” through force.

Westphalian sovereignty was therefore not an endorsement of isolation, but a civilisational restraint, a power-recognising boundary, and ambition tempered by order. Any external military 'intervention' in Venezuela without a lawful international mandate risks reopening a pre-Westphalian wound, reviving the logic of conquest cloaked in moral exceptionalism, a logic history has repeatedly judged catastrophic.

The interwar failure of the League of Nations offers a sobering lesson in what follows when restraint is selectively applied. The League’s Covenant prohibited aggressive war in principle, yet enforcement proved uneven and politically contingent.

Its collapse was less a matter of institutional weakness than of ethical asymmetry; powerful states demanded discipline from weaker states while exempting themselves from consequence. Civilisation can not endure such hypocrisy. This failure compelled humanity after 1945 to construct a stronger moral architecture grounded not merely in diplomacy but in universal, binding law.

That architecture is embodied in the United Nations and its Charter, which codified humanity’s collective memory of devastation. Article 2(1) affirms the sovereign equality of all states, while Article 2(4) establishes a categorical prohibition on “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” This provision is not procedural language, but a civilisational vow. The Charter’s limited exceptions are deliberately narrow.

Article 51 recognises an inherent right of individual or collective self-defence only “if an armed attack occurs,” and Chapter VII permits enforcement action solely through explicit Security Council authorisation. These are moral safeguards, not political conveniences.

Economic strangulation intended to induce state collapse, covert destabilisation or unilateral military action violates not only the provisions of the Charter but its ethical purpose, articulated in the Preamble, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” The International Court of Justice reinforced this principle in its 1986 Nicaragua v. United States judgment, which clarified that indirect uses of force and coercive intervention breach customary international law alongside the Charter itself.

Beyond treaties lies an older and deeper grammar of order, natural law. Across civilisations, legitimate power has been understood as power in balance. Ma’at in ancient Africa articulated truth, balance, and right order as the foundation of just rule; Ubuntu grounded authority in relational humanity and mutual recognition; the Dao in Chinese philosophy emphasised harmony with the natural flow of existence; Dharma in Indian thought defined duty aligned with cosmic order and Greco-Roman natural right traditions held that law derives legitimacy from reason and justice rather than force alone.

Viewed through this lens, aggression against Venezuela is not merely unlawful; it is cosmologically misaligned. It privileges force over harmony, domination over reciprocity, and immediacy over generational responsibility.

History suggests that civilisations which violate this balance may triumph briefly, but they decay from within.

The human consequences of interventionism follow a familiar and well-documented pattern. Iraq, Libya and numerous Cold War interventions were each framed as exceptional necessities, often invoking humanitarian or security rationales. Each produced long-term instability, humanitarian suffering and regional disorder, outcomes acknowledged in post-conflict assessments by the United Nations, humanitarian agencies and independent commissions. These results are not accidents; they are symptoms of civilisational drift, moments when power forgets its ethical anchor.

To normalise intervention in Venezuela would erode the universal norm that protects all states, especially weaker ones, accelerating a global regression toward blocs, perpetual crisis and militarised insecurity, a world governed by impulse rather than order.

The present moment, therefore, demands not escalation but re-alignment. Re-alignment does not require the ideological endorsement of Venezuela’s government. It requires fidelity to a higher principle embedded in international law itself, that disputes are resolved through peaceful means as required by Article 2(3) of the United Nations Charter; that peoples possess the right to self-determination affirmed in Article 1(2); and that law must stand above power. True leadership is not domination; it is restraint grounded in wisdom.

If the twenty-first century is to avoid becoming an age of permanent fracture, powerful states must remember what earlier generations learned at immense cost, that peace is not weakness; it is civilisation choosing survival over vanity. The US's aggression against Venezuela is not an exception. It is a mirror, reflecting whether humanity still honours the sacred code-legal, ethical and civilisation that makes coexistence possible.

The writer is an Independent Commentator

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