The military intervention of the United States in Venezuela in early January 2026 is one of the most significant events in the politics of the hemisphere since the end of the Cold War. The arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro by US forces and his handover to the United States to be prosecuted for federal crimes has not only changed the internal political course of Venezuela but has set in motion an important debate on international law, sovereignty, and the credibility of the so-called rules-based international order.
While Washington has justified the operation as an inevitable exercise of law enforcement and national security, the reaction from the United Nations and across the political spectrum of states indicates that the episode may prove a dangerous precedent – one that highlights deep contradictions in the interpretation and application of global rules by powerful actors.
UN Human Rights Office has cautioned that the US move has “made the world ‘less safe'” and stressed that unilateral uses of force outside the UN framework of international law undermine collective security and normalize the use of coercion by powerful states.
These concerns were echoed by Antonio Guterres who raised the question of the legality of the operation under the UN Charter and its potential to destabilize an already fragile region. The acuity of these reactions is remarkable not just because they question US rationales, but as indications of increasing disquiet among international bodies responsible for enforcing the rules of sovereignty and non-intervention.
The reasons offered by the US administration to justify its actions were domestic indictments against Maduro, such as accusations of narco-terrorism and mass drug trafficking, because Venezuela became a haven for the establishment of transnational criminal networks that directly threaten US security.
Supporters of the intervention have likened the episode to the 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States and the capture of Manuel Noriega, depicting the Venezuela operation as an extension of extradition, law enforcement, and other law-enforcement on behalf of the territorial United States, rather than a war.
Yet this analogy has its imperfections. The modern international system is much more institutionalized than it was in 1989 and the legal limits on the use of force (codified most clearly in the UN Charter) are now widely accepted as foundational norms rather than optional guidelines.
At the heart of the controversy is Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter which forbids the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, except in cases of self-defense or by the Security Council’s authorization. In the case of Venezuela neither condition was obviously met. Venezuela did not take any kind of armed attack on the United States, and no authorization was granted by the Security Council.
Legal scholars cited by Reuters and Chatham House have therefore said that the intervention could not be justified under existing international law. The argument in the case of the domestic criminal indictments that they do allow unilateral military action to be taken in another country is especially disturbing, as it runs the risk of blurring the line between law enforcement and warfare, a blurring that, if normalized, could have global implications.
This episode has to be understood also in a larger historical and doctrinal context. US relations with Latin America have long been dominated by a conviction in hemispheric exceptionalism that dated to the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that the Western Hemisphere was a special US sphere of influence. While originally conceived as an exercise in defense against European colonialism, the doctrine became with time a rationale for intervention.
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The Roosevelt Corollary of 1904 explicitly asserted a US right to intervene as a regional police power that gave it legitimacy to intervene repeatedly throughout Central America and the Caribbean throughout the twentieth century.
Although in the post-Cold War period, overt interventionism did decline, the overall logic of hemispheric dominance never quite went away. It has re-emerged with renewed clarity in the 2025 US National Security Strategy which articulates what analysts have called the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. While not labeled as such in the official documents, this corollary is seen in the language of this strategy with respect to “hemispheric responsibility,” preemptive stabilization and exclusion of rival powers from the Americas.
The document makes the Western Hemisphere a vital strategic area in which the United States reserves the right to act decisively – militarily if necessary – to protect its interests.
Seen through this lens, the intervention in Venezuela comes to seem less an isolated response to criminality, and more the practical application of a more general strategic vision.
Venezuela controls the world’s largest proven reserves of oil, an estimated 300 billion barrels or more, and has in recent years strengthened its economic and security relations with China, Russia, and Iran.
For Washington, such relations have increasingly come to be seen as unacceptable encroachments by extra-hemispheric powers. The ouster of Maduro thus has many different objectives: weakening opposing influence, changing regional alignments, and re-establishing US primacy in Latin America.
Yet even if these strategic motivations are admitted, they do not help to resolve the normative dilemma posed by the intervention. The rules-based international order, used frequently by Western policymakers, is based on the premise that power needs to be checked by law and institutions. When the United States circumvents these limitations, it belies not only the credibility of the United States, it also belies the very norms that it claims to uphold elsewhere.
Critics have noted the hypocrisy of denouncing breaches of sovereignty by competing powers and intervening unilaterally when it is in US interests to do so. Such selective adherence to rules runs the risk of turning the international order into a hierarchy instead of a system of law.
The reaction from Latin America has been revealing particularly. Several regional governments condemned the intervention as a breach of sovereignty, and recalled a long history of interference from outside while deepest political scars remain. Even states who’ve been critical of Maduro’s governance raised their voices in discomfort with the precedent his forcible ejection has established.
This reaction highlights a more general anxiety in the region: If there is a possibility of overriding sovereignty by a strong neighbor claiming a security or criminal justice justification, then legal equality between states is an illusion.
From a global point of view, the implications are not limited to Venezuela or even to Latin America. If unilateral military actions based on domestic legal claims become the norm, then other powerful states may feel encouraged to follow such strategies.
The consequent loosening of legal restraint may lead to more rapid disintegration of the international system into spheres of influence running according to coerced rather than under consent. The UN Human Rights Office’s warning that such actions make the world less safe should therefore be taken seriously and not written off as rhetorical excess.
At the same time, a balanced assessment must be made of the real failures of Venezuela’s political system under Maduro. Years of economic disintegration, hyperinflation and human rights abuses have caused the Venezuelan population to suffer greatly.
Diplomatic engagement and economic sanctions did not create significant political change, thus some policymakers believed they had to take extraordinary measures. This argument is felt by those who see international law as not being responsive enough to long-standing authoritarianism and transnational crime.
However, the major question is not whether Maduro’s government warranted criticism or accountability, but whether unilateral military force is a legitimate or sustainable way of achieving such ends. History suggests that interventions that are couched in the terms of corrective or temporary tend to create long term instability and resentment.
Moreover, the lack of a clear multilateral framework for Venezuela’s political transition has raised concerns about legitimacy and governance in the post-intervention phase.
Ultimately, the US intervention in Venezuela is a crucial stress test to the rules-based international order.
It exposes the conflict between power and principle, strategic ambition and legal constraint. The invocation of the Trump Corollary is a sign that it is willing to put unilateral action above multilateral consensus, reviving an older hemispheric dominance tradition at a time when the world is already coming under strain from global cooperation.
Whether this approach serves to strengthen the security of the US or to hasten the collapse of the norm is an open question, but the implications will reverberate well beyond Caracas.
If the rules-based order is going to have any meaning left, it must apply equally – even to the states which are “most able to violate it.” Otherwise, international law has the potential to become a language of convenience rather than a structure of obligation. Venezuela, in this sense, may come to be remembered not only as a national tragedy, but as a defining moment in the slow unravelling of the global order the United States once championed.
*The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Diplomatic Insight.
Atiqullah Baig Mughul
Atiqullah Baig Mughul is a graduate in International Relations, specializing in security studies, Middle East politics, diplomacy, and policy-oriented geopolitical research. He can be reached at atiqullahmughal18@gmail.com
