When Spain and other European empires seized entire regions and continents, they claimed that their objective was to spread Christianity. Another argument, as noted by the poet Rudyard Kipling, was that colonialism was the “white man’s burden” to enlighten the world with Western values.

In recent decades, the United States, supported by its Western allies, has argued that the objective of its military interventions in other countries is to “spread democracy”.

This is how strong powers have historically justified imperial aggression as a noble task, attempting to conceal the true objective — the appropriation of land, gold, timber, silver, and other minerals, the enslavement of local populations, or competing for supremacy with other colonial powers.

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Then came the US leader. His boundless arrogance finally allowed the world to hear the truth: his objective is the oil business and preventing other countries from strengthening economic relations with Venezuela. The invasion was prepared with the usual propaganda about the “evil emanating from the Caracas regime”. However, once it was carried out, the real reasons came to light.

In the US excuse, Nicolas Maduro may not have been an “ideal” president for the Venezuelan people, he “possibly turned a blind eye” to drug trafficking. But as an argument for the invasion, his association with cocaine exports to the US lacks credibility, as US President Donald Trump recently freed a former president of Honduras who had been sentenced to 45 years in prison by a US court for facilitating drug exports to the US.

Even before Trump made the real reasons explicit, we had a duty to question the epithets used to describe Maduro, unless we chose to forget the lies that former US president George W. Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

It was a lie that Saddam Hussein was about to produce weapons of mass destruction or that he had ties with Osama bin Laden. It was evident that the real reason was Iraq’s oil.

The US leader and the Republican Party feel so entitled to their economic greed, their disregard for the sovereignty of other countries, and their objective of assigning a global policing role to the US, that the word “democracy” was not even uttered at the news conference in which the invasion was explained. Furthermore, Trump openly dismissed any role in the post-Maduro era for Venezuela’s leadership that got democratically elected in the July 2024 elections.

Maduro’s government was far removed from the eclectic socioeconomic models that have underpinned the success of China, Singapore, South Korea, and Western Europe. In some Americans and Latin Americans’ eyes, it may have perpetuated the mismanagement of oil wealth like most previous governments of Venezuela. Nevertheless, this does not justify a major power’s abandonment of international norms to unilaterally assume the roles of global gendarme, police force, and judge.

For this reason, the invasion must be condemned by the entire world, especially by militarily weak countries or those without an army, such as Costa Rica, since the only weapons they possess to defend their sovereignty are the norms of international law.

It could be argued that the world needs a strong country to act as a universal police force and judge, given that the United Nations and international courts lack the muscle to perform that role.

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That ineffectiveness is real, but it is largely due to the fact that the great powers neither respect nor obey them. In any case, if the US were a neutral, fair, and rule-abiding police force — rules that its leaders frequently proclaim — it would not have abducted Maduro and overthrown many others.

The only positive outcome of the Venezuelan invasion is that the world has finally understood the true meaning of MAGA: “Make America Global Gendarme Always.”

The author is a professor at the Instituto Empresarial University in Spain, a senior fellow at the Beijing Club for International Dialogue, and was special adviser to the president of Costa Rica from 2018 to 2022. 

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.