The sudden capture of Nicolás Maduro and the declaration of temporary US administration ripped open every unresolved tension in modern international politics. Washington insists it is enforcing law, dismantling a criminal regime, and buying time for democracy. But airstrikes, absent a clear UN mandate, look less like policing and more like the revival of a discredited era of intervention, where power rewrites the rules it claims to defend.

Venezuelans now stand at the center of a storm they did not choose. Exiles dream of return, yet fear a foreign protectorate. Regional leaders condemn quietly, calculating what this precedent might mean for them. In Washington, triumphalism collides with dread over another open-ended commitment. The true verdict will not be rendered by speeches or legal briefs, but by whether Venezuelans themselves emerge with real sovereignty—or simply a new flag over the same old wound.