Later this month, I will celebrate Burns Supper, an event that marks the birth of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns. I love poetry, and have read the works of Burns since I was first able to read. There is a well-known line from his To a Mouse that goes:

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men

Gang aft agley [awry],

An’ lea’e [leave] us nought but grief an’ pain,

For promis’d joy!

I had different plans for my columns this month. I wanted to focus on issues of immigration, disability, algorithms and remembering the Shoah. I still hope to touch on these in time. Unfortunately, the actions of January 3 have put my original plans in disarray, and are of such a serious nature that I would be negligent if I failed to address them.

In the early hours of January 3, the Americans launched an illegal war, murdering up to 100 Venezuelans, military and civilian, while traumatising the entire population of Caracas. Amidst the chaos they executed members of the presidential guard and kidnapped Nicolás Maduro, the president of a sovereign nation.

Hours later, in contravention of the Geneva convention regarding the treatment of prisoners, but in line with a long history of American arrogance, dating back to the souvenirs and postcards of lynchings and more recent displays of imperial triumphalism (such as the capture of Saddam Hussein or the lynching of Gaddafi) the US president shared on social media a picture of Maduro, blindfolded and shackled, in the custody of American stormtroopers. This was followed by a farcical “perp walk” on the tarmac in New York.

Following this, the Americans held a bombastic press conference where Trump announced that the US will now “run” Venezuela, and that its natural resources, primarily its oil (the largest proven reserves in the world) would now be controlled by US companies. One expects Trinidad & Tobago will likely get a cut of the plunder for being a loyal lackey to the empire. Not long after this, Trump actively mused about invading Mexico and Colombia, as well as Greenland.

It’s worth quoting from KC Philippe Sands, an expert in international law who served as a prosecutor for the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet:

“The action against Venezuela is manifestly illegal under international law, and cannot plausibly or by any reasonable standard be characterised as a law enforcement action. [...] Equally worrisome is the failure of others to condemn. The apparent silence of the British Prime Minister speaks volumes. Having lived through the catastrophe and criminality of the Iraq war in 2003, which Mr Trump himself has condemned, I would hope that Keir Starmer sticks to the principles of legality to which he is so firmly committed.”

It will probably surprise no one that Prime Minister Starmer has not stuck to the principles of legality. Instead, international law was sacrificed on the altar of the “special relationship“. Indeed, with the exception of Spain – which has consistently stood for international law on Gaza as well – most of Europe offered up virtually no defence of international law, instead focusing on victim blaming.

This is blatant appeasement and makes a mockery of European claims to be defenders of international law, while also normalising the naked imperialism of the American regime. Thus the hypocrisy of the West is laid bare – they support the idea of a rules-based international order, only it is one where the primary rule seems to be that the rules are whatever the US says they are, international law be damned.

It’s important to note that the US has acted in such an imperial way before – it is pretty much the very history of the US to conquer, pillage and plunder. The latest action has its precedent in the invasion of Panama in 1990, complete with the kidnapping of Manuel Noriega; more recently there was the kidnapping, by US soldiers, of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, of Haiti, as part of the French and US-orchestrated 2004 coup.

There is, of course, a long list of US imperial actions in our region – in fact, it is probably easier to name the countries that the US hasn’t either invaded (Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic), engineered a coup and subsequent puppet governments (Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela), or otherwise sought to destabilise (Jamaica). Between 1898 and 1994, the US effected regime change in Latin America 41 times – once every 28 months for an entire century.

The main difference now is how nakedly blatant the US has acted. Historically, at least in the past 30 years, they have at least sought to clothe themselves with some fig leaf of legitimacy – be it human rights or fictional weapons of mass destruction – and sought to act only with at least token representatives of other countries, especially Britain (Afghanistan, Iraq). The empire today is naked. It is explicit in its imperial ambition. Resources do not belong to other countries, like Venezuela. It is not Venezuelan oil, but US oil, of which Venezuela rudely put their soil on top of and thought they had a sovereign right to, along with self-governance.

The empire is also naked in another sense. They have demonstrated that they are weak. Not militarily weak by any means, but weak in terms of legitimacy and ideas. They have reverted to the most crude and farcical imperialism. We have 19th-century gunboat imperialism mixed with a mafia approach, but this time with 21st-century weapons.

That they are cowards is clear as well – they only punch down. That Venezuela poses zero military threat to the US was clearly demonstrated by the ease with which Maduro was kidnapped. Every country that the US attacks is an order of magnitude weaker than it (and conveniently has resources the US wants to control). The US is too afraid to fight even a remotely near peer such as China or Russia – instead it seems content to carve up the world in partnership with them: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia.

JD Vance says we should take the Trump regime at its word. Maya Angelou reminds us that when someone shows you who they are, believe them. And the US has shown (and is celebrating it) that it is a rogue state, a global bully, intent on naked imperialism.

Last year, I wrote that it represented a clear and present danger. Today that danger is here and unleashed. And it will do as it pleases unless it is stopped.

Our leaders, as shown by Starmer, will not stop the US unless they are forced to by popular revolt. The choice before us is to bend the knee, or stand for a better world, dragging our “leaders” behind us, kicking and screaming if need be.

This empire has no clothes.

• Jonathan Starling is a socialist writer with an MSc in Ecological Economics from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning from Heriot-Watt University