(Part 2)
Terror Strike on Venezuela
Kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife is an extraordinary act of aggression, even by the standards of USA.
Killing a head of state during military operations, while extreme, fits within recognized frameworks of warfare. Targeted strikes against command and control, elimination of military leadership, decapitation strikes, have legal categories, constraints, and precedents. They can be argued as lawful or unlawful based on circumstances, but the debate occurs within established law.
Kidnapping is categorically different. It’s not warfare. It’s hostage-taking. And hostage-taking by states has no legal defense whatsoever.
If American forces had struck Maduro’s residence with missiles, killed him and announced regime change, the international response would be severe but comprehensible within existing frameworks. Acts of war generate certain responses. Alliances activate. Security Council convenes. But the conceptual structure remains intact.
Seizing him alive, along with his civilian wife, taking them to American territory, and using their detention to coerce the successor government breaks the framework entirely. It’s not war. It’s organized criminality with state resources.
Statecraft
Violence in pursuit of state interests has always existed. Leaders understand this. They prepare for it. They build defenses, alliances, and deterrence against military threats. That’s the game.
But there’s no defense against kidnapping. The new norm is to never leave secured territory, never trust any international space, and assume every interaction might be a trap. That makes all diplomacy, all summits, all negotiations impossible. Not just with America, but with everyone, because now the precedent exists.
This is why even brutal states historically avoided this method. Not from morality, but from recognition that it destroys the minimal framework needed for any international interaction. If leaders can be kidnapped during what appears to be normal state relations, there are no normal state relations anymore.
The distinction is between violence within rules and violence that destroys rules themselves. Killing Maduro would be the former. Kidnapping him is the latter.
And once rules are gone, violence doesn’t decrease. It multiplies and spreads, because nothing constrains it anymore.
Kidnapping of Wife
Wife of Maduro holds no office. She commands no forces. She poses no military threat. Her seizure serves only one purpose: leverage through personal attachment. That is hostage logic, not war logic.
The legal term for this is grave breach of international humanitarian law. The strategic term is state terrorism. And I must confess, this was something beyond my imagination.
Even in warfare traditions that permitted taking captives, targeting the wife of a ruler violated codes of honor. After Karbala, the treatment of Hussain’s family became a permanent stain on those responsible. Across civilizations, this boundary existed. Not from law alone, but from recognition that some acts destroy legitimacy itself.
Trump himself said that inappropriate behavior toward women ends political careers in America. Yet here his administration kidnaps a president’s wife as state policy. The contradiction reveals how low the moral standards have fallen.
The epic Ramayana in India is based on kidnapping of a wife. The major Hindu festival of Deepawali or Diwali is a celebration of rescue of King Rama’s wife. The effigy of kidnapper Ravana is burned every year on Vijay Dashmi, the festival of victory celebrated before Diwali.
But that was ancient history. Treating adversary king with disrespect has another example in recent history of India. It is from the same era of 17th century when kidnapping kings and families was permissible in Europe.
Precedent in India
Aurangzeb kidnapped and tortured Chatrapati Sambhaji Rao in 1689. This wasn’t just brutal. It was strategically catastrophic. Aurangzeb thought he was eliminating a rival. Instead he created a martyr and unified every Maratha faction against the Mughal Empire. The act was so excessive, so beyond acceptable norms of warfare, that it destroyed Mughal legitimacy permanently.
Aurangzeb demanded resources from Rajput kingdoms and other vassals to fund the southern war. They complied initially but grew resentful. Their support became reluctant, then withdrawn. Regional powers who had tolerated Mughal dominance began seeking alternatives. Allies became neutral. Neutrals became hostile.
There is a similarity between the Aurangzeb and Trump’s empires. Both needed resources to service debt and maintain legitimacy. But extracting those resources through force destroyed the legitimacy that made extraction possible. The more desperate the extraction becomes, the faster legitimacy collapses.
Aurangzeb died in his tent, in 1707, still campaigning, empire already fragmenting around him. Within decades his empire shrunk from Red Fort to Palam village in Delhi itself.
Imperial Negotiations
Maduro had already offered access. American oil companies could negotiate contracts. Venezuelan heavy crude could flow to Gulf Coast refineries designed specifically for it. The economic outcome Washington supposedly wanted was available through negotiation.
So why kidnap him?
Because negotiated access does not solve the actual problem, which isn’t access to Venezuelan oil. This was not about achieving an outcome. This was about demonstrating dominance. Maduro was negotiating, which means he retained agency. Kidnapping eliminates agency. It shows other resource-rich states that negotiation is a courtesy, not a right. Comply completely or face removal.
The effect of this action is paradoxical. If every resource-rich state now knows cooperation doesn’t protect them, why cooperate? Better to arm, to seek protection from rivals, to build deterrence. The kidnapping doesn’t encourage compliance. It encourages resistance and alliance-building against the kidnapper.
Effect on USA Debt
America seized or destabilized Syria, Iraq, and Libya. All have significant oil reserves. None of this resolved the debt crisis. Because the debt isn’t caused by lack of resource access. It’s caused by structural over-consumption, military over-extension, and financial system fragility.
Seizing Venezuelan oil fields doesn’t erase thirty-five trillion in debt. It doesn’t fix the fact that interest payments now exceed defense spending. It doesn’t solve the problem that shale production requires sustained high prices while American consumers demand low prices. These are contradictions that cannot be resolved through resource seizure.
The operation makes sense only as short-term price manipulation. Install a compliant government, coordinate production cuts with that government, boost prices to sixty-five or seventy dollars, keep shale producers profitable for another quarter. But this doesn’t address debt. It just delays one immediate crisis.
So the operation fails even on its own terms. It doesn’t solve debt. It doesn’t secure permanent resource control. It doesn’t encourage cooperation. It demonstrates the desperation explained in Part 1 of this article.
Suez Moment
Capture of Suez Canal was the last desperate war that British Empire tried and failed. USA avoided direct war with Venezuela. It is tactically smart but strategically catastrophic. Kidnapping on Saturday. By the time the Security Council meets on Monday, Maduro is already in New York and Trump is negotiating with Vice President Rodriguez. The operation can be over before opposition can organize. If it works, USA will control Venezuelan oil without the political cost of occupation.
The operation may avoid Suez-style immediate collapse, but it accelerates the deeper pattern. It demonstrates that rules don’t exist. And once that demonstration is made, every other power adjusts accordingly.
Often the clever solutions to immediate problems accelerate the long-term collapse.
The empire that has lost the ability to accept anything less than total collapse, even when submission was already being offered.
Kidnap of wife of a head of state crosses last pretence of decency.