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By Feroze Mithiborwala

Delcy Rodriguez, daughter of Jorge Rodríguez a leading Ideologue and Martyr. She comes from a rich heritage rooted in Bolivarian Socialism, Anti-Imperialism, and Popular Sovereignty.

When the United States carried out what the Venezuelan government has described as the illegal abduction of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, Caracas entered one of the most dangerous moments in its modern history. In the midst of shock, military threat, and diplomatic siege, Delcy Eloína Rodríguez Gómez—long a central figure of the Bolivarian state—assumed the role of caretaker president, vowing continuity, resistance, and national sovereignty.¹ To understand Delcy Rodríguez is to understand inheritance—of struggle, ideology, and sacrifice.

A Revolutionary Lineage

Delcy Rodríguez was born in Caracas on May 18, 1969, into a family deeply rooted in Venezuela’s revolutionary left. Her father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, was a founding leader of the Liga Socialista, a Marxist organization that emerged from the remnants of the 1960s guerrilla movement and sought to challenge the political and economic order of Venezuela’s Fourth Republic.²

In 1976, Jorge Rodríguez was arrested by Venezuela’s political police, the Dirección de los Servicios de Inteligencia y Prevención (DISIP), under the government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez. He died shortly thereafter in custody. Although authorities claimed suicide, contemporaneous reporting, testimony from fellow detainees, and later historical investigations have documented strong evidence of torture during interrogation.³ His death has been widely recognized by scholars as emblematic of Cold War repression in Venezuela under U.S.-CIA-backed regimes that combined state power with systematic political repression, torture and violence.⁴

Thus for Delcy Rodríguez, this legacy is ideologically deeply rooted in struggle and sacrifice — it is personal, political and formative.

Her brother, Jorge Rodríguez Gómez, today serves as President of Venezuela’s National Assembly and has been a central political strategist within the Bolivarian movement, further situating the Rodríguez family within the revolutionary project.⁵

From Chávez to Maduro

A lawyer trained at the Central University of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez entered public life during the ascent of Hugo Chávez, whose Bolivarian project sought to dismantle Venezuela’s entrenched elite pact and reclaim state sovereignty over oil revenues.⁶

Rodríguez later served as Foreign Minister from 2014 to 2017, becoming internationally visible for denouncing sanctions, U.S. interventionism, and violations of international law at forums including the United Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement.⁷

In 2018, Rodríguez was appointed Executive Vice President and later assumed a central role in economic coordination during the escalation of U.S. sanctions, which economists and human rights bodies have linked to sharp declines in living standards and excess civilian mortality.⁸

Her ideological orientation has remained consistent: Bolivarian socialism, anti-imperialism, and popular sovereignty.

The Abduction and the Constitutional Response

Following the January 2026 U.S. operation—described by Washington as a “law-enforcement action” and by Caracas as an “act of international piracy” —multiple international legal scholars and Global South governments questioned its legality under international law, citing violations of state sovereignty and due process.¹

Rodríguez’s designation as caretaker president followed constitutional succession norms previously analyzed by comparative constitutional scholars studying Venezuela’s crisis governance framework.⁹

In her first public address, she stated: “There is only one president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros. What has occurred is an abduction, not a transition.”¹⁰

She accused the Trump administration of acting as an imperial enforcer for transnational capital, citing oil interests, sanctions profiteering, and Venezuela’s steadfast support for Palestine.

US Gangster Capitalism, Zionism, and the Architecture of Aggression

Rodríguez has framed the operation as an expression of “gangster capitalism”—a term used by critical political economists to describe the fusion of coercive force, sanctions regimes, and corporate extraction in contemporary imperial strategy.¹¹ UN special rapporteurs have previously characterized U.S. sanctions on Venezuela as causing “devastating humanitarian consequences” that may amount to violations of international law.¹²

Crucially, Rodríguez has been explicit that the assault on Venezuela cannot be separated from the strategic U.S.–Israeli alliance and the political project of Zionism, which she has consistently described as a colonial ideology rather than a religious identity.

In public statements before and after the abduction of Maduro, Rodríguez argued that Venezuela was targeted not only for its oil reserves but for its uncompromising alignment with Palestine, its condemnation of apartheid Israel’s on-going genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and thus its refusal to submit to U.S.–Israeli geopolitical diktats and threats.¹³

She further identified Zionist political networks as operating in convergence with sanctions enforcement, regime-change policy, and militarized coercion against governments in the Global South that reject Western hegemony.¹⁴

This framing is consistent with Venezuela’s long-standing foreign policy since the Chávez era, including the severing of diplomatic relations with Israel following the 2008–09 genocidal war on Gaza and repeated denunciations of Israeli apartheid at the United Nations.¹⁵

Rodríguez’s intervention thus situates Venezuela’s crisis within a broader global confrontation between an imperial order anchored in Washington and Tel Aviv, and a Global South asserting sovereignty, multi-polarity, and resistance to colonial violence.

The Social Missions: Why the People Still Defend the Revolution

At the core of Rodríguez’s political legitimacy lie the Bolivarian social missions initiated under Chávez. These programs have been extensively studied by international institutions, development economists, and UN agencies.

Mission Barrio Adentro expanded primary healthcare access with Cuban medical cooperation; Mission Robinson led UNESCO to declare Venezuela free of illiteracy in 2005; Mission Ribas and Mission Sucre dramatically increased secondary and university enrollment among working-class Venezuelans.¹⁶ Food distribution systems such as Mercal and later CLAP, alongside the Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela, were designed to buffer the population against market volatility and sanctions-induced shortages.¹⁷

Peer-reviewed economic studies demonstrate that between 2003 and 2012 Venezuela achieved one of the sharpest reductions in poverty and income inequality in Latin America.¹⁸ While sanctions and macroeconomic collapse later reversed many gains, scholars widely agree that the missions permanently altered social access and political consciousness.¹⁹

Rodríguez has consistently defended this redistributive model, arguing that oil revenues must serve social development rather than foreign capital accumulation.²⁰

Popular Support and Political Reality

Multiple independent surveys and regional analysts note that a significant segment of Venezuela’s population—particularly among the poor—continues to reject U.S. intervention regardless of dissatisfaction with economic conditions.²¹ Rodríguez’s authority rests less on personal charisma than on social welfare, empowerment of the poor, institutional continuity and anti-imperialist legitimacy.

Conclusion

Delcy Rodríguez stands today as a political embodiment of resistance—shaped by the torture-death of her father, forged in Chávez’s revolution, tested under Maduro’s siege, and now confronting direct U.S. military coercion. History’s verdict remains unwritten. What is already clear is this: Venezuela did not submit—and Delcy Rodríguez did not bow.

Footnotes

1. Alfred de Zayas, statements on extraterritorial coercion and sovereignty, UN Independent Expert archives; International Association of Democratic Lawyers, legal brief, January 2026.
2. Steve Ellner, Rethinking Venezuelan Politics (Lynne Rienner, 2008), 42–45.
3. Greg Wilpert, Changing Venezuela by Taking Power (Verso, 2007), 29–31.
4. Eva Golinger, The Chávez Code (Pluto Press, 2006), 18–22.
5. Steve Ellner and Miguel Tinker Salas, eds., Venezuela: Hugo Chávez and the Decline of an Exceptional Democracy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).
6. Fernando Coronil, The Magical State (University of Chicago Press, 1997).
7. United Nations General Assembly, Sixth Committee debates, 2015–2017.
8. Francisco Rodríguez, “Sanctions and the Venezuelan Economy,” Peterson Institute Working Paper, 2019.
9. Javier Couso, “Constitutional Crisis and Executive Power in Venezuela,” International Journal of Constitutional Law 17, no. 2 (2019).
10. Associated Press and Reuters, reports quoting televised address, January 2026.
11. David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford University Press, 2003).
12. UN Human Rights Council, Special Rapporteur on Unilateral Coercive Measures, A/HRC/39/47/Add.1 (2018).
13. Delcy Rodríguez, statements on Gaza and Palestine, cited in Telesur English, November 2024.
14. Delcy Rodríguez, address to the Non-Aligned Movement ministerial meeting, reported in Al Mayadeen English, January 2026.
15. United Nations General Assembly, Venezuelan statements on Palestine and Gaza, 2009–2024.
16. UNESCO, Venezuela Declared Free of Illiteracy, 2005.
17. FAO, Food Security Policies in Bolivarian Venezuela, regional report, 2013.
18. Mark Weisbrot and Luis Sandoval, The Venezuelan Economy in the Chávez Years (CEPR, 2008).
19. Julia Buxton, The Failure of Political Reform in Venezuela (Ashgate, 2018).
20. Delcy Rodríguez, remarks cited in Telesur English, 2024.
21. Latinobarómetro, regional opinion surveys, 2018–2024.

Feroze Mithiborwala is an expert on West Asian & International Geostrategic issues. He is the Founder-Gen. Sec. of the India Palestine Solidarity Forum.

6 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

In a degrading pseudo-legal farce, the Trump administration dragged kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores before a federal court in Manhattan on Monday.

When Maduro was asked to confirm his identity, he declared: “My name is President Nicolás Maduro Moros. I am president of the Republic of Venezuela. I am here kidnapped since January 3rd—”

He was allowed to get only a few words out before 92-year-old Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein cut him off. “There will be a time and a place to go into all of this,” he snapped.

As deputy US marshals led him from the courtroom, Maduro declared in Spanish: “I am a kidnapped president. I am a prisoner of war.”

The hearing lasted just over 35 minutes. Both pleaded not guilty. Defense attorney Barry Pollack, who previously represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, announced he would challenge the legality of his client’s “military abduction.” Maduro, he said, “is head of a sovereign state and entitled to the privileges that go with that.”

Flores bore the marks of the violence inflicted upon her during the abduction. The Telegraph reported that Flores “had visible bruises to her face—one the size of a golf ball on her forehead—red cheeks and what appeared to be a welt over her right eye.” Her attorney, Mark Donnelly, told the court she had sustained “significant injuries during her abduction” and asked the judge to authorize an X-ray to determine whether her ribs were fractured.

The day before, Maduro had been paraded through New York in a van with open doors. This is itself a war crime under international law, as it falls under the prohibition of “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”

The Manhattan federal courthouse where Maduro appeared is the same courthouse where Jeffrey Epstein, a close associate of Trump, stood for his arraignment in 2019. Epstein was murdered in prison on August 10, 2019, in what the Trump regime calls a suicide.

Maduro and his wife are being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn—the same facility that once held former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, whom Trump pardoned just weeks ago despite his conviction for trafficking 400 tons of cocaine into the United States.

The accusations against Maduro are not meant to be believed by anyone. Maduro was not kidnapped because he trafficked drugs. He was kidnapped because his country sits atop the largest proven oil reserves in the world—303 billion barrels—and the gangster Trump wants them. Trump said so himself at Saturday’s press conference: “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars … and start making money for the country.”

The Hill reported on Monday that Trump told oil companies about the assault on Venezuela before it happened, while not notifying Congress, let alone the American people. “Reporters on Air Force One asked the president if he spoke to American oil companies to tip them off before” the attack, The Hill wrote.

“Trump nodded and said he spoke to the companies ‘before and after’ the operation. ‘And they want to go in, and they’re going to do a great job for the people of Venezuela, and they’re going to represent us well,’ Trump continued.”

The Trump administration has issued a list of demands to Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez, who was sworn in Monday after Maduro’s abduction. According to Politico, US officials demanded that Rodríguez stop “the sale of oil to U.S. adversaries, according to a U.S. official familiar with the situation and a person familiar with the administration’s internal discussions.” Trump threatened Rodríguez in an interview with The Atlantic: “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”

Rodríguez initially responded to the seizure of Maduro defiantly, declaring on Saturday that “there is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro” and denouncing the US operation as “barbaric.” But by Sunday she had struck a more conciliatory tone, posting on Instagram that Venezuela sought “peaceful coexistence” and inviting the US government “to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation.”

The State Department posted an image of Trump declaring: “This is OUR hemisphere.” US imperialism is claiming the whole of Latin America (along with Canada) as its property, making clear that it will kidnap or murder anyone who resists, in a return to naked colonialism.

While Maduro declared his innocence in a Manhattan courtroom, the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency session a few miles to the north, where the magnitude of what the Trump administration had unleashed became clear. This was not simply a travesty of US criminal law and international law. This was an act of war targeting the entire world.

The atmosphere at the UN was one of crisis. Which country would be next? The European Union? Russia? Canada? Colombia? Cuba? China? In the past month alone, Trump has issued direct threats against at least six UN member states.

Venezuela’s UN Ambassador Samuel Moncada accused the United States of attacking Venezuela in a bid to seize control of its oil resources—“a move that harks back to the worst practices of colonialism and neocolonialism.”

Colombia’s representative stated, “There is no justification whatsoever, under any circumstances, for the unilateral use of force to commit an act of aggression. Such actions constitute a serious violation of international law and the United Nations Charter…”

China’s representative added: “China is deeply shocked by and strongly condemns the unilateral, illegal and bullying acts of the US.”

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, invited to brief the Security Council, placed the assault in context. “In the past year, the United States has carried out bombing operations in seven countries, none of which were authorized by the Security Council and none of which were undertaken in lawful self-defense under the Charter,” he said. “The targeted countries include Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and now Venezuela.”

Sachs traced the history of US regime-change operations against Venezuela: the US-backed coup attempt in 2002, the funding of anti-government protests in 2014, the crippling sanctions that collapsed oil production by 75 percent and real GDP per capita by 62 percent, the unilateral recognition of Juan Guaidó as “interim president” in 2019 and the seizure of $7 billion in Venezuelan sovereign assets.

“Members of the Council are called upon to defend international law, and specifically the United Nations Charter,” Sachs declared. “Members of the Council are not called upon to judge Nicolás Maduro.”

Yet even as condemnation poured in from around the world, the American press celebrated the act of imperialist banditry. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board railed against “The ‘International Law’ Illusion in Venezuela,” declaring that “Rogue regimes now use it [international law] as a shield to protect their own lawbreaking.” The Journal concluded: “The demonstration of U.S. nerve and military prowess will do more than a thousand U.N. resolutions to protect the free world.”

The Washington Post editorial board was equally brazen. Its headline declared: “Maduro’s arrest exposes legal fictions,” with a subtitle adding, “The administration concocts a legal rationale for a foreign policy objective. That’s OK.” The Post openly declared that international law is a “legal fiction.”

These editorials constitute open admissions that what the United States carried out was a crime, coupled with the declaration that American military power places it above the law.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated he was “deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected.” But such statements will not stop Trump’s global military rampage.

The capitalist powers that built the post-World War II legal order are now tearing it apart in their drive toward a new colonial carve-up of the world. Opposition must come from below—from the independent mobilisation of workers in the United States, Venezuela and internationally against imperialist war and the capitalist system that produces it.

6 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ranjan Solomon

The United States’ decision to withdraw from more than sixty international organisations is not an administrative reshuffle, nor a routine assertion of sovereignty. It is a political declaration of abandonment — an unmistakable signal that the world’s most powerful nation no longer wishes to participate in collective global responsibility unless it dictates the terms.

The White House justified the move by claiming these bodies promote “radical climate policies, global governance, and ideological programs that conflict with U.S. sovereignty and economic strength.” Stripped of euphemism, this is a rejection of multilateralism itself. Climate cooperation, international law, humanitarian norms, and shared global governance are now framed as threats to American power.

This moment demands more than criticism. It demands a counter-strategy.

If the United States chooses to walk away from the world, then the world must seriously consider walking away from the United States.

“Isolate the United States” refers to policies of isolationism, meaning non-involvement in foreign conflicts and alliances, historically strong in the U.S. (especially 1930s) but challenged by global interconnectedness, leading to debates about U.S. power, economic impact, and the desire for either international cooperation or self-focused “America First” approaches. Some analysts suggest recent policies are isolating the U.S., while others argue genuine isolation is impossible and global unity is needed to counter U.S. actions.

Withdrawal Is Not Neutral — It Is an Act of Sabotage

International organisations exist precisely because unilateral power is dangerous. From health and labour to climate, refugees, culture, and human rights, global bodies are imperfect attempts to manage shared problems that no nation — especially no superpower — should dominate or abandon at will.

When the United States withdraws, it does not simply “exit.” It cripples institutions by defunding them, delegitimising them, and pressuring allies to follow suit. We have seen this before: the gutting of UNESCO, threats to the WHO, hostility toward the ICC, disdain for climate frameworks, and open contempt for UN mechanisms that refuse obedience.

This latest mass withdrawal fits a longer pattern: participate only when dominant, exit when challenged. Such behaviour is not leadership. It is vandalism of the global commons.

From Multilateralism to Imperial Exceptionalism

The United States has long insisted on a so-called “rules-based international order.” Yet it exempts itself from those rules whenever they constrain its military, corporations, or allies. It refuses to recognise the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court while threatening judges who investigate U.S. or Israeli crimes. It demands compliance with international law from adversaries while violating it through illegal invasions, drone assassinations, sanctions, and occupations. By withdrawing from dozens of international organisations, Washington is no longer even pretending. It is declaring openly: rules are for others.

At that point, the global community must ask a hard question:

Why should the world continue to centre institutions, economies, currencies, and norms around a state that rejects mutual obligation?

Genocide, Gaza, and the Collapse of Moral Authority

The timing of this withdrawal is not incidental. It comes amid unprecedented global outrage over Israel’s assault on Gaza — an assault enabled, armed, financed, and diplomatically protected by the United States.

As international agencies document mass civilian deaths, starvation, and the destruction of an entire society, Washington has chosen not introspection but retreat. Instead of engaging with global institutions raising alarms, it withdraws from them. Instead of submitting to scrutiny, it punishes scrutiny.

This is not merely hypocrisy. It is strategic evasion of accountability. A power that enables mass atrocity and then abandons the institutions meant to prevent such crimes has forfeited any claim to moral leadership.

Sanctions, Climate, and the Weaponisation of Exit

The United States already weaponizes participation; now it weaponizes withdrawal. Sanctions regimes – imposed unilaterally or coercively – have devastated civilian populations from Venezuela to Iran to Afghanistan. Climate negotiations are undermined when the world’s largest historical emitter treats environmental cooperation as optional. Labour, health, and cultural bodies suffer when funding is yanked to enforce ideological conformity.

Exit becomes leverage. Absence becomes threat. This is how empires behave in decline: not by reforming systems they helped shape, but by burning bridges when those systems no longer serve them.

The World Must Respond Collectively. The danger is not only what the United States has done, but what others may tolerate. If withdrawal carries no cost, it becomes precedent. If sabotage is rewarded with silence, multilateralism collapses into theatre. If one state can opt out of global responsibility while retaining global privilege, then international law becomes fiction. This is where Boycott USA moves from slogan to strategy. Not emotional, not impulsive – but principled, calibrated, and collective.

What Boycott and Isolation Can Mean

A global response does not require mimicry of U.S. behaviour, but it does require resolve. Measures can include:

· Diplomatic distancing from U.S.-led forums that undermine multilateralism

· Economic divestment from U.S. arms manufacturers and fossil-fuel corporations

· Academic and cultural refusal to legitimise imperial narratives

· Strengthening South–South institutions independent of U.S. dominance

· De-dollarisation efforts to reduce vulnerability to American coercion

Isolation is not revenge. It is boundary-setting.

It is not Anti-American, But Anti-Abandonment This is not a call against the American people, many of whom suffer under the same system of militarism, inequality, and corporate capture. It is a call against a state apparatus that treats global cooperation as expendable and global lives as collateral.

When a nation withdraws from the world, it cannot expect the world to continue business as usual.

A Line Has Been Crossed

Withdrawing from sixty international organisations is not just policy. It is a worldview — one that rejects shared fate in favour of domination, cooperation in favour of coercion, and accountability in favour of impunity. At such moments, history demands clarity.

The global community must say: If you abandon the world, the world will no longer centre you.

To isolate the United States politically, economically, and morally – until it recommits to international responsibility – is not extremism. It is collective self-preservation.

Dr. Ranjan Solomon has worked in social justice movements since he was 19 years of age. After an accumulated period of 58 years working with oppressed and marginalized groups locally, nationally, and internationally, he has now turned a researcher-freelance writer focused on questions of global and local/national justice.

8 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Richard Falk

[Prefatory Note; This essay in modified form was published on December 29, 2025 in CounterPunch. The January 3 acts of US aggression against Venezuela and kidnapping of its elected President followed by an indictment in US Federal Court on charges of narco-terrorism. Rationalized as a ‘law enforcement’ undertaking by apologists rather than viewed as ‘aggression’ by critics. It is a geopolitical expression of extra-legal prerogatives shielded from UN censure and sanctions by the veto power of the P5, and in that sense reflects the same mentality underlying the complicity with Gaza genocide. What the UN did by unanimously endorsing the Trump Plan is to lend an aura of legitimacy to the US earlier role that was alarmingly veto-free and a tacit acknowledgement that ‘peacemaking’ is also within the domain of geopolitical discretion, regardless of values at stake, including basic human rights. In the Venezuela context the UN is more responsive to the international law dimension because states regard their national economic interests and sovereignty endangered by US imperial disregard for borders, political independence, and sovereignty over natural resources. Israel in contrast is subconsciously perceived as falling within a non-spatially defined sphere of interests geopolitics, and less threatening as systemic challenge to the statist character of world order. ]

After October 7 Attack: Genocide as Retaliation

Throughout this period challenging the adequacy of the UN in the face of genocide, there were reasons to redeem its reputation, including an awareness that its refusal to respect judgments of the leading international tribunals (International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court). It needs to be better understood that when the UN was established 80 years ago the Charter design gave the last word on the management of global security to the five winning states in World War, and not to international law or the UN as believed by the most ardent champions of a meta-state rule governed world order.

By clear intention despite the priority accorded war prevention in the Preamble to the Charter, the capabilities of the UN to act coercively against aggression, apartheid, and genocide were withheld from the Organization. Instead, the winners (that is, the five permanent members of the Security Council of P5) of the recently concluded war against fascism were also given a right of veto that amounted to a limitless entitlement of any one of the five in the only UN political organ with the authority to make binding decisions to block action. Tahis provision meant not only an opting out of decisions contrary to their will but of preventing Security Council from acting even when the other 14 members were united in voting for a decision. In practice this meant that prospects for peace and security in major conflict situations were left to the geopolitical calculations and alignments of these most powerful and dangerous members of the new organization.

During the Cold War, which prevailed globally between 1945-1991 the paralysis of the UN in relation to the management of global security was mainly due to the discretion at the disposal of the opposed alliances of the US-led NATO forces on the Western side of the ideological divide and strategic rivalry. On the other side was the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces. The UN contented itself with being a spectator, or site of opposing propaganda denunciations as regarding the Vietnam War, Moscow’s interventions in Eastern Europe, and other settings of violent conflict involving the strategic interests of the P5.

This was partly due to the constitutional framework of the UN, but it also reflected the unwillingness of many leading countries to dilute sovereignty when it came to their national security agendas. This refusal was most dramatically illustrated by the rejection of nuclear disarmament and a preferred reliance on deterrence, exhibiting the militarist orientations of foreign policy elites in leading governments, including all of the P5 states augmented by others. This blends a militarized hard power version of global security with P5 strategic ambitions to reinvent Western domination in a period of collapsing European colonialism. It is also reflected priorities attached to internal issues of policy urgency connected with development and national security. In effect, unless civil society was mobilized around the world, as most prominently in relation to European colonialism and South African racism, internationalism lacked the political will and material capabilities to act effectively in relation to local (non-systemic) war prevention and even the most severe encroachments on human rights.

Against this background, the role of the UN while disappointing was not surprising given the strong ties between the white West and Israel in this encounter with a Muslim majority Palestine in the strategically important Middle East with respect to the geopolitical priorities of the West and its allies. This lent the Israel/Palestine struggle an inter-civilizational dimension while also posing a challenge to Western hegemony in relation to energy reserves, arms sales, and more generally, trade and investment.

This line of interpretation was accentuated by the anti-Western religiously oriented Hamas, a non-state entity that was characterized in Western media and state propaganda as nothing other than a terrorist organization. Such a posture ignored the 2006 political victory in Gaza of Hamas in an internationally monitored election and its role as the center of legally grounded Palestinian resistance to an Israeli occupation that consistently violated international humanitarian legal standards as set forth in the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949 governing ‘belligerent occupation,’ while Israel showed no signs of withdrawing as expected to its 1967 borders, which were themselves far in excess of the partition arrangement proposed in 1947 by the UN in GA Resolution 181. Several UN members complicit with Israel overtly supported the genocide in Gaza for two years, stepping back from support mainly because of the rise of public protest activity in their countries as it became evident that Israel was exceeding all constraints of law and morality in persisting with its genocidal campaign. As well, many other states, including many in Muslim majority countries while opposing Israel’s conduct in Gaza rhetorically, continued covertly to maintain mutually favorable economic relationships vital for sustaining Israel’s genocidal campaign.

It should be appreciated that the ICJ by a near unanimous vote on July 19, 2024 declared continuing Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank (and even East Jerusalem) to be unlawful, decreeing its withdrawal, an outcome that the General Assembly formally supported while Israel and its support group ignored or dismissed. It is important to appreciate that the ICJ, the judicial arm of the UN, performed professionally, upholding international law, although failing to secure Israeli compliance or the material and diplomatic support of its group of enabler countries, underscoring that the failure of the UN was not related to international law as such, but to the design of the Organization that vested enforcement authority in the Security Council, and residually in the General Assembly. In that regard the SC was paralyzed by the veto, and the GA by the weakness of political will.

This political agenda explains the six ceasefire initiatives that were vetoed in the Security Council combined with the failure of complicit states, above all, the United States, to use its soft power leverage to induce Israel to stop its assault on Gaza and satisfy the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people. Such a willingness is inhibited by adhering political realism of the pre-nuclear age and the special interests of the arms industries and a long militarized governmental bureaucracy. There was a further distinctive feature of the Israeli reality that drew upon the lingering guilt of the liberal West toward its feeble response to Nazi antisemitism and the Holocaust. In effect, Israel enjoyed a positive status by being situated within a unique Western sphere of influenced, reinforced further by the global network of Zionist influence dedicated to ensuring a pro-Israel foreign policy (as well analyzed by John J. Mersheimer & Stephen M. Walt in their book on the Israel lobby in the United States, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007).]

The Disgraceful UN Response to the Trump Plan

Against this background, the 15 members of the Security Council, disgracefully voted unanimously in favor of the US draft resolution, adopted as SC Resolution 2803 on November 17, 2025, endorsing the Trump Plan for the stabilization of Gaza. The plan emerged with the approval and substantive inputs of Israel, significantly unveiled during a Netanyahu visit to the White House at a joint press conference. The core feature of the plan was to reward the perpetrators of prolonged genocide, further aggravated and preceded by apartheid and resulting in making a wasteland of Gaza. Shockingly, there no references in the resolution to Israel’s defiance of rulings of the International Court of Justice, resolutions of the General Assembly, or the assessments of independent scholars and genocide. Neither Israel nor the United States, nor the other complicit states were obliged, or even encouraged, to pay reparations for the unlawful devastation caused in Gaza. Instead, this was left to be sorted out by the combined forces of vulture capitalism operating freely as if Gaza reconstruction should be treated as a juicy real estate venture with the monetary contributions expected to be contributed by wealthy Arab governments.

In this process, not only was the diplomatic framework imposed on the Palestinians, but the US was outrageously accepted, without even a whimper of protest, as the legitimate ‘peacemaker’ although it was overtly collaborating with Israel in drafting the plan that pointedly excluding Palestinian participation, thereby suppressing their right of self-determination. Indeed, the US Government went so far as to deny visas to any Palestinian Authority delegate who sought to attend the 2025 General Assembly meeting of the UN or to otherwise take part in UN and other proceedings shaping Palestine as a political entity. What makes the resolution a step backward if the objective had been what it should have been, arrangements for a peaceful and just future crafted with the participation of Palestinian representation as determined by an open and internationally monitored referendum with a presumed goal of dedication to a just and durable peace.

Instead, SC Resolution 2803 if considered as a whole, indirectly exonerates the culprits for their past behavior carrying impunity to an extreme, perverse UN validation. Beyond this 2803 openly acknowledges and gives its approval to US total control of recentdiplomatic efforts to replace unrestrained Israeli violence with a ceasefire that Israel ignores at its pleasure and US indulgence. The bloody result has been hundreds of lethal violations of the ceasefire killing up to now of hundreds of Palestinians by estimates of the Gaza Health Ministry, without Israel even being reprimanded by Washington for so abusing a ceasefire deal. Why Hamas accepts this Israeli practice of accepting the ceasefire while simultaneously continuing with genocide at a decelerated rate, and persisting with cruel policies causing widespread severe suffering among the entire Gazan population of an estimated two million Palestinian survivors traumatized and homeless after two plus years of genocidal assault.

As to the future, 2803 endorses a colonialist transitional arrangement given operational reality by a Board of Peace, of course to be chaired by none other than Donald Trump and given stability in Gaza by the formation of an International Stabilization Force to be formed by the contributions of troops by UN members endorsing the plan. The US has brazenly acknowledged its own transactional goals by pledging $112 billion to rebuild Gaza as a global hub for trade, investment, and tourism. Governance in Gaza is left in part to Israel that seems to be claiming a permanent, unilaterally enlarged security presence in northern Gaza above and beyond the original yellow line.

Given the highly dubious manner of recovering from the Gaza catastrophe at this late stage, how can we explain its widespread international support, and the disappearance of opposition in the Security Council? The five SC members from the Global South (Algeria, Somalia, Guyana, Sierra Leone, and Panama), made some critical comments about 2803 during the formal discussion that preceded the vote, centering on its vagueness as to crucial details and even to its one-sidedness, yet all ended up voting in favor. Did such a vote reflect genuine agreement, or more likely, was it a vote that willingly submitted to geopolitical primacy when it came to the management of global security? And why would Indonesia and Pakistan, Muslim majority countries, even if not members of SC, go out of their way to express approval of the 2803 path to the future? More predictable, yet nevertheless disappointing, was the approval expressed by the European Union. Such a diplomatic display served as a cynical reminder that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is part of Judeo-Christian civilizational long game of sustaining Middle Eastern hegemony.

As troubling was the gratuitous endorsement of 2803 given by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, who not only welcomed the resolution but expressed the hope that its momentum would be converted into “concrete action.” Thankfully, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, expressed “serious concern with the Security Council’s adoption of resolution 2803, warning that it runs counter to the Palestinian right to self-determination, consolidates Israël’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including ongoing unlawful policies and practices, and therefore risks legitimating ongoing mass violence.” Revealingly, Albanese spoke these words of truth to power, after herself enduring punitive sanctions imposed in July for her courageous willingness to bear official witness to what was becoming all too clear to the eyes and ears of the peoples of the world. It is ironic that the UN’s response to 2803 was somewhat rescued from taints of complicity by an unpaid appointee not subject to UN discipline. Her words are congruent with those of Craig Mokhiber who resigned from a senior position at the UN because of its failure to deal responsibly with respect to Palestinian grievances, and in the last couple of years emerged as the most informed and incisive critic of the UN approach, reinforcing Albanese’s forthrightness on behalf of law and justice with respect to Palestinian grievances and rights, but the Organization’s own transactional approach privileged geopolitical imperatives over compliance with the UN Charter.

It additionally seems strange and cynical that Russia and China, although voicing some criticisms during the discussion, did not use their right of veto to block passage of 2803, especially given the frequent use of the veto on Israel’s behalf by the US and considering the principles at stake. It is likely that these two geopolitical rivals of the US were impressed by Hamas’ acceptance of the overall approach and did not want to be seen as spoilers held responsible for a breakdown of the Trump Plan that would have undoubtedly have produced produce a total breakdown of the already tarnished ceasefire. Additionally, China and Russia both seem to believe that global stability is best preserved by extending a degree of geopolitical reciprocity to their trilateral relations. In this limited sense, Trump seems more in accord with how cooperative relations with these two countries would bring stability and transactional gains than did the Biden approach of fighting Russia by way of Ukraine to preserve US post-Cold War dominance, a path that increased the risk of a third world war fought with nuclear war leading to a lengthening of the Ukraine War with heave casualties on both sides. Trump’s approach, although fragile because of his mercurial style, stressing geopolitical stability, including an acceptance of spheres of influence as compromising the sovereignty and wellbeing of smaller states and even, as here, of overlooking genocide.

The rejection of 2803’s endorsement of the Trump plan by Hamas was not entirely a surprise. It does not explain why Hamas ever accepted the Trump diplomacy at its outset except for its ceasefire and IDF withdrawal prospects. Hamas’ acceptance extended to the whole of the Trump plan, but with this stand against 2803 and its announced refusal to disarm it may now be either the basis of a better compromise or at least a stalemate as to further progress. Hamas, and Iran, the other vocal critic of the SC resolution, also undoubtedly are reacting to the absence on Israel’s part of any willingness to show signs of embracing a politics of reconciliation, even to the extent of conscientiously upholding the early ceasefire, partial withdrawal, and an end to the rigid constraints on humanitarian aid. For Israel to have shown no mercy to a population living without heat, secure shelter, and adequate food and medical supplies is to send the chilling message that Israel has not even considered abandoning its expansionist ambitions that include further ethnic cleansing in Gaza and a surge of settlement growth on the West Bank leading to de facto annexation as a prelude to formal annexation and inclusion in the realization of the Greater Israel endgame. From its inception more than a century ago, the Zionist Movement has employed ‘salami tactics’ to obtain what was politically possible at a given moment, and waiting to satisfy other goals until the political climate made it feasible.

The US representative in the SC, Amb. Mike Waltz, insisted that “[a] vote against this resolution is a vote to return to war” was part of the ‘take it or leave it’ Trump approach. Nor is it surprising that Netanyahu hailed the endorsement of 2803 by declaring “that President Trump’s plan will lead to peace and prosperity because it insists upon full demilitarization, disarmament, and the deradicalization of Gaza.”[15] Or that France and the UK sugarcoated their endorsements of the Trump Plan by verbal statements of conditional support for eventual Palestinian statehood as affirmed in its sponsorship of the New York Declaration, envisioning future Palestinian representation under the authority of a reconstituted Palestinian Authority (PA), itself a creature of US/Israel dominated diplomacy that has circumvented Palestinian self-determination. Under present conditioned the PA is being repurposed to implement the Trump Plan. The PA announced its support for 2803 in a move calculated to convince Israel and the US that it can be counted upon to go along with their stabilization scenario despite its rejection of Palestinian grievances and denial of Palestine’s right of self-determination. Such a PA position, undoubtedly motivated by cynical opportunism, should be treated as discrediting the PA from representing the interests of the Palestinian people, but one wonders. Offering such ‘breadcrumb’ rewards to the PA, while disqualifying Hamas from any role in representing the Palestinian people is emblematic of the next phase of the Zionist end game intent on achieving a political surrender of Palestine and the elimination of Hamas and Palestinian resistance, limiting ambitions for ‘playing nice’ to nominal statehood masking an Israeli/US protectorate.

Concluding Remarks

The maneuvers of states, following their interests rather than supposedly shared values associated with the UN Charter and the international rule of law, is to be expected given the history of international relations and the political realist orientation of most foreign policy elites. Nevertheless, it is regrettable, given the gross disregard of justice and rights, which pervades the Trump Plan and the diplomatic and hard power muscle at the disposal of the US. It does not augur well for meeting other world order challenges including climate change, migratory flows, ecological stability, less inequitable distributions of wealth and income to individuals, states, and regions, as well as a more robust commitment to peaceful modes of conflict resolution.

This saga of 2803 is particularly unfortunate because it shows that the geopolitical management of global security extends beyond the veto power of the P5. For the sake of stability, the UN venue implicitly swallows the Israeli genocide to an unseemly extent of unanimously endorsing a neo-colonialist future for Gaza and impunity plus for Israel and its complicit supporters. Symbolic of this unseemly submission by the UN and its membership is the endorsement of 2803 by the UN leader, Antonio Guterres, an individual declared persona non grata by Israel more than a year ago. Israel’s insulting dismissal of the UN as ‘a cesspool of antisemitism’ and the like should have at least led the Organization’s Secretary General to respond with stony silence to 2803 rather than cynically kneel in submission. sending a shameful message to the world that from the perspective of the UN that genocide does not disqualify a state from receiving diplomatic and territorial rewards as long as the geopolitical actors or P5 remain on board or at least silent. In effect, the dynamics of power politics is still making history, despite the disastrous consequences. One takeaway from this 2803 experience is a realization that the Global South is not sufficiently ready to seek geopolitical symmetry in what is often interpreted as the hopeful interpretation of the emergence of a multipolar world order. By geopolitical symmetry is meant an historic embrace of polycentric balance that increasingly challenges the P5 asymmetry that has dominated the UN for the past 80 years.

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years.

8 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Ashraf Zainabi

The question may sound provocative, even exaggerated. Yet in early 2026, it is being asked in newsrooms, universities, diplomatic circles, and living rooms across the world with growing seriousness. Is the United States entering a phase of unchecked assertiveness, militarily, politically, and institutionally, or are recent actions merely defensive responses to a changing world order? The answer lies somewhere between perception and power, between intent and consequence.

The most striking trigger for this debate has been the United States’ direct military action in Venezuela, culminating in the capture of a sitting president. Whatever one’s view of the Venezuelan government, this act marked a rare and dramatic escalation. In the modern era, powerful states have influenced outcomes through sanctions, diplomacy, covert operations, or proxy conflicts. Directly removing a head of state through military force is different. It sends a message not just to the target country, but to the entire international system. That message is unsettling: sovereignty appears conditional, and power appears decisive.

This action did not occur in isolation. Around the same time, the US announced its withdrawal from 66 international organisations, many linked to the United Nations system and global cooperation frameworks. Climate bodies, cultural institutions, labour forums, migration platforms, structures designed to manage shared global problems, were abruptly abandoned. The justification was familiar, national interest, sovereignty, inefficiency of multilateralism. But the signal was again unmistakable. The United States is stepping away from rule-based cooperation and leaning more heavily on unilateral power.

To many observers, this combination feels less like strategy and more like a rupture. Historically, American power was most effective when it combined force with legitimacy, when military strength was embedded within alliances, norms, and institutions. The post–World War II order, however flawed, rested on this balance. What we are witnessing now looks different. It resembles a belief that raw power alone can secure outcomes, while global rules are optional constraints.

This is where the charge of “rampage” enters the conversation. Critics argue that the US is increasingly comfortable acting first and justifying later. Venezuela today, Iran tomorrow, Cuba and Greenland, even allies are mentioned in speculative or rhetorical ways that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. While no confirmed military plans exist against many of these countries, the language matters. It normalises threat as policy. It lowers the threshold of acceptability for force.

Defenders of the US approach counter that the world has changed. They argue that multilateral institutions are slow, compromised, or captured by rival powers. They point to China’s rise, Russia’s aggression, and non-state threats as evidence that restraint invites weakness. From this perspective, decisive action is not recklessness but realism. Power, they say, must be demonstrated to be respected. There is logic in this argument, but also danger.

History repeatedly shows that power untempered by restraint breeds resistance. Military dominance can win battles, but it rarely wins legitimacy. Afghanistan and Iraq were not failures because of lack of force; they failed because force could not substitute for political consensus, social understanding, and moral credibility. The lesson many believed the US had learned was humility. The question now is whether that lesson is being unlearned.

The retreat from international organisations deepens this concern. Global challenges today, climate change, pandemics, migration, technological disruption, do not respond to missiles or sanctions. They demand coordination. When the world’s most powerful country withdraws from cooperative platforms, it does not weaken those problems; it weakens collective capacity to address them. Ironically, it also creates vacuums that others are eager to fill.

China understands this well. While the US pulls back from multilateral spaces, China steps in with infrastructure deals, development banks, and diplomatic engagement. Beijing avoids direct military confrontation with Washington not out of goodwill, but calculation. It builds influence quietly, economically, institutionally. The contrast is sharp, one power projecting force, another projecting presence.

This comparison is instructive. The United States remains militarily unmatched, but power in the 21st century is no longer measured only in aircraft carriers. It is measured in trust, networks, standards, and long-term partnerships. By prioritising unilateral action, the US risks winning moments while losing momentum.

So, is the US on a rampage? If by rampage we mean uncontrolled violence, the answer is no. There are still checks, Congress, courts, public opinion, allies, economic interdependence. War with major powers like China or Russia remains unthinkable precisely because the costs are catastrophic. The US is not blindly charging into global war.

But if by rampage we mean a growing reliance on coercion, threat, and withdrawal from shared rules, then the concern is valid. The pattern is visible. Military action where diplomacy once dominated. Exit where engagement once prevailed. Certainty where caution once existed.

The deeper issue is not America’s strength, but America’s confidence. A confident power shapes rules; an insecure one breaks them. A confident power leads institutions; an anxious one abandons them. Recent actions suggest not supreme confidence, but fear of decline, fear that time is no longer on America’s side.

This fear can be dangerous. It can turn rivals into enemies, competition into confrontation, and leadership into domination. It can also blind policymakers to the quiet costs of aggression, erosion of moral authority, alienation of allies, and the normalisation of force as first resort.

The world does not need another era of gunboat politics, even in modern form. It needs restraint backed by strength, not strength unleashed without restraint. It needs powerful nations to remember that leadership is not the ability to act alone, but the ability to bring others along.

The United States still has a choice. It can recalibrate, use its power to rebuild institutions, modernise cooperation, and address shared crises. Or it can continue down a path where force replaces persuasion and exits replace engagement.

History will decide whether this moment marks a temporary assertiveness or the beginning of a deeper rupture in global order. But the warning signs are already visible. When the strongest nation begins to act as if rules no longer matter, the world does not become safer. It becomes more fragile. And fragility, not weakness, is what turns power into peril.

Dr. Ashraf Zainabi is a teacher and researcher based in Gowhar Pora Chadoora J&K

8 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Anisur Rahman

If Donald Trump is not stopped immediately, nobody knows what further catastrophe awaits mankind. Chamberline was blamed for appeasing Adolf Hitler. Europe´s appeasement policy towards Trump is more pathetic. They are afraid to say the plain truth and take refuge in the jargon of cautious diplomatic vocabulary. They forget that at times of necessity, one must call a spade a spade. Venezuela may be far away from Europe. But don’t they realize that they have already been hit by him? Could anyone imagine that Europe would be dependent on the US´s CNG or LPG? European consumers are paying an extraordinarily high price because of Brussels´s Russia policy and Europe´s surrender to the US.

Donald Trump renamed the Monroe Doctrine the “Donroe Doctrine” with a more assertive, authoritarian tone. The thumping assertion of the Monroe Doctrine is: all the countries of both North and South America are backyards of the USA. Europeans have no say on these two continents. In plain words, “Americas” belongs to the USA. In return, Washington will not interfere with European colonies elsewhere. This is how the sphere of influence was defined by the then-US president, James Monroe, in 1823. In the meantime, the US has expanded the doctrine. With the emergence of a one-pole-based world order, the US began to consider the whole world within its sphere of influence. However, the rise of the People’s Republic of China has changed the equation considerably.

The US is no longer satisfied with its sphere of influence. If a country or government does not obey or serve their interests, they now carry out direct aggression. In 1990, the US invaded Panama, deposed and arrested its ruler, Manual Noriega, and brought him to the US, though he was once a puppet of Washington. No one sincerely lamented for Noriega because of his earlier role. Maduro´s case is different. He became a symbol of resistance to imperialism.

The US imperialistic intention has become nakedly exposed when Donald Trump said today or tomorrow the USA will annex Greenland by any means. The USA needs Greenland for its geographical location and USA´s strategic interests. Pure and open declaration. No covert posture. If it is accepted, Bangladesh can annex or cut off India´s “seven sister states” from the mainland, or India can annex part of Bangladesh. Trump even expressed his intention of making Canada the 51st state of the USA. President Trump has categorically said that the USA must have access to Venezuelan oil, which, in terms of quantity/amount, is the largest in the world. This single factor, greed, drove Washington to carry out the assault on Caracas. Checking the narcotic handle or establishing democracy are just excuses to cover its ill motives.

The hegemonic powers adopt different methods to install or topple governments in countries where they have special interests. For example, India installed/supported the Hasina regime in Bangladesh because it was loyal and obedient to New Delhi to the extent that it did not hesitate to sacrifice the legitimate interests of Bangladesh for preserving even the undue interests of India. In return, India supported the rigged elections of Bangladesh held in 2014, 2018, and 2024 through which the AL could come to power. Consequently, both the Awami regime and India became tremendously unpopular. And the regime was toppled by a people´s uprising/revolution.

The other method of toppling a government is by subjugation and interference from outside. A powerful hegemon can make a legitimate government nonfunctional and unpopular through strangulation. It can impose harsh economic sanctions, embargoes, trade barriers, and blockades against a country that it does not like, thereby defying international norms. They provoke and instigate public resentment. Maduro and Venezuela have become victims of the most powerful hegemon in the world. They are exerting the same pressure on Iran. How long it can withstand it is to be seen in the future.

The only positive thing is that a puppet government installed by a dominant outside power does not last for long.

An unusual winner in this power game is Russia. When the US conducts such a raid against a sovereign country and virtually declares that it will govern Caracas, Moscow can comfortably enjoy this tragedy because Ukraine and Europe failed to stand up firmly against Washington´s similar misdeeds.

This regional crisis may lead to a more severe and dangerous international crisis. The immediate fallout will be on Cuba, which heavily depends on cheaper Venezuelan oil. Trump has also said he will stop Venezuelan oil supply to even China. Besides, he wants to disrupt China´s Belt and Road connectivity route in Latin America. China´s heavy investments in this country will be at risk. Many political analysts think the USA´s “Stop China” policy might have played a role in Trump’s Venezuela strike. Beijing has strongly reacted against it. They have demanded the immediate release of Maduro. The Taiwan issue may become more volatile. Further tensions between the two superpowers are not good news for the world. Nobody knows where it leads to. Some prominent Western political observers and experts on strategic affairs apprehend that a critical mistake or miscalculation can endanger the whole of mankind.

The US´s flagrant violation of international law is worse than Russia´s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine. One must remember that Crimea was part of the Russian Soviet Federation from 1783 to 1954. Russia built it. In February 1954, the Russian Federation transferred it to the Ukrainian Federation when both Russia and Ukraine were part of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics. Had the Western alliance not backed down from the Minsk agreement on autonomy of the Donbas region, the present Ukraine crisis could have been avoided. And the international community, including the US, recognized Taiwan as part of the PRC when it was admitted to the UN, and Taiwan was expelled from the world body. Beijing´s One China policy has been accepted by almost all. The dispute is how to incorporate Taiwan into the PRC. Hence, one must not equate the USA`s aggression in Venezuela with China´s claim on Taiwan.

The US has once again undermined the UN charter by striking against an independent and sovereign country. A multipolar-based international community might not tolerate it indefinitely.

Anisur Rahman (1947) is basically a journalist with a primary interest in international affairs. His journalistic career began more than five decades ago, in 1969, when he joined the newly established daily newspaper The Daily Purbodesh as its Sub-Editor.

8 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Boaventura de Sousa Santos

What happened in the early hours of January 3 in Caracas left the world stunned. But the strongest reason for astonishment is the fact that the world was stunned. What happened had been widely predicted. Since when? The less informed would say since Donald Trump came to power. But it is mainly since the publication of the National Security Strategy in November 2025, which states that the US reserves the right to intervene in any country whenever its interests are at stake.

Let’s go back in history and analyze the three main components of what happened: the surprise, the illegal capture of a political leader, and the reasons given for the act.

As for the surprise and the reasons, we need only go back to September 1939. In 1939, the world (the world that mattered then was Europe and the US) was stunned by Hitler’s surprise attack on Poland. The justification of the Nazi leader: “The Polish state has refused the peaceful settlement of relations which I desired, and appealed to arms… In order to put an end to this lunacy I have no other choice than to meet force with force from now on… Destroying Poland is our priority… The winner is never asked if what he said was the truth or a lie. As far as starting and fighting a war is concerned, there is no law – victory is the decisive factor. Be brutal and be without mercy.”

Anyone who closely followed Hitler’s behavior could predict what was going to happen. Hitler publicly invented Polish aggression while secretly ordering surprise attacks, telling his generals to act ruthlessly to achieve victory, illustrating the deceptive nature of the invasion. Polish aggression was invented, the invention was turned into reality through propaganda, and the invasion was invoked as an act of self-defense. Germany’s security was at stake. It so happened that European diplomats looked but did not see, listened but did not hear, read but did not understand. Denial was a cover for the impotence and poor political quality of the political leaders of the time.

As for the illegal capture of leaders, it is easy to recall the case of Panamanian President Daniel Noriega on January 3, 1990. However, we need to go back much further to see how a similar tactic was used in the past during the period of historical colonialism. King Ngungunyane was the king of the Gaza Empire between 1884 and 1895, a territory that today corresponds largely to Mozambique. Because of his resistance to Portuguese colonialism, he was known as the “Lion of Gaza.” He was defeated by colonialist troops in 1895 in Chaimite. Not satisfied with their victory and fearing that the king would continue to fuel anti-colonial resistance, the colonialists captured him and brought him to Portugal as a trophy of war. They paraded him along the main avenue of Lisbon. He was then deported to one of the Azores Islands, where he died in 1906.

In August 1897, French colonialists imposed colonial control over the Menabé kingdom of the Sakalava people in western Madagascar, massacring the local army. King Toera was killed and beheaded; his head was sent to Paris, where it was placed in the archives of the Natural History Museum. Almost 130 years later, pressure from the king’s descendants, as well as from the government of the Indian Ocean nation, paved the way for the return of the skull.

In other words, displaying symbols of resistance (sometimes the leaders themselves, their skulls, or their art objects) as trophies in the metropolis is a consistent practice of colonial rule. Whether the “deposit” is on an island, in a museum, or in a center in New York is a minor issue, a matter of convenience for the victor.

Has colonialism returned?

This is perhaps the most naive question that can be asked at this point. It is based on the idea that colonialism is a thing of the past, having ended with the independence of the European colonies. Nothing could be further from the truth. Colonialism is the treatment of a people or social group considered subhuman and, as such, unworthy of being defended by international or national law, human rights, or international treaties. The justification is perfectly rational: since they are subhuman, it would be absurd to treat them as human. That would jeopardize the defense of beings considered fully human. Colonialism is racism, slavery, plundering of natural and human resources, occupation by a foreign power, expulsion of peasants or indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories to make way for “development projects,” illegal deforestation, ethnic profiling, and racial discrimination.

Colonialism is a permanent and essential component of capitalism. Writing in England and bearing in mind above all the English case, Karl Marx was mistaken when he wrote that colonial violence was an initial phase of capitalism (primitive or original accumulation) that would later give way to the “monotony of economic relations based on the exploitation of free wage labor.” Colonial violence is permanent, and without it, capitalism would not exist. It is not present in the same way everywhere in the world precisely because colonialism-capitalism is an unequal and combined global project. From Rosa Luxemburg to Walter Rodney and David Harvey, this fact is now almost universally accepted.

More recently, what was the creation of the State of Israel if not an act of colonial occupation, a loathsome way for Europeans to unload onto the Palestinian people the atonement for the heinous crimes that they, Europeans, had committed against the Jews? Is the transformation of Gaza into the Riviera of the eastern Mediterranean anything more than an act of recolonization?

Another sign of recolonization is the anachronistic return of piracy. In times of peace or undeclared war, interfering with navigation in national or international waters is an act of piracy.

If Karl Marx, at the time he wrote (mid-19th century), had lived in India, Egypt, or Nigeria, instead of England, he would certainly have paid more attention to colonialism than to capitalism. Colonialism was the first modern global project, first as a pioneer of capitalism and then as a central component of the consolidation of capitalism. For this reason, the pioneering countries (Portugal and Spain) were promptly marginalized as soon as the pioneering period ended.

Recolonization and the duality of criteria

It is fair to think that colonial violence and capitalist monotony, despite being twin sisters, had periods of unequal coexistence. The post-World War II period gave more and better publicity to the capitalist sister, while in the current period, which did not begin with Trump and will not end with him, publicity is on the side of the colonialist sister. We are in a period of recolonization, while distracted intellectuals with false consciousness sing hymns to decolonial thinking. Others, such as Yanis Varoufakis, whom I greatly admire, speak of techno-feudalism, forgetting that feudalism, even in Europe, was a much more confined regime than is thought. If there is anything new in the world, it is not techno-feudalism, it is techno-colonialism.

One of the fundamental characteristics of colonialism is the abysmal line that separates “us” (the metropolitan sociability of fully human beings) and “them” (the colonial sociability of sub-humans). This division is neither essential nor ontological (humanity is one). It is driven by short-term tactical objectives. And the main objective is always free access to so-called natural resources, without which capitalism cannot survive. Vlodymyr Zelensky’s legitimacy is as great or as small as that of Nicolas Maduro, but while the former is welcomed as a hero, the latter is captured and treated as a criminal. If indeed Nicolas Maduro did not win the elections, Zelensky is the product of a coup d’état disguised as a color revolution (2014) – in which Ms. Victoria Nuland handed out sandwiches to protesters – and his term has long since ended. The prolongation of the war is his insurance policy for staying in power. Zelensky has long since handed over the minerals and land to US companies. Maduro’s crime was not handing over the oil until now. In addition, Zelensky serves to annoy Russia, China’s main ally, while Venezuela accommodates both.

The fear of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping

As current Western leaders measure others by their mediocre standards, their concern is not with the aberrant and barbaric illegality committed in Venezuela. They are primarily concerned with the possibility that Putin is now legitimized to capture Zelensky or China to invade Taiwan. I don’t like to make predictions, but I am convinced that the US has just given China and Russia a golden opportunity for them to show their moral superiority over the West. As rising empires, they have other means of imposing their will and doing so with the credible appearance of a positive sum: all countries win, although Russia and China win more.

What next?

I read the National Security Strategy published in November 2025 very carefully. It is an important document that should be read by all democrats around the world. The world is divided between two rival powers, one of which is willing to use all means to defeat its rival and to do so as quickly as possible. To do so, it must transform its sphere of influence into a fortress defended by loyal vassals. The two loyal vassals are self-mutilated Europe (Russia is part of Europe) and Latin America. China’s access to Europe is already blocked. That was the objective of the war in Ukraine, which Europeans are now consolidating at their own expense.

The important thing is to further weaken Europe and make it increasingly dependent on the US. To do this, it is important to reduce the European Union to irrelevance. The first act was Brexit and regaining the unconditional loyalty of the United Kingdom. Now it is a matter of ending the European Union: when they are isolated European countries are weaker and easier to control. Let us note one of the priorities of the policy for Europe (p. 27): “Building up healthy nations in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe through commercial ties, weapons sales, political collaboration, and cultural and educational exchanges.” This formulation shows how the dominant countries of the European Union are excluded from this policy, especially France, Germany, and the Nordic countries. In Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe lies the hope of the world’s future.

This formulation shows how the dominant countries of the European Union are excluded from this policy, especially France, Germany, and the Nordic countries. In Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe lies the hope of vassalage. These are the weakest countries, with weaker social democracy and therefore more susceptible to being governed by conservative (preferably far-right) parties whose loyalty to the US will never be questioned. The Italians, Greeks, Spaniards, and Portuguese know what this means. For example, the Portuguese, on the eve of presidential elections, have certainly noticed the large investments in advertising by the far-right party, Chega. The poor vote, but the rich pay. All this in addition to their huge presence on social media. In a semi-presidential system, a Chega candidate, once elected President of the Republic, will easily convince the Portuguese that he wants to change Portugal, but that the system won’t let him because the blocking parties oppose it. There is no other solution but to provoke a political crisis, dissolve parliament, call elections, and hope that his party wins the elections (alone or in coalition with a right-wing party – PSD – whose political agenda is already “adapted” to that of the far right). Then everything will be different…

Latin America is problematic due to its important trade relations with China. The destabilization processes must be tougher. The case of Venezuela is very revealing. In the case of Osama Bin Laden’s kidnapping by special forces, no American soldiers died and only a few of Osama’s relatives died. In Maduro’s case, between 30 and 40 soldiers from the presidential guard died, many of them Cuban, according to information from the Cuban government. For now, nothing can be confirmed, not even whether there were negotiations and who participated in them. One thing is certain: the Venezuelan people knew nothing and were taken by surprise. And even less is known (or wanted to be known) about the Venezuelan indigenous peoples (Wayuu, Warao, Pemon, Yanomani, etc.) who make up 2-3% of the population and whose relationship with the Bolivarian revolution has long been tense due to the exploitation of natural resources (mining) in their ancestral territories.

Next come the three big puzzles for the NSS: Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Mexico is a priority because Cuba’s survival will depend on it, and Cuba must fall because it is a matter of prestige for the great statesman Marco Rubio. The interventions vary. Gustavo Petro has already been declared a narco-terrorist. In turn, as Brazilians are well aware, the blockade candidate, Lula da Silva, was arrested in 2018 to be removed from the presidential race. The governments that followed privatized the country’s strategic wealth so that, if Lula da Silva’s return could not be prevented, he would return to a country very different from the one he had left. And so it was. Nicolas Maduro may also return, but if he does, he will find a very different country, especially in terms of control over oil exploration.

Each country’s strategy will be different, but they will all have something in common: massive intervention by BigTech and the control they have over the Internet, strategic satellite communications, and social media. Selective digital blackouts will be one of the weapons used to immobilize resistance to imperial designs. China and Russia are already beginning to take precautions, and I think they have good reasons to do so.

Latin America is more divided than ever, as became clear at the recent meeting of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States). In fact, some countries cannot play the innocence and surprise card in everything that is happening in Venezuela. In my view, Brazil made a very serious strategic mistake by blocking Venezuela’s entry into BRICS. This was an important contribution to Venezuela’s isolation. Another, even more perverse contribution came from the Europeans when they awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to someone who had called for US military intervention in her own country. Donald Trump is the protagonist of this barbarity, but he did not act without receiving encouraging signals. Signals imposed by him? Perhaps we will never know.

And how to block China in Africa and the Middle East? It is difficult to say whether Israel is, like Europe, a loyal vassal of the US, because in this case, it is not clear who is the vassal and who is the master. Iran is the big puzzle in the Middle East; in Africa it is Nigeria. The strategy is well defined. In one way or another, both countries are targeted for neutralization. The elephant in the NSS room is what will happen within the US, an impoverished, divided society, ignorant of what it is today and deluded about what it was yesterday, in short, a society where a civil war is already taking place in dribs and drabs with massacres in schools, supermarkets, and churches. What saves us is that history is not deterministic and that chance and the resistance of the people have reasons that imperial reason does not know.

What is to be done?

The left and the war of liberation

If it is true that we are in a period of recolonization, the response of the people can only be a war of liberation. Even if it is very different from previous wars, starting with that of Haiti in 1804. Unfortunately, critical thinking and left-wing politics have not yet realized the transformation, and each party is presenting its little candidate with its little program to entertain the long winter or summer evenings (depending on the country).

UN and European Council

At the institutional level, I dare to make two suggestions involving two Portuguese men whom fate has placed at the head of two institutions that are already dead and only show signs of life due to the illusion created by the inertia of history.

In the case of the UN, António Guterres should resign immediately. It would be the only act of similar impact and opposite to that of the invasion and recolonization of Venezuela. Those who know Guterres know that he has some virtues, but there is one he lacks: courage. We remember Kofi Annan and Boutros-Boutros Ghali and the price they paid for opposing the designs of the US. Guterres has eaten crow too often.

In the case of the European Council, chaired by António Costa, he too should resign because the sovereignty of peoples no longer makes sense, especially when one belongs to the sphere of influence of the US, which has just thrown sovereignty down the drain of the magnificent buildings in Brussels. But Costa has the same problem as Guterres and one more. To the pride of the Portuguese, António Costa was never a victim of racism (as far as I know) while he was minister and prime minister of Portugal. However, I am sure that if he dared to deviate from the script written by the US ambassador to the EU, Ursula von der Leyen, President Trump would be the first person to play the racist card against Costa with his usual rudeness. The same thing happened to Obama when he was in the White House. Obama behaved so well that he was even the great promoter of remote and aseptic killing by drones. Several thousand people died. And he had already won the Nobel Prize, of course. So, nothing to expect from Costa.

What remains? Everything.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos is the emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Coimbra in Portugal.

8 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Stansfield Smith

The US “regime change” operation against Venezuela has been defeated. The Bolivarian Revolution remains firmly in power. Now, Washington’s campaign against the Chavistas attempts to paint Interim President Delcy Rodriguez as compromising on the heritage of Presidents Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez. The Wall Street Journal ran an article Venezuelan Regime’s New Strategy: Appease Trump to Survive, referring to Delcy Rodriguez’ official statement January 4 (below).

The Washington Post on January 6 could state “the Trump administration appears to have quietly settled on Delcy Rodríguez, Nicolás Maduro’s right hand, as the figure it prefers to lead Venezuela after Maduro’s fall. This was not an improvised choice. Reportedly, it is the result of prolonged negotiations in which she presented herself as the natural successor to Maduro.” In fact, Venezuela operated according to its constitution, approved in a national referendum, where the vice president takes office if the President cannot fulfill his duties. The vice president is Delcy Rodriguez. Her becoming president follows Venezuela’s highest law. Trump had nothing to do with it.

Trump’s remarks on January 3 that Rodríguez had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and appeared “quite courteous,” saying “we’re going to do whatever you need,” aimed to sell the story of her acquiescing to Washington. But Rodríguez swiftly contradicted that story hours later, appearing on state television to declare that “there is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.”

January 5, the Wall Street Journal escalated the campaign to smear now acting President Delcy in an article that came out two days after she assumed presidential powers. It claimed the CIA viewed Delcy as the best-positioned short-term successor to President Maduro. The intention is to make us think the CIA has a special connection with her. In fact, by this time, she was already interim president, and Washington saw it could do nothing about it but sell the story she is there by US choice.

This US fake news campaign seeks to sow division in the Chavista movement and among defenders of Venezuela by instigating rumors that the kidnapping of Maduro involved a “mole,” and that Delcy Rodriguez had a deal with the CIA and Trump.

In addition, much is made of part of her January 4 statement out of its context: “We invite the US government to collaborate with us on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law to strengthen lasting community coexistence.” Some interpret this as compromising if not a step towards capitulation. In fact, she emphasized Venezuela does not want war, but a “respectful international relationship between the United States and Venezuela, and between Venezuela and the countries of the region, based on sovereign equality and non-interference…That has always been the position of President Nicolás Maduro and it is the position of all of Venezuela at this time.” This is also exactly what Cuba has always asked of the United States.

Her whole statement: Message from Venezuela to the World and to the United States

Venezuela reaffirms its commitment to peace and peaceful coexistence. Our country aspires to live without external threats, in an environment of respect and international cooperation. We believe that global peace is built by first guaranteeing peace within each nation.

We consider it a priority to move toward a balanced and respectful international relationship between the United States and Venezuela, and between Venezuela and the countries of the region, based on sovereign equality and non-interference. These principles guide our diplomacy with the rest of the world.

We extend an invitation to the US government to work together on a cooperation agenda aimed at shared development, within the framework of international law, and to strengthen lasting community coexistence.

President Donald Trump: our peoples and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war. That has always been the position of President Nicolás Maduro and it is the position of all of Venezuela at this time. That is the Venezuela I believe in, to which I have dedicated my life. My dream is for Venezuela to be a great power where all good Venezuelans can come together.

Venezuela has a right to peace, development, sovereignty, and a future.

Delcy Rodríguez, Acting President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

Unfortunately, many who should know better fell for the US rulers’ propaganda campaign. A Consortium News piece declared, Did Venezuela VP Hand Over Maduro in Deal With the US? Rather than exposing US psyops, which earned it its high reputation, here it gives it legitimacy. Another, Tariq Ali, once a respected Trotskyist anti-war activist, claimed on X that “the US is backing Delcy who has promised them whatever they want.” And reposts long discredited Eva Golinger, “Internal Coup? Was Maduro Betrayed by his VP?” And, “Sure seems like Delcy Rodriguez was the CIA source on the inside who set Maduro up and handed him over to the United States.” None of these smears are based on any evidence.

On January 4, President Trump declared, “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Delcy Rodriguez has responded, “The Venezuelan people are a people who do not surrender, and we do not give up…President Nicolas Maduro’s instructions have been given. Let’s go out and defend our homeland…We are ready to defend Venezuela…We will never again be slaves.”

Manolo de los Santos’ excellent article explains who Delcy Rodriguez is. “The Rodríguez family’s revolutionary credentials are etched in struggle. Their father, Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, a leader of the Socialist League, a Marxist-Leninist organization, was tortured and murdered by the Punto Fijo regime in 1976. Both Delcy and her brother Jorge (the President of the National Assembly) emerged from this tradition of clandestine and mass struggle for socialism. President Maduro himself was a cadre of the same organization. To suggest betrayal among them or capitulation born of cowardice or opportunism ignores four decades of shared political formation, persecution, and leadership under relentless imperialist aggression and the class character of their revolutionary leadership.”

Now, not only do we have the US government repudiating the world and international law by invading a country and seizing its president for admitted concocted reasons. We must face the fact that the US psyops system continues to be so effective that it is able to dupe leading long-time opponents of the US empire, like Tariq Ali, into being mouthpieces for its own “regime change” propaganda.

Stansfield Smith, ChicagoALBASolidarity.org

8 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad and Carlos Ron

On the early morning of January 3, the United States government launched a massive attack on Caracas, Venezuela, and three of the country’s states. Roughly 150 aircraft swarmed the skies, bombing with exceptional ferocity. Amongst these aircraft were EA-18 Growlers equipped with the most advanced electronic warfare systems, such as the Next General Jammers, as well as AH-64 Apache and CH-47 Chinook helicopters. Residents of the city had never experienced such sustained violence: loud explosions, massive plumes of smoke, and aircraft—–seemingly unconcerned about counter-attacks —– plunged the city into darkness. Later, at a press conference, US President Donald Trump said, ‘The lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have. It was dark and it was deadly’. The United States does not spend more than $1 trillion annually on its military without having built the world’s most lethal arsenal. This was hyper-imperialism in hyper-drive.

Elite Delta Force troops descended from the helicopters to the location where President Nicolás Maduro was spending the night. They faced resistance from soldiers on the ground, but overwhelming firepower from the air killed many Venezuelan and Cuban soldiers (24 Venezuelans, according to the Venezuelan Army, and 32 Cubans, according to Havana). Once ground resistance was neutralised, the Delta Force seized President Maduro and Venezuela National Assembly member, Cilia Flores, Maduro’s wife. They were taken to the USS Iwo Jima and then flown to the United States to stand trial in the Southern District of New York, based on an indictment alleging that they ‘corrupted once-legitimate institutions to import cocaine into the United States’. Six people are accused in the indictment, including Maduro and Flores.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, Vice President Delcy Rodriquez assumed leadership in Maduro’s absensce. She held a widely publicized meeting with all the main political leaders, including the Minister of Interior Diosdado Cabello who was also named in the indictment. In this initial meeting, Rodriquez called for the release of Maduro and Flores, emphasised that Maduro remains the legitimate president, and confirmed that the government remained intact and at work to assess the situation. Within a day, Rodriquez—now sworn in as acting president in the absence of Maduro –said that she is open to discussion with the United States to prevent another attack, though she continued to insist on the release and return of Maduro and Flores. Certainly, the scale of the attack by the United States made it clear that Venezuela cannot sustain a full barrage from the US over a period, thus, reopening dialogue will be necessary, especially regarding Trump’s primary interest: the oil industry. Rodriquez comes from a revolutionary family, her father Jorge Antonio Rodriquez being the founder of the Socialist League, in which Delcy Rodriquez and Maduro once served as cadres. There is no question of any surrender of the Bolivarian process, which is a fundamental political line for Rodriquez and the team that is leading Venezuela’s government.

As dawn broke on 3 January and the stench of bombs lingered in the air, the population was both alarmed and shocked. It is important to emphasise that the 2003 Operation Shock and Awe bombing campaign in Iraq was dwarfed by the bombing of Operation Absolute Resolve (2026) against Venezuela. The bombs were way more powerful, and the weapons systems far more sophisticated and overwhelming. Yet it did not take long for people to take to the streets. A spontaneous open-mic outside the Presidential Palace of Miraflores drew crowds to speak out against the attack on their country. Most speakers spoke passionately with great feeling about the Bolivarian process. They understood that this attack was against their sovereignty, and-–more significantly–-that this was an attack on behalf of the Venezuela’s old oligarchy and US oil conglomerates. Their clarity was striking, yet corporate media ignored this coverage.

The weakness of the new mood in the Global South

A few hours before the attack on Venezuela, President Maduro met with Qiu Xiaoqi, the high envoy of President Xi Jinping. They discussed China’s Third Policy Paper on Latin America (released December 10), in which the Chinese government affirmed, ‘as a developing country and a member of the Global South, China has always stood in solidarity through thick and thin with the Global South, including Latin America and the Caribbean’. They reviewed the 600 projects that are being jointly conducted between China and Venezuela and the $70 billion Chinese investment in Venezuela. Maduro and Qiu chatted, and then they took photographs which were posted widely on social media and shown on Venezuelan television. Qiu then left with the Chinese Ambassador to Venezuela Lan Hu and the directors of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Latin America and Caribbean department, Liu Bo and Wang Hao. Within hours, the city was being bombed. That day, the spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, ‘Such hegemonic acts of the US seriously violate international law and Venezuelan sovereignty, and threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean region. China firmly opposes it’. Beyond that, little could be done. China does not have the capacity to roll back US hyper-imperialism through military force.

Within Latin America, the rising Angry Tide – led by Argentina’s Javier Milei – celebrated the capture of Maduro, while Ecuador’s right-wing President Daniel Noboa made the point not only about Venezuela, but about the need to defeat the Pink Tide that had been inspired by Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarianism: ‘All the criminal narco-Chavistas will have their moment. Their structure will finally collapse across the continent’. Argentina led a group of ten countries to block a condemnation of the US violation of the UN Charter at a meeting of the thirty-three-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). These countries were Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago. It is a sign of the Angry Tide’s growing influence that CELAC, once able to stand for sovereignty, is now dragged into support for US adventurism in Latin America and for Trump’s orientation toward the revival of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine.

CELAC was established in 2010 from the Rio Group (1986) in 2010 to form a regional body excluding the United States (as the Organisation of American States does), which is why its creation was helped along by the Pink Tide. Its first co-chairs were right-wing Chilean President Sebastián Piñera and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. This kind of unity of the right and left over the idea of sovereignty is now weakened beyond recognition. A failure of CELAC to act has meant that not only its orientation (including the passage of the idea that the Latin America is a Zone of Peace in the 2014 Havana summit) has been dismissed, but so too has the Charter of the Organisation of American States.

Trump has openly pledged to revive the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, first articulated by US President James Monroe to combat not only European interference in the Western hemisphere but also the growth of independence led by people such as Simón Bolívar, one of Latin America’s greatest heroes. Bolivarianism was revived by Chávez as one of the core ideological frameworks of the Pink Tide. Trump’s open embrace of the Monroe Doctrine and his call for a “Trump Corollary” (do what it takes to enforce the Doctrine) signals the US aim to restore old oligarchies across the hemisphere and grant US conglomerates free rein (potentially even reviving the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a trade initiative defeated by Chávez and others in 2005). This is class struggle on a continental level.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.

Carlos Ron is Co-Coordinator of the Nuestra America office of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.

8  January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By V.A. Mohamad Ashrof

This article examines the theological and legal tensions arising from the linguistic distinction drawn between the Arabic term ‘Allah’ and the English term ‘God’ within pluralistic secular frameworks. Centred on a recent controversy in Guruvayur, Kerala—where elected councillors chose to swear their oaths ‘in the name of Allah’ rather than the statutory ‘in the name of God’—this article deconstructs what it identifies as the Delusion of Distinction.

In the municipality of Guruvayur, Kerala—a region celebrated for its sacred identity as a “temple town” and its long history of communal coexistence—a legal and theological tremor recently surfaced. During their official induction, councillors belonging to the Muslim League opted to swear their oaths ‘in the name of Allah’ instead of the constitutionally prescribed ‘in the name of God’ as stipulated in the Third Schedule of the Indian Constitution and the Oaths Act of 1969. This prompted a formal complaint by Kerala Congress (M) leader R. H. Abdul Salim, who sought their disqualification on the grounds of procedural deviation.

Though appearing at first glance to be a matter of bureaucratic literalism, the episode unveils a deeper theological crisis. The controversy rests on a shared—but flawed—assumption held by both the councillors and their critics: that ‘Allah’ and ‘God’ refer to distinct ontological realities. This article argues that such an assumption represents a fundamental departure from Quranic hermeneutics. By transforming a linguistic signifier into a marker of tribal exclusivity, both parties inadvertently resurrect the very barriers the Quran sought to dismantle. Through linguistic, theological, and constitutional analysis, this article demonstrates that ‘Allah’ is not a sectarian brand name for a Muslim deity but a universal reference to the Absolute.

The Etymological Reality: ‘Allah’ as the Universal Definite

Any resolution of this dispute must begin with the foundations of Semitic linguistics. The word Allah (الله) is a contraction of al (the) and ilah (deity or god). Its literal meaning is “The God”—singular, definite, and unique.

This etymology is not exclusive to Islam; it belongs to a shared Abrahamic heritage. The term is cognate with the Hebrew Elohim and the Aramaic Alaha. Long before the advent of Islam, Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews used Allah in their prayers and scriptures. Even today, Arabic translations of the Bible employ Allah to refer to the God of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.

When the Guruvayur councillors insist on ‘Allah’ to the exclusion of ‘God’, they commit what may be termed a semantic fallacy. They treat a common noun elevated into a proper noun as though it were a sectarian trademark. From a Quranic standpoint, this is a regression. The Quran did not introduce a new deity; it came to correct distorted human understandings of the One God already invoked across languages and cultures. To claim that ‘Allah’ cannot be translated as ‘God’ is to deny the linguistic fluidity intrinsic to the Semitic tradition itself.

The Quranic Bridge: Unity of the Divine Referent

The strongest rebuttal to this linguistic exclusivism emerges from the Quran itself. In Q.29:46, the Quran outlines a principled framework for interfaith engagement:

“And do not argue with the People of the Scripture except in a way that is best … and say: ‘We believe in what has been revealed to us and what has been revealed to you. Our God (Ilahuna) and your God (Ilahukum) is One, and to Him we submit.’”

The phrase wa-ilahuna wa-ilahukum waḥid is theologically decisive. Rather than employing sectarian nomenclature, the Quran deliberately uses the generic term Ilah to assert unity of referent. It does not say, “Our Allah and your God are the same,” but affirms that the object of worship is one, regardless of the linguistic label.

By insisting on ‘Allah’ as a non-translatable term within a secular constitutional oath, the councillors unintentionally convey the message: “Our God is not your God.” This directly contradicts the Quranic mandate. If the God of the Quran is the same God worshipped in the Torah and the Gospel, then He is undoubtedly the same ‘God’ invoked in a secular oath. To deny this reduces Rabb al-‘Alamin (Lord of the Worlds) to a Rabb al-Muslimin (Lord of the Muslims)—a localised, tribal deity.

Linguistic Tribalism and the Delusion of Distinction

The Delusion of Distinction arises from the mistaken belief that divine sanctity is bound to the phonetics of a particular language. This form of linguistic tribalism is explicitly rejected in Q.17:110:

“Say: Call upon Allah or call upon the Most Merciful (al-Raḥman). Whichever you call—His are the most beautiful names.”

This verse establishes a principle of linguistic plurality. If the Quran permits substitution of Allah with al-Raḥman, it validates any name that truthfully points to the Divine essence. The Most Beautiful Names (al-Asma’ al-Ḥusna) are attributes—Justice, Mercy, Truth—not magical sounds rendered invalid through translation.

To suggest that the English word ‘God’ is ontologically inferior is to confine the Divine to Arabic phonetics. Yet if Allah is truly the Creator of all humanity, then God, Ishwar, Daivam, Yahweh, and Dieu are all legitimate references to the same transcendent reality. By erecting linguistic barriers, one does not defend Islam; one provincialises God.

Deconstructing the Legal Complaint: A False Dichotomy

The complaint filed by R. H. Abdul Salim is likewise grounded in a false dichotomy. It assumes that because the statute specifies ‘God’, the use of ‘Allah’ constitutes defiance of constitutional authority.

In a multilingual and pluralistic democracy, ‘God’ functions as a constitutional placeholder for the highest moral authority recognised by an individual’s conscience. To penalise an elected representative for invoking the Arabic equivalent of that placeholder is a form of sectarian legalism. However, the councillors’ refusal to accept ‘God’ inadvertently reinforces Salim’s premise, as though they were indeed swearing by a different authority.

A Quranically informed position would have recognised that swearing by ‘God’ is swearing by Allah. By turning the issue into a public contestation, the Divine Name was reduced to a political marker rather than a moral anchor. This constitutes what may be called semantic idolatry.

The Abrahamic Continuum and the Error of Brand-Naming

The Quran consistently presents itself as a confirmation (muṣaddiq) of previous revelations, not a rupture. Q.2:136 commands believers to declare:

“We believe in Allah and what has been revealed to us … and what was given to Moses and Jesus … We make no distinction between any of them.”

If no distinction is to be made between the prophets, none can be made between the Divine source who sent them. The God who spoke to Moses as Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh and to Jesus as Alaha is the same Being identified as Allah in Arabic.

Insisting that Allah cannot be translated into God or Daivam introduces a distinction precisely where the Quran insists on unity. It amounts to a brand-name theology, implying that the Islamic God is a different “product” from the God of previous revelations—an implication bordering on theological incoherence within tawḥid.

Meaning over Sound: The Essence of the Divine Names

Islamic spirituality is rooted in meaning (ma‘na), not mere sound (lafẓ). The Divine Names describe attributes of essence, not phonetic charms. If God is al-Ḥaqq (The Truth), then invoking Truth in any language is an invocation of God.

To treat ‘Allah’ as possessing a sacramental power denied to ‘God’ is a form of phonetic fetishism. It ignores the Quranic assertion that God is closer to the human being than their jugular vein (50:16)—a proximity entirely independent of language.

More subtly, it risks a form of semantic shirk: the suggestion that Allah and God represent rival referents. Tawḥid rejects this absolutely. There is no “Muslim God” and “secular God”. Any sincere reference to the Creator is a reference to Allah.

Kerala, Language, and the Fitna of Identity Politics

Kerala has long exemplified a composite cultural ethos, where Islam historically integrated local linguistic traditions rather than displacing them. The Guruvayur controversy signals a troubling drift towards linguistic Arabisation as identity politics.

This discord born of symbolism overshadowing substance. A public oath should foreground accountability and service, not linguistic posturing. The Quran declares that wherever one turns, there is the Face of God (2:115). By rejecting the word ‘God’, the councillors turned away from that Face as it appears within the linguistic reality of their own society.

Towards a Quranic Secularism

The Oaths Act exists to ensure moral accountability, not theological gatekeeping. The spirit of the law rests in sincerity of intention (niyyah), not phonetic precision.

A genuinely Quranic secularism recognises that universal principles of justice, equity, and integrity are manifestations of the Divine in the public sphere. Within such a framework, ‘God’ is not a secular substitute for Allah but its English synonym.

The Guruvayur councillors erred because they accepted the premise of otherness. A truly Quranic response would have affirmed: “I swear in the name of God, whom I call Allah in the language of my faith.”

The Guruvayur episode exposes a deeper malaise: the branding of the Divine. While the councillors may have acted from a sense of religious sincerity, their stance revealed a lack of Quranic depth. By treating Allah and God as distinct, they perpetuated a Delusion of Distinction that fractures what the Quran insists is One.

A mature secular democracy requires linguistic flexibility, just as faith traditions require theological breadth. Whether one says Allah, God, or Ishwar, the referent is the same Lord of the Worlds. Recognising this unity is essential for an inclusive public square where service, justice, and integrity matter more than the phonetics of devotion.

V.A. Mohamad Ashrof is an independent Indian scholar specializing in Islamic humanism. With a deep commitment to advancing Quranic hermeneutics that prioritize human well-being, peace, and progress, his work aims to foster a just society, encourage critical thinking, and promote inclusive discourse and peaceful coexistence.

10 January 2026

Source: countercurrents.org