You can’t make this stuff up!

If a screenwriter pitched a plot where the principal architect and loudest evangelist of a “rules-based order” systematically dismantled it through a series of hypocritical acts, brazen invasions, and cartoonish villain dialogue… they’d be laughed out of the room for lacking subtlety.

Yet, here we are, living in that very script, watching the postwar international framework unravel not with a whimper, but with a series of surreal bangs that defy belief. The events unfolding are so stark in their contradiction, so naked in their pursuit of power, that they stretch the boundaries of credulity. You genuinely can’t make this stuff up!

The latest, most dizzying chapter reads like a rejected thriller: a stunning military incursion into Venezuela, culminating in the abduction of its president. This followed months of escalating tension, framed around narco-terrorism charges. Yet, the mask slipped almost immediately. The Oga Trump, in a moment of jarring candor, implied the true motive was oil, reducing a sovereign nation to a gas station to be seized.

The operation, leaving scores of Venezuelan civilians dead, illustrated a chilling calculus: the “red line” of civilian casualties is drawn in invisible ink when the citizens are not one’s own. Mass death becomes permissible, not for existential threats, but for petro-political gamesmanship. This single act is a grenade tossed into the vestiges of the UN Charter, a physical manifestation of might-makes-right.

The reaction from the rest of the Western leadership chorus has been a masterclass in cognitive dissonance, a performance so awkward it borders on satire. Consider the British Prime Minister, a trained attorney versed in international law, squirming under questioning by a journalist. Cornered to condemn an operation that was a textbook violation of the very order he claims to uphold, he danced a pathetic jig of evasion. The spectacle of a leader refusing to name a blatant crime, for fear of offending the perpetrator, laid bare the “rules” as a contingent framework—rules for thee, not for me. It was a silent, damning admission that the order is not built on principle, but on patronage.

This hypocrisy reaches its zenith when the rhetoric of Western leaders is placed under the light. They decry President Putin as the “Hitler of our time” for seeking to prevent Ukraine’s absorption into a hostile military alliance on Russia’s border—an action framed, from Moscow’s perspective, as securing its backyard. Yet, in the same breath, listen to the US Ambassador to the UN, who declared with imperial clarity that the Western Hemisphere is America’s domain. He stated that sovereign nations within it will not be allowed to cooperate with US adversaries, and that countries exhibiting “adversarial tendencies” forfeit the right to control their own resources.

The message is unambiguous: sovereignty, self-determination, and the right of association are privileges granted by Washington, not inherent rights. For Russia or China to seek spheres of influence is authoritarian expansionism; for the US to enforce its own is natural leadership. The lack of self-awareness is not just ironic; it is pathological.

The pattern is fractal, repeating across the globe. Iran is branded a terrorist state for cultivating regional alliances and influencing neighbours—a practice known as “diplomacy” and “statecraft” when conducted by Western powers. Its actions, however legal within the framework of international relations, are re-cast as existential threats because they challenge a US-dominated status quo. Meanwhile, the charge of “narco-terrorism” leveled against Venezuela is deployed with solemn gravity, even as past interventions based on similar WMD pretexts have been exposed as fabrications. The script is worn, the plot holes gaping, yet the production rolls on, demanding we suspend our disbelief even further.

What we are witnessing is the death throes of a narrative. The firmament that has nominally held since 1945—a world order where the victors wrote rules they themselves were least constrained by—is cracking. The “rules” were always a blend of genuine aspiration and convenient cover, but now the cover is gone. The hegemon, feeling its primacy challenged, is shedding the pretense. It is asserting a raw, unvarnished right to intervene, to dictate, and to control, based solely on the calculus of its own interest. The emperor isn’t just naked; he’s boasting about his wardrobe. Na wa o!

This surreal convergence of action and rhetoric heralds a terrifying new epoch. The 2020s are shaping up to be the decade where the last stabilizing fictions are stripped away. With that firmament gone, we are entering a volatile period of explicit spheres of influence, renewed proxy conflicts, and a naked struggle for resources. The old deterrents of mutual embarrassment or appeals to consistent principle are null. When leaders openly admit to resource grabs while charging others with terrorism, when lawyers cannot name illegal invasions, and when diplomats explicitly claim continents as their backyard, all bets are off.

Such periods of chaotic transition, where established norms evaporate and power is asserted without apology, are historically the harbingers of great calamity. They are the anxious, volatile years scribbled in history books before the chapter heading “Major War.”

The uncertainty is profound. We are now spectators and participants in a global drama where the script has been torn up, the director is shouting contradictory commands, and the actors are improvising with live weapons. The unfolding plot is so brazen, so riddled with double standards and shocking admissions, that it feels like a poorly written dystopic fan fiction.

But the explosions are real, the consequences are mortal, and the alarming truth is that no one is making it up. This is our new reality, and the curtain has only just risen on a very dangerous, and very interesting time to be alive.

Nigerians can now invest ₦2.5 million on premium domains and profit about ₦17-₦25 million. All earnings paid in US Dollars. Rather than wonder, click here to find out how it works.

Join Daily Trust WhatsApp Community For Quick Access To News and Happenings Around You.