By Isaac Christopher Lubogo (Suigeneris)
I. The Prologue: When Power Speaks in Explosions, Not in Law
The modern world was not designed to be ruled by whispers and drones. When the United States, under President Donald Trump, struck vessels and alleged drug operations in or around Venezuelan waters, it did not merely unleash missiles—it unleashed a profound question: Can the powerful rewrite the law in the name of security while denying the world the right to know?
Every bomb that falls without explanation erodes the architecture of law. Every secret justified in the shadows transforms legitimacy into tyranny. The so-called “Venezuela strikes” are not just an operational controversy—they are a litmus test for whether international law still matters, or whether power alone shall now dictate what truth is.
II. The Anatomy of a Justification
The Trump administration framed its actions as a war against “narco-terrorism.” Through this prism, Venezuela was not a sovereign state—it was a theatre of criminality, a platform for cartels, and therefore fair game. U.S. officials claimed authority under the President’s Commander-in-Chief powers and the doctrine of self-defense, insisting the vessels targeted posed “imminent threats” to U.S. national interests.
Yet, to date, no credible, verifiable, or sustainable evidence has been presented to support these claims. Reports from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International classify the attacks as unlawful extrajudicial killings—an indictment not just of policy, but of moral decay.
If the truth cannot stand in sunlight, then it was never truth at all.
III. The Law: The Fragile Thread Holding Civilization Together
A. The UN Charter and the Crime of Arrogance
Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter is clear: no state shall use force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state. Exceptions exist only for self-defense or Security Council authorization. Neither applied here.
By acting unilaterally, the United States trampled on Venezuela’s sovereign equality, the very foundation of the post-war world order. No amount of “anti-narcotics rhetoric” can substitute for a lawful mandate. The claim of defending oneself from a distant boat on the Caribbean Sea is not self-defense; it is self-deception.
B. The Mirage of Armed Conflict
Labeling drug operations as “armed conflict” is not law—it is linguistic manipulation. Under international humanitarian law, an armed conflict exists only when violence reaches a certain intensity and organization. Drug trafficking, deplorable as it is, does not meet that threshold.
By expanding the “war” definition to suit convenience, the U.S. administration sought to legalize what would otherwise be illegal killings. It blurred the line between combatants and civilians, war and crime, law and excuse.
C. The Right to Life and the Duty of Transparency
International human rights law, particularly under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), enshrines the right to life as sacred and inviolable. Lethal force is justified only when strictly necessary and proportionate, and when no less harmful alternative exists.
Human Rights Watch noted that in these strikes, such necessity was never demonstrated. No imminent threat. No transparent process. No independent investigation. What emerges instead is a pattern of silence—a refusal to submit state violence to scrutiny.
“A democracy that hides its bullets is merely a dictatorship with better grammar.”
IV. Sovereignty on Trial: The Death of Equality Among Nations
When a superpower treats a weaker state as a mere coordinate on a map, sovereignty dies by precedent. Venezuela, regardless of its governance record, remains a sovereign nation under international law. The principle of non-intervention forbids any external coercion—economic, political, or military—without consent.
If the United States can strike unilaterally today in the name of narcotics, what prevents another state tomorrow from striking Miami in the name of ideology? Once the sanctity of borders is pierced by convenience, global law becomes a buffet for the strong.
“A sovereign state without power to resist is not a state—it is a stage for others’ dramas.”
V. Transparency: The First Casualty of Power
In jurisprudence, the burden of proof lies with the accuser. Yet the Trump administration reversed this logic. It demanded blind belief and offered classified whispers. No independent verification, no Congressional oversight, no open briefings to the public.
Even U.S. domestic law, through the War Powers Resolution, requires congressional authorization for sustained military engagement. No such authorization existed. Thus, the strikes violate not only international law but the United States’ own constitutional order—a double betrayal.
Transparency is not a courtesy; it is the soul of legality. Where evidence is withheld, accountability dies.
VI. Human Rights: The Victim No One Names
Human rights law demands that when lethal force is used, states must investigate promptly, independently, and publicly. The U.S. has done none of these. Families of the dead receive no answers; the world receives no truth.
If the victims were indeed civilians or low-level traffickers with no imminent threat to the U.S., these acts qualify as extrajudicial killings, prohibited under all international human rights instruments.
And when a state kills without due process, conceals its evidence, and justifies it through propaganda, it commits not merely a crime—but a desecration of humanity’s legal conscience.
VII. Institutional Blindness: Who Holds the Superpower to Account?
The architecture of accountability—the United Nations, International Criminal Court, and Inter-American Human Rights System—remains hesitant when the accused is a superpower. The result is a jurisprudence of fear: the strong escape judgment, the weak suffer lectures.
Still, history has a long memory. Just as the Nuremberg principles once judged victors by their own standards, so too will tomorrow’s tribunals recall this hypocrisy. Sovereignty cannot coexist with selective justice.
“Law without equality is no law at all; it is the etiquette of power.”
VIII. The Moral Indictment
If legality is the skeleton, morality is the flesh of justice. What we are witnessing is the corrosion of both.
America, once the self-proclaimed beacon of democracy, now stands accused of sanctioned opacity, lethal arrogance, and moral amnesia.
This is not about left or right, Trump or Biden—it is about whether civilization still bows to the rule of law or to the rule of might.
When the U.S. acts as both prosecutor and executioner without oversight, it teaches the world that legitimacy can be privatized.
“You cannot export democracy in bombs and expect gratitude in ashes.”
IX. The Way Forward: From Secrecy to Accountability
The international community must demand:
Immediate, independent investigation into all Venezuela-related strikes.
Full declassification of intelligence and operational evidence.
Congressional and judicial oversight within the U.S. to review compliance with domestic and international law.
Public transparency on civilian casualties and reparations to affected families.
A reaffirmation of the UN Charter principles that safeguard small nations from predation.
The silence of institutions is complicity; the silence of citizens is surrender.
X. The Lubogo Verdict: The Law Must Speak Louder Than Power
The legality of war is not a matter of convenience—it is the last defense against barbarism.
In the Venezuelan case, the U.S. has not met the thresholds of transparency, necessity, or proportionality. Its claims of self-defense lack credible evidence. Its secrecy mocks human rights oversight. Its actions, in the balance of law and morality, constitute a violation of sovereignty and the right to life.
History will not remember the excuses. It will remember the arrogance.
“Empires fall not because they are weak, but because they forget the law that made them strong.”
Thus, to strike without proof, to kill without judgment, and to conceal without remorse—is not foreign policy.
It is state-sanctioned lawlessness dressed in the robes of patriotism.
And in that shadow, Venezuela bleeds not only as a nation but as a mirror of our collective failure—the failure to protect the weak from the excesses of the powerful, the failure to insist that even superpowers kneel before the law.
Epilogue
If this world is to remain a community of nations and not a jungle of hunters, then the law must regain its voice, louder than missiles and mightier than propaganda.
For when America violates the sovereignty of another state in darkness, it is not Venezuela alone that is struck—it is the very conscience of humanity that is wounded.
