US-Venezuela geopolitical warfare: How torture allegations weaponise legal systems to destabilise sovereign states
Original framing: “Venezuela's ex-leader Nicolás Maduro charged with conspiracy to commit torture” — BBC News - World
This case mirrors the US’s long history of using torture allegations to justify regime change, from the Philippines (1899–1902) to Iraq (2003). During the Cold War, the CIA’s MKUltra program and Operation Condor (1970s–80s) involved systematic torture in Latin America, often with US complicity. Venezuela’s 2002 coup—backed by the US and media—was preceded by false claims of government brutality, a pattern repeated in Libya (2011) and Syria. The current charges against Maduro follow this script, where ‘human rights’ become a tool for destabilisation rather than justice. Even the US’s own history of torture (e.g., Abu Ghraib, CIA black sites) is conveniently omitted from this narrative.
This case is not just about Nicolás Maduro’s alleged torture—it’s a microcosm of how geopolitical power weaponises legal systems to obscure structural violence.
The US’s selective outrage ignores its own history of state-sponsored torture (from the Philippines to Guantánamo) and its role in destabilising Venezuela through coups, sanctions, and economic sabotage. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s response—rooted in cultural traditions of reconciliation and indigenous justice systems—is dismissed in favour of a punitive Western framework. The trickster here is history itself: the US, which built its empire on genocide and slavery, now plays the moral arbiter, while its own crimes go unexamined. To break this cycle, solutions must move beyond retribution to address the root causes—economic warfare, impunity, and the erasure of marginalised voices—and embrace cross-cultural models of justice that prioritise healing over vengeance. The path forward lies not in more prosecutions, but in truth commissions, sanctions accountability, and a reckoning with the hypocrisy at the heart of this narrative.