Opinion | US attack on Venezuela tests moral clarity of the post-war world order

Beyond its immediate impact on Latin America, the operation has sent a wider signal. It underscores a willingness to bypass international norms, intimidate smaller states and expand the scope of unilateral action, raising concerns not only in the Americas but also in regions as distant as Europe.

The use of force, especially actions that endanger international peace and security, should constitute the gravest of global crises, demanding caution, restraint and accountability. Yet when the US president speaks casually – even with levity – about military strikes against Iran or likens the arrest of a sovereign head of state to “watching a television show”, and when some take to social media to celebrate the “surgical precision” of such operations, a deeper alarm emerges. The international order painstakingly built since the end of the second world war is facing one of its most serious tests.

Rule-based institutions and multilateral mechanisms are being steadily eroded. International law, once invoked as a universal constraint, is increasingly applied selectively. The result is a growing sense that global affairs are drifting towards a modernised version of the law of the jungle.

This new order differs from the era of naked territorial expansionism before the second world war. In a world shaped by nuclear deterrence, artificial intelligence and transactional politics, power now manifests itself in more refined forms: precision strikes framed as technical necessity, economic coercion disguised as discipline, control of strategic resources justified by supply-chain security and bloc politics driven by ideological alignment rather than shared responsibility.

At the same time, the US has come to resemble an empire defined less by democratic restraint than by overwhelming military capability. The US president’s broad discretion to employ force abroad, combined with the growing concentration of authority across executive, legislative and media institutions, has weakened the checks and balances that once defined American constitutional governance. It is legitimate to ask whether the spirit – if not the letter – of constitutional democracy is being hollowed out.