Trump’s actions in Venezuela are morally calamitous, showing a perilous disregard for human dignity and the rights of ordinary Venezuelans to be free from external forces. Although Maduro is a corrupt autocrat who has often ruled by decree, no country has the right to snatch the head of state of another country under any circumstances, let alone taking such a brazenly monstrous act expressly for the purpose of exploiting a country’s natural resources.

On legal grounds, Trump’s action is an impudent overreach that undermines the rule of law and violates the UN charter. On ideological grounds, it represents an ominous deviation from democratic principles, embracing authoritarian tactics that must be soundly rejected. Trump’s actions in Venezuela starkly betray the fundamental ideals of global solidarity and justice and represent a complete inversion of what the international community should stand for—mutual respect for territorial integrity and the pursuit of conflict resolution peacefully.

It is unfathomable how a US president would announce unashamedly to the nation and the world that the US has invaded Venezuela, captured its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, who will both be indicted for drug trafficking, and that the US would now “run the country.” In reality, which Trump explicitly explained, the US will now control all of Venezuela’s oil deposits—the largest in the world—and American oil companies will take over, reap the profits, and share them with the US government.

Trump’s claim that this will stop the smuggling of drugs to the US is hypocritical at best. The fact is that he just pardoned a convicted drug trafficker and former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, and that Venezuela is not a........

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