America is a Gangster State

Picture of fire at Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuela's largest military complex, after a series of explosions in Caracas on January 3, 2026. (Photo by Luis JAIMES / AFP via Getty Images)

The kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife solidifies America’s role as a gangster state. Violence does not generate peace. It generates violence. The immolation of international and humanitarian law, as the U.S. and Israel have done in Gaza, and as took place in Caracas, generates a world without laws, a world of failed states, warlords, rogue imperial powers and perpetual violence and chaos. If there is one lesson we should have learned in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, it is that regime change spawns Frankensteinian monsters of our own creation. The Venezuelan military and security forces will no more accept the kidnapping of their president and U.S. domination – done as in Iraq to seize vast oil reserves -- than the Iraqi security forces and military or the Taliban. This will not go well for anyone, including the U.S.