لحظة ادراك

 A Thug in a Necktie

Hollywood-style scenes from a feature-length film, shuttling between the presidential palace in Caracas and a cell on Manhattan Avenue in New York, broadcast live by a thug in a necktie. A show of force aimed at anyone who strays from the stick of hegemony and expansion. He tells the entire world that whatever he says will be the law, and that no law will protect the weak. I will run politics with handcuffs, not by rules. In the betting halls of casinos and the rings of wrestling arenas, there are no wagers except on the strong and the wealthy. He is the offspring of a philosophy that says: Strike first, explain later. Whoever objects is accused; whoever refuses is punished; whoever endures is broken. In his lexicon there are no sovereign states or borders—only zones of influence and interests. There are no peoples, only pressure cards. There is no international law, only temporary obstacles that can be bypassed with a tweet on a platform built expressly for that purpose.

The arrest of an elected head of state is not a detail or a passing event; it is the end of an era and the beginning of a new one—an era in which international politics are run the way gangs are run, meanings are kidnapped, justice is shackled, and laws are kicked aside like worthless beggars. More dangerous than the act itself is the silent applause. The world’s silence—or its complicity—has turned this incident into a precedent. Today Venezuela, tomorrow someone else. Once ceilings are broken, breaking them becomes hardly worth mentioning. He did not merely arrest a president; he arrested the idea that the world is governed by rules. He arrested the illusion of international justice, the last remnants of mutual respect between states, and the freedom of peoples to determine their choices and interests.

After all that has happened, one must acknowledge the bitter truth: this thug did not descend upon the world from the sky. He is the product of a world that allowed power to run rampant, allowed populist rhetoric to replace the language of reason, and allowed the media to justify humiliation when it comes from an ally. This is not merely a Venezuelan issue; it is the issue of a world being shaped to fit the grip of a single man—a world reduced to a man who believes that reaching the presidency granted him an absolute mandate to do anything, that history is written with handcuffs, not ideas. Perhaps the most important question is not how he dares to do all this, nor why no one stopped him, but who put this thug in office in the first place. The answer lies with the American people, who chose their car’s fuel tank as a substitute for human freedom, justice, and equality—and who will pay the highest price when they try to reclaim them after they have been trampled by the very thug who rules them.

Let there be no equivocation: the world, through its silence and by swallowing the insult, has helped him press forward. He began with his allies before his adversaries. Twenty-seven European countries he turned into caricatures, summoning their leaders to televised tribute sessions. Fifty-seven Arab and Muslim states he made into models of extortion and plunder of their peoples’ resources. As for the strong among friends and foes who stood up to him, he placated them for a time. Even within the United States, the war he waged against Zohran Mamdani before the elections was nearly unprecedented in American history—only to receive him in the White House, humbled before the popular will that elevated him to the office of Mayor of New York. This is the only equation thugs have ever understood throughout history.

The surplus power possessed by the United States now lies in the hands of an obsessed thug, wielded to manufacture a degrading image of a people and a president who dared to challenge him—deliberately staged in this humiliating form as a message to the entire world, not only to America’s “backyard,” but to friends before enemies. Some populists may benefit from these policies in the short term—sometimes under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking here, or combating migrants there. Yet the truth he could not conceal is the loose money above ground and the precious minerals beneath it. This is the precise calculus behind what he did to Maduro: the sea of oil on which this country floats will not be open to Chinese investment; it belongs to Chevron and its likes, who decide to whom, when, and at what price it is sold—not the people of the land, nor its rightful owners.

The world should be more anxious than ever. Whoever thinks they have paid the tribute and settled the matter is deluded; whoever believes they have struck a deal over tax settlements is even more deluded. There is no limit to the appetite of thugs—even when they wear neckties.