The End of State Sovereignty
Alain de Benoist sees the US kidnapping of Venezuelan president Maduro and the escalating tensions around Greenland as marking the end of the world order based on state sovereignty, a dramatic shift which Europeans are neither willing nor ready to accept — at their own peril.
Recent events in Venezuela have been commented on in a purely partisan manner. Those who detest Nicolás Maduro applauded his kidnapping, while those who appreciate him cried out in outrage. Both are equally detestable ways of losing sight of the essential point.
The key issue, in fact, is not whether Maduro is a “good guy” or a terrible dictator, but to understand that with this kidnapping we have definitively entered a new era: one in which the sovereignty of states is no longer recognized by the dominant power.
Maduro’s kidnapping took place on January 3, thirty-six years after that of Panamanian president (and former CIA informant) Manuel Noriega. But also, a month after Donald Trump himself granted clemency to former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced in 2024 to forty-five years in prison for drug trafficking by a New York court. Donald Trump decided on this military intervention, called “Absolute Revolve”, without considering international law (admittedly, much abused for several decades) and without even consulting Congress, as the Constitution required him to do in principle. This allowed him to carry out the kidnapping of the sitting president of a sovereign state.
The real lesson of this kidnapping is that Washington now claims the right to act unilaterally wherever it wants, even against sovereign states or allied countries. Since its founding, the United Nations has defined itself as a “league of sovereign states”. If there are no longer sovereign states, it no longer has a reason to exist.
On closer examination, this is also a blow to democracy, since this democracy is based on popular sovereignty: Venezuela belongs neither to Trump nor to Maduro, but first and foremost to the Venezuelan people. Trump has not called for new elections in Venezuela but has instead chosen to announce to Venezuelans that from now on he will be the one to govern their country.
Trump’s European supporters are generally sovereigntists. From now on, they will have to settle for a president who, when it comes to sovereignty, recognizes only his own. While Italian and Spanish populist parties openly rejoiced at Maduro’s removal from office, only Marine Le Pen had the courage to declare:
“There is a fundamental reason to oppose the regime change that the United States has just brought about in Venezuela. The sovereignty of states is never negotiable, regardless of their size, power, or continent. It is inviolable and sacred. To renounce this principle today for Venezuela, or for any state, would be tantamount to accepting our own servitude tomorrow.”
The “Narco-Terrorism” Alibi
The allegation that Maduro is one of the leaders of “narco-terrorism” has not convinced anyone: Venezuela is not a cocaine producer, and no Latin American country produces fentanyl. The accusation that he is the head of an alleged “Cartel de los Soles” was quietly dropped when he was indicted. To explain Maduro’s kidnapping, the US ambassador to the UN invoked another reason: the United States, he simply states, “cannot have adversaries who control the world’s largest oil reserves”!
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves (303 billion barrels, equal to 17% of the world total). Their exploitation is certainly in a deplorable state, as the current world prices make neither extraction nor refining profitable. But an oil infrastructure can be rebuilt when you have the keys to it. Even though the United States is self-sufficient in this sector, strategic control of Venezuelan oil is of primary importance. Even more so since China has been the main buyer of Venezuelan oil (between 55% and 90% depending on the month).
Maduro’s removal from office demonstrates above all that Donald Trump’s policy is not isolationist. Isolationism in the United States has its origins in George Washington’s famous speech in 1796, when he left office, urging Americans “not to engage in any form of permanent alliances (no entangling alliances) with any foreign country”.
“Our great rule of conduct towards foreign nations is to have as little political connection with them as possible, while developing our commercial relations […]. Europe has a series of fundamental interests that do not mean much to us […]. It would therefore be foolish on our part to commit ourselves with artificial ties to participate in the vicissitudes of its politics or the multiple combinations generated by its alliances and enmities.”
Trump does not share this position at all. What he takes from Washington’s speech is that the United States should not engage in alliances that are not advantageous to them.
This is hardly any news. The United States has long been accustomed to intervening in world affairs. Since 1947, it has participated in over 70 regime changes, in gross violation of international law! Pascal said that force without law is unjust, but law without the force necessary to establish and enforce it is just a mirage or wishful thinking.
Trump is interventionist, as were almost all of his predecessors, but in a new way. On the one hand, he wants to limit himself to rapid interventions (a few weeks for Iran, a few hours for Maduro), knowing that his electoral base will not accept a prolonged involvement like that in Vietnam or Afghanistan. On the other hand, and above all, he unscrupulously abandons the ideological or moral facade to which Americans have been accustomed until now. Abandoning all hypocrisy, he does not pretend to fight to impose “liberal democracy and freedom”. And without any concern for ideological or moral justification, he claims an almost sovereign right over the political destiny of all the states he does not like.
Trump announced that the United States will now “govern” Venezuela. He did not specify how (Marco Rubio as governor?). In the immediate term, Maduro’s kidnapping sets a precedent that China could exploit when it invades Taiwan and that Putin could use to ridicule the West’s claims to lecture him on respecting borders. In Kiev, Zelensky has already suggested to Donald Trump that he kidnap the Chechen president!
This tactic is perfectly in line with the guidelines of the New National Security Strategy published by the White House on December 5. The United States declares without hesitation that the Western Hemisphere is now its exclusive zone of influence, its fiefdom. The United States’ “networks of alliances and allies” are mentioned in the section “What Are America’s Available Means to Get What We Want?”, which has the merit of clarity. The words used by Stephen Miller, Trump’s political advisor, to justify American intervention in Caracas are revealing:
“We live in the real world, a world governed by force, power and authority.”
This clearly means that human rights, moral considerations, and the rule of law do not belong in the “real world”.
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Business First!
Trump thinks like a businessman, in terms of deals and profits. Abandoning even the doctrine of free trade, he uses customs and duties as instruments of politics and geostrategy. In all sectors, the United States now takes a brutal realist approach: only the balance of power counts. One could call this the “law of the strongest” or the “law of the jungle”, or even a return to the “state of nature” conceived by Thomas Hobbes. But one might also wonder whether this radical shift simply marks a return to a realistic conception of what politics really is, whose driving force and hallmark has always been enmity.
The fundamental shift is therefore this: Washington still wants to be able to intervene anywhere in the world it wishes but no longer claims to act as the guarantor of a universal regulatory order. It no longer acts as the defender of the liberal international order established after 1945, but only in accordance with its own national and regional interests. No matter what the borders and friendly or allied states may be, only America’s interests matter. As former Secretary of State Pierre Lellouche wrote, “this America has voluntarily abdicated its role as leader of the ‘free world’ and, even more so, as guarantor of a rules-based international order. What matters are its interests.” In this context, international law is just another tool, like the dollar or the extraterritoriality of American law.
Who will be next? Will the next American intervention target Iran, Cuba, Greenland, Colombia or Mexico? Greenland is a constituent territory of the Kingdom of Denmark (it was already so before the United States declared independence!). It hides 1.5 million tons of “rare earths” (compared to 2 million in the United States). In addition to its obvious geostrategic interest, its annexation by Washington would allow the United States to become the most populous country on Earth (22 million km², compared to 17 million for Russia and 9.5 million for China). Why Greenland? Trump’s answer: “Because the United States needs it.” It’s that simple. Denmark is also a member of NATO. So what?
Trump already talks about “my hemisphere” as he would say “my wife” or “my car”. To claim all rights in Latin American countries, which he considers his backyard, he invokes the famous “Monroe Doctrine”. But his interpretation does not correspond to historical reality.
A Distorted “Monroe Doctrine”
In his speech on December 2, 1823, President James Monroe did not intend to give the United States the right to intervene at will in the Western Hemisphere or to interfere excessively in the affairs of Latin American countries. His “doctrine” simply consisted of rejecting any European intervention on the American continent. It was the Europeans he was referring to when he stated, “as a principle concerning the rights and interests of the United States, that the American continents […] cannot be considered as objects of future colonization by any European power.”
It was precisely for this reason that Carl Schmitt had spoken out in favor of a “European Monroe Doctrine” that would prohibit Anglo-Saxon countries from any military presence or intervention on European territory, including the seas.
https://www.arktosjournal.com/p/the-end-of-state-sovereignty