These days, in several of his interventions, Dominique de Villepin, former Foreign Minister under Chirac and later Prime Minister of France during the difficult period of the 2005 suburban uprisings, went straight to the point. He said that what happened with the kidnapping of the President of Venezuela by the Americans represents a paradigm shift.

De Villepin—who may possibly run in the 2027 presidential elections—saw a dark gesture toward a world in which rules, even weakened and often frustrated rules, would have no role. In other words, he understood that the political significance of this story far exceeds the fate of Maduro himself.

De Villepin is a lyrical politician of a certain Gaullist tradition, which should not be idealized, especially now when our Trumpian present and the muted reactions to ongoing events are disheartening.

However, he possesses the sensitivity and, above all, the political instinct of a conservative who knows how to prioritize threats—like those early Gaullists of World War II who could meet with Leftist resistance fighters opposing the pro-Hitler Vichy regime.

Furthermore, on issues like the new social question and the taxation of the ultra-wealthy, this “aristocrat” De Villepin holds respectable positions, arguably better than those of the liberal technocrats of Macronism or of other Right- and Far-Right factions.

One can note that just as in the 1930s the voices of certain urban and conservative figures who recognized the fascist threat were invaluable (and did not play with the far Right in the name of a “common fight against communism”), today people like De Villepin (or Thierry Breton) can discern the important point: that Trumpism is not merely a misspelled or skewed version of liberal democratic normality but sets in motion something far worse.

What is the monster being created through decisions like the one we saw in the kidnapping of Maduro? We are witnessing the restoration and aggressive resurgence of all reactionary ideologies and practices: from white supremacy and the colonial gaze to crude anti-socialism and deep contempt for the poor and suffering.

Yet we also see something else.

Using Venezuela as a pretext and through obsession with “leftist populism,” many in the Center and Center-Right, including in our country, appeared to enjoy the actions of American special forces and the images of Maduro as a prisoner.

And if tomorrow comes Colombia under the leftist Petro or Cuba, a world that otherwise “is not Trumpian” but admires, for example, an Ann Applebaum, will emotionally side with those delivering decisive blows to the few remaining islands of socialism, populism, and anti-imperialism.

The justification is often cold realism, expecting that our country might gain something from these realignments.

More likely, however, is something else: not realism, but aversion to anything considered leftist, Third World–populist, socialist, etc. Just as in the 1930s, part of the liberal-conservative camp preferred the far Right to the “reds.”

At some point, De Villepin was asked about Emmanuel Macron’s first statement, which mainly referred to the “relief at the end of the dictator Maduro.”

He responded: it is blindness. They should also have asked him about the Greek Prime Minister’s statement. Perhaps there is no better term for part of Europe—both leaders and citizens—than their inability to perceive the consequences of imposing authoritarian transactional practices on public affairs, both domestic and especially international.

When the only law becomes “what I can achieve by any means”, the very concept of law is nullified. Law allocates responsibilities, rights, and claims.

We are now in a situation where the hegemonic player of the West demands a violent redesign of the Western Hemisphere in which no dissenting or deviant regimes are allowed.

In the case of Greenland, where naturally no “anti-American” power exists, Trump’s desire for alignment is explicitly a desire for annexation. From creating a security perimeter, we move straight to a planned assault in the Arctic, which will presumably become the new theater of unorthodox superpower conflicts.

Ran Alevis, another conservative intellectual and student of historian François Furet, also understood the core of the problem. He spoke of Trump’s “imperial populism” because, as we know, in certain contexts it is difficult to use the charged term imperialism for a Western country.

Alevis—and indeed all of us—know that power often dictates the rules, not justice. When this is accepted and normalized as state and political behavior, the issue transforms. It becomes something beyond “realism”: it destroys any possible political community, internal and external.

And this is exactly what seems to emerge in the era of Big Oil and Big Tech under the Trump presidency, which has become a tool for dismantling an already destabilized world.

Nikolas Sevastakis is Professor of Political Philosophy at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and author.