Uncommon Knowledge: Trump Closes Venezuelan Airspace, but...

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By Newsweek EditorsShareNewsweek is a Trust Project member

Just over 10 years ago, a Russian Su-24 strayed across a sliver of Turkish airspace near the Syrian border—by Ankara’s account, for all of 17 seconds. The response was immediate and devastating. A Turkish F-16 fired a missile and the bomber plunged in flames, with one crew member shot dead in his parachute by Syrian rebels. President Vladimir Putin described it as "a stab in the back," but NATO affirmed its members’ right to defend their skies. The incident was jarring in its unambiguity.

A decade on, NATO in the Trump era looks a lot more ambiguous. In September 2025, three Russian MiG-31s loitered 12 minutes over Estonia before Italian F-35s shooed them out; Tallinn called it "unprecedentedly brazen." Poland said up to 23 drones crossed its border on September 9, prompting Article 4 consultations and the first shootdowns of Russian assets over NATO territory in the Ukraine war. Romania logged its 13th breach on November 25—and its first in daylight—scrambling German and Romanian jets. Norway, after a decade of relative quiet, reported three Russian incursions this year.

And yet last week, the decisive-sounding response happened not over Europe, but over Venezuela. "Consider the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela to be closed in its entirety," President Donald Trump posted, after the FAA warned of a deteriorating security environment.

For all his breathless talk of "closing airspace," the West still tiptoes around Russian air probes targeting NATO while Trump talks tough in America’s backyard—against a pariah state that, unlike Moscow, can’t shoot back.

Common Knowledge

Reactions to Trump’s stance on Venezuela have been swift.

On the right, the administration’s own voice framed the move as overdue muscle. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the days of acting "with impunity" are over. Conservative hawks, noting months of U.S. naval and air actions against alleged narco-boats, argued that shuttering the skies was the logical next rung of coercion.

On the left, alarm is growing. Senate Democrats have repeatedly demanded the statutory basis for strikes and escalatory moves around Venezuela, warning the White House "cannot outsource Article I authority to the CIA or JSOC." Caracas, meanwhile, blasted Trump’s post as a "colonialist threat" and violation of sovereignty.

Uncommon Knowledge

Only one actor can legally "close" airspace—and it isn’t Washington. International air law’s opening sentence is older than NATO. Article 1 of the 1944 Chicago Convention says: "Every State has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory." That is, sovereign skies belong to the sovereign beneath. You can warn and sanction. You can advise airlines away from someone else’s. But you cannot shut theirs, because it isn’t yours.

Nobody seems to have told Russia. NATO’s own numbers show allied air forces scrambled well over 300 times in 2023 to meet Russian aircraft approaching allied airspace, mostly over the Baltic Sea. Independent tallies indicate 2024 was "stable" versus 2023. The probing has been insistent.

What changed in 2025 is that events weren’t just "approaches" in international airspace but documented intrusions into NATO skies—skies that the U.S. is also bound by treaty to protect:

Poland (September 9–10): Warsaw reported 19 Russian drones breaching Polish airspace during a mass strike on Ukraine. Polish and allied aircraft shot down several—the first known NATO shootdowns of Russian assets over NATO territory since the war began—and Poland invoked Article 4.
Estonia (September 19): Three MiG-31s violated Estonian airspace for about 12 minutes near Vaindloo Island—an "unprecedentedly brazen" incursion—before Italian F-35s escorted them out. Tallinn requested Article 4 consultations.
Romania (November 25): Two Russian drones made the deepest and first daytime incursion into Romanian airspace since the full-scale invasion; one crashed roughly 70 miles inside the country, while German Typhoons and Romanian F-16s scrambled under standing orders to shoot if needed. Bucharest counted it the 13th breach this year.
Norway (April 25, July 24, August 18): Oslo logged three Russian violations lasting 1–4 minutes—its first such cases in more than a decade.
Lithuania (October 23): Vilnius protested a brief incursion by a Su-30 and an Il-78 refueling tanker from Kaliningrad, about 700 meters into Lithuanian airspace for roughly 18 seconds.
Finland (February 7; May 23; June 10): Helsinki reported suspected violations—first near Hanko (minutes inside Finnish airspace), then two aircraft near Porvoo, and again on June 10.

How does that compare to the Venezuela situation? What Washington can do—indeed has done, repeatedly since 2019—is restrict U.S. civil aviation and suspend U.S.–Venezuela air service: the FAA barred U.S. operators below 26,000 feet in 2019 as the security situation worsened; commercial flights were halted the same month, and U.S. regulators revived and tightened advisories again last month.

Trump’s latest outburst now ripped up that playbook. In February 2024, said that he’d "encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want" to NATO freeloaders, though it was a line he later tried to temper as president.

With Maduro, by contrast, the line has been consistently hard. From sanctions, to rewards for Maduro’s arrest, to U.S. strikes on alleged narco-boats, it is a test case for maximum Trumpian pressure, culminating in his decree that Venezuelan airspace is now closed.

"Closing" another country’s airspace is sovereign business, and the United States knows it—because the same rule shields NATO skies. Treading carefully around Russia might be wise policy, given the risks; Trump, for reasons known only to his administration, is using the opposite approach to Venezuela. He is policing the skies the U.S. doesn't own, while his NATO allies fight to enforce theirs.

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