The arrest of Nicolás Maduro has triggered a predictable chorus in Europe. Laments about the collapse of a “rules-based international order” have poured forth, as though such an order had ever functioned as advertised, or had ever applied evenly. The distress is real, but the premise is shaky. What is unraveling is not a system of rules, but a long-standing illusion about how power has actually worked.
For decades, much of Europe persuaded itself that international politics had been tamed by norms, arbitration mechanisms and shared restraint. This belief was never more than a partial truth, sustained largely by American power and European acquiescence. When rules aligned with the interests of the strong, they were invoked with reverence. When they did not, they were quietly bypassed. The novelty today is not the return of power politics, but the erosion of the language that once concealed it.
History offers little support for the nostalgic narrative. In 1945, half of Europe was consigned to Soviet domination not through legal arbitration but through calculation. No international court intervened on behalf of the Baltic states or Central Europe. Their fate was settled by bargaining among victors. Spain, for its part, secured the stability of Franco’s regime through defence agreements with the United States in 1953. Moral outrage was scarce. Cuba’s endurance as a frozen dictatorship after 1962 followed the same logic: a tacit division of spheres of influence, dressed up in ideological rhetoric but governed by power.
The so-called “rules-based order” coexisted comfortably with these arrangements. It was never designed to prevent them.
What has changed is tone. Under Donald Trump, America no longer bothers to speak softly while carrying a big stick. It brandishes the stick, sometimes clumsily, and dispenses with euphemism. Many Europeans appear more offended by this rhetorical bluntness than by the substance of American policy itself. The obscenity, in their view, lies not in the exercise of power but in its unvarnished admission.
This discomfort obscures a deeper problem. Europe’s faith in rules has often served as a substitute for strategy. It justified chronic underinvestment in defence, the outsourcing of security to Washington, and energy policies that assumed abundance in a world where scarcity never disappeared. It also sustained a vast ecosystem of international institutions and expert commentary devoted less to deciding outcomes than to explaining them after the fact.
Venezuela exposes the fragility of this worldview. Should the United States succeed in imposing decisive influence over the country—and, by extension, over the world’s largest proven oil reserves—the implications would extend far beyond Latin America. This would not be a humanitarian crusade, whatever the accompanying rhetoric. It would be a strategic manoeuvre with global consequences.
Control over Venezuelan heavy crude would reduce America’s exposure to supply shocks in the Persian Gulf and soften the economic risks of confrontation with Iran. It would strengthen Washington’s hand in shaping global energy flows, reinforce the dollar’s centrality in oil markets and help preserve the financial architecture that underpins American power. In such a scenario, Venezuela becomes less a failed state in need of redemption than a strategic asset in a broader contest.
Seen this way, Caracas is not an anomaly but a precedent. It signals that economic pressure, political engineering and, if necessary, force remain viable tools for restructuring states that fall outside acceptable alignments. The message will not be lost in Tehran, Beijing or Moscow.
None of this means that democracy, law or human rights are irrelevant. It means they are insufficient on their own. Moral language untethered from power convinces domestic audiences but rarely alters outcomes abroad. Rules, when they matter, tend to follow balances of power rather than create them.
Europe now faces an uncomfortable choice. It can continue to mourn the passing of an order that never quite existed, or it can confront the realities it long preferred to ignore. The world has not suddenly become more brutal; it has merely become less polite. Accepting this need not entail cynicism. It requires responsibility.
If Europe wishes to defend rules, it must also be willing to sustain them. Otherwise, Venezuela will not be the last mirror held up to its illusions.
