(ECNS) -- On February 23rd,Venezuela's Foreign Minister Yvan Gil demanded the immediate release of the country's President Nicolas Maduro and his wife who were forcibly seized and transferred to the U.S. What intentions does this reveal?
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has weaponized tariffs, using the “purchase of Greenland” as a political bargaining chip and threatening to impose tariffs on many European countries. What impact could this have on Europe—and on the world at large?
The latest episode of W.E. Talk program invited Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University of China, and John Milligan-Whyte, Chairman of the America-China Partnership Foundation, for an in-depth discussion.
What does it mean to seize a president?
The United States’ forcible seizure of President Maduro and his transfer to New York for trial has sent shockwaves through the international community.
Milligan-Whyte noted that when a sitting president is dramatically removed from his own country by a foreign power in a matter of days, the act itself constitutes a direct and substantive blow to the principles of sovereignty and the international order. In his words, this was not simply a political move, but a deliberate demonstration of power.
Wang emphasized that the action should not be viewed as an isolated incident. Rather, it represents a continuation, and an escalation, of long-standing U.S. interventionism in the Western Hemisphere. Since the Spanish–American War at the end of the 19th century, the United States has repeatedly intervened in Latin America under various pretexts.
What makes this case different, Wang argued, is its “novelty”: at extremely low political and military cost, the United States directly took control of another country’s leader, creating a powerful demonstration effect.
Milligan-Whyte warned that this is precisely what makes this issue so dangerous. If such a method is seen as effective, and if it delivers immediate intimidation, it may be abused as a repeatable political tool. He stressed that this was not a traditional war, but an experiment in testing the limits of military power and executive authority on a smaller country.
Both experts agreed that the real issue extends far beyond Venezuela itself. The core question is whether “seizing a president” could become a tolerated and repeatable practice. If such a precedent is accepted, they warned, the sense of security underpinning international politics would be systematically eroded.
More than Venezuela: Who is driving emergency-state politics?
In Wang’s assessment, the U.S. operation is driven by multiple overlapping motivations.
First, it is intended to intimidate anti-U.S. forces in Latin America by using an extreme case to signal the cost of crossing red lines.
Second, it reflects a strategy centered on control over oil, ports, and critical minerals. Against the backdrop of global energy transition and mounting fiscal pressure, Washington seeks to reinforce its resource and financial advantages.
Third, it serves domestic U.S. political narratives, particularly the project of hegemonic transformation under the banner of Make America Great Again.
Milligan-Whyte approached the issue from the perspective of U.S. domestic political mechanisms, highlighting the interaction between foreign actions and internal pressures. In his view, Trump has a habitual tendency to dominate the news cycle by engineering major external events.
As foreign actions escalate, Milligan-Whyte warned, they risk being used to manufacture a permanent “state of emergency.” Once emergency conditions are normalized, the U.S. president can invoke extraordinary powers and push beyond existing constraints.
For this reason, Milligan-Whyte expressed deep concern about the spillover effects of such logic. If intimidation produces results, it will be replicated, he cautioned, potentially not only in Latin America but in other regions as well. He said he is particularly worried that the United States could take radical action over Greenland.
When presidential authority is continuously elevated to a “state of exception,” he argued, even actions involving allies or sensitive regions may be packaged as “security necessities,” allowing them to bypass normal international constraints.
In Milligan-Whyte’s view, once this path is taken, the consequences will not be limited to regional instability. It will ultimately rebound against the United States itself—damaging its economic foundations, national security, and international credibility in ways that may be difficult to repair.
Wang Yiwei summarized this trajectory as a “Trump-version Monroe Doctrine.” Empowered by new variables such as artificial intelligence, capital flows, and the dollar system, the United States, he argued, is attempting to reshape its dominance over the Western Hemisphere through lower costs but higher intensity.
京公网安备 11010202009201号