Late Friday night into early Saturday, I watched the news and scrolled through social media as reports of explosions in Caracas began to spread. I went to sleep unaware of what the morning would bring. Hours later, bleary-eyed and half-blind without my glasses, I woke to headlines announcing that the Trump administration had captured and arrested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in what it called “Operation Absolute Resolve,” transporting him to New York to face narco-trafficking charges. Maduro’s sudden removal is being celebrated by Venezuelans abroad and met with a mix of relief and unease inside the country. But beyond those reactions lies a far more troubling implication: Venezuela will not be the end.

And I mean that in multiple senses, domestic and international alike. Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that he intends to operate above the law. Under U.S. law, Congress authorizes war, not the president acting unilaterally. For those who insist that Saturday’s operation was not an act of war, international law is far less forgiving. The forcible capture of the head of another state constitutes a use of force prohibited under Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, which bars the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Recognition disputes do not create legal loopholes. Even if the administration claims Maduro was not the legitimate president, customary international law, the principle of sovereign equality, and the doctrine of non-intervention make clear that sovereignty cannot be violated absent self-defense or explicit authorization by the UN Security Council, neither of which applies here.

The United States has a long and troubled history of interventions abroad, but this action is unprecedented, especially given that Trump recently pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández in early December of 2025, the former president of Honduras who had been serving a U.S. federal sentence after being convicted of conspiring with major drug traffickers and using the Honduran state apparatus to facilitate the flow of cocaine into the United States. That the same administration now claims moral and legal authority to abduct the sitting leader of another country on narco-trafficking grounds is a contradiction so stark it should set off alarm bells across the international system.

This move comes from an administration that has repeatedly flouted the Constitution and the rule of law, deporting individuals in defiance of federal court orders and judicial stays, undermining asylum and due-process protections, and openly attacking judges who rule against it. It has dismantled or hollowed out federal agencies without congressional authorization, sidelining career civil servants through mass firings and loyalty tests, reviving efforts to reclassify thousands of federal workers to strip them of civil-service protections, and purging inspectors general charged with oversight and accountability.

The administration has deployed federal forces and the National Guard in ways that raised serious legal questions about the limits of executive authority, while engaging in blatant nepotism by elevating family members and close political allies into positions of influence. All of this has unfolded alongside the routine use of the presidency as a vehicle for personal and family enrichment, from steering government business toward Trump-owned properties to leveraging public office for private financial and political gain.

What still haunts me is the Vanity Fair article, a two-part profile by journalist and author Chris Whipple titled “Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and the ‘Junkyard Dogs’: The White House Chief of Staff on Trump’s Second Term.” Published in mid-December 2025, it was based on 11 on-the-record interviews with Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. The article was widely laughed off across social media as comedy, a knowing nod to truths many of us already sensed, its characters caricatured and cast aside in jest, but in retrospect it reads less like insider gossip and more like a warning flare. Wiles states plainly that Donald Trump operates with the belief that there is nothing he cannot do. Nothing. Zero. Nothing. A sitting president who believes there are no limits is not projecting strength. He is advertising danger, lawlessness, and impunity.

For Donald Trump and the cabal of wealthy patrons, both inside and outside his cabinet, the very idea of accountability feels foreign, a belief that by nearly every measure has been reinforced rather than challenged. But recognizing that reality means confronting another one. Venezuela will not be the end, not by a long shot. Whenever Trump needs a quick political win to satisfy his demand for ego and legitimacy, whether foreign or domestic, he has shown he will take it by any means necessary. Logic, strategy, vision, and responsible statecraft be damned. This is, after all, the same man who pressured a governor to “find” votes to overturn the 2020 election, conduct detailed in damning evidence and reinforced by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s recent congressional testimony, and who has consistently sought to deflect scrutiny from unresolved questions surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files. There are several recent incidents that lay bare this irrational and impulsive governing style, including the rush to frame overseas violence as political theater rather than sober diplomacy and hollow gestures at home dressed up as patriotism, such as the much-publicized $1,776 bonuses supposedly derived from tariffs and issued to military members, later revealed to be repackaged housing allowances they were already entitled to receive. Each episode follows the same script: spectacle over substance, symbolism over strategy, distraction in place of accountability.

We do not need a history lesson or another ritual invocation of past horrors. The writing is already on the wall: we know what happens when autocrats go unchecked, and when imperial ambitions inevitably collide with reality.

How and whether our elected officials, and Americans at large, respond now will determine what comes next. Maybe it is Greenland. Maybe Mexico. Maybe Canada. Perhaps there really is a third term after all, or the arrest of political opponents and dissenters. Why not? The law no longer appears to function as a bulwark, a barrier, or a meaningful deterrent for this administration and its whims. 

Some members of Congress across the aisle have begun expressing concern after the administration’s operation to capture Maduro, with debate largely tracking partisan lines. Democrats have raised objections with little emphasis on accountability, amounting to more performative bluster than consequence. Republicans have largely supported the operation, often to placate Trump and advance their own ambitions, though a smaller number have questioned how it aligns with the president’s professed “America First” agenda. Still others, exhausted by the daily chaos, are choosing to exit Congress rather than confront the consequences of speaking out. 

Nonetheless, without real accountability, Venezuela will not be the last episode of lawlessness and chaos we witness. And without any desire to sound hyperbolic or paranoid, what comes next may be far more sinister.

Jared O. Bell, PhD, syndicated with PeaceVoice, is a former U.S. diplomat and scholar of human rights and transitional justice, dedicated to advancing global equity and systemic reform.