The Problem Is Not Venezuela

I am beginning to hear, with increasing confidence, the argument that it may be “necessary” for the United States to intervene in Venezuela. The tone is familiar—grave, resolute, and oddly impatient with doubt—as though history itself were tapping us on the shoulder.

What is remarkable is not the assertion that Nicolás Maduro is a bad man. He appears to be one. His commitment to free elections is questionable, corruption is endemic, and his governance inspires little affection.

What is remarkable is the staggering lack of national self-awareness with which this case is being made.

We are urged to accept our leaders’ moral judgment at a moment when American moral consistency has all but collapsed. It is the United States that openly backs the authoritarian leadership of El Salvador. It is the United States that embraced Jair Bolsonaro, a man whose illiberal credentials were neither subtle nor accidental. We flirt with Vladimir Putin to such a degree that Ukraine—and much of Europe—now openly wonders whose side we are on. We maintain warm relations with Saudi leadership whose brutality is neither disputed nor disguised.

At home, the record is no more reassuring. Supporters of a sitting president stormed the Capitol in an effort to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, despite courts across the country finding no evidence of election fraud. We now see masked federal agents operating in American cities, theatrical detention schemes floated with a wink, and a growing comfort with force exercised without transparency.

And it is this United States that now questions Venezuela’s legitimacy?

Maduro may not believe deeply in democratic norms, but neither does he appear to be invading his neighbors, destabilizing distant regions, or asserting dominion far beyond his borders. Meanwhile, it is the United States that has fired upon fishing vessels off a foreign coast without public evidence, conducted follow-up strikes on survivors, and seized tankers under shifting justifications.

If this is the defense of world order, it is an unconventional one.

Once, we could plausibly claim moral authority. Vietnam was framed by Cold War imperatives. Iraq—however disastrously—was taken to the United Nations. The twentieth century purchased us an enormous reservoir of goodwill, earned through sacrifice and leadership.

That reservoir is now perilously low.

So when the United States declares that another leader “must go,” what are we asking the world to believe—that we are acting on principle, or preference? On law, or impulse? On order, or convenience?

The danger is no longer merely that our foreign policy has become erratic.
It is that we seem incapable of recognizing how profoundly our own conduct has altered the very standards by which we judge others.

And the world, unfortunately, has already noticed.