Qamar Bashir
Press Secretary to the President (Rtd)
Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to France
Former Press Attaché to Malaysia
Former MD, SRBC | Macomb, Michigan, USA
The world has been shaken by an extraordinary development that cuts to the heart of sovereignty, law, and global power. Demonstrations have erupted across continents after the United States captured the sitting president of Venezuela — a leader who, under international law, enjoys immunity not because he is above the law, but because he represents the sovereignty and dignity of his nation. When a president is seized, the state itself is symbolically seized. Today, it is not merely one man before a New York court, but thirty million Venezuelans whose sovereignty stands on trial.
This single act has ignited global outrage. From New York to Chicago, protesters marched with banners reading “Hands off Venezuela” and “No Blood for Oil,” rejecting America’s unilateral policing of the world. In Amsterdam, London, Madrid, Berlin and Buenos Aires, demonstrators condemned what they called kidnapping and aggression. In Caracas, supporters filled the streets calling it an act of war. At the UN Security Council, China demanded the president’s release, Russia denounced lawlessness, and Brazil’s President Lula called it a grave violation of sovereignty. Even U.S. allies expressed discomfort, warning that force without legal mandate shatters the system meant to prevent war.
Yet Washington appears determined to prove power through force at a moment when it is losing ground elsewhere. Economically, the United States no longer dominates global production and trade. Financially, the world is slowly reducing dependence on the dollar. Culturally and politically, influence is drifting toward Asia and the developing world. And most critically, the era of oil — once America’s greatest lever — is fading fast.
Oil today is worth far less in strategic power than at any time since its discovery. Global demand growth peaked. Electric vehicles already account for over one-fifth of new car sales worldwide, and by 2030 over half of all cars sold in Europe and China are expected to be electric. Renewable electricity costs have collapsed — wind and solar are now the cheapest power in history in many regions. Meanwhile, breakthroughs in nuclear fission efficiency, experimental fusion, high-density batteries, hydrogen systems, and grid-scale storage are transforming energy security permanently.
That means oil is no longer the irreplaceable lifeblood of economies. Its share of global energy has already dropped from over 50% in the 1970s to under 30% today — and it is projected to fall toward 20% by 2030. When electricity — not oil — powers transport, logistics, and industry, the geopolitical value of oil falls with it. Long-term market forecasts now warn that beyond 2030, oil demand may permanently decline. Once falling demand collides with oversupply, oil becomes not a golden asset but a stranded one. Extracting, transporting, and securing it by military force will become economically irrational and politically toxic.
So the world is entering a new energy-power order. Power will no longer belong to those who sit on oil wells, but to those who control renewables, nuclear science, advanced storage, micro-grids, AI-driven energy efficiency, and fusion research. Nations investing in these technologies — China, the EU, Japan, South Korea, and others — will command the future. Those clinging to oil supremacy will discover that history has moved on without them.
Seen through this lens, the U.S. operation in Venezuela looks like the desperate act of a declining empire trying to freeze time. It is the attempt to preserve oil-era dominance in a post-oil world. But military coercion cannot reverse scientific progress. It cannot stop the spread of clean, decentralized energy systems that free nations from dependence on oil routes controlled by others.
Even U.S. allies now sense the danger. Canada, historically deferential to Washington, watched nervously as threats and resource claims crept closer to its own sovereignty. European states, once obedient followers in U.S. interventions, now speak of legality and restraint, knowing that today Venezuela is on trial — but tomorrow any nation could be.
The American justification — that Venezuela fuels narcotics and instability — collapses before basic facts. Synthetic drug supply chains run largely through Mexico and other channels, not Venezuelan oil platforms. The narrative is politically convenient, but structurally hollow. What truly matters is geostrategic access, leverage, and psychological dominance.
But that dominance is slipping — and Washington knows it. As more states trade in their own currencies, as energy sources diversify, as technology redistributes power, the ability of one state to command others declines. And when influence fades, the temptation to use force grows.
Yet force comes at a cost. The protests sweeping the world do not only defend Venezuela. They defend the principle that sovereignty cannot be dragged off an airplane at gunpoint. They defend the idea that power must answer to law, and that even the strongest nation cannot declare itself judge, jury, and executioner over global governance.
Even inside the United States, many now fear the moral and strategic price of endless intervention. They understand that the military might cannot substitute for respect, legitimacy, and trust. They also understand that every unlawful action accelerates the erosion of American authority rather than restoring it.
The irony is that by trying to prove relevance through force, the United States risks proving the opposite. Oil empires are ending. Technology empires are rising. And the nation that fails to adapt becomes the nation left behind.
What the world is witnessing is not merely the abduction of a president, but the panic of a superpower watching history escape its grasp. The capture of a head of state will not return America to uncontested supremacy. Instead, it will be remembered as a moment when the world realized that legitimacy, law, and innovation — not missiles — define real power.
And the final judgment may not be delivered in a New York courtroom, but in the court of history — where nations are measured not by how loudly they threaten, but by whether they respect the sovereignty, dignity, and future of others.
