Unprecedented Trump 'aggression' sparks international chaos — and confounds experts

President Donald Trump’s unprecedented declaration over the weekend that Venezuela's air space was “closed” had a major impact on air travel in and around the country, leaving some experts dumbfounded.

“Not a single plane flying over Venezuela, a country of 30 [million] people with world's largest oil reserves,” wrote journalist and author Matt Kennard Monday in a social media post on X.

“Its airspace has been closed by the U.S. President sitting in White House 2,000 miles away. International law is a chimera. World is run like the mafia and Washington is the Don.”

Despite Trump not having the legal authority to close another country’s airspace, his announcement nonetheless left a major impact on air travel; flight trackers have shown planes avoiding Venezuelan airspace since Saturday, and several airlines had reportedly cancelled flights to Venezuela in response, Newsweek reported.

Trump’s unprecedented announcement was just the latest in his administration’s increasing hostility toward the South American nation, which includes ongoing strikes on suspected drug-carrying sea vessels that have killed at least 83 people and have been criticized as “extrajudicial killings,” the deployment of an aircraft carrier strikes group, discussions about outright assassinating Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and plans to begin land operations “very soon.”

“Trying to ‘close’ the airspace of another country is an act of aggression. It risks flight disruptions, economic panic, and aviation accidents. It is also an attempt to isolate Venezuela without admitting that the U.S. is imposing a de facto blockade,” reads a recent statement from the anti-war advocacy group Code Pink, published on social media.

“The people of Venezuela have lived with the consequences of Washington’s reckless interventions. They deserve peace, not another manufactured war. Diplomacy, not domination, remains the only path that respects international law and regional sovereignty.”

While Trump administration officials have cited Venezuela’s alleged support of drug trafficking and human rights abuses as cause for the increased hostilities, the administration’s aggression toward the South American nation aligns closely with a pattern of U.S. intervention in the continent over the past 100 years.

The United States has attempted to enact regime change in South American nations several times over the past century, often under the guise of concern over human rights abuses, but almost always sparked by said countries having embraced economic models that restricted international corporations’ access to resources and labor.

Perhaps the most frequently cited example of such intervention is the 1973 U.S.-backed coup in Chile, when the Democratically elected leader, Salvador Allende, was overthrown at the behest of American communication and mining companies that had been stripped of their control of Chile’s resources and labor under Allende’s leadership, with the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet installed in his stead.