Attack On Venezuela Will Destroy The US Empire | Amb. Chas Freeman

## US Interventionism: Oil & Historical Parallels The seizure of Venezuela’s leader and the legal case that followed cannot be understood as an isolated aberration; it is the latest act in a long, continuing performance of power in which strategic and commercial interests dance together. The conversation with Ambassador Chas Freeman situates this episode within a familiar arc: interventions framed as moral or legal imperatives are often animated, at least in part, by the calculus of energy and markets. From the overthrow of governments in Latin America to more recent operations in the Middle East, the pattern repeats—political decapitation presented as a way to restore order, while the spoils and the economic levers inevitably matter. Freeman stresses that the idea of simple, quick control over a national petroleum sector is a fantasy. Modern oil industries are intricate systems requiring years of expertise to revive and maintain; boots on the ground do not translate into immediate production. Yet the perception that force can secure access to resources persists in strategic thinking. Past interventions—Panama, Guatemala, Chile, Iraq—show a recurring combination of ideological rhetoric and explicit protection of commercial interests. The historical record is not simply one of isolated errors; it’s a catalogue of recurring assumptions that invading or coercing a regime will both stabilize a region and open markets. The Venezuelan seizure shatters that comforting narrative: the “dog has caught the car,” Freeman says, and the machine of empire now faces the consequences of having overplayed its reach. What distinguishes this instance is not only the target but the brazenness of the method. Kidnapping a head of state—or arranging his capture on foreign soil—and transporting him to be prosecuted under the constraints of a domestic judicial spectacle is not merely a policy choice; it is a deliberate repudiation of the international norms built to prevent might from making right. The conversation argues that such a step doesn’t just harm Venezuela; it undermines the very architecture of predictable, legal international behaviour and signals to other states that reciprocity and escalation are now rational responses. ## The "Automatic Weapons" Charge & Legal Imperialism One of the most striking features of the indictment discussed in the exchange is its deployment of typically domestic criminal statutes to justify extraterritorial action. The absurdity of charging a foreign head of state with possession of automatic firearms—when that possession occurred on Venezuelan soil—reveals a broader shift: the law has become an instrument of policy, stretched beyond precedent to validate the projection of force. Freeman labels this “rule by law” rather than “rule of law”: legal forms are preserved, but the substantive constraints that once restrained power are hollowed out. The conversation links this trajectory to earlier innovations in legal language that permitted rights to be suspended—terms like “enemy combatant” or the ad hoc re-interpretation of the Geneva Conventions. Those evolutions were not neutral technicalities; they were choices that amplified executive authority and curtailed protections previously regarded as sacrosanct. The expansion of jurisdiction, the creative reading of statutes, and the selective enforcement of immunities all amount to a legal imperialism where the dominant power retools domestic laws to legitimate extraterritorial coercion. This legal strategy carries dangerous precedent. If a superpower claims the right to indict or snatch foreign leaders by invoking domestic offenses that are nominally about protection of its forces or interests abroad, then weaker states will be left with no credible legal shield. The conversation warns that other states—especially those with capabilities to act—may emulate the tactic. Once the taboo against such operations is lifted, reciprocity becomes plausible: could Russia try to abduct a Western leader under some contrived legal pretext? The crisis is not merely moral or diplomatic; it is juridical, with implications for every nation that has relied on immunities and international norms to protect its sovereignty. ## Designing New Institutions: What to Keep from the UN? If the existing legal and institutional architecture has been eroded, what should a post-crisis redesign look like? The exchange explores reform not as nostalgic restoration of a pristine order, but as pragmatic reconstruction: keep what functions and reforge what doesn’t. The United Nations, for all its flaws, still offers useful mechanisms—forums for recognition, diplomatically mediated conflict resolution, and codified conventions that set baseline expectations. Freeman’s reflections imply that discarding these structures wholesale would be a mistake; instead, the global community must insist on clearer, enforced limits that prevent unilateral reinterpretation of law by powerful states. A reimagined multilateralism should restore reciprocity and penalties for breaches, not through toothless statements but via enforceable costs that bite where they matter: economic elites and corporate actors who profit from stability and access. International institutions must be retooled to make impunity more costly, whether by coordinated legal instruments, trade measures, or the creation of hybrid mechanisms capable of rapid fact-finding and accountability. Importantly, reform should be about lowering the transaction costs for the majority of states to act collectively. The current architecture privileges powerful states’ vetoes and allows selective enforcement. Any serious institutional redesign will have to address decision-making lock-ins and ensure that rules are not convertible into instruments of domination. ## How the Global Majority Can "Unfreeze" the System One of the most consequential themes in the exchange is the role of mid-sized and smaller states in breaking the impasse. Freeman points to a growing international reaction—expressions of outrage from a surprising range of countries—as evidence that the “global majority” is not passively accepting unilateral lawmaking. But outrage is not strategy. To “unfreeze” the system, these countries must convert moral protest into coordinated policy that imposes costs on flagrant violators of international norms. This is not merely about moral suasion; it’s about constructing leverage. States in Asia, Africa, and Latin America have economic, diplomatic, and normative tools that can be mobilized: coordinated refusal to recognize outcomes, selective withdrawal of cooperation in international bodies, and collective sanctions targeted at political and economic elites complicit in lawbreaking. Freeman underscores the need for measures that hurt the business interests and political patrons who enable imperial overreach. The global majority need not match the military might of the dominant power to be consequential; it need only make the international environment less hospitable to lawbreaking by increasing the costs of impunity. Equally important is narrative and institutional legitimacy. By creating alternative forums and coalitions—regional courts, trade agreements with conditionalities, or pooled diplomatic initiatives—smaller powers can build durable counterweights. The conversation suggests that history shows the powerful often assume other states will acquiesce; coordinated, principled resistance can change the arithmetic of what is politically feasible. ## Bottom- Up Sanctions & Overcoming Inertia Top-down sanctions regimes controlled by great powers have their own problems—often serving geopolitical aims unevenly and hurting populations rather than elites. The interview proposes complementary “bottom-up” measures: civil society, private actors, and municipal institutions in democracies can exert pressure that state-to-state diplomacy cannot. Targeted divestment campaigns, legal

Attack On Venezuela Will Destroy The US Empire | Amb. Chas Freeman Can a superpower simply kidnap a foreign leader and charge them with possessing weapons on their own soil? Now that the U.S. has effectively "caught the car" in Venezuela, is there any road left for international law, or have we fully entered the era of the outlaw state? To make sense of this unprecedented aggression, I brought back Ambassador Chas Freeman. As a former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas has seen the machinery of empire from the inside, and his assessment of this latest intervention—and the constitutional crisis accompanying it—is as chilling as it is essential. Links: Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack. com (Opt in for Academic Section from your profile settings: https://pascallottaz.substack.com/s /academic) Goods Store: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com Timestamps: 00:00:00 Trump's Attack on Venezuela 00:11:24 US Interventionism: Oil & Historical Parallels 00:22:08 The "Automatic Weapons" Charge & Legal Imperialism 00:32:37 Designing New Institutions: What to Keep from the UN? 00:36:46 How the Global Majority Can "Unfreeze" the System 00:41:59 Bottom- Up Sanctions & Overcoming Inertia 00:49:59 Conclusion: Deepfakes & The End of the Order #Pascal Hello, everybody, and welcome back. Today we’re joined once again by Ambassador Chas Freeman, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Chas, welcome back. Thank you. Good to be with you, Pascal. Chas, we’ve now seen that Donald Trump, on the second or third day of the year, attacked Venezuela. As a former U.S. official and diplomat for the United States, what did you make of this blatant attack on another nation? #Amb. Chas Freeman Well, I think there are several dimensions to this that need to be explored. One is, of course, that this was a meticulously planned information campaign—really, a disinformation campaign—with a lot of accusations against Israel, most of which had no substance. It was preceded by careful preparation of the press environment, the information environment, as well as by murders on the high seas of people suspected of being involved in moving drugs—not to the United States, actually, but to Trinidad for onward shipment to Europe and West Africa. Quite an elaborate story was developed in the media. The Trump administration announced a revised version of the Monroe Doctrine, presaging a rampage through South America and the Caribbean, presumably also Central America and North America, in the form of Mexico. All of this was quite out in the open. I think Nicolás Maduro underestimated it. He seemed to believe that Trump wouldn’t be serious. The first thing is that the operation itself was very skillfully managed. The second is that it was entirely -- 1 of 14 -- illegal—indecent, really an atrocity. I think it brought to an end three centuries of effort to develop a kind of international rule of law, starting in the 18th century and continuing on. Much of the 20th century, especially the last 50 years, was spent by the United States trying to promote that vision of the rule of law internationally. By the time of the Biden administration, that had decayed into something called the “rules-based order,” which basically meant: we make the rules, we enforce them on whomever we wish, and we exempt whomever we wish—including ourselves—from those rules. But I think what we're seeing is an international reaction building against this really outrageous repudiation of the whole idea of rules internationally. I've seen very strong statements by smaller countries—Singapore in your region, since you're in East Asia, as well as Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. The fact is, the rule of law has two purposes. One is, of course, to provide predictability to the environment so that people can carry on business in a normal manner, fairly sure of what is and isn’t going to happen. But more importantly, it protects the weak against the strong. And the strongest country in the world now—the United States—has just repudiated all consideration of the rights of everyone else. This is, in effect, a sort of tyranny over the globe. And I think, frankly, we've seen with the case of Gaza that words of outrage accomplish nothing. If the United States is not subjected to sanctions by the global majority—if it doesn’t pay a price, particularly its business elite—I think what we're looking at is a horror. I see that Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister of Denmark, is once again under threat from Trump about Greenland. And where does this stop? You know, Trump came into office claiming Greenland. He's also laid a claim to Iceland, remarkably. And I don't see how the European relationship with the United States survives this kind of thing. What happens to NATO? What happens to the EU? Who stands up to this bully? I think this is really a deciding event, if there ever was one. And I haven't even mentioned Panama. But setting a precedent—I just saw a wonderful cartoon someone sent me. It showed a television broadcaster saying, “In news of the Western Hemisphere, a peace-loving democracy has invaded and captured the leader of a neighboring war‑mongering country.” And it shows the Canadian Royal Mounted Police hauling Donald Trump off. He’s just set a precedent that can be applied to him. That is to say, if a leader is regarded as intolerable in his behavior, others can now take action. And someone pointed out, you know, what was the justification Trump used here—which was fictitious for the most part—about drug production in Venezuela? You know, the Mexican government could easily respond—since it’s failed completely to get any diplomatic reaction to its repeated requests to stop the flow of weapons from the United States into Mexico, weapons that are used by the drug cartels there to terrorize Mexican society. Mexicans, following this precedent, could simply bomb the places where the guns are made or stored. And they would have the precedent that Donald Trump has set as justification. So I think this has huge implications, not just for Venezuela. And there are a number of other aspects of this that are quite absurd. It’s very clear that Donald Trump expects Delcy Rodríguez, who is the constitutional successor—acting president through Nicolás Maduro in his absence now that he’s incarcerated in -- 2 of 14 -- New York—that they expect her to take over because she had a major role in the partial repair of the Venezuelan petroleum sector after the extremely bad management under Maduro. And she revived Venezuelan oil production to a considerable extent. That just means she can be bought to help American oil companies—she can be enticed to cooperate with the United States. So she’s being subjected, on the one hand, to blandishments: “If you cooperate and run Venezuela to our satisfaction, we’ll leave you alone, our companies will invest, and everything will be wonderful— for a while, anyway.” Of course, if you make that kind of deal with a mafioso, it doesn’t last. On the other hand, she’s being told, “If you don’t cooperate, your fate will be worse than Maduro’s.” So this is, again, the mafioso approach to managing relationships. A final note: I’d just say there’s a lot of absolute nonsense in the media. There’s a report that twenty plutocrats from Wall Street are headed to Venezuela to look into oil investment opportunities. I wouldn’t want to be one of those guys, given the likelihood that there will be armed opposition in Venezuela to that kind of thing. But aside from the danger that any American oil company investing there is likely to face from guerrilla action, I think it has to be said—well, you know, I was ambassador to Saudi Arabia. At one point I read that people had advised Henry Kissinger, in an earlier era, to send the military in to take over the oil fields and the operations of Saudi Aramco, and I just had a good laugh. If you know anything at all about modern petroleum industries—extractive industries—they’re enormously complex. They require great expertise. They take years to revive production. There’s no immediate payoff from this under any circumstances, even if the security situation allows companies other than Chevron, which has been there all along and cooperated with the regime in Venezuela, to enter the Venezuelan market. So I think this is loony tunes. This is complete lunacy, and it needs to be stopped. Is the world going to do something, or are we just going to do the usual European thing—wringing your hands while sitting on them, which is an uncomfortable position, but it’s about all Europeans do these days? #Pascal Well, I mean, that’s, I think, the Swiss position, if I understand their statements. They’re not happy with what happened, but they’re not even willing to mention that the United States committed the infringement. The European Union is more or less content to say that Maduro is gone. So basically, without saying “we applaud what happened,” they’re saying, “we’re fine with the outcome.” But may I ask you—because we do, unfortunately, have the precedent that these kinds of operations can work—a lot of people say the Iraq war was a huge blunder and failure and whatnot. But the fact of the matter is that, thanks to the 2003 invasion, the United States, for the last 22 or 23 years, has been controlling Iraq’s oil, successfully so. It also did so in Syria. So there is a history of successfully getting oil out of countries through war. #Amb. Chas Freeman -- 3 of 14 -- I think the case of Syria is a pretty egregious one. It’s clearly motivated largely by control of the limited oil production there. But I have to correct you with respect to Iraq—the primary production is all Chinese companies. So we fought the war, and somebody else reaped the benefits economically. And of course, Iraq is still very unsettled. It’s a society and a nation divided, trying to get rid of the American troop presence and continuously failing. So that is not a success. I’m afraid this invasion of Venezuela is fairly typical of failed American strategic reasoning. It’s the same pattern: we invade, we remove the leader, and everything else is supposed to be fine. We take out Saddam and everything is solved in Iraq. You know, we decapitate the government in Tehran with the Israelis and everything is wonderful. Well, no, it isn’t. And if you take out, as we did, the leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, is everything wonderful in Syria? I don’t think so. So this is a fallacy—and a perpetual one. It’s very interesting to me that Venezuela has followed its constitutional process and appointed Delcy Rodríguez as acting president. She’s apparently a very competent woman, educated in France, and, as I said, has a stellar record managing the mess in the Venezuelan petroleum industry. And so she—well, you know, Trump says, or rather, Rubio says, and Trump echoes, “Well, we can work with her.” She’ll run the country to our satisfaction because we have her—because we’ve got her between threats and inducements. I don’t think that’s necessarily going to be the case. Venezuela is a country of 30 million people, and of course many abroad have fled the misery that our 25 years of sanctions have caused. This isn’t the first time we’ve kidnapped a Venezuelan president. We did that to Hugo Chávez Frías in 2002 and installed a puppet government in Caracas, which the Venezuelan military then overthrew. And Chávez came back. He died of disease in 2013, I think. Maduro was a bad candidate—not very competent, and probably a fairly brutal dictator in his country. There’s hardly anyone who has a kind word to say for him. But a man who is totally illegitimate doesn’t arm four and a half million people with rifles in a people’ s militia. So I think this problem of legitimacy that we claim—“well, he wasn’t legitimate,” and so forth—well, first of all, who are we to say that? But anyway, even