Is nuclear deterrence the ultimate shield of sovereignty? Why North Korea is untouchable while Venezuela was attacked by the US

The international system has always rewarded power, but in the contemporary world, it punishes weakness with unprecedented efficiency. In an era marked by accelerating resource competition, territorial revisionism, and open great-power rivalry, the comforting fiction that rules-based order, UN charters, or moral outrage can shield a nation from hostile aggression has collapsed. What remains is a harsher, more transactional reality: states that can impose unacceptable costs on their adversaries survive; those that cannot are disciplined, invaded, sanctioned into submission, or outright dismantled. At the very apex of this brutal hierarchy sits nuclear deterrence. The US military action in Venezuela The recent US operation in Venezuela, which eventually culminated in the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, is not merely a dramatic episode in Latin American geopolitics. It is a case study in how power is exercised in the modern world, and how the absence of a nuclear umbrella turns sovereignty into a revocable privilege. On 3rd January, Donald Trump announced that United States forces had successfully captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flown them out of the country. The operation was swift, decisive, and unapologetically unilateral. Loud explosions shook Caracas at around 2 am local time. Low-flying aircraft roared over the city. Power outages followed. Panic spread through the streets. A national emergency was declared, too late to matter. Within minutes, the Venezuelan state had ceased to function as a sovereign entity. Washington framed the action as part of a broader “war on drugs,” citing alleged narcotics smuggling through the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Congress was not consulted. The United Nations was not asked. Latin America was not warned. The logic was simple: the United States wanted to punish Maduro; it did. Narcotics and drugs are perhaps only pretexts to legitimise the unlawful military action against Venezuela. What made Venezuela uniquely vulnerable was not just economic collapse, internal dissent, or diplomatic isolation. It was the complete absence of a deterrent capability that could impose costs on the attacker. No nuclear umbrella. No second-strike threat. No red line that had Washington fearing a certain retaliation. Nuclear Weapon is now the ultimate deterrent in international relations. If you want to be a big power or at least repel the big powers, you MUST have that. North Korea got one and all threats against her ceased. https://t.co/SnkOZszbWV— Kwaku Asante (@kwakuasanteb) January 3, 2026 This is where the conversation must turn uncomfortable. Compare Venezuela’s fate with that of North Korea. For years, Pyongyang has been labelled an incorrigible rogue state. Its leader, Kim Jong Un, stands accused of crimes against humanity: extrajudicial killings, torture, forced labour camps, and systemic repression. Nuclear possession invites restraint; absence invites destruction. North Korea has repeatedly threatened the United States and its allies, South Korea and Japan, both of which host major US military bases. It has tested missiles over Japanese territory and claimed the capability to strike the US West Coast. It had routinely tested ICBMs, sometimes flying them above Japan, and crashing them in the Pacific Ocean and insisting that they have the capability of striking at the heart of the US’s Silicon Valley, San Francisco. Trump and the United States have also long slammed Kim Jong Un as a brutal dictator repressing his own people, just for the sake of maintaining his grip on power. Yet, despite all this provocation, there has been no American invasion of North Korea. No midnight raid on Pyongyang. No attempt to capture Kim Jong Un and parade him before an international tribunal. Nuclear weapons are the only true way to ensure your sovereignty.— Null (@Vhoyde) January 3, 2026 The reason is not restraint. Nor is it American benevolence as the US lawmakers often frame it. It is fear, the fear of unfactored retaliation. Aggression for Venezuela, hesitation for nuclear-armed North Korea North Korea possesses nuclear weapons. Even a limited retaliatory strike could spark a volley of attacks against Seoul, cripple US forces in the Pacific, and trigger escalation beyond anyone’s control. That single fact forces Washington to abandon regime-change fantasies and settle for sanctions, bluster, and managed hostility. The same logic applies to China, the country with the third-largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world. Beijing is accused, often correctly, of human rights abuses, military coercion, and aggressive expansionism. In the South China Sea, Beijing has placed itself in near-constant confrontation with almost every regional stakeholder, constructing artificial islands, militarising one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors, and coercively harassing fishing vessels operating in international

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Is nuclear deterrence the ultimate shield of sovereignty? Why North Korea is untouchable while Venezuela was attacked by the US

The international system has always rewarded power, but in the contemporary world, it punishes weakness with unprecedented efficiency. In an era marked by accelerating resource competition, territorial revisionism, and open great-power rivalry, the comforting fiction that rules-based order, UN charters, or moral outrage can shield a nation from hostile aggression has collapsed.

What remains is a harsher, more transactional reality: states that can impose unacceptable costs on their adversaries survive; those that cannot are disciplined, invaded, sanctioned into submission, or outright dismantled.

At the very apex of this brutal hierarchy sits nuclear deterrence.

The US military action in Venezuela

The recent US operation in Venezuela, which eventually culminated in the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, is not merely a dramatic episode in Latin American geopolitics. It is a case study in how power is exercised in the modern world, and how the absence of a nuclear umbrella turns sovereignty into a revocable privilege.

On 3rd January, Donald Trump announced that United States forces had successfully captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flown them out of the country. The operation was swift, decisive, and unapologetically unilateral. Loud explosions shook Caracas at around 2 am local time. Low-flying aircraft roared over the city. Power outages followed. Panic spread through the streets. A national emergency was declared, too late to matter.

Within minutes, the Venezuelan state had ceased to function as a sovereign entity.

Washington framed the action as part of a broader “war on drugs,” citing alleged narcotics smuggling through the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Congress was not consulted. The United Nations was not asked. Latin America was not warned. The logic was simple: the United States wanted to punish Maduro; it did. Narcotics and drugs are perhaps only pretexts to legitimise the unlawful military action against Venezuela.

What made Venezuela uniquely vulnerable was not just economic collapse, internal dissent, or diplomatic isolation. It was the complete absence of a deterrent capability that could impose costs on the attacker. No nuclear umbrella. No second-strike threat. No red line that had Washington fearing a certain retaliation.

Nuclear Weapon is now the ultimate deterrent in international relations. If you want to be a big power or at least repel the big powers, you MUST have that.

North Korea got one and all threats against her ceased. https://t.co/SnkOZszbWV
— Kwaku Asante (@kwakuasanteb) January 3, 2026

This is where the conversation must turn uncomfortable.

Compare Venezuela’s fate with that of North Korea. For years, Pyongyang has been labelled an incorrigible rogue state. Its leader, Kim Jong Un, stands accused of crimes against humanity: extrajudicial killings, torture, forced labour camps, and systemic repression.

Nuclear possession invites restraint; absence invites destruction.

North Korea has repeatedly threatened the United States and its allies, South Korea and Japan, both of which host major US military bases. It has tested missiles over Japanese territory and claimed the capability to strike the US West Coast. It had routinely tested ICBMs, sometimes flying them above Japan, and crashing them in the Pacific Ocean and insisting that they have the capability of striking at the heart of the US’s Silicon Valley, San Francisco.

Trump and the United States have also long slammed Kim Jong Un as a brutal dictator repressing his own people, just for the sake of maintaining his grip on power.

Yet, despite all this provocation, there has been no American invasion of North Korea. No midnight raid on Pyongyang. No attempt to capture Kim Jong Un and parade him before an international tribunal.

Nuclear weapons are the only true way to ensure your sovereignty.
— Null (@Vhoyde) January 3, 2026

The reason is not restraint. Nor is it American benevolence as the US lawmakers often frame it. It is fear, the fear of unfactored retaliation.

Aggression for Venezuela, hesitation for nuclear-armed North Korea

North Korea possesses nuclear weapons. Even a limited retaliatory strike could spark a volley of attacks against Seoul, cripple US forces in the Pacific, and trigger escalation beyond anyone’s control. That single fact forces Washington to abandon regime-change fantasies and settle for sanctions, bluster, and managed hostility.

The same logic applies to China, the country with the third-largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world. Beijing is accused, often correctly, of human rights abuses, military coercion, and aggressive expansionism. In the South China Sea, Beijing has placed itself in near-constant confrontation with almost every regional stakeholder, constructing artificial islands, militarising one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors, and coercively harassing fishing vessels operating in international waters. It is in a perennial dispute with Taiwan and has wrongly claimed Indian territories as its own.

Despite trade wars, diplomatic pressure, threats of taking over Taiwan, and naval brinkmanship, the US has yet to resort to direct military action. China is also the global manufacturing house, virtually controlling global supply chains for every product, from rare-earth minerals used to produce Electric Vehicles to high-end electronics goods.

Nuclear parity and economic heft compel caution. Power respects power.

This power differential becomes even sharper when examining the US and Israeli strikes on Iran in June 2025. On 21st June, Trump announced that the United States had attacked three Iranian nuclear sites: Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan, using capabilities that only Washington possesses. B-2 stealth bombers armed with GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, targeted facilities buried deep beneath mountains.

Trump’s message was blunt: “There is no other military in the world that could have done this. Now is the time for peace.”

This was not diplomacy. It was coercion backed by overwhelming force.

Fordow, Iran’s most fortified enrichment facility, sits 80–90 metres underground, deeper than the Channel Tunnel. Even the MOP was not a guaranteed solution. Yet the United States proceeded, fully aware that this marked the first direct US air attack on Iranian territory since the 1979 revolution. It was an act of war, justified because Iran was nearing weapons-grade uranium.

Here lies the paradox of the nuclear age: possession invites restraint; pursuit invites military strikes.

Israel had already initiated hostilities under ‘Operation Rising Lion’. Iran responded with ‘Operation True Promise 3’, launching drones and missiles, targeting Israeli energy infrastructure. Regional proxies had been weakened, but Iran retained the capacity to strike US bases across the Middle East and choke the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly 30% of global oil supply passes.

Yet even in this escalation, Washington calculated carefully. Iran does not yet possess nuclear weapons. That made pre-emptive action conceivable.

Contrast this again with North Korea. Its nuclear arsenal is crude, its economy broken, its diplomacy toxic. None of that matters. What matters is that any attack risks unacceptable retaliation.

The lesson is unmistakable.

It is not the United Nations that protects states. UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed “grave alarm” over the US strikes on Iran, warning of catastrophic consequences and urging diplomacy. His statement changed nothing. It never does.

The UN speaks in moral vocabulary; power speaks in consequences.

Trump’s threats to Colombia after tasting success inthe Venezuelan military adventure

Venezuela learned this the hard way. The aftermath of the Maduro operation has already destabilised Latin America. Trump, emboldened, openly threatened Colombia, calling its president Gustavo Petro a “sick man” and suggesting military action, sounds good to me.” Relations deteriorated overnight. Sovereignty, once again, proved negotiable.

Notably, Colombia, despite being a US ally, understood the warning. Petro described the Venezuela action as an “assault on Latin America’s sovereignty.” Trump responded by telling him to “watch his a*s.”