For decades, a precarious assumption underpinned the international order: United States dominance, however costly, was a necessary fixture. The system absorbed its extractions — of resources, data and financial sovereignty — under a mantra of resigned pragmatism.
However, a series of actions, culminating in a stark violation in Venezuela, have shattered the pretense that this system is bound by its own proclaimed rules.
The US operation against the government of Nicolas Maduro early this month, justified as a restoration of democracy, faced immediate allegations of being an unprecedented act of coercive regime change. The critical blow to Washington's narrative came when US President Donald Trump stated that the core motive was to open the country's vast oil reserves. This public admission framed the mission not as a defense of principle, but as a raw resource grab, a blatant violation of international law and the United Nations Charter.
The reaction from key Western capitals was telling. There was no unified outrage in defense of the international order. Instead, a pattern of strategic silence and feeble justification emerged.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a self-described advocate of international law, declined to state whether the strikes violated it, citing a need for "all the material facts".
French President Emmanuel Macron initially suggested that the Venezuelan people could "only rejoice", offering only later a tepid critique of the "method employed".
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni framed the invasion as "legitimate" self-defense, a justification widely criticized as untenable.
This collective failure to defend sovereignty and law laid bare a crisis of credibility for leaders who position themselves as guardians of a "rules-based order".
Regional analysts argue that the stated motive of oil was a superficial cover. Venezuela's oil industry is in collapse; if resource access were the primary goal, intervention would have been more likely years earlier.
The real strategic shift, they contend, was the deepening foothold of US' rival powers in the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore, they noted that these kinds of strategic decisions aren't made by the White House, but by the Pentagon, suggesting the operation was driven by military assessments of a tangible security threat rather than political or economic agendas alone.
From this perspective, the Venezuela operation was a tactical move in a broader strategic contest, revealing a system where power ultimately trumps protocol.
This event coincides with a significant US policy shift, formalized by an executive order this month to withdraw from 66 international organizations — a move widely analyzed as a deliberate retreat from multilateral engagement, and a parallel surge in military ambition, evidenced by a presidential proposal to increase defense spending to a projected $1.5 trillion by 2027. Foreign policy, critics argue, has become dominated by a fortress mentality.
This model stands in stark contrast to the primary instrument of Chinese global influence — economic statecraft. China promotes the Belt and Road Initiative as a framework for noninterference and mutual development, funding projects like Kenya's Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway. Its model of engagement is distinct, though not all regional infrastructure involves Chinese finance, as seen with the Bangladeshi-funded Padma Bridge, which was nevertheless built by a Chinese contractor.
The foundational pitch of this approach is diametrically different — economic integration without formal political subservience.
The choice for many nations is thus becoming clearer. One path involves remaining within a system perceived as increasingly unilateral, where security is prioritized through militarization and the rules are applied selectively. The other involves accelerating the construction of a multipolar system — forging deeper non-Western trade alliances, developing alternative financial messaging systems and settling trade in national currencies to reduce coercive dependency.
Multipolarity is not an anti-Western project but a call for a distributed and balanced order, in which engagement is multifaceted and law, not raw power alone, dictates terms. The era of resigned acceptance is over. The project of building a stable, equitable world is now a contested, and urgent, global undertaking.
The author is a Colombian political commentator and entrepreneur based in Dongguan, Guangdong province.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.