Putinisation of America!

 

Putinisation of America!

In a stunning attack on January 3,2026 on the world’s most oil-rich country, the US Special Forces abducted the President of a sovereign country Venezuela Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, while they were asleep in their home inside a heavily guarded military complex, in gross violation of the international law and the UN charter. This would put any civilized nation to utter shame.

 

The Military Operation lasted less than 30 minutes, triggering 7-8 blasts across capital Caracas. Maduro and his wife were dragged out of their beds, blindfolded and handcuffed, and flown out on choppers, with the CIA and the FBI agents coordinating the operation, and placed on the warship, and taken them to New York City.  Maduro is held at the Brooklyn jail, called ‘hell on earth’ for its rampant violence. He is facing the trial on trumped-up charges of drug trafficking and narco-terrorism, for which there is no evidence.

 

Trump gave interviews to media outlets to boast about the raid, excitedly telling journalists he had watched the incursion live from his Mar-a-Lago resort: I watched every aspect of it, and I listened to the communication between …where we were in Florida and in the field in Venezuela. It was amazing to see the professionalism, the quality of leadership.”

 

Trump, a critic of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and someone who promised to be a peacemaker when he took the office for the second time last year has betrayed the commitment. He rode to power on his promise of focusing on America and ending ‘forever wars’, coining the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’. And from a ‘President of peace’, he has now donned the mantle of a ‘President for war’, rechristening the Department of Defence as the Department of War. 

 

A day after a blistering speech accusing the Trump administration of ‘kidnapping’ Maduro, Venezuela’s Vice President, Delcy Rodrigues, and now acting President, adopted a more conciliatory approach, expressing the willingness to cooperate with the Trump Administration in running the country. She said: “We extend an invitation to the US government to work together on a cooperative agenda, oriented toward shared development, within the framework of international law, and to strengthen lasting community coexistence.” Incidentally, Rodriogues, Maduro and his wife, are the devotees of Satya Sai Baba. Rodrigues visited the memorial of the spiritual guru twice. She visited the Prashanti Nilayam in Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, to offer her respects in August 2023 and October 2024.

 

Trump snubbed Venezuelan prominent opposition leader Maria Corina Machado as a potential interim President, because she accepted the Noble Prize for peace last year which he desperately wanted, and instead backed Rodrigues, saying that Machado does not have the ‘support or respect in Venezuela to become its leader’ In fact, Machado was a bitter critic of Maduro’s dictatorship. She was banned from contesting the Presidential election last year which was rigged. Her candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won the election, but Maduro was declared elected as the President- the electoral fraud the world condemned.

 

Machado is in exile. The people saw Maduro’s ouster as a chance for Machado’s rise. The hope of returning to her country and becoming its President is dashed. The Washington Post cited two people close to the White House saying If she had turned down the Nobe Peace Prize and said: I can’t accept the Noble Peace Prize because it’s Donald Trump’s, she’d be the President.".  

 

America returns to the Monroe Doctrine of interventionism. Named after the 5th President James Monroe in 1823, the doctrine is one of the most consequential American foreign policy agendas of the 20th century. It laid out the American opposition to new or expanding European involvement in the Americas, after centuries of colonial rule.  Progressively, the US extended this tenet to consider South and Central Americas a strategic backyard that should be under its sphere of influence and hegemony. It became a significant element of American foreign policy, used as an alibi to justify meddling in internal affairs of Latin American countries and effect regime change.  And according to Anil Sasi of The Indian Express, “between 1898 and 1994, the US government intervened successfully to change governments in Latin America at least 41 times, ostensibly to protect its interests and counter communism.”

 

The invasion of Venezuela is similar to the protracted pointless conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.  There are strong similarities to the invasion of Iraq. The US is attacking an arguably illegitimate foreign leader on the basis of nebulous connections to terrorism, potentially turning what was a stable situation into an unstable one. Venezuela is home to the largest crude reserves on Earth, sitting on over 300 billion barrels worth of crude – about a fifth of the world’s global reserves. America is more interested in exploring these oil reserves to make money.

 

Though some countries have condemned the American invasion of Venezuela and abducting of Maduro and his wife, the response from big countries Russia and China, which have high stakes in Venezuela, was lukewarm.  It is not a collective expression of outrage and outright condemnation. The Russian and the Chinese reactions are understandable because they too, like Trump’s America, have neo-imperialistic ambition to expand their sphere of influence and establish hegemony on countries across the globe.

 

However, a coalition partner in the Sri Lankan government has shown much courage in condemning the US aggression. The chief of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) of Sri Lanka’s ruling National People’s Power (NPP) coalition in a statement to the media said: “We strongly condemn the United States’s military aggression against the independent and sovereign State of Venezuela and the abduction of democratically elected President Nicholas Maduro and his wife.”

 

No country has any business to intervene in internal matters of other countries and bring the regime change., however bad and unpopular it may be.  It is for the people of those countries to bring change in the regime. “As in any other free and sovereign state, the right to determine the future and the leaders of the country, rests on the people of Venezuela. Powerful countries do not have the right to violate this principle”, said Tilvin Silva, General Secretary, JVP.  

 

Following the US aggression, the UN Security Council called an emergency meeting to discuss the developments. A top UN official condemned the US attack on Venezuela, saying it violated the international law; could fuel instability in the region and set a concerning precedent that could make violent conflicts more likely; and called for an ‘inclusive democratic dialogue’ to help determine the future of the country.   The UN Under-Secretary General Rosemary DiCarlo said: “The UN Charter should always be respected. Intranational law contains tools to address issues such as illicit traffic in narcotics, disputes about resources and human right concerns.”

 

At troubled times, the world looked to India of Gandhi and Nehru to arrest the brazen aggression on sovereign countries. The Nehru and the Indira Gandhi periods are a testimony to this. India’s response to the naked aggression of the US on Venezuela was a great disappointment. It expressed ‘deep concern’ about the developments, but not condemned the aggression that overthrew the elected government. It is silent on the capturing of President Maduro and his wife. India lost the vantage position of making a difference to the international order, by virtue of being the most populous country and the largest democracy in the world.

 

The developments in Venezuela have given a new twist to the Indo-US relations. The bulldozing tactics of Trump administration are exposed.  Trump, while talking to reporters on Sunday, January 4, aboard Air Force One en route to Washington DC from Florida, said: “They (India) wanted to make me happy, Basically, Modi is a very good man; he is a good guy. He knew I was not happy, and it was important to make me happy. They do trade and we can raise tariffs on them very quickly, If India continues its oil imports from Russia, it would be very bad for them.”

 

And during a press conference held by Trump, the Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, made a startling disclosure: “I was at the Indian Ambassador’s house (Vinay Kwatra), about a month ago and all he wanted to talk about is how they are buying less Russian oil. Would you tell the President to relieve the tariff (of 25% imposed by the US over and above 25% reciprocal tariffs). This stuff works.”

 

Again, on January 6, Trump, while delivering remarks at the House GOP Member Retreat, claimed that “Prime Miniter Modi came to see me: ‘Sir, may I see you please, Yes’.  I have very good relationship with Modi. He’s not that happy with me because you know they’re paying a lot of tariffs now because they’re not doing the oil, but they are, they’ve now reduced it very substantially, as you know, from Rusia.” Since September 2025, India’s oil imports from Russia have been on a decline. The Official trade data shows that India’s imports from Russia have declined by over 18 per cent last year as compared to the previous year. India surrendered the right to freedom of trade, under pressure from Trump.  

 

And now comes another shocking revelation from the US. The Hindu, January 7, 2025, carried a front-page report titled Indian Embassy hired Trump aide’s firm for talks on trade, bilateral ties during Operation Sindoor. The report in a nutshell:

 

“The Indian Embassy in Wahington made four outreach requests, including three to White House officials and one to the US trade representative on May 10,2025, the day a ceasefire between following Operation Sindoor was announced. It approached White House Chief of Staff Susie Wils, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Ricky Gill of the National Security Council, and Director of Communications Steven Cheung to discuss ‘media coverage’ of the conflict, says a filing by US lobby firm SHW LLC with the US Department of Justice…The Narendra Modi government has thus far repeatedly denied that the US played any role in mediating the India-Pakistan conflict, despite several claims by US President Donald Trump, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.” It is evident the Indian government was telling lies to the nation. 

 

The filings raised eyebrows amongst diplomats in Delhi as the firm claimed that it set up meetings for several Indian officials with top Trump administration over the past year. The filings made by the SHW Partners LLC mentioned assistance rendered to the Indian Mission for the period between April and December 2025. On June 23, days before Mr. Jaishankar’s’ visit to Washington to attend the Quad Foreign Ministers’ meeting, SHW sent emails requesting meetings for the Minister with US Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of War Pete Hegeth and CIA Chief John Ratcliffe. This is the fist time a lobbying firm has been asked to set up meetings with US officials.

 

The Modi government is maintaining a studied silence on these revelations. It is a total collapse of the Indian diplomacy in the face of a weak government.  No leader and no country have been so badly humiliated, bullied and insulted openly as Narendra Modi and India by Trump.  Yet, the Modi government keeps quiet. Modi owes an explanation to the nation. What is the reason for his abject surrender to Trump, staking self-respect and dignity of India, compromising national interest?

 

Having failed to secure peace in Ukraine, Trump has resorted to military adventurism to divert the people’s attention from economic slowdown and domestic scandals, particularly the ‘Epstein files’, which have serious national and international ramifications. Now he chose to follow the footsteps of Putin of attacking a sovereign country in the backyard. It is Putinisation of America.

 

Russian President Putin invaded Ukraine four years ago, managed to annex 20 % of its territory. But he didn’t succeed in securing President Zelensky’s surrender. Trump has succeeded in abducting President Maduro of Venezuela.  Both Ukraine and Venezuela are big countries, each having around 30 million people. Trump’s unilateral military adventurism poses a grave threat to international peace and order.

 

And what he did to Venezuela, he may do not only to countries like Mexico, Cuba, Panama, Colombia in his immediate neighbourhood, but even to a faraway Iran in the Middle East to make them submit to his neo-imperialist expansionism. He is threatening military action against Greenland and wants to take it over.  The BRICS and major powers and Latin America should speak in one voice to halt this dangerous new paradigm that defies the international law and the moral principles that govern the community of nations.