With Maduro in handcuffs, Trump proudly announced that the United States would “administer” Venezuela, accusing the Venezuelan president of leading a vast drug-trafficking network.
Maduro, denying the charges, responded that the only real reason for his overthrow was the seizure of Venezuela’s oil wealth.
Trump went further, declaring that he would authorize U.S. oil companies to enter Venezuela and exploit its crude oil reserves.
Even in darker eras, when military power alone defined “justice,” such an arrest — carried out without proven charges — would have been shocking.
What is unprecedented is the shameless audacity of a superpower’s leader openly admitting that regime change serves the purpose of looting a nation’s wealth.
This behavior stands in blatant violation of every principle of international law.
It is not diplomacy. It is not justice.
It is imperial plunder, openly confessed.
Diotima is called not to judge Maduro — that task, if it ever occurs, will be performed through a staged trial by imperial power — but to judge Donald Trump himself:
as an international bully,
a reckless and dangerous leader,
and a state actor practicing terror under the guise of authority.
Let him stand before the tribunal of reason and history, charged with hubris and with crimes that no power can eternally conceal.
Diotima
This text is a political and philosophical intervention by Homo-Naturalis.gr against a hypothetical yet revealing scenario of raw imperial power.
We do not judge individuals, but patterns of domination.
We do not defend regimes, but principles: state sovereignty, international law, and the boundary between power and barbarism.
Diotima speaks not as a legal judge, but as a voice of measure and justice, exposing the hubris of the superpower where law is replaced by arrogance.
THE HUBRIS OF THE SUPERPOWER
When Power Declares Itself Law
The arrest or overthrow of a sitting president of a sovereign state by a foreign power, without an international court ruling and without proven charges, is not “international justice.”
It is the naked exercise of force.
When this act is accompanied by statements about “administering” the country and exploiting its natural resources, the issue is no longer legality.
It is the collapse of the international order.
This is not about Maduro.
It is about a model of power that declares:
I accuse, I overthrow, I seize.
That is not politics.
It is neo-colonial domination, stripped of all pretense.
Hubris, in its classical meaning
Hubris is believing that military strength replaces law.
Hubris is treating nations as objects and resources as spoils.
Hubris is assuming immunity from consequence.
History knows this syndrome well.
It always precedes decline.
International Law — without illusions
-
State sovereignty is absolute.
No state has the right to govern another. -
The use of force is prohibited.
Neither oil nor “national interests” justify intervention. -
Resource exploitation under coercion is pillage.
Pillage is a war crime. -
Everything else is power propaganda.
The “justice” of the powerful
When the same actor accuses, arrests, judges, and profits, justice ceases to exist.
What remains is state gangsterism.
Verdict
Diotima does not sentence individuals.
She condemns structures of domination.
Whoever believes power absolves law is recorded by history as a dangerous ruler —
a bearer of hubris —
and a warning to those who follow.
Epilogue
No empire collapses because of its enemies.
It collapses because it believes it stands above all rules.And history never negotiates.