The Dirty Dance of Pounding Power

“You misuse your country’s resources. I will not allow you to do that.”“You cannot take care of what you own, so I am taking it over.”“Your watch is beautiful, but you do not know how to maintain it.”“Your wife is beautiful, but you do not respect her. I will take her.”“Your children are not your property. If you do not raise them as I instruct, the state will take them away.”

When spoken inside a home, these words would be recognized instantly for what they are: the language of abuse. No court would accept them as benevolence. No moral system would confuse them with care. And yet, when the same logic is spoken between nations—wrapped in the vocabulary of national security, human rights, or global stability—it is often applauded as responsibility.

This is the paradox of modern power.

In the case of Venezuela, the script has been painfully familiar. A country sitting atop some of the world’s largest oil reserves is declared incapable of managing its wealth. Its leadership is labeled illegitimate. Sanctions are imposed, assets frozen, access to global markets denied. Then comes the moral verdict: the suffering of the people proves the failure of the state. What is quietly omitted is how much of that suffering is engineered by isolation itself. The conclusion follows seamlessly: intervention is no longer interference; it is obligation.

The logic is chillingly paternal. Venezuela, we are told, is like a negligent owner—unfit to possess what it holds. Therefore, others must decide who governs it, who trades with it, and who profits from its resources. The oil beneath Venezuelan soil becomes less Venezuelan the moment its government refuses alignment. Sovereignty is reduced to conditional custody.

This logic does not remain confined to one geography. It travels.

Now consider Greenland—a land with a small population but vast strategic value. As Arctic ice melts, new shipping routes open, rare-earth minerals gain importance, and military positioning becomes decisive. Suddenly, Greenland is no longer peripheral. It is described as underdeveloped, underutilized, too important to be left alone. The language shifts from cooperation to entitlement. The subtext is unmistakable: you are not managing this asset efficiently; someone else should.

No tanks roll in. No bombs fall. Instead, there are proposals, “offers,” strategic interest statements. But the underlying assumption remains the same as Venezuela’s: control follows value, not consent.

Then there is Iran, a nation repeatedly portrayed not merely as a rival, but as a threat to global order itself. Its resources, its geography, its scientific capacity—especially nuclear—are framed as dangers in the wrong hands. Sanctions tighten, sabotage is justified, assassinations are normalized in public discourse. The message is consistent: some nations cannot be trusted with what they possess. Their sovereignty is provisional, revocable upon disobedience.

What unites these cases is not ideology, culture, or governance style. It is strategic relevance. Oil, minerals, shipping lanes, military corridors. When a country holds something the global system desires, its internal failures—real or exaggerated—become invitations for external control.

And this is where the metaphor of the household becomes instructive. Imagine a powerful neighbor forcing his way into your home, declaring that your property is wasted, your family is mismanaged, your future decisions unacceptable. Imagine him insisting that his takeover is for your own good. No amount of rhetoric would disguise the violation.

Yet internationally, we have normalized this behavior.

We call it intervention.We call it containment.We call it responsibility to protect.

Rarely do we call it what it is: a hierarchy of sovereignty, where some nations enjoy full ownership of their destiny, while others are placed under permanent probation.

The tragedy is not only moral; it is systemic. Each intervention, justified as exceptional, becomes precedent. If Venezuela can be isolated for mismanagement, who defines mismanagement? If Iran can be punished for future risk, who decides acceptable ambition? If Greenland’s resources are deemed too important for its people alone, what small nation is ever truly safe?

We tell ourselves these actions protect global stability. But stability for whom? The global order increasingly resembles a gated community, where rules apply selectively, enforced by those who wrote them. National security becomes a mask for economic priority. Human rights become tools of pressure rather than principles of universality.

And where does it end?

If sovereignty is conditional on obedience, then no nation is sovereign.If resources determine legitimacy, then morality is subordinate to markets.If power alone decides who is fit to rule, then international law is theater.

History is unambiguous on this point: empires rarely collapse because they are evil; they collapse because they convince themselves they are necessary. They begin by correcting others, end by consuming themselves.

The question before us is not whether Venezuela failed, or Iran erred, or Greenland needs development. Nations, like people, stumble. The question is whether the world will continue to answer every failure with force, every difference with domination, every resource with entitlement.

Because once we accept the logic that someone else knows better how to own what you have, there is no principle left—only power.

And power, unchecked, never stops at justification. It stops only at resistance—or ruin.