If I were President Prabowo Subianto, I would feel uneasy watching news of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro being transferred to the United States to face trial, an image that raises uncomfortable questions about how power determines when sovereignty ends.
It would not matter whether the charges were framed in the language of narcotics, corruption, or human rights. What would matter is the signal: that sovereignty, for certain states and leaders, is conditional, and that justice can cross borders when interests align.
That unease is sharpened by Indonesia’s own response. Unlike Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who reacted directly and publicly, asking for immediate release of Maduro, President Prabowo issued no personal statement. Indonesia spoke instead through its foreign ministry, which expressed concern and urged restraint without explicitly naming the United States. The tone was cautious, procedural, and deliberately restrained. It was neither protest nor endorsement, but careful distance.
Such caution is rarely accidental. It reflects an awareness of how international power actually operates: unevenly, selectively, and with a long institutional memory. For leaders whose pasts are preserved in international archives and human rights reports, global justice is never abstract. It is latent. It can remain dormant for years, even decades, only to be activated when alliances fray or obedience weakens. In this landscape, silence can be a form of prudence, and ambiguity a survival strategy.
The Maduro episode, then, should not be read merely as a legal event or a moral reckoning. It is also a demonstration. It shows how history can be reactivated when it becomes geopolitically useful, how sovereignty can be suspended, and how the language of justice can be mobilized with remarkable speed once power feels threatened.
This context matters all the more under Donald Trump. Trump’s tariff wars, first against China, then against allies and rivals alike, have shown that he views international relations as a zero-sum transaction. Tariffs, sanctions, financial pressure, diplomatic isolation, and legal mechanisms are all part of the same toolkit. They are not separate instruments, but interchangeable ones. When trade policy fails, moral language follows. When economic pressure stalls, legal narratives emerge.
Venezuela sits at the intersection of this logic. It possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves, exceeding 300 billion barrels. It sits atop the world’s largest known oil reserves, yet has chosen to deepen ties with China, engage in de-dollarized trade using the yuan, and challenge the petrodollar system that underpins American financial power. In geopolitical terms, this is not merely economic diversification; it is a challenge to a monetary order that has sustained American dominance for half a century. In such a context, it is naïve to imagine that law and political economy operate in isolation. When a state undermines the architecture of US dominance, justifications, whether it’s legal, humanitarian, or moral, are never difficult to assemble.
Since the 1970s, that order has rested on the petrodollar system, an arrangement in which global oil trade is priced in US dollars, ensuring permanent demand for the currency. The consequences have been enormous: the ability to finance deficits, sustain military reach, and export inflation. When this system is challenged, the response is rarely neutral.
History offers uncomfortable echoes. Iraq’s decision to price oil in euros was followed by invasion. Libya’s proposal for a gold-backed oil currency ended with NATO bombs. In each case, humanitarian language accompanied actions whose strategic effect was the restoration of dollar dominance. These parallels do not absolve authoritarian leaders of repression, but they reveal a consistent alignment between monetary defiance and coercive response.
None of this is to defend Maduro or excuse the repression that has hollowed out Venezuelan democracy. Quite the opposite. His fate illustrates a deeper paradox: authoritarianism at home weakens sovereignty abroad. By dismantling democratic institutions, suppressing opposition, and ruling through coercion rather than consent, Maduro did not shield Venezuela from foreign interference. He invited it.
The erosion of domestic legitimacy created the very opening through which external power could intervene, moralize, and ultimately dominate the narrative. This is where the lesson becomes urgent for Indonesia, and for President Prabowo personally.
If Prabowo wishes to avoid giving any external power excuses to interfere, pressure, or moralize, the most effective strategy is not transactional loyalty to Washington. It is democratic discipline at home. Rolling back civil liberties, weakening checks and balances, militarizing governance, or criminalizing dissent does not make Indonesia stronger. It makes it vulnerable. Every violation becomes a footnote. Every crackdown becomes a future exhibit. Every erosion of democratic norms becomes a ready-made justification, waiting to be activated.
Seen this way, Maduro’s arrest is a warning disguised as an event. A reminder that sovereignty is not defended by silence or deals alone, but by legitimacy rooted in genuine popular support. If Maduro genuinely empowered democracy at home and respected the will and unity of the Venezuelan people, the United States would have neither a moral nor a legal basis to intervene in Venezuela’s internal affairs, as sovereign nations are entitled to self-determination free from external interference.
Leaders who govern democratically may still face pressure from great powers, but they deny those powers the moral high ground. Leaders who drift toward authoritarianism, however, hand their critics a narrative weapon.
Indonesia’s Constitution already provides the roadmap. The 1945 Constitution mandates a democratic state grounded in law, popular sovereignty, and the protection of human rights. It also commits Indonesia to an independent and active foreign policy, bebas dan aktif, and to opposing all forms of colonialism and oppression. These principles are not abstract ideals. They are strategic assets.
To uphold them is not to weaken the state, but to fortify it. A democratic Indonesia with strong institutions, protected freedoms, and credible accountability is far harder to coerce, isolate, or discipline. It can speak with moral clarity not because it is perfect, but because it is consistent. It does not need to shout defiance, nor retreat into silence. It can articulate principles without fear that its own record will be used against it.
Trump’s America respects strength, but it defines strength narrowly: compliance, utility, and leverage. Indonesia should define strength differently. Not as submission, and not as bravado, but as constitutional fidelity. In an era when tariffs can be imposed overnight and legal narratives assembled just as quickly, the safest position is not obedience, but legitimacy.
If I were President Prabowo, watching Maduro’s fate unfold, I would see not only a warning about American power, but a mirror reflecting my own choices. The path away from vulnerability does not lie in suppressing dissent or centralizing authority. It lies in deepening democracy, honoring constitutional limits, and earning real support from the Indonesian people, something no foreign power can grant, and no tribunal can take away.
In that sense, Venezuela’s tragedy may yet serve a purpose elsewhere. It should reminds Indonesia and Prabowo that in a world of transactional empires, democracy is not only a moral ideal. It is a form of protection.
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Editorial Omong-Omong Media is also published by The Jakarta Post every Monday.
