Kidnapping a head of state—any head of state—is a bad idea, full stop. And that
includes the Venezuelan president. You don’t have to like him, agree with his politics, or support his government to recognize that abducting a president is reckless, dangerous, and flat-out wrong.
Kidnapping isn’t some clever shortcut to change. It’s violence. It puts lives at risk, not just the person taken but security staff, bystanders, and ordinary people who get caught in the chaos that follows. History shows that when political conflicts turn into hostage-taking, things spiral fast. Nobody wins, and the country usually ends up more unstable than before.
If the goal is democracy, justice, or accountability, kidnapping moves everything in the opposite direction. It hands authoritarian leaders a perfect excuse to crack down harder, silence dissent, and blame “foreign plots” or “terrorists” for everything. Peaceful opposition, civic organizing, elections, international pressure—those tools get weaker, not stronger, when violence enters the picture.
There’s also the basic moral point. You can’t claim to fight for human rights while violating the most basic ones. Kidnapping strips a person of freedom and safety. If that’s acceptable when it’s “your enemy,” then it becomes acceptable for anyone, anywhere, anytime. That’s a slippery slope no society should want to slide down.
Venezuela’s problems are real and serious. Economic hardship, political repression, and mass migration don’t disappear because someone grabs the president. Real change is slow, frustrating, and often boring—but it comes from pressure, dialogue, law, and collective action, not from dramatic acts that make headlines and leave scars.
So no, kidnapping the Venezuelan president isn’t brave, strategic, or justified. It’s harmful, counterproductive, and morally wrong. If the goal is a better future for Venezuela, violence like this only pushes that future further away.
Let’s be clear: the mere suggestion that Donald Trump could be involved in the kidnapping of another country’s president is not “controversial politics.” It’s horrifying. It’s one of the most reckless and lawless acts ever associated with a U.S. presidency.
Kidnapping a foreign head of state isn’t strength. It’s thuggery. It’s the kind of move you expect from criminal gangs or failed states, not from a country that loves to lecture the rest of the world about democracy and the rule of law. If Trump or anyone in his orbit thought this was acceptable, it exposes a complete contempt for international norms, laws, and human rights.
And spare us the excuses. Venezuela’s government is deeply flawed—no argument there. But that does not give the United States, or any president with a messiah complex, the right to play cowboy and snatch leaders off the global chessboard. That’s not foreign policy; it’s imperial arrogance dressed up as “decisiveness.”
What makes this especially disgusting is the hypocrisy. Trump built his brand on “law and order,” yet kidnapping is about as lawless as it gets. You can’t claim to oppose authoritarianism while using authoritarian tactics. You can’t pretend to defend freedom while ripping it away through force.
This kind of action doesn’t help Venezuelans. It puts them in greater danger. It fuels paranoia, justifies crackdowns, and hands propaganda victories to the very regimes critics claim to oppose. Ordinary people pay the price while powerful men posture and chest-thump.
If the U.S. wants any credibility left on the world stage, it has to reject this nonsense outright. No secret operations, no strongman fantasies, no excuses. Kidnapping a president is immoral, illegal, and indefensible—no matter who’s sitting in the Oval Office.
Such an act deserves condemnation, investigation, and consequences. Democracy doesn’t survive on brute force. It dies from it.
– Ella Martin, CoOperativeNZ 2026
