So… We’re Just Collecting World Leaders Now?

So, in case you haven’t heard yet, the United States literally went into Venezuela, bombed a few targets, and captured their president, Nicolás Maduro. Yep — as wild as that sounds, that’s exactly what happened. U.S. forces grabbed him and his wife and flew them straight to New York, where he’s now facing drug-trafficking charges in court. This wasn’t some polite “please show up to court” situation. It was a full-on military raid in another country.

Now, to be fair, Maduro isn’t exactly an innocent angel. For years he’s been accused of corruption, rigging elections, human-rights abuses, and being mixed up in drug trafficking. The U.S. has actually had criminal charges filed against him since 2020. A lot of Venezuelans blame him for the economic disaster in their country, and plenty of people wanted him gone. So I totally understand why some folks are cheering this on.

But here’s where I have a problem with it: the way it went down. The U.S. didn’t get permission from Venezuela. There wasn’t some big international agreement or United Nations decision. They just went in, used military force, and took another country’s president. That’s why so many people — including world leaders and legal experts — are calling this “kidnapping.” And honestly, when you look at it that way, it’s hard to disagree.

The big issue for me is what this means for the future. If the United States can just roll into another country, grab its leader, and drag them into a U.S. courtroom, what’s to stop other powerful countries from doing the same thing? Today it’s Venezuela. Tomorrow it could be somewhere else. Once you break that rule about respecting other countries’ sovereignty, things get messy really fast.

Meanwhile, Venezuela is now being led by Maduro’s former vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, at least for now. The country is tense, the world is watching, and nobody really knows what’s going to happen next. Even people in the U.S. are split — some think this was bold and necessary, others think it was reckless and illegal.

My personal take? I don’t support dictators, but I do think there should be rules about how governments handle this stuff. And this whole situation feels like the U.S. may have crossed a line. Maybe Maduro deserves to face justice — but the way it happened matters, too. Because once you normalize something like this, it’s really hard to walk it back.

If this leads to real change and a better life for Venezuelans, that would be amazing. But right now, it mostly just feels like the world just got a little more unstable — and that’s honestly kind of scary.