There is much to understand from the dramatic kidnapping — abduction is perhaps a better word — of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores last weekend by the United States armed forces, combined with the military attack on the country’s capital Caracas.

This understanding is greatly helped by the comments of the US’s first elected insurrectionist and convicted felon (fraud and sexual assault) President, Donald Trump, at and following his inauguration for his second term nearly 12 months ago.

Trump singled out the 25th US president, William McKinley, who was first elected 1896 but assassinated early into his second term, for praise. Some of this praise was because of his promotion of tariffs.

But it was also because McKinley is regarded as the first imperialist American president. He went to war with Spain and China to claim colonial spoils. Annexations included Puerto Rico and the Philippines (where more than 200,000 Filipinos were killed).

Far and hard right politics, fascism and narcissism
For context, the current US government under Trump’s leadership is a mix of far and hard right politics.

I have discussed this in a previous article (November 3) describing how the far right is successfully cannibalising the mainstream rightwing internationally (including its implications for Aotearoa New Zealand).

Residing within the far right is fascism. Considering Trump and some of his cabinet members and key staff to be fascists is a very reasonable conclusion to draw.

One of the characteristics of many fascists is narcissism; a personality disorder recognised as a mental health condition; an excessive preoccupation with oneself and one’s own needs, often at the expense of others.

Blend narcissism and fascism (or even wider far right beliefs) together and you have an absence of empathy and indifference to harmful consequences of their actions on others.

Even intelligent people within this subset find their narrow paradigms shut out to consideration of the tactical and strategic errors (“own goals”) that might arise out of their decision-making.

Recommended reading and watching
There has been much public commentary on the violent assault on Venezuela and the kidnapping/abduction of its president and First Lady. Three have stood out for me.

One is British leftwing journalist, commentator, author and activist Owen Jones. He speaks with lively empirically based passion. In his Battlelines publication (Substack, January 4) he didn’t pull his punches about global anarchy.

The second commentary digs deep. It is a 31-minute interview by Venezuelanalysis (January 4) with Caracas based analysts Steve Ellner and Ricardo Vaz: Venezuela: Trump’s war for oil and domination is a war crime.

I strongly recommend watching it. In addition to the military violence and abduction, they address Trump’s declaration that Washington will take control of Venezuela’s oil and effectively run the country, warning that the operation constitutes an unlawful use of force.

Venezuela: Trump’s war for oil.

They also refer to the extrajudicial killings on Venezuelan fishing boats at sea as violations of international law and Venezuelan sovereignty.

The third is a recommended read of an online article (January 6) by Helen Yaffe, professor of Latin American political economy (Glasgow University): What is the US doing in Venezuela.

As well as describing the dramatic events, Dr Yaffe puts them in both their historical and current political contexts.

The absurd: Maduro’s machine gun
Trump’s justifications range from the absurd to the manufactured to the overstated. But one justification is absolutely on the mark. His narcissism is ironically beneficial at least from the perspective of analysis.

In openly exposing that that this is all about naked power Trump and his coterie don’t care that he can be easily caught out over fabrication and inconsistencies. If one believes that they are all-powerful, why should they care.

The absurd justification for the legal case against Nicolás Maduro is that he had a machine gun in his possession.

Putting aside the fact that the risk of what might happen (foreign military abduction) did actually occur, arguing this in a country where machine guns are easily and lawfully accessible — really.

The manufactured: narcotrafficking
The biggest fabrication, arguably exceeded the US government’s false “weapons of mass destruction” claim used to justify the disastrous invasion of Iraq over two decades ago, was to blame Venezuela, Maduro in particular, for the US fentanyl epidemic.

It even called it a “weapon of mass destruction”.

Consider the following facts that completely discredit Trump’s fabrication:

• In its March 2025 report the US State Department identified Mexico as the sole source of fentanyl entering the United States. United Nations investigations into fentanyl distribution also don’t identify Venezuela as a producer, let alone a supplier.
• Trump claims that Maduro leads a so-called Venezuelan “Cartel of the Suns” that traffics narcotics, including fentanyl, into the US. In fact, this is a politically manufactured fantasy. There is no such organisation as has just been acknowledged in the last few days by the US Department of Justice.
• In 2024, Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández was convicted in a US court and sentenced to 45 years for conspiring to smuggle over 400 tons of cocaine into the US. Last November, Trump pardoned this narcotrafficker.

The overstated: oil
Many believe that the US invasion is all or primarily about oil. Certainly Trump’s own words and actions encourage this belief. After all, Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

However, since Trump’s sanctions targeting its oil sector back in 2017, Venezuela’s exports to the US have plummeted. Instead, China has become its biggest importer.

Last November, Trump released a US National Security Strategy for Latin America. It declared that “Restoring American energy dominance (in oil, gas, coal, and nuclear) and reshoring the necessary key energy components is a top strategic priority”.

However, while important, oil profiteering is not the prime driver of the US assault on Venezuelan sovereignty. Although Venezuela has huge oil reserves, it is heavy oil which is more difficult to fully process.

Instead, its oil reserves are a consequence of a wider geopolitical agenda sometimes called “spheres of influence”. While intricately linked, US oil sanctions are more a weapon than a driver of the imperialist assault on Venezuela.

The on the mark justification
Where the United States’  justification was on the mark comes from Donald Trump’s above-mentioned praise for the first “American imperialist president” William McKinley.

Consistent with this praise, through misrepresentation, Trump has drawn upon what is known as the “Munroe Doctrine”.

This Doctrine was named after President James Monroe who was the fifth US president (1817-1825). Munroe was both an original Founding Father of US independence and the last Founding Father to serve as president.

The Munroe Doctrine was issued in 1823, less than 50 years after US independence was declared and 34 years before its constitution was approved. It was a young developing country; not that long ago itself comprising 13 different British colonies.

The Doctrine was a policy of limiting European colonialism in the Americas but not to replace it with American colonialisation because it lacked both the inclination and means to achieve this. It was more aligned in principle with non-colonial states in the region.

However, Trump is reinventing the Doctrine to extend US colonial power throughout the Americas. This is what the National Security Strategy is all about.

The attack on Venezuela is an endeavour — among other things —  to:

• impose US hegemony in Latin America;
• exploit Venezuela’s natural resources (oil, gas, critical minerals, and rare earth elements) as part of an attempt to build a new supply chain in the Western Hemisphere;
• cut off Latin America’s ties with other countries, particularly its biggest competitor China;
• threaten other leftwing or progressive governments in the continent;
• destroy the project of regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean; and
• sabotage “Global South” unity over supporting Palestine and other liberation struggles.

Where to next?
I have deliberately not discussed related issues such as the nature of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela along with the longstanding United States hostility towards it beginning in the latter part of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and the entrenched and violent far right opposition to it.

I have also not discussed the impact of the sudden drop in oil prices in 2014, the impact of accelerating US economic warfare (sanctions) since 2015, and the controversy over last year’s presidential elections.

As an aside these elections in my view were imperfect but legitimate. Further, Trump has been explicit — he isn’t interested in “restoring democracy” or “democratic transition”; nor does he rate the alternative Venezuelan far right led by Maria Corina Machado stating that she didn’t have the support to run the country.

These exclusions are because I don’t want to distract from the greater priority being regional and global seriousness of the US’s military aggression (including abductions) towards the sovereignty of Venezuela and its people.

The US aggression is part of a wider plan to extend US domination across the Americas and beyond, consistent with its above-mentioned National Security Strategy which, in turn, is based on a misrepresentation of the anti-colonial 1823 Munroe Doctrine.

Trump has explicitly signalled Cuba, Mexico, and Columbia as the next likely targets. Brazil and Uruguay can’t be ignored either. Even Greenland is expressly on his list.

Quite simply, the sovereignty of most Latin American and other more vulnerable countries that don’t comply with the US’s narcissistic far right — including fascist — leadership’s agenda are at risk.

What about New Zealand?
New Zealand is in a difficult position. The government’s public response has been underwhelming although not as bad as the sycophantic United Kingdom government.

Luxon’s government, with Winston Peters as foreign minister, has been slowly weaning New Zealand away from its international neutrality position to one increasingly closer to that of the United States.

The extensive exposure of this blatant and violent US display of power-grabbing makes public justifying this policy shift much more difficult.

Robert Patman, professor of international relations at Otago University discusses this in The Conversation (January 5): NZ faces a foreign policy reckoning.

Much more direct is Bryce Edwards’ piece published by the Democracy Project  and Asia Pacific Report (January 7): NZ’s craven stance on the US invasion of Venezuela.

As the narcissism of fascism and the far right continues to push the parameters of their power, an already unsafe world is becoming increasingly more dangerous and our government’s response suggests increasing sycophantic timidity.

Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Three people, including former Wellington mayoral hopeful Graham Bloxham, have been arrested at a Venezuela solidarity protest in New Zealand’s capital.

Around 100 people were rallying against the US military action earlier this week outside New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) on Lambton Quay.

During the event Bloxham, who was attempting to film the protest, was seen scuffling with two protesters.

They were taken by officers into a police van and were driven away.

Police break up the protest scuffle in Wellington. Video: RNZ

Bloxham runs the Facebook page WellingtonLive and has faced controversy in the past after being arrested for failing to stop for police, and being told by the Employment Relations Authority to pay a former employee $30,000.

His charges for failing to stop for police were dismissed.

Last year, he also posted on social media that he was the victim of an unprovoked assault in Oriental Bay.

A police spokesperson said three people were arrested for disorder and charges are being considered.

Right to protest
The spokesperson said police recognised the lawful right to protest and maintained a presence to ensure the safety of all involved.

RNZ has contacted Bloxham for comment.

The group was protesting outside MFAT against the US military intervention in Venezuela, and calling for the New Zealand government to take a stronger stance.

Since the attack on Vanezuela and capture of president Nicolás Maduro, there has been one statement from Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, in which he expressed concern at developments and called on all parties to act in accordance with international law.

The prime minister Christopher Luxon is yet to comment.

Valerie Morse from Peace Action Wellington said the United States’ involvement in Venezuela was contrary to international law, and the New Zealand government’s response had been “pathetic”.

“I think they’re obviously very concerned about their relationship with Washington. They do not want to antagonise Donald Trump,” she said.

Eduardo Salazar Moreira from Peru said the the US intervention was about oil, not democracy.

Oil, not democracy
“There’s always been imperialism by the US, especially in Latin America, but they’re going back to this older, more blatant, more explicit version of imperialism that’s way more active.”

He said New Zealand had a voice on the global stage, and should be using it.

“New Zealand does have a voice, and they should use it, because if we’ll let this happen in Latin America, and then it’ll happen everywhere, not just by Trump.

“It’ll happen by other superpowers in this new multipolar world that we have now, and that’s when we’ll be a really small country that can’t do much when we let that happen.”

A small number of counter-protesters were also present.

Nathalie Wierdak, who is from Venezuela, said she disagreed with the protesters, particularly those who had signs calling for Maduro’s release.

She said the protesters should have talked to people from Venezuela first before deciding to rally.

Protest not pro-Maduro
“Maduro is a criminal. He has committed several crimes against many Venezuelans. He has more than 8000 registered cases of human rights violations in our country.

“So I don’t think that it’s right that people who are not Venezuelan are protesting for us and speaking for us, and they’re claiming to Free Maduro who is a criminal and Cilia Flores who is also a criminal.”

Morse said the protest was not pro-Maduro.

“We are not in favour of a violent dictatorship, and that’s what Maduro’s regime was. There’s nobody here supporting Maduro.

“We want freedom and democracy for the people of Venezuela, we just don’t think that the United States’ involvement is likely to deliver that for the people of Venezuela. What it’s likely to deliver is a lot more hardship.”

Protesters and counter-protesters were seen speaking civilly to each other following the rally’s dissolution.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

For decades, the United States and Israel have stuck closely to their respective, scripted roles in the Middle East: the job of good cop and bad cop.

The charade has continued despite Washington’s active participation in Israel’s 25-month slaughter of Gaza’s people — and a dawning realisation among ever-larger sections of Western publics that they have been duped.

Here is my first prediction of 2026: this law enforcement role-playing is going to continue even after the Trump administration’s outrageously illegal abduction of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, at the weekend, and Trump’s admission that the US attack was about grabbing the country’s oil.

The path to Caracas — and potentially next to Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland and Canada, other targets of Donald Trump’s greed — was paved in Gaza.

It is worth standing back, as one year ends and another begins, to consider how we got here, and what lies ahead.

The central conceit of the good cop, bad cop narrative is that both the US and Israel are the ones upholding the law and fighting the criminals.

Unlike the Hollywood version, neither of these real-world cops is in any way good. But there is a further difference: the spectacle is not intended for those the pair confront. After all, the Palestinians know only too well that they have been suffering for decades under the boot of a lawless, joint US-Israeli criminal enterprise.

No, the intended audience are the onlookers: Western publics.

Ban on aid groups
The US “honest broker” myth should have perished long ago. But somehow it persists, despite the evidence endlessly discrediting it. And that is because Western capitals and Western media keep propping the myth up, treating it as a plausible description of events it simply cannot explain.

Nothing has disrupted the official “policing” storyline in Gaza, supposedly against Hamas “law-breaking”.

It is now echoed in Trump’s outlandish claim that his self-declared oil grab in Venezuela is really about bringing Maduro to justice for supposed drug trafficking — or “narco-terrorism” as the administration prefers to call it.

Why has Gaza dropped off the front pages? Only because the “good cop” declares it has brought hostilities from the “bad cop” to an end.

Last week, Trump publicly applauded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, for sticking to the president’s so-called “peace plan”. “Israel has lived up to the plan, 100 percent,” Trump declared.

The reality, however, is that Israel violated the “ceasefire” nearly 1000 times in the first two months after it was supposed to go into effect, in mid-October. Israel continues to kill and starve the people of Gaza, if at a slower rate.

Last week, Israel announced it was banning 37 humanitarian organisations from Gaza, including Doctors Without Borders, which supports one in five emergency hospitals beds in the strip. The group noted that Israel was “cutting off life-saving medical assistance for hundreds of thousands of people”.

The ceasefire is just the latest storyline in a two-year piece of theatre.

Horrifying dream
While Western capitals and the media stubbornly adhere to the good cop, bad cop narrative, Western publics have started waking from it, as if from a bad dream.

The mass demonstrations of two years ago may have gradually shrunk in numbers, but only after western politicians and media waged an aggressive war of attrition and campaign of vilification against them. Public exhaustion has set in.

The cause of the disbelief and anger that spurred millions to take to the streets, and to campuses, remains unaddressed. Western powers are still colluding deeply in Israel’s crimes. The public’s initial outrage has slowly hardened into a burning resentment and disdain towards their own political and media establishments.

That mood intensifies each time western officials, unable to win the argument, resort to force.

Britain illustrates especially starkly the authoritarian, repressive trends visible across the West.

There, protests against genocide have been designated “hate marches”. Slogans in solidarity with the Palestinians are now grounds for arrest for antisemitism. Journalists critical of the government have been arrested or their homes raided.

Support for practical action to stop the genocide, by targeting the weapons factories supplying Israel with killer drones, is now classed as terrorism.

The government is flaunting its indifference – again backed by the media – as anti-genocide activists risk death to protest the outlawing of Palestine Action and their abusive treatment by prison authorities, in the biggest UK hunger strike since the IRA’s nearly half a century ago.

To no effect, a group of United Nations legal experts – called special rapporteurs –expressed grave concern last month at the UK’s flouting of international law in its treatment of the hunger-strikers, who face prolonged detention on remand in violation of British law.

Just before Christmas, the world’s most famous environmental campaigner, Greta Thunberg, was arrested in London by the Metropolitan Police for holding a sign drawing attention to the plight of those prisoners.

This has been a process of escalation, of upping the stakes. First, opposition to Israel’s apartheid rule over Palestinians was conflated with antisemitism. Now opposition to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians is conflated with terrorism.

Scrapping jury trials
The task of Western establishments — and their media — has been to shore up a patently duplicitous narrative to excuse their complicity in the Gaza genocide: that the more vocal the criticism of Israel, the more evident the antisemitism.

The implication is clear. The correct response to that genocide is silence.

Ultimately, domestic courts in the UK — led by a judiciary highly unrepresentative of wider British society — are unlikely to hold the line against this all-out assault on law, morality and basic logic.

The test will be a ruling by the High Court, expected soon, on the legality of the British government’s decision to outlaw Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation — the first time a direct-action group has been proscribed in British history.

Worryingly, the judge hearing the case — who, in approving the judicial review, had indicated a degree of scepticism about proscription — was removed from the hearing at the last minute and without explanation. He was replaced by a new panel of three judges who have a track record of demonstrating more deference to the British state.

Ousting the review judge in the appeal against Palestine Action’s proscription, and replacing him with three new judges, is a desperate attempt to create a veneer of judicial authority in support of the actions of Starmer’s outlaw government.

My latest: https://t.co/r84WPOfAT4 pic.twitter.com/ace8CbDIZv

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 26, 2025

The lacuna in this growing domestic architecture of authoritarianism is the right to trial by jury. Unsurprisingly, juries have a tendency to take a far more critical view of the British establishment’s behaviour than the establishment does itself.

For centuries, juries have been a central component of fair trials, and viewed as a fundamental to a justice system capable of limiting state power and governmental overreach.

Now the government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced plans to scrap many jury trials — citing the need to address a record backlog of cases, a backlog it is failing to address by properly funding the court system.

Once the principle is conceded, it is surely only a matter of time before all jury trials are eradicated.

Bank accounts frozen
Already, under government direction, judges in political trials — notably in climate protest cases — have been denying defendants the chance to explain their motivations and reasoning to juries.

That is because too often, when presented with information the media has withheld from them, those juries acquit.

Starmer’s government understands that efforts to crush the Palestinian solidarity movement, and chill speech critical of UK complicity in genocide, depend on securing convictions. Juries are an obstacle.

Even so, the government has up its sleeve other punishments — outside the scope of judicial scrutiny — that can be used to penalise pro-Palestinian activism, whether it be efforts to stop Israel’s genocide or to simply ameliorate the suffering of its victims.

Last month it emerged that the National Crime Agency, a body answerable to government ministers, was likely behind efforts to economically intimidate and vilify the wider Palestinian solidarity movement.

The bank accounts of solidarity groups in Manchester and Scotland have been frozen, as part of investigations into Palestine Action, despite neither having an affiliation with the direct-action group.

These underhand, extrajudicial moves by the government hamper efforts to raise or donate money to charities that help feed Palestinians in Gaza, treat the wounded and house those without shelter in the winter.

It is hard to get one’s head round the depravity of these decisions.

Declared non-person
This is far from just a British problem. Other Western states are following suit in a bid not only to rehabilitate the genocidal state of Israel but to erase any perception of their own participation in its crimes.

And the template is being rolled out not just domestically but at the international level too.

While Western states bully their publics into silence on Gaza, international humanitarian institutions have done their best to hold their nerve.

United Nations special rapporteurs — independent legal experts — have issued a series of damning reports on Israel’s genocide and Western complicity.

The US responded last week by slashing $15 billion from its funding of UN humanitarian agencies.

Most visible among the rapporteurs has been the UN’s expert on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese. Washington’s response to her has been illuminating.

In July she was placed on a US Treasury sanctions list normally reserved for those accused of terrorism, drug trafficking or money laundering. Her listing came a few days after she published her report on the collusion of Western corporations in Israel’s genocide.

The US sanctions violate the diplomatic immunity she enjoys as a UN official and make it impossible for her to attend meetings at UN headquarters in New York.

With the US effectively exercising a stranglehold on the international financial system, the sanctions also mean no banks or credit cards will allow her to use their services. She cannot be paid by employers. She cannot book a flight or hotel.

Universities, human rights institutions and charities have cut her adrift for fear of facing reprisals themselves if they continue to have dealings with her.

Her assets in the US have been frozen, including her bank account and an apartment. It is unlikely her new book on Palestine can be distributed in the US.

Effectively, Albanese has been turned into a “non-person”, with the silent consent of Western politicians and media.

ICC sanctioned
The State Department justified the sanctions on the grounds Albanese had recommended that the International Criminal Court (ICC) issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant.

In fact, ICC judges approved the arrest warrants in November 2024 after the court’s prosecutors amassed evidence of crimes against humanity committed by Netanyahu and Gallant, chiefly over their imposition of an aid blockade to starve Gaza’s population.

It was no surprise, therefore, that the Trump administration has issued similar sanctions against eight judges at the Hague war crimes court, either for approving those arrest warrants or for authorising an investigation into crimes by US military personnel in Afghanistan.

In an executive order announcing the sanctions in February, Trump declared a “national emergency”, saying the court represented an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”.

You might imagine that this lawless move against some of the most renowned jurists in the world would have provoked considerable pushback in Europe. You would be wrong. The all-out assault on one of the main pillars of international law has been barely mentioned.

Le Monde broke ranks in November to interview French judge Nicolas Guillou. He detailed the impact since he was sanctioned in August: “All my accounts with American companies, such as Amazon, Airbnb, PayPal and others, have been closed . . .  Being under sanctions is like being sent back to the 1990s.”

European banks, fearful of the US Treasury, also closed his accounts, and European companies refuse to provide him with services.

He concluded: “Putting someone under sanctions creates a state of permanent anxiety and powerlessness, with the intent of discouragement.”

Washington has sanctioned too the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, and two of his deputies.

In fact, Khan, a British lawyer, has found himself embroiled in a protracted legal and reputational struggle ever since he submitted the applications in May 2024.

That included threats, reported by Middle East Eye, from the then UK foreign secretary David Cameron that Britain would defund the court and withdraw from the Rome Statute that founded the ICC if Khan did not back down.

‘Might is right’ politics
Clearly, Israel and the US are eager to intimidate the court, and ready to destroy it rather than be judged by international law standards and held accountable for their crimes.

But the sanctions have an additional audience: the International Court of Justice (ICJ), sometimes referred to as the World Court.

Its panel of 15 judges have issued a series of rulings over the past two years against Israel.

Most explosively, the ICJ ruled in January 2024 that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. As a result, the ICJ is currently investigating Israel for this, the ultimate crime.

The wheels of justice turn slowly at the World Court. But its judges are undoubtedly watching the treatment of Albanese and the ICC with alarm.

Like gangsters, Israel and the US are sending a very direct message to each of the ICJ judges: you will be punished too, if you dare to find us guilty.

ICC judge Nicholas Gillou notes that Europe could show solidarity with the victims of these sanctions by invoking what is known as “a blocking statute” – a mechanism that protects EU citizens and companies from the effects of sanctions imposed by third countries.

But any hope that Europe will break ranks with the US and Israel over this naked attack on the two main courts upholding international law — bulwarks against a return to “might is right” global politics — is almost certainly forlorn.

Last month, drawing on the Trump playbook, the European Union imposed economic sanctions on a dozen of its own critics.

Notable was the inclusion of Jacques Baud, a former colonel in the Swiss army. His distinguished military career includes leading peacekeeping missions for the UN, including in Rwanda and Sudan, and serving as a Nato senior strategic analyst.

Reputational assassination
Baud was accused of no crime. His offence is being deeply critical of European officials and the strategic coherence of their support for war in Ukraine. Given his military expertise, his analyses are embarrassing European establishments.

The draconian sanctions mean he is effectively imprisoned in Belgium, where he lives. He cannot leave to return to Switzerland. His assets are frozen. He cannot use a bank account and cannot have any kind of economic relations with other citizens of the EU.

Baud cannot appeal the decision or subject it to judicial review. Like Albanese he has been turned into a non-person.

A precedent has thereby been set that means anyone who challenges Western leaders — whether judges, journalists, lawyers, or human rights groups — could similarly end up destitute.

What the US and the EU are rolling out are extrajudicial reputational assassinations and economic incarcerations, as a way to silence critics and watchdogs, that cannot be appealed.

This is a model Israel and its lobbyists in the West have been trialling for years.

The US doxing website Canary Mission, for example, seeks to destroy the careers and livelihoods of students and academics critical of Israel.

Meanwhile, the lawfare group UK Lawyers for Israel is currently under investigation for threatening individuals and groups with vexatious legal actions to pressure them into retracting their solidarity with Palestinians.

Criminals in charge
Washington — the gangster-in-chief posing as global policeman — refuses to accept any limitations on its actions. If legal authorities, whether domestic or international, try to stand in its way, they are either punished or pushed aside.

In this topsy-turvy world, Trump’s naked exercise of colonial violence is feted as peace-making. As he was massing troops off Venezuela’s coast last month, Fifa, the international football federation, awarded him its inaugural “peace prize” — an honour created specifically to stroke his ego.

Though the Nobel Committee could not bring itself to hand the peace prize directly to Trump, its judges did the next best thing. They awarded it to Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuela opposition leader who has publicly called on the US to invade her country and seize its resources.

The complete abandonment of long-standing international legal safeguards puts everyone in jeopardy — all the more so when technological developments mean states have near-absolute control over their citizens’ lives, and superpowers can use ever more sophisticated weapons to wreck countries at little cost to themselves in blood or treasure.

But paradoxically, the very act of dismantling the global system of international law is still being dressed up in the garb of law enforcement.

Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza is supposedly needed to defeat Hamas’ “illegitimate” rule. The abduction of Maduro from Caracas is sold as the enforcement of drug-trafficking laws.

European leaders’ response to Trump’s crime of aggression against Venezuela signals where things head next.

Britain’s Starmer effectively welcomed Washington’s criminal regime-change operation and threat to occupy Venezuela to control its oil. He said he “shed no tears” for Maduro.

Similarly, Kaja Kallas, Europe’s foreign policy chief, emphasised Maduro’s supposed lack of “legitimacy”.

Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Denmark, Greenland, Canada — all in Washington’s sights — should fear that similar “legal” pretexts will be found to justify attacks on their own sovereignty.

Trump’s favourite new catchphrase is that he can do global business “the easy way or the hard way”.

Now, having shredded international law, the “good cop” looks ready to discard an outdated disguise and reveal the serial villain underneath.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published by the Middle East Eye and reepublished from the author’s blog with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, New Zealand responded with unusual speed. Sanctions followed. Condemnations were issued. The language was unambiguous.

We were told this was about defending the “rules-based international order” — a phrase our politicians have grown remarkably fond of. Winston Peters has deployed it frequently in his time as Foreign Minister.

So where is that principled clarity now?

On Saturday, the United States attacked the Venezuelan capital Caracas, seized President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and spirited them away to face charges in New York.

President Donald Trump then declared that America would “run” Venezuela — including, he made abundantly clear, its oil reserves. He threatened the acting president with a fate “probably worse than Maduro” if she failed to cooperate.

This is, by any reasonable definition, an invasion. An act of aggression against a sovereign state. A violation of Article Two of the UN Charter. The kind of thing New Zealand normally objects to, or used to.

Peters’ response? After about 24 hours, he made a brief statement on social media: “New Zealand is concerned by and actively monitoring developments in Venezuela and expects all parties to act in accordance with international law.”

That’s it. “Concerned”. “Monitoring”. Expecting all parties to behave. One party has just bombed a capital city, kidnapped a head of state, and announced it will control the country’s resources. But sure, let’s urge “all parties” to play by the rules.

The Prime Minister’s Office, when asked for a response at the highest level, simply referred journalists back to Peters’ tweet. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon himself has said nothing.

As Geoffrey Miller, the independent geopolitical analyst, observed: “Luxon will probably be grateful to escape the media spotlight by virtue of the weekend’s events falling in the depths of New Zealand’s typically elongated summer holidays.”

The language tells you everything
Pay attention to the words politicians choose and the words they avoid. Peters didn’t name the United States. He didn’t describe what happened as an invasion, an attack, or even an intervention. The carefully crafted statement avoids assigning responsibility to anyone. It’s diplomatic jelly.

Compare this to how other countries have responded. Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay issued a joint statement expressing “deep concern and rejection of the military actions carried out unilaterally in the territory of Venezuela, which contravene fundamental principles of international law.”

They warned that “such actions set an extremely dangerous precedent for regional peace and security and for the rules-based international order.”

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was equally direct: “Spain did not recognise the Maduro regime. But neither will it recognise an intervention that violates international law and pushes the region toward a horizon of uncertainty and belligerence.”

Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide put it simply: “International law is universal and binding for all states. The American intervention in Venezuela is not in accordance with international law.”

Even Singapore, which is hardly known for picking diplomatic fights, issued a statement saying it was “gravely concerned” and “strongly condemned any unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country under any pretext.” That echoes the language Singapore used after Russia invaded Ukraine.

New Zealand? “Concerned” and “monitoring”.

The vested interests behind timidity
Maduro is no martyr; he is a dictator who ran his country into the ground. He lost the 2024 election by an enormous margin and then stole it. His regime was corrupt, authoritarian, and responsible for the flight of eight million Venezuelans from their own country. No tears should be shed for him personally.

But that’s not the point. The question isn’t whether Maduro deserved power. He didn’t. The question is whether the United States can bomb sovereign nations, kidnap their leaders, and declare control of their natural resources whenever it feels like it.

The answer, if you believe in national sovereignty or the rules-based order our government claims to defend, should be an emphatic no.

Why can’t New Zealand say so? The answer lies in vested interests: both American and our own.

Start with Washington. Trump’s intervention is not primarily about narcotics or democracy.

As Professor Robert Patman of Otago University has noted, Venezuela is not at the centre of America’s drug problems. Fentanyl and other drugs mainly come from places like China and Mexico. Trump’s announcement that America would “run” Venezuela and take its oil reserves revealed the true motivation.

At his news conference, Trump made clear his major objective was securing Venezuela’s oil resources, which he claims the United States “owns”. This from the man who once said America made a mistake in not grabbing Iraq’s oil reserves after the 2003 invasion.

The vested interests of American corporations are driving this policy, dressed up in the language of law enforcement and regional security. The military is simply being used to secure assets for private corporations.

And what about New Zealand’s own vested interests in staying quiet? Here the picture becomes clearer. Our farming and export sectors have already been hit by Trump’s tariff regime. An initial 10 percent rate in April was raised to 15 percent.

A November decision to roll back tariffs on food imports provided some relief, but American trade policy remains a constant threat. India has been hit with 50 percent tariffs for buying Russian oil. Brazil was targeted because of its prosecution of Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro.

Our agricultural and export lobby groups watch these retaliatory tariffs nervously. Any government criticism of Trump risks placing New Zealand next on the punishment list. This explains why Peters has been so careful not to name the United States in his statement.

The economic interests of New Zealand’s export sector — farmers, meat processors, dairy companies — are being prioritised over principles. It’s the politics of fear, wrapped in the language of diplomacy.

Stephen Nagy, a professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo, put it bluntly when explaining why America’s Asian allies have been so reluctant to criticise Trump: “You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” This is what happens when a country’s foreign policy becomes subordinate to its immediate economic interests.

The double standard is breathtaking
Consider how this would play out if the roles were reversed. Imagine China had just bombed Taipei, sent special forces to capture Taiwan’s leader, and declared it would “run” the island.

Would Winston Peters be tweeting about how New Zealand “expects all parties” to respect international law? Would Chris Luxon be hiding behind his summer holiday?

Of course not. The response would be immediate, forceful, and unambiguous. We would be told that Chinese aggression cannot be tolerated. Gordon Campbell made this point sharply: “If the Chinese military were blowing up merchant shipping in the South China Sea, bombing Taipei and sending in special forces to kidnap Taiwan’s leader . . .  New Zealand wouldn’t be meekly asking both sides to show restrained respect for international law. We would be outraged.”

The same double standard has been on display over Gaza. Peters’ line about expecting “all parties” to respect international law has been the government’s exact position there too, as if both sides in that conflict have been equally responsible for bombing hospitals and blocking humanitarian aid.

Only last week, New Zealand opted not to join a joint statement by foreign ministers from Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom calling for Israel to abide by ceasefire terms. Peters sat that one out.

Opposition voices show what’s possible
Not everyone in New Zealand politics has been so timid. Phil Twyford of the Labour Party issued a stronger statement, actually naming the United States and describing the action as a violation of international law.

It’s not revolutionary language (more like stating the obvious) but in the context of the government’s mealy-mouthed response, it stands out. Opposition Leader Chris Hipkins should be speaking out likewise.

Helen Clark has been characteristically direct, telling RNZ that the US attack was “clearly illegal under the UN Charter.” When former prime ministers speak more clearly than current foreign ministers, something has gone badly wrong.

Professor Patman told RNZ that New Zealand’s response should be “firm and robust” and noted that the days of “softly, softly diplomacy” with Trump are over. Patman says: “New Zealand has persisted for the last 12 months in what I call softly, softly diplomacy towards Trump. The idea is if we keep our heads beneath the radar, we say nice things, we have photo opportunities with the great men at international meetings, he will soften and we’ll be able to nudge him in a more moderate direction. I’m afraid that’s over.”

He labelled Peters’ statement as “limp”.

The credibility at stake
The consequences of this craven approach go beyond the immediate crisis. Geoffrey Miller warned that the inconsistency between how Western allies responded to Russia and how they’re responding to America “may come back to haunt them, particularly when it comes to their credibility with the Global South.”

He’s right. Countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are watching. They’ve heard endless lectures from Western nations about the importance of the rules-based order, about sovereignty, about international law.

Now they’re watching those same nations stay quiet — or worse, make excuses — when the violator is the United States. Beijing and Moscow will exploit this at every opportunity. They’ll point to Venezuela whenever anyone raises Ukraine or Taiwan. And they’ll have a point.

As Nathalie Tocci wrote in The Guardian, the European failure to condemn Trump’s action “embodies the law of the jungle so dear to dictators such as Putin. For Europeans to silently condone such a vision is not just unethical. It is plain stupid.”

After all, Trump is now speaking out loud about annexing Greenland too. And increasingly, the concept of “Spheres of Influence” seems to be rising, whereby military superpowers such as the US, Russia, China, etc can operate on a “might is right” basis to intervene however they want in their own regions.

If the world reverts to such “Spheres of Influence”, New Zealand is left exposed. If the US can claim the Americas, what is to stop a superpower from claiming the Pacific?

New Zealand has spent years positioning itself as “a good international citizen”. It has sought seats on the UN Security Council. It has championed multilateralism. It has talked endlessly about the importance of small states having a voice in international affairs.

How does that square with staying silent when a great power simply ignores international law because it can?

The integrity test New Zealand is failing
This is ultimately a question of integrity — the kind of integrity New Zealand claims to stand for on the world stage. Either international law applies to everyone, or it doesn’t. Either sovereignty matters, or it’s just a convenient talking point when it suits politicians.

Either New Zealand is willing to call out violations regardless of who commits them, or else the politicians are just selective critics who only speak up when the target is someone they already dislike.

Winston Peters once prided himself on being willing to speak uncomfortable truths. New Zealand First has long positioned itself as independent-minded, unwilling to simply follow the crowd. Where is that independence now?

What we’re seeing instead is a government so afraid of offending Trump, and so captured by the economic interests of our export sector, that it can’t even name the United States in a statement about an American military attack.

As Professor Patman observed: “Foreign policy in this country has been traditionally bipartisan. We have stood up for the rule of law internationally.” If that’s true, then it’s certainly time to show some element of independence from the US and Five Eyes.

But doing so requires the New Zealand government to put principles ahead of the vested interests of farmers and exporters, and ahead of the political calculation that offending Trump carries too high a price.

Murray McCully, not exactly a darling of the left, showed more backbone when he championed UN Security Council Resolution 2334 on Israeli settlements in 2016. As Gordon Campbell observed, the current situation almost makes you yearn for the days when McCully was foreign minister.

That’s a damning indictment of how far New Zealand has fallen.

So, as we head towards an election year, foreign policy needs to be made a major issue. Voters now deserve to know whether New Zealand will continue to subordinate its principles to its perceived economic interests.

Dr Bruce Edwards is a political commentator and analyst. He is director of the Integrity Institute, a campaigning and research organisation dedicated to strengthening New Zealand democratic institutions through transparency, accountability, and robust policy reform. Republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

What have we become if to survive in our so-called “free world” we must turn a blind eye to cold-blooded genocide, must arm ourselves to oppose our major trading partner, must support a contrived war to defeat an adversary that no longer exists, (lest its new form otherwise achieves its potential) must sanction some and not others, trade with some and not others — and now must, yet again, be silent as another sovereign nation is brazenly plundered for its wealth.

US President Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela is not a “police operation” against a criminal “fugitive,” nor is it part of an “escalating pressure campaign” against a hostile regime.

It’s none of the things that the White House and our media claims, faithfully copying and pasting stories supplied by The New York Times, CNN and The Washington Post.

Blithely asserting the right to “run” Venezuela and “take” the country’s vast oil reserves, in a textbook example of the 19th century colonialism, Trump’s actions brazenly violate international law and numerous entrenched conventions. And all of it whitewashed by our media in euphemistic pseudo-legalese, to impress those gullible enough.

With Trump not only flouting the US Constitution but no longer even pretending that this is about anything other than the theft of another country’s resources, bragging that US oil companies will begin “taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,” what does it say about us that we accept such brigandry?

How, in God’s name, have we allowed ourselves to be swayed by the dribblings of a scurrilous misogynist, the associate of a convicted paedophile and a creature so altogether odious that, in any other context, we wouldn’t be seen dead with him?

Brandishing his big black marker, Trump, the unabashed narcissist, has changed the US Constitution from; “We the People . . . ” to now read: “ME the People”!

When can we expect those we have entrusted to defend the principles we claim to represent, to stand up and say something?

Or is it simply a matter of us being too gutless ourselves, too intimidated, too craven, to break ranks, step forward and say: “The Emperor has no clothes!”

Malcolm Evans is an independent New Zealand award-winning cartoonist and commentator.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Amid widespread condemnation of the United States over its brazen weekend attack on Venezuela around the world and in the UN Security Council today, Senator Bernie Sanders has posted on social media six reasons why the operation to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro on Venezuela was very wrong.

Abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro told a packed New York City courtroom that he was “innocent”, a “decent man”, and that he had been “kidnapped”, in his first public comments since the US attack, reports Al Jazeera.

Members of the 15-strong UN Security Council (UNSC), including key US allies, condemned Washington and warned that the kidnapping of Maduro and his wife by US special forces could be a precedent-setting event for international law.

The reasons Senator Sanders (Democrat-Vermont) has given why Trump’s actions were wrong are:

1. It is illegal and unconstitutional. Congress did not authorise or even know about this military action.
2. It will make the world less safe. If international law is ignored, any nation or terrorist organisation can justify violent attack by pointing to Trump’s actions in Venezuela. This was Putin’s logic in Ukraine.
3. It is blatant imperialism. Powerful nations do not have the legal or moral right to invade smaller countries to steal their natural resources. Venezuela’s oil belongs to the people of Venezuela, not US corporations.
4. At a time when the entire world is moving away from fossil fuels for cheaper and non-polluting sustainable energies, protecting the interests of Big Oil is bad for the climate and bad economics.
5. Maduro is corrupt and anti-democratic. So is MBS of Saudi Arabia. So are many other leaders around the world. Just because we do not like a country’s leader does not mean we have the right to overthrow their government.
6. Trump ran for president as a “peace candidate” who believed in “America First”, not someone who was going to “run” another country. At a time when 60 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, maybe he should try doing a better job running this country [United States], not taking over Venezuela.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

US President Donald Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has taught me a lesson: that if you think you have a scoop, you file it immediately, not only to get the story out first but to warn the world if it’s about something bad that might be coming.

Shortly after Trump bombed Nigeria on Christmas day, I wrote an article that said his real aim was to send a message to Maduro and that among the options he was entertaining was a SEAL-type operation to capture or kill Maduro.

How did I come to this conclusion? I have no assets in the US intelligence community. I was completely running on instinct, and my instincts told me that the egomaniac Trump wanted to eclipse Obama’s feat in sending in the SEALS to kill Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad in 2011, just as he wanted badly to get the Nobel Peace Prize that Obama got.

But it was the holidays and, out of consideration for the folks that run my stories, who deserved a New Year’s break to be with their families, I sat on it after I finished it on December 27 and only sent it to Foreign Policy in Focus on January 2, eight hours before the Caracas operation that kidnapped Maduro, in violation of all the norms of civilised conduct among states.

But though out-scooped by Trump, I still think that there are elements in the unfiled article that could be useful in helping us anticipate what could unfold in the days and weeks ahead. So here’s the scoop that wasn’t.

Trump strikes Nigeria but real target is Venezuela
The Trump regime’s air strikes on Islamic State targets in Nigeria on Christmas Day may have had symbolic significance but no strategic value. There will likely be no impact on the efforts of the militant group called Lakurawa, allied to ISIS, to establish a base in Sokoto state.

Many have been puzzled by the attacks that involved the use of Tomahawk missiles, especially given the relatively minuscule space given to Africa in the recently released National Security Strategy (NSS) 2025. That brief section focuses on transforming the US relationship with Africa from one based on aid to trade, though it does say, “we must remain wary of resurgent Islamist terrorist activity in parts of Africa while avoiding any long-term American presence or commitments.”

It is likely that the attacks were carried out for reasons unrelated to Africa. One is to appease Trump’s Christian evangelical base. As Joshua Keating, an expert in crisis areas, has noted, “Trump’s sudden interest in Africa’s most populous country was likely motivated less by any particular event there — these are all longstanding issues — than by developments in Washington. Though it doesn’t get a ton of mainstream media attention, the plight of Christians in Nigeria has been a galvanising issue for evangelical Christians in the US in recent years.”

On his internet platform Truth Social, Trump has cited figures from the international Christian rights NGO Open Doors, claiming that of the 4476 Christians killed for their faith globally in 2024, 3100 were in Nigeria.

In her recent book on the key groups that make up the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, Furious Minds, Laura Field says that non-establishment Christian groups have an outsized influence in the Trump administration.

With the Republicans struggling in the lead-up to the mid-term elections in 2026, these groups’ muscle on the ground can determine whether the Republicans will continue to control the House of Representatives.

The main target: Venezuela
However, the main goal of the strikes, in my view, had to do mainly with developments thousands of kilometres away. It was to signal to the government of Nicolás Maduro that it will face not just attacks on Venezuelan boats at sea but also air attacks on ground targets. This interpretation would be consistent with NSS 2025.

NSS 2025 is an iconoclastic document. It literally dumps the 80-year-old strategy of liberal containment that guided the United States from the post-Second World War years through the Cold War years to the post-Cold War years, which was to meet challenges to global capital wherever and whenever the US state saw its interests threatened or challenged.

Next to its overthrowing the 80-year-old American “Grand Strategy,” the most significant departure in NSS 2025 is its break with the key assumption of US security policy since the presidency of George W. Bush (2001-2008), including the first Trump administration (2017-2021): that Washington must focus its resources on containing China, which was defined as the principal US strategic competitor.

Replacing China and the Asia Pacific as the main US concern in the Western Hemisphere, the document comes out with a reiteration of the Monroe Doctrine, but one fortified with what it calls the “Trump corollary.”

It states that Washington “will deny non-hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our hemisphere.” There is no more stark expression of the rude replacement of the liberal containment doctrine by a “spheres of influence” approach.

Meantime, the debate goes on in Trump administration on whether a ground invasion of Venezuela is the best way to implement the Western-Hemisphere-first strategy. Air strikes are one thing, boots on the ground are another, and one opposed by much of the MAGA base that is tired of the “forever wars”.

The “Molotov Cocktail” throwers in that base have made known their opposition or disquiet regarding a Venezuelan adventure.

Laura Loomer, an influential firebrand, has challenged Trump’s rationale for the attacks on Venezuelan boats, which is to prevent the opioid fentanyl and other drugs from being shipped to the United States.

“Fentanyl isn’t being manufactured in Venezuela,” she said, urging that the Pentagon target the Mexican drug cartels responsible for most shipments instead. She has also criticised María Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize awardee for 2025 and the leader of the opposition in Venezuela, for “actively stoking and promoting violent regime change”.

Steve Bannon, a key official in the first Trump administration, said “neoconservative neoliberals” like Secretary of State Marco Rubio are pushing for a Venezuelan intervention that would derail the administration from its domestic priorities. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the volatile Georgia congresswoman, has posted on X that “People voted in 2024 against foreign intervention and foreign regime change as we have seen far too many times how that’s turned out, it’s not good, and people are so sick of it.”

My fearless forecast
Trump will limit attacks on his perceived adversaries globally to air strikes or naval bombardments to keep them off balance and not risk triggering another forever war with a ground invasion.

Of course, Trump’s people are probably weighing a SEAL-type special op — like then-President Obama’s killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad in 2011 — to murder or capture Maduro, but Maduro is likely to be already very well prepared for such a contingency. He’s not stupid.

Frankly, if you ask me, Washington has dug itself into a hole with its focus on Venezuela, one from which there is no easy exit.

If one gives a broad interpretation to Che Guevara’s dictum that the best way to defeat the United States was to create “two, three many Vietnams,” then Venezuela has the potential for becoming the third phase of the death rattle of the empire, Vietnam being the first and bin Laden’s dragging Washington to eventual defeat in the Middle East the second.

Dr Walden Bello is co-chair of the board of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South and senior research fellow at the sociology department of the State University of New York at Binghamton. He is also author of Global Battlefields: My close encounters with dictatorship, capital, empire, and love (2025). This article was first published by Foreign Policy in Focus and is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

There is no doubt that Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela was illegal, former prime minister and UN leader Helen Clark says.

Over the weekend, the US attacked the Venezuelan capital Caracas and captured the South American nation’s president and his wife, citing alleged drug offences.

Nicolás Maduro is now being held in a federal jail in New York City, and is expected to appear in court this week.

Speaking to RNZ’s Morning Report, Clark said there was no argument for the steps the US had taken.

“Article 24 of the UN Charter says states must refrain from using military force against each other and respect their sovereignty.

“There is a case for Maduro appearing before a court — that should be the International Criminal Court — on charges for crimes against humanity and there’s quite a long list of those that have been documented by various UN bodies over the years but this operation by the US . . .  is illegal.”

There was not an argument to be made that removing Maduro was in the security interests on the US, she said.

‘Not self-defence’
“There’s no evidence that the US was able to act in self-defence because it was not about to be attacked by Venezuela. So the self-defence argument does not apply at all.”

Hard not to conclude that 🇺🇸 intervention in #Venezuela is a breach of international law. Maduro was a dictatorial ruler presiding over arbitrary detention & torture of opponents. Iraq 2003 intervention, however, suggests unpredictable path ahead: https://t.co/4qjeENjpAH

— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) January 3, 2026

While some people in Venezuela were celebrating Maduro’s capture in the hopes it would create more stability, Clark said this might not be the case.

“The worry with the president of other such interventions, when you take out a leader of an apparatus and then if you try to dismantle that apparatus by external forces, as was the case with Iraq — and I suppose, to some extent, with Libya — is that you create more instability and chaos,” Clark said.

“We don’t really know at this point what the US’s even short-term, let alone medium-term plans are. There’s been, effectively a warning by President Trump this morning that if the acting president, Ms Rodriguez, doesn’t play ball, she will ‘pay a price even bigger than Maduro’.

“What does this mean? Will she be literally, physically taken out? Killed? So this is a very unstable, unpredictable, uncertain situation at the moment.”

On Sunday, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters made the first public statement from New Zealand on the situation.

“New Zealand is concerned by and actively monitoring developments in Venezuela and expects all parties to act in accordance with international law,” Peters said in a post on X (formerly Twitter), using the official Minister of Foreign Affairs account.

NZ ‘stands with Venezuelan people’
“New Zealand stands with the Venezuelan people in their pursuit of a fair, democratic and prosperous future.

Clark said the statement was a “good start”.

RT @WhiteHouse: Nicolas Maduro on board the USS Iwo Jima. pic.twitter.com/Y4wzZM5qde

— Donald J Trump Posts TruthSocial (@TruthTrumpPost) January 3, 2026

New Zealand was known for following and upholding international law and Peters’ statement was consistent with the country’s long-held position, she said.

On Sunday, international relations Professor Robert Patman of the University of Otago described the US’ military actions against Venezuela as an “audacious move”.

“It’s a direct challenge for countries like New Zealand, which support the view that international relations should be based on rules, procedures and laws,” he told RNZ’s Worldwatch.

Patman said while many would be pleased to see Maduro gone, that did not mean they would be happy the US “violated Venezuela’s sovereignty”.

He believed New Zealand’s response to the US action in Venezuela should be firm and robust.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENTARY: By Adrian Blackburn

Blatantly, boastfully, bullyingly, shamelessly, Trump overnight threw open to the world’s eyes the cruel reality of US foreign policy. He has brought out from the shadows the ugly reality of what for generations previous administrations have found politic to keep covert.

That foreign policy has been shown most especially arrogant in regard to its neighbours anywhere in the Americas.

It has been based on a lie, a lie to its own people first but no less potently to the nations, including New Zealand, which have subscribed to that fiction of a United States democracy representing all the best human qualities.

The nicely gift-wrapped package includes belief in equality, fairness, justice, the sanctity of human life, acceptance of difference, mutual respect, kindness and love: The American way, the ultimate Christian morality in practice.

Trump has done all of us who have bought that lie a favour. What he is saying out loud with the attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro is the age-old message of a rogue state — might is right, all power comes from the barrel of a gun, bow down to us.

Any self-reflection by Trump, unlikely, would reveal to him the deeper historical truth that empires which once seemed invulnerable resort to such desperate measures as his Venezuelan adventure in an attempt to deny, to delay, to divert from the fact they are in their death throes. Decline and fall.

It will get worse for the United States, as a state. The lie will become increasingly acknowledged internationally as trust is shown to be a one-way street. The allied fiction of US Treasury bills as a long-term safe repository for the world’s savings may be undermined even faster.

Run on the US bank
Trust gone, it’s the work of moments for an international run on the bank of the US to begin. Even if its already hard-working monetary printing presses go into overtime, an economy and society propped up on trillions upon trillions of dollars of debt can quickly become bankrupt

Immediately, though, what can the international community do in protest? I believe there’s a special obligation on the “Western” nations to assuage a little of their guilt as willing US accomplices over many years, accomplices ready to abandon true independence and a fair bit of morality to self-interest, cowardice.

Just a gesture in protest, but a powerful one, would be to immediately and in unison demand the temporary closure of US embassies and the withdrawal of their staff as persona non grata.

Unrealistic? Of course. Real-politik will rule, OK!

Turning blind eyes to Venezuela
But we should all beware of turning blind eyes to Venezuela. Who next, after Maduro, incurs the Don’s displeasure? If Zelensky stubbornly won’t surrender to Don and Vlad’s territorial demands, will he be safe on his next State visit to the US from arbitrary arrest and incarceration as an alleged war criminal?

Does our own Christopher Luxon need to brush up his flattery skills even further? Losing every hole of a golf match with Trump would help.

Trump, though, has already lost, whether in his hyperbolically hypocritical state he knows it or not. But he has done the world a useful service in revealing how an empire on the way out is likely to act.

Big oil will be triumphal about a grab for Venezuela’s oil riches in the hypocritical guise of protecting the US from illicit drug imports.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, meanwhile, is quietly gloating.

Adrian Blackburn is lifelong journalist and writer. Staff writer on many publications, including The NZ Herald, Sydney Morning Herald, BBC World Service, Beaverbrook Newspapers, NZ Listener and NZ Woman’s Weekly. Author of The Shoestring Pirates (Hodder and Stoughton, 1974) a history of pirate Radio Hauraki, and Gift: A Troubling Message from the Afterlife (2024). This commentary was originally a Facebook posting under the title “Trump grabs Venezuela by the pussy” and is republished here with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Analysis by Patricio Zamorano
From Washington DC

New information divulged this week reveals that Juan Guaidó was designated as “commander and chief” of the mercenary operation that completely unraveled on the shores of Venezuela. The 41 page contract that formed the basis of the already known eight page General Services Agreement was published by the Washington Post^[1] this week.

This more complete document confirms what the mercenary and head of SilverCorp, Inc., Jordan Goudreau, had already revealed to the media: the agreement was aimed at “planning and executing an operation to capture/detain/remove Nicolas Maduro (heretoafter “Primary Objective”) remove the current Regime and install the recognized Venezuelan President Juan Guaido.”

The document provides complete information about the money that would be invested (212 million dollars), and the payments and commissions that SilverCorp would receive from Guaidó’s team, which includes Juan José Rendón, Sergio Vergara and attorney Manuel Retureta.

The document also explains the promised retainer of 1.5 million dollars that Goudreau has been complaining about publicly since the failed operation last Sunday, May 3.

What has not been said: information about the operation was published two days before the attack

There is an important detail that the world press has not analysed. One AP article^[2] which details the preparations for the attack was published Friday May 1, two days before the attempt to invade Venezuela was launched from Colombia. The article  provides particulars on the presence of three paramilitary groups (deserters from the Venezuelan armed forces and police) in Colombia and explains how this operation had been foiled and aborted. It clearly names Jordan Goudreau, including a profile on the mercenary and many other details about the planned attack. No Colombian nor US authority mobilized to neutralize the illegal paramilitary camps.

This document also appears to confirm that Goudreau, despite the exposure of the planned incursion by the press, still proceeded with the attack, irresponsibly putting at risk the lives of those involved. It also shows that neither US intelligence agencies, nor the Colombian police, nor even Guaidó’s team took action to stop the attack.

One can extrapolate two possible reasons for this. Allowing the operation to move forward, without directly committing to SilverCorp, would show the actual consequences of the operation (whether a success or failure). The operation could also expose the government of Maduro to world criticism if it produced fatalities on one side or the other. What is certain is that all of these scenarios, “whether above or under the table” in the words of Rendón on CNN, were discussed extensively with Guaidó and his advisors with the aim of illegally overthrowing Maduro. Rendón told CNN in Spanish that “they analysed all of the scenarios; alliances with other countries, their own actions, uprisings of people from within, of the soldiers that are there, the eventual use of actors that are outside, retired soldiers. All these scenarios were produced, as the president said well, we are analysing things above and below the table.”^[3]

Guaidó was leader of the operations

The most important theme of this story, which the Washington Post does not even mention in its article, is what is described on page 39 of the contract.

Under the title “ATTACHMENT N: CHAIN OF COMMAND,” the document includes the following:

1. Commander in Chief – President Juan Guaidó
2. Overall Project Supervisor – Sergio Vergara
3. Chief Strategist: Juan Jose Rendon
4. On Site Commander – To be determined

The page is signed by Guaidó’s advisors and there is a large black box that surely hides compromising information about SilverCorp.

Denial is followed by selective recognition

The evidence is very clear that Guaidó’s team has decided to change its strategy. The first reaction of Guaidó was to deny that he was involved in the disastrous operation^[4] in the face of the cost of lives of eight mercenaries, former Venezuelan soldiers, and the capture of numerous paramilitaries, including two US former soldiers. Guaidó’s team  however,  publicly acknowledged this week their involvement, but they tried to discredit SilverCorp as if it had acted on its own. Nevertheless Rendón recognized that he had paid 50 thousand dollars to the mercenary company^[5]  of Florida and that his signature on the document is legitimate.

The big question is what will be the response of the legal authorities in the US and Colombia. So far there has been no arrest, despite the fact that all of the details of the operation and the violations of law committed are clear and irrefutable.

In the coming days it will become evident whether the governments of Trump and Duque in Colombia opt for the strategy of impunity. This scandal without doubt weakens in an important way the illegal policy of sanctions and the dirty campaign supported by the hard-line Venezuelan opposition that has broken with the strategy of dialogue that other more moderate anti-Chavista sectors continue to advance in Caracas.

Translation made from the original Spanish by Fred Mills, academic and Co-Director of COHA

End notes

^[1] “From a Miami condo to the Veenzuelan coast, how a plan to ‘capture’ Maduro went rogue”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/from-a-miami-condo-to-the-venezuelan-coast-how-a-plan-to-capture-maduro-went-rogue/2020/05/06/046222bc-8e4a-11ea-9322-a29e75effc93_story.html

^[2] “Ex-Green Beret led failed attempt to oust Venezuela’s Maduro”, https://apnews.com/79346b4e428676424c0e5669c80fc310

^[3] “J.J. Rendón habla sobre la Operación Gedeón en Conclusiones de CNN en Español”, https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2020/05/07/j-j-rendon-habla-sobre-la-operacion-gedeon-en-conclusiones-de-cnn-en-espanol/

^[4] “Guaidó niega vínculos con intento de invasión en Venezuela”, https://www.chicagotribune.com/espanol/sns-es-coronavirus-guaido-niega-vinculo-intento-invasion-venezuela-20200505-uiditc4i6nbdda3nyx24n26zee-story.html

^[5] “J.J. Rendón habla sobre la Operación Gedeón en Conclusiones de CNN en Español”, https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2020/05/07/j-j-rendon-habla-sobre-la-operacion-gedeon-en-conclusiones-de-cnn-en-espanol/

By Patricio Zamorano
From Washington DC

Now that we have had a few days to study the failed, illegal paramilitary incursion by a group of American and Venezuelan mercenaries into Venezuela, some key details have emerged in this incredible story. They reveal the internal dynamics of the country’s fractured, demoralized, and financially corrupt opposition. Much of the information was provided by the former U.S. soldier Jordan Goudreau, hired for “Operation Gideon” by Juan Guidó himself along with advisors Sergio Vergara, Juan José Rendón, and with the advice of attorney Manuel Retureta, all of them who signed the service plan to launch the paramilitary operation (called “General Services Agreement”).

A dozen paramilitaries were captured from Sunday May 3 to Monday May 4 in the coastal area of La Guaira and Chuao^[1] with the help of fishermen. They include deserters from Venezuela’s armed forces and police, along with former U.S. soldiers. Eight of the mercenaries were killed by the country’s security forces.^[2]

The trove of evidence makes it impossible for Guaidó and his advisors to deny their involvement in the contract for services. Not only are copies of the 8-pages General Services Agreement circulating on the internet,^[3] there is also a recording of their phone conversation while they were signing it.^[4]

A multi-million dollar contract

U.S. mercenary Jordan Goudreau, owner of Florida Silvercorp USA Inc, which has been around for two years, is revealing all the inside information for the simple reason that Guaidó never paid the agreed upon fee, including a retainer of $US1.5 million. He claims that he only received US$50,000^[5] through Rendón.

A native Canadian, Goudreau is a U.S. Army combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. According to his simple website that centers around his personal image, Jordan Goudreau “has also planned and led international security teams for the President of the United States as well as the Secretary of Defense.”^[6] According to a profile AP wrote about him,^[7] that claim seems to be an exaggeration of his friendly relationship with Keith Schiller, who served as chief of security and bodyguard to Trump. Several interviews conducted by AP of people close to the mercenary suggest that Goudreau is politically naive, impulsive, and harbors delusions of grandeur.

Airing it all out in public

From all the extensive videotaped interviews of Goudreau, it is apparent that on the heels of a failed operation fraught with incompetence and which resulted in the deaths of several mercenaries, the soldier of fortune is rushing to reveal all to the world press in order to redirect blame towards Juan Guaidó. It is also clear that his public statements are motivated by the fact that his fees were not paid and he has no obligation to maintain confidentiality, because “At this point the contract has been completely fractured and nothing has been upheld on the side of the opposition (…) I have done everything that the contract outlines.”^[8]

The actual contract has over 70 pages according to Goudreau. The shorter General Services Agreement promises Silvercorp payment of over US$200 million^[9] for overthrowing the government of Nicolás Maduro. According to the contractor, the money comes from the ample funds the U.S. has illegally confiscated from the Citgo oil company, owned by the Venezuelan State, and which has been transferred to Guaidó’s account.^[10] Goudreau also cited the Rio Treaty (The Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, TIAR) as justification for the operation, which is the agreement the Venezuelan opposition has fruitlessly been trying to invoke in the Organization of American States (OAS) to spur military action against Venezuela.^[11]

Goudreau criticizes Guaidó on moral grounds

The mercenary also questioned Guaidó’s character:

“They hurt us more than they helped us. At the beginning they said they were going to help us. You have these guys with access to millions of dollars. They were given 90 million dollars, 9 million of which were allocated towards defense. Look, they are going to deny all this. They knew there were guys in the frontier. You have 60 Venezuelans who were hungry, training, thinking about liberation, and they went and did it. Meanwhile your opposition government is making tons of money. I think there is a problem.” When asked why he thinks Guaidó withdrew support for the attack, Goudreau added, “I think there is a lot of money involved right now. When people are making money, they are comfortable. I don’t think there is a real incentive to free” the country.^[12]

The opposition’s growing disenchantment with Guaidó

Despite all the evidence against him, particularly the contractor’s complaints of non-payment and his apparent signature on the contract for services, the self-proclaimed president of Venezuela was quick to deny any involvement with the paramilitary operation.^[13]

All of these revelations have two implications. First, they confirm the continuous charges made by the Maduro administration in recent years of the existence of a real paramilitary threat coming from Colombian soil.^[14] Second, it drives a wedge of criticism among many in the opposition, particularly in the U.S., who have been coming down hard on Guaidó for abandoning the former Venezuelan military officers.^[15] Even the journalist who interviewed Goudreau on video, Patricia Poleo, who is against the Chavista Maduro government, is being harshly criticized by the most extremist elements of the opposition.^[16]

Criticism and scandal are familiar themes. This case is reminiscent of the abandonment of dozens of Venezuelan military deserters in Colombia, some with their families, after the frustrated fake “humanitarian aid” operation that was staged in February 2019 along the Colombian-Venezuelan border. On that occasion it came to light, and was confirmed by the Colombian intelligence services, that Guaidó’s team stole thousands of dollars that had been raised for that campaign. The Venezuelan deserters who were inspired by the opposition were abandoned in unpaid hotel rooms.^[17]

The opposition is clearly willing to use paramilitary violence

This case proves several fundamental points: That Guaidó is handling large sums of money; his constant attacks on the Venezuelan government are to limited effect; and he has not managed to break the unity of the Venezuelan military. It is also clear that he is financing semi-clandestine private activities, with nothing to show for it so far. And he is willing to hire mercenary forces to launch adventurous military attacks that risk the lives of the participants and of civilians in Colombia and Venezuela.

While the moderate opposition forces continue to engage in talks with the government of Nicolás Maduro, an increasingly isolated hard-line faction continues in its efforts to uphold the U.S. sanctions, to validate foreign military intervention, and to launch paramilitary attacks.

It is also clear that incompetence and low morale are having a significant impact on the extremist opposition in Venezuela, which for some unknown reason, abandoned the group of mercenaries at the start of their attack on this Caribbean nation. The case is like so many such operations in the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America, when groups of mercenaries are abandoned at the last minute for reasons of political pragmatism, realistic military calculations predicting failure, money grabbing scandals, or simple military incompetence.

Leaving obvious clues: operational naiveté and the end of Guaidó

All of the recent scandals surrounding Guaidó have led to a significant withering of his support. There has been clear disappointment in his lack of results, while all the hundreds of millions of dollars the U.S. government has placed at the shadow government’s disposal have not paid off. It also shows that Guaidó is politically immature and inept, leaving such clear traces as a mercenary services contract signed in his handwriting at a law firm that cannot refute the legal evidence.

There is no doubt that this marks the beginning of the end of Guaidó’s influence with the hard liner sector of the  Venezuelan opposition and could perhaps bolster the position of the moderates who prefer a political solution over sanctions, violence, and outside intervention. This unfunded, ill-prepared military attack fraught with errors cost human lives—about eight soldiers perished, many of them young former soldiers and police officers shown on the videos of the ex-military fighters before the attack began.^[18] All those who plotted to support or abandon this military action bear the blame.

The words of Jordan Goudreau leave no doubt about what much of the opposition is feeling now, after the failure of this pseudo-military adventure: “I have been a freedom fighter my whole life. I fought in Iraq, in Afghanistan, I am a decorated soldier. I have been shot at. But I have never ever in my life seen the back stabbing and the level of complete disregard for men in the field.”

This article was translated from the original in Spanish by Jill Clark-Gollub, COHA Assistant Editor/Translator.

End Notes

^[1] “Hijo de Raúl Baduel se encuentra entre los detenidos en la embarcación de Chuao”,

https://www.elnacional.com/venezuela/hijo-de-raul-baduel-se-encuentra-entre-los-detenidos-en-la-embarcacion-de-chuao/

^[2] “Ocho paramilitares fallecidos en incursión frustrada por La Guaira desde Colombia”, http://www.avn.info.ve/node/481798

^[3] Ver varias fuentes: https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14861, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXImw1yWkAA1a2B?format=jpg&name=medium, https://dialogosdelsur.operamundi.uol.com.br/america-latina/64517/venezuela-revelan-el-contrato-firmado-por-guaido-para-ejecutar-golpe-de-estado

^[4] “Jordan Goudreau’s telephone conversation with Juan Guaidó, prior signed contract”, https://anoncandanga.com/jordan-goudreaus-telephone-conversation-with-juan-guaido-prior-signed-contract/

^[5] “Ex-Green Beret Says Attempt to Oust Maduro Ongoing After Setback”, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ex-green-beret-says-plan-to-oust-venezuela-e2-80-99s-maduro-is-ongoing/ar-BB13AKhH

^[6] https://www.silvercorpusa.com/about-jordan-goudreau

^[7] “Ex-Green Beret led failed attempt to oust Venezuela’s Maduro,” https://apnews.com/79346b4e428676424c0e5669c80fc310

^[8] “PRUEBA DE QUE GUAIDÓ FIRMÓ EL CONTRATO”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-L2VQPnZMI

^[9]“Venezuela: revelan el contrato firmado por Guaidó para ejecutar golpe de Estado”, https://dialogosdelsur.operamundi.uol.com.br/america-latina/64517/venezuela-revelan-el-contrato-firmado-por-guaido-para-ejecutar-golpe-de-estado

^[10] “Venezuela.- El ex boina verde acusado de la incursión naval en Venezuela dice que el plan contra Maduro sigue en marcha”, https://www.notimerica.com/politica/noticia-venezuela-ex-boina-verde-acusado-incursion-naval-venezuela-dice-plan-contra-maduro-sigue-marcha-20200505120944.html

^[11] “PRUEBA DE QUE GUAIDÓ FIRMÓ EL CONTRATO”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-L2VQPnZMI

^[12] “CÓMO IMPIDIÓ GUAIDÓ LA SALIDA DE MADURO | EXCLUSIVA OPERACIÓN GEDEON”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGsao-iBZGk

^[13] “Guaidó niega vínculos con intento de invasión en Venezuela”, https://www.chicagotribune.com/espanol/sns-es-coronavirus-guaido-niega-vinculo-intento-invasion-venezuela-20200505-uiditc4i6nbdda3nyx24n26zee-story.html

^[14] “Acusación de “campamento paramilitar” de Venezuela a Colombia”, https://www.trt.net.tr/espanol/espana-y-america-latina/2019/09/01/acusacion-de-campamento-paramilitar-de-venezuela-a-colombia-1261825

^[15] “VIDEOS EXCLUSIVOS | Preparativos Operación GEDEÓN”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJGudB6zJv4

^[16] “Patricia Poleo RESPONDE | Entrevista de Alejandro Marcano”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ_p6ZyS7Pg&t=1s

^[17] “Guaidó’s Star Fades as his Envoys to Colombia Allegedly Commit Fraud with Humanitarian Funds for Venezuela”,  http://www.coha.org/guaidos-star-fades-as-his-envoys-to-colombia-allegedly-commit-fraud-with-humanitarian-funds-for-venezuela/

^[18] “VIDEOS EXCLUSIVOS | Preparativos Operación GEDEÓN”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJGudB6zJv4&t=549s