The famous line from Apocalypse Now is more than a movie quote. "I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like… victory," declares Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, romanticizing the destruction of a Vietnamese village as he prepares to surf on a conquered beach.
On January 3, 2026, a different kind of imperial production premiered in Caracas.
As the acrid scent of explosives and burning concrete settled over the city after US airstrikes, one had to ask: What does "victory" smell like here?
The answer lies not in the false script of liberation, but in the raw scent of plunder and a brazen declaration of a new colonial era.
This was not a military mission; it was a spectacle -- a violent piece of theatre where the kidnapping of a president was staged as a law enforcement action, and the seizure of a nation's destiny was framed as a "transition."
The operation, codenamed “Absolute Resolve,” was a blockbuster in its scale and audacity. US forces launched 150 aircraft from 20 bases across the hemisphere, striking military sites in Caracas and other states before a ground team kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro from his compound.
The visuals were curated for maximum impact: Satellite images showed damaged buildings at the Fuerte Tiuna military complex; the world later saw a photo, shared by the US President himself, of a blindfolded Maduro on the deck of the USS Iwo Jima. He was then flown to New York to face what US officials called drug trafficking charges.
This narrative, however, is a carefully constructed facade.
The legal justification crumbles upon inspection. Leading international law experts have condemned the attack as an “illegal use of force” and a blatant “act of war.”
Claire Finkelstein, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, states plainly: “I don't think there's any basis under international law for the action that occurred overnight by the US government... It was an act of war against Venezuela.”
The United Nations Charter, which the US helped draft, explicitly prohibits the “threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”
The charade of “narco-terrorism” charges is this generation's “weapons of mass destruction” -- a familiar, cynical pretext for regime change.
The real script: Monroe Doctrine 2.0 and the prize of plunder
If the legal pretext is fiction, the true script is an open secret.
It is the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” a policy explicitly outlined in the 2025 US National Security Strategy that asserts a “potent restoration of American power” in the hemisphere.
This is not about democracy or drugs; it is a “muscular assertion” of the right to dominate what the US considers its backyard.
The captured president himself had accused Washington of seeking “to seize control of Venezuela's vast oil reserves.” After the operation, the US president confirmed this, stating the US would now “run” Venezuela and explicitly linking its future to the entry of American oil companies to refurbish the country's degraded infrastructure. The scent of victory, it turns out, is the smell of petroleum.
This aggression is also a direct strike against the rise of a multipolar world. Venezuela is a key strategic partner of China in Latin America, and the doctrine driving this intervention explicitly aims to “push out foreign companies that build infrastructure in the region.”
The attack on Caracas is a signal to every nation in the Global South: Align with alternatives to US hegemony at your own peril.
As one analyst notes, the operation sends a clear warning to other nations like Cuba and Nicaragua that are deepening ties with US rivals.
The global audience: A chorus of condemnation and complicity
The world's reaction reveals a fractured international order.
From Latin America, the response split between those celebrating the fall of a leader they considered a dictator and those denouncing a grave violation of sovereignty.
Brazil's president called it an "unacceptable" affront, while the UN Secretary-General stated he was "deeply alarmed" by a move that sets a "dangerous precedent." Russia and China joined in condemning the raid.
Most telling, however, has been the muted response from traditional US allies in the West.
Their cautious, legalistic statements stand in stark contrast to the blunt language from the Global South.
This timidity begs the question posed by observers: “What's to stop other countries now mounting military operations to kidnap the leaders of other countries and proclaim that they are now running them?”
The spectacle in Caracas has dangerously rewritten the rules, revealing an international community unwilling or unable to uphold its own foundational laws.
The final scene: The imperative of southern solidarity
The road ahead for Venezuela is one of "precarious limbo" and "managed instability," fraught with the risk of further conflict as various armed groups vie for power in the vacuum.
For the rest of the world, especially the nations of the Global South, the message is unambiguous. The kidnapping of President Maduro is not an anomaly; it is a template. It demonstrates that in the face of a resurgent imperial doctrine, sovereignty is conditional and international law is malleable for those with the most military might.
The defense against this new-old aggression cannot be passive. It requires an active, united front -- a symphony of solidarity that echoes the long history of resistance to imperialism.
It demands economic partnerships that bypass coercive systems, diplomatic unity in forums like the United Nations, and, most importantly, the unwavering cultural and political will to reject the empire's narrative.
We must call a kidnapping a kidnapping, and plunder, plunder. The choice for the rest of us is clear: Will we be a captivated audience to this dangerous sequel, or will we rise together to change the ending?
Zakir Kibria is a Bangladeshi writer, policy analyst and entrepreneur based in Kathmandu, Nepal. His email address is zk@krishikaaj.com