At dawn on January 3, 2026, the United States executed a military operation on Venezuelan soil that will mark a watershed moment in 21st-century geopolitics. US forces struck targets in and around Caracas, seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flew them to New York to face federal charges; while President Donald Trump unabashedly proclaimed that the US would “run the country” until a political transition is arranged. We call this an invasion because that is exactly what it was: an unprovoked armed intrusion by one sovereign state into another, conducted without a shred of lawful authority. It is not a policing action, not a sanctioned use of force, not an exercise in self-defense: it is aggression pure and simple, a brazen revival of the worst instincts of imperial power.
The United Nations Charter, the bedrock treaty that has undergirded global peace since 1945, could not be clearer. Article 2(4) prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state without Security Council authorization or a legitimate self-defense claim.
There was no Security Council mandate. And while the administration has trumpeted drug charges as justification, drug trafficking, even if proven, does not constitute an armed attack under Article 51 of the UN Charter. There was no imminent attack on US soil justifying defensive force. The Chatham House legal analysis is unambiguous: the action “has no justification in international law” and is a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty.
The forcible removal of Maduro from his country by another state’s military is not a lawful extradition. Extradition requires bilateral agreement or consent of the host state’s judiciary or executive, none of which existed here. In international law, this is kidnapping. An expert law professor described the act as “power kidnapping the law”: a great power seizing what it wishes under an invented moral license. The principle of non-intervention in domestic affairs is a cornerstone of international relations. It forbids external powers from imposing leadership changes or coercing political outcomes within another state. Air strikes, incursions, and regime removal outside of recognized legal frameworks are explicitly prohibited. The very nations that co-authored the UN Charter – France and Spain – joined others in condemning the operation as a breach of the non-use-of-force principle.
Under the US Constitution, only Congress may declare war. This campaign was launched without congressional authorization, prompting criticism from lawmakers across the political spectrum, who labelled it “unconstitutional, un-American, and a direct threat to our democracy.” The administration has attempted to dress the incursion in terms of law enforcement, citing indictments against Maduro and narco-terrorism charges. But to project domestic law outside one’s borders with military force against a sovereign government is not law enforcement; it is imperial overreach. It stretches domestic criminal jurisdiction to the point of absurdity and, in doing so, erodes the very rule of law it purports to uphold.
Trump’s invocation of something he dubiously calls the “Donroe Doctrine” is not a legal principle but a carnival mask for naked interventionism: a rewriting of the Monroe Doctrine to justify hegemonic dominance. If a permanent member of the Security Council can launch an unprovoked assault and abduct a head of state with impunity, what belies the idea that other powers can’t do the same? International lawyers warn that such a precedent weakens the UN Charter’s authority and invites imitation; from Beijing to Moscow to other aspiring hegemons. One expert even suggested that China could feel emboldened to make a move on Taiwan, citing Trump’s action as a precedent.
The UN was designed to prevent unilateral use of force and broker collective security. When a Security Council member violates foundational provisions with no practical consequences due to veto power, the entire structure of collective security is degraded. The power to veto should not be a shield for aggression. Latin America has long insisted on a zone of peace free from extra-regional military intervention. Brazil, Mexico, and other governments recoiled at the strike, warning that it jeopardizes regional stability and could unleash new waves of displacement, economic shock, and militarization. Rather than offering a constructive path for Venezuelans who have endured hardship under Maduro’s regime, this intervention shoves the country deeper into chaos, suspends national sovereignty, and replaces one form of autocratic rule with another; this time led by outsiders. The idea that Washington can “run” Venezuela until transition is not democratization; it is occupation.
It would be facile to fall into moral equivalence with Maduro, a leader widely criticized for human rights abuses and economic mismanagement. But the ends do not justify the means in a world where law matters. Resorting to unilateral military force without legal mandate wounds the normative foundation that prevents global anarchy. Moreover, the logic of arming intervention to end suffering is self-defeating. History teaches us that foreign military imposition rarely results in stable, self-determining democracies. Instead, it engenders resentment, fuels insurgencies, and provokes interstate rivalries.
President Trump’s gambit is not a heroic crusade against narco-terrorism or tyranny. It is a blatant violation of international law; a crime of aggression, as defined in the post–World War II legal order, and a triumph of raw power over principle. It undermines US credibility, poisons hemispheric relations, and destabilizes the system built to safeguard peace. For Americans, the constitutional blunders alone should be enough to spark outrage. Abroad, world leaders have condemned the action; the United Nations Secretary-General has said the rules of international law have not been met. What Trump has done is not leadership; it is recklessness masquerading as resolve.
The international community must not be passive in the face of this assault on the rule of law. To remain silent is to concede that might makes right; a doctrine that leads inevitably to global disorder. In seizing Maduro, the United States did not uphold justice. It violated the sovereignty of another nation, shredded the UN Charter, and etched a precedent that will haunt global stability for decades to come. The age of lawless intervention cannot stand. It must be opposed not only in Caracas and Caracas’s allies, but by every state that values sovereignty, peace and the fragile architecture of international law that restrains the strong from devouring the weak. America should champion norms, not trample them. Instead, on that January morning, it chose the naked exercise of force; and in so doing, diminished itself and imperiled us all.
