Back in 1989, the United States marched into Panama, grabbed President Manuel Noriega on drug charges, and flew him straight to Miami for trial. More than 500 Panamanian civilians died. Whole neighbourhoods were flattened. The Panama Canal remained securely in American hands. And what did they call this? Conquest? “Operation Just Cause” – a law enforcement action.
That’s the template. Abduction becomes extradition. Bombing becomes precision justice. Occupation becomes “temporary stewardship”. Fast forward to January 3, 2026. The United States runs the exact same play in Caracas. They strike the capital, snatch President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and announce they’ll “run the country” until a “proper transition”. Within 48 hours Maduro is in a Miami courtroom facing drug charges. Donald Trump beams: “One of the most stunning displays of American military might in history.”
They didn’t call it an invasion. They called it an arrest.
While American forces were busy seizing a foreign capital, a small trader in India was getting raided and slapped with penalties for a few thousand rupees of tax discrepancy. One is hailed as justice. The other is branded evasion. The act is the same – withholding something that belongs to a governing authority. The difference is scale, and who has the power to write the story.
The Legitimacy Test
If an ordinary Venezuelan had bombed government buildings in Caracas, kidnapped the president and declared he would run things for a while – what would we call him?
Terrorist. Criminal. Insurgent.
When the United States does exactly the same thing, we’re having a “debate” about whether it’s justified. That gap – that glaring double standard – is where real legitimacy lives. It’s not about morality. It’s about power. As Thucydides put it over two thousand years ago in the Melian Dialogue: “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Venezuela 2026 is just the latest chapter.
The same logic plays out with taxes. A salaried employee who under-reports ₹50,000 faces raids, penalties, potential prosecution. A corporation that shifts ₹500 crore offshore gets negotiation, settlements, amnesty schemes. Both withheld money from the state. Scale decides which one is treated as a criminal and which one is treated as “complexity” that deserves dialogue.
How Scale Manufactures Legitimacy
This pattern is ancient and repeats with remarkable consistency.
Territorial annexation follows a script, more or less: The U.S. starts a war over a disputed border with Mexico (1846) and walks away with 55% of its territory. Today we call it “westward expansion”. China takes Tibet (1951), framing it as liberating serfs from feudalism. Today it’s an “autonomous region” and any resistance is “separatism”. Both won. Both integrated the land. Both wrote the history books.
Regime change operates similarly: The U.S. invades Iraq (2003) on fabricated WMD claims, kills hundreds of thousands, dismantles the state. Two decades later it’s remembered as an “intelligence failure”, a “mistake” – not the crime of aggression it legally was. The U.S. had enough power to outlast the outrage until the narrative shifted from crime to costly error.
Gradual encroachment succeeds through fait accompli: China builds and militarizes islands in disputed waters, ignoring an international tribunal ruling (2016), and keeps going. At home it’s “defending sovereign rights”. Abroad there are protests, some sanctions talk, but no real military pushback. If you’re strong enough to finish the job and ride out the criticism, the new reality sticks.
In December 2024, President-elect Trump declared that acquiring Greenland was an “absolute necessity” for U.S. national security — citing rare-earth minerals and Arctic positioning. When Denmark refused to even discuss selling its autonomous territory, Trump declined to rule out “other options,” hinting at military or economic coercion.
By January 2025, his son was on a “private visit” to Greenland while officials in Washington floated tariff threats to “get Denmark’s attention.” That same month, new noises came out of the White House: talk of “reclaiming” the Panama Canal, pressure on Canada about “51st-state” integration, and tariff ultimatums to Colombia, Cuba, and others across Latin America over migration and trade.
A NATO ally, a major trading partner, and an entire region learned the same lesson: when a superpower wants something you control, alliance and sovereignty become negotiable. The method differed from Venezuela — economic pressure instead of airstrikes — but the logic was identical: strategic value justifies bending the rules, and scale decides who gets to enforce their will.
Russia tried the same in Crimea and faced sustained sanctions – they didn’t have enough economic or narrative muscle to make the world shrug and move on. The U.S. faced no such price for Iraq. Legitimacy isn’t earned through virtue. It’s manufactured through power, control of the story, and time.
But narrative control isn’t absolute anymore. NGOs, independent media, social media, grassroots voices – they fight back in real time. Colonial powers could take generations to cement their story because information was tightly controlled. Today, powerful states have to manufacture legitimacy much faster and against far more resistance.
The Asymmetry of Law
International law operates as a power hierarchy, not a neutral system. There’s no impartial judge, no equal enforcement. The Rome Statute goes after African warlords and Balkan strongmen, but has never touched an American president, a Chinese premier, or a Russian leader. Not because they’re innocent – because they can simply ignore the court.
US Senator Mark Warner put it bluntly: “Does this mean any large country can indict the ruler of a smaller adjacent country and take that person out?” The answer is yes – if they’re strong enough to get away with it.
Just like tax authorities will happily crush a small trader over minor discrepancies but approach corporations hiding hundreds of crores with negotiation and dialogue. Enforcement follows the path of least resistance – which always means it falls hardest on those who can’t push back.
Other powers are watching. China can point to Venezuela to justify moves on Taiwan. Russia already uses U.S. interventions to excuse actions in Ukraine. This is the logical outcome when sovereignty stops being a real principle and becomes a privilege of the powerful.
The Humanitarian Exception Alibi
Could Venezuela be justified on humanitarian grounds – alleviating suffering under Maduro’s brutal regime?
Perhaps, if we believed the rationale. But the U.S. happily props up equally brutal governments when it suits them: Saudi Arabia (journalist dismembered, mass executions), Egypt (tens of thousands of political prisoners), UAE (opposition criminalized). Humanitarian concern appears only when it’s strategically convenient.
If the goal was really the well-being of Venezuelans, there were other options: sustained diplomatic pressure, targeted sanctions on regime leadership, support for internal opposition. The bombing-then-governing route reveals the actual priority: control of resources, influence, and regional dominance.
When humanitarian claims are applied this selectively, they stop being principles and become just another weapon in the arsenal. Scale decides which suffering is worth bombing over.
What This Reveals
Three uncomfortable truths emerge:
Legitimacy is built through power, story control, and time. Today’s aggression can become tomorrow’s “liberation” – if you get to write the textbooks. But legitimacy can also crumble when enough people see through the story: colonial empires fell, Vietnam turned American intervention into a cautionary tale, the Soviet narrative collapsed with the USSR. Power buys time, not immortality. The backlash against Venezuela, spread by digital media and non-state actors, proves legitimacy has to be constantly defended.
International law isn’t a brake on power – it’s a tool of the powerful. The strong use it to bless their actions. The weak invoke it and get ignored. The ICC creates some friction, but it still can’t touch those who refuse to play.
Scale completely changes moral judgment. A small trader faces raids and ruin. A corporation gets a quiet settlement. A superpower seizing a country gets a debate about “whether it was worth it”. We don’t judge actions consistently – we judge them based on who committed them and what they could enforce.
The Historical Trajectory
Empires have always worked this way. The British “administered” India rather than “conquering” it. The Spanish “civilized” indigenous peoples rather than massacring them. The framing shifted only when the power relationship changed.
What’s different now is the speed and the contestation. Colonial legitimacy could be built slowly because information was controlled. Today, the U.S. tries to manufacture it in weeks – through quick legal moves, media framing, and the assumption that American courts have universal jurisdiction.
Will it work? History suggests it can, if the U.S. stabilizes the situation, extracts concessions, and rides out the storm. Panama worked. Iraq became a “costly mistake”. Venezuela will probably follow unless the backlash – international condemnation, economic sanctions, domestic fallout, relentless online scrutiny – becomes too heavy to ignore.
The information environment has changed. In 1989, most Americans learned about Panama through evening news broadcasts largely repeating official narratives. In 2026, real-time documentation, international perspectives, and counter-narratives circulate instantly. Legitimacy must be manufactured against greater resistance – but it can still be manufactured if you have enough power.
The Moral Question
Should legitimacy depend on scale? Should the same act be judged completely differently depending on who does it?
Most people would say no. We want rules that apply equally to everyone, strong or weak. But the world doesn’t work that way – and maybe never has.
The small trader and the American president both withheld resources from a governing authority. One faces financial ruin and potential prosecution. The other holds a victory press conference. The difference isn’t their morality. It’s their capacity to impose their version of events and survive the consequences.
This isn’t cynicism. It’s recognition of how power operates. The question is whether we’ll build systems strong enough to constrain it.
What Comes Next
Venezuela will be judged by results, not principles. If the U.S. installs a friendly government, secures concessions, and the noise dies down – the precedent is set: sovereignty means nothing without firepower to defend it.
If it bogs down into endless occupation, regional anger, or domestic backlash – it becomes another “unsuccessful” adventure. Either way, the yardstick remains power, not law.
Other powers are taking notes. China sees justification for Taiwan. Russia sees cover for its sphere of influence. Smaller countries learn the lesson: the rules bind you, not them – unless you become strong enough to break them.
Non-state actors, digital media, international institutions, mobilized public opinion – they add friction. They make legitimacy more expensive and more difficult to fake. That matters. But it’s still not enough to fundamentally change the game.
Conclusion: Seeing Clearly
This isn’t about defending Maduro’s regime. It was repressive and corrupt. The point is to see the system we actually live in: one where moral language hides power calculations, and legitimacy comes from strength, not principle.
As long as we judge the small trader by one standard and the superpower by another, we’re not living under law – we’re living under hierarchy. And hierarchies don’t answer to justice. They answer to force.
The ordinary taxpayer and the president deserve the same rule of law. The small evader and the superpower deserve the same scrutiny.
Non-state actors, digital documentation, mobilized citizens – they can’t yet stop major powers, but they can make power more expensive, more visible, and much harder to dress up as virtue.
Recognizing this pattern is the first step toward building real counter-power: informed publics, transnational legal pressure, economic solidarity, relentless exposure.
The choice is straightforward: keep pretending the system is just, or see it clearly enough to start changing it.
That change starts by refusing to accept different rules for the weak and the powerful. It continues by building mechanisms that can impose real costs on anyone – no matter how strong – who violates sovereignty or basic fairness.
The small trader who evades a little tax and the nation that seizes a capital both took something that wasn’t theirs. One was branded a criminal. The other branded it justice.
We still get to decide whether that difference reflects morality – or just who has the bigger stick.
Until we apply the same standard to both, we’re not building justice. We’re just accepting hierarchy and calling it order.
