CHICAGO (WLS) — A former Pentagon chief is voicing concerns over America’s diminishing influence on the global stage.

Chuck Hagel, who held the position of Secretary of Defense from 2013 to 2015, engaged in a detailed discussion with the ABC7 I-Team amidst escalating international military tensions.

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Hagel, a Vietnam veteran and two-time Purple Heart awardee, who served as a U.S. senator and a Republican under the Democratic Obama administration, shared his candid views with the I-Team. He expressed unease about ongoing global developments and their implications for the future of American power.

A primary topic was the recent U.S. actions in Venezuela. Was the military’s capture of President Maduro an act of war?

“It was undeniably a breach of international law,” Hagel remarked. “We’ve been contravening international law in recent months by targeting individuals at sea without substantiating who they are, their activities, or their cargo, which also goes against our domestic laws.”

Just this week, Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote batting down legislation that would have required President Donald Trump to secure congressional authorization before any additional military action in Venezuela.

“We built a world of international rules and laws and institutions, collective security, NATO, and that’s all in question now, certainly with what the president has done in Caribbean, the Pacific and in Venezuela,” Hagel said.

In his first year back in office, President Trump has called those targeted by kinetic strikes “narco-terrorists” and has designated Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations, but that designation has some asking if that makes them a legitimate military target.

“Well, in this administration, I guess it does. But in real life, in international law, no, it doesn’t to say somebody is a narco-terrorist,” Hagel said. “Just because you say it or the president says it, that doesn’t mean they are.”

Hagel says the U.S. military is the most advanced fighting force on earth. But, as the President weighs intervention in Iran along with the armada massed off of Venezuela’s coast, there is growing concern about the end game.

“You can’t start these kinds of operations all over the globe and think your military is going to be able to handle all this, because once you start something, you never know where it’s going to go,” Hagel said.

Former secretary Hagel is also deeply troubled at the prospect of threats by President Trump to attack Greenland.

“Well, it’s unprecedented. First of all, if… if we would act on this, you will break NATO,” Hagel said. “NATO countries could not trust the United States anymore. Russia will do whatever it wants in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland, China. Will move on, Taiwan and South China Sea as they already are. Where do we go from there? And then the world becomes really dangerous.”

Hagel argues NATO has been the cornerstone of American world power allowing us to base our military forces all over Europe and hold aggressive adversaries at bay.

“I could see a situation if we keep going the way we are going a United States with no allies,” he said.

Hagel went on to say he’s seen a level of politicization of the military during President Trump’s second term that is dangerous.

Hagel was in Chicago this week for his work with the University of Chicago’s non-partisan research center, Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST).