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On January 3, 2026, the United States carried out a large-scale operation in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and their transfer into U.S. custody. ^[1] Within hours, the story stopped being only about Maduro. It became a stress test of the West’s default assumptions about how global order actually works.

The reaction split fast and predictably: condemnation framed in the language of sovereignty and the UN Charter; applause framed in the language of liberation and justice; and, underneath both, a quieter argument about whether “international law” is a meaningful constraint—or primarily a vocabulary used to legitimize outcomes power already permits.

Two languages for one event

When a great power uses force to remove a sitting head of state and relocate him for prosecution, states and commentators typically reach for one of two languages.

The first is legal-institutional: Was this lawful? Was it authorized? What does the UN Charter permit? What precedent does it set?

The second is strategic-realist: What will it cost? Who can impose consequences? What does it deter? What does it invite?

These languages often coexist, but Venezuela forced a choice because it exposed the tension between *the claim* of a rules-governed international order and *the mechanism* by which order actually persists.

The enforceability problem

The measured point is not that international law is “fake” in every domain. A great deal of international life runs on rules that are real in practice: treaties, trade arrangements, financial compliance, aviation coordination, maritime norms, and sanctions enforcement. In those domains, rules can be highly consequential because they are tied to access, markets, and institutional membership.

But in the domain that states care about most—hard security and regime survival—international law runs into a structural limitation: there is no global sovereign with a monopoly on force. The question is not whether rules exist, but whether they bind the actors most able to ignore them.

That isn’t a rhetorical flourish. It’s the structural fact everything else sits on.

The UN can convene, condemn, and deliberate. But it cannot consistently coerce major powers into compliance. In the wake of the Maduro operation, the UN Security Council moved to meet and the UN Secretary-General warned the action set a “dangerous precedent.” ^[2] That may shape legitimacy and alliances. It may raise political costs. But it does not function like law inside a state, because law inside a state ultimately rests on enforceable authority.

This is why the phrase “international law” so often behaves less like binding law and more like legitimacy currency—something states spend, something rivals contest, and something that matters most when it is backed by power.

The reaction spectrum makes more sense as philosophy, not partisanship

The political reactions were not merely partisan reflexes; they were expressions of competing world-models.

Institutionalists treated the precedent as the core danger: once unilateral force becomes normalized, the world becomes easier for worse actors to imitate.
Sovereignty-first critics (especially in regions with long memories of intervention) treated it as a return to imperial patterns—regardless of Maduro’s character.
Results-first supporters treated it as overdue action against an entrenched authoritarian regime and criminal networks.
Realists treated it as a reminder that rules do not restrain actors who cannot be credibly punished.

It is possible to disagree with the operation and still accept the realist diagnosis. “This was reckless” and “this reveals how order works” are not contradictions—they’re often the same conclusion stated in different registers.

A small but telling detail: systems moved, not just speeches

One detail worth noting is that the event had immediate operational spillover beyond diplomacy: temporary Caribbean airspace restrictions and widespread flight cancellations followed, with U.S. authorities later lifting curbs. ^[3] That’s not a moral argument either way. It’s simply a reminder that great-power action produces real-world system effects instantly—while multilateral processes operate on a different clock.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s internal institutions scrambled to project continuity. On January 4, 2026, reporting described Venezuela’s Supreme Court ordering Vice President Delcy Rodríguez to assume the interim presidency following Maduro’s detention. ^[4] Again, one can read this in legal terms or strategic terms. But it underscores the same point: the decisive moves were being made through power, institutional control, and logistics—not through international adjudication.

What Venezuela is really teaching

The strongest measured conclusion is this:

1. International law can matter as coordination and legitimacy.

2. But in hard-security conflicts, it does not function like ordinary law because enforcement is selective, especially against great powers.

3. Therefore, when Western leaders speak as though “international law” itself will constrain outcomes, they are often describing the world they want—or the world they remember—more than the world that exists.

This is the wake-up Venezuela delivers: not that rules are worthless, but that rules don’t become rules until they are paired with credible consequences. If the West wants a world that is safer for liberal societies, it must stop mistaking procedural vocabulary for strategic capacity.

What Western leaders should do differently

If “international law” is often a language of legitimacy rather than a source of enforcement, then the task for Western leaders is not to abandon norms—but to rebuild the conditions under which norms can actually hold. That requires a change in posture that is both external and internal.

First: speak honestly about interests and tradeoffs.

A rules vocabulary can be morally sincere and still strategically evasive. Western publics deserve leaders who can say, without euphemism, what outcomes matter, why they matter, and what costs we are willing to pay to secure them.

Second: re-embody Western values in our institutions, not merely our slogans.

The West is not “a place that sometimes gets things right.” It is the most successful civilizational experiment yet produced: freedom under law, pluralism, scientific dynamism, broad prosperity, and the moral insight that the individual matters. If leaders treat this as an embarrassment rather than an inheritance, they will govern as caretakers of decline.

Third: restore civic confidence by repairing the narrative infrastructure.

A civilization that teaches its own children that it is uniquely evil will not defend itself—or even understand why it should. The “mono-focused West-is-bad” story has become a kind of institutional reflex across parts of education, culture, and bureaucracy. You can reject naïve triumphalism while still insisting on civilizational honesty: that the West has flaws, committed crimes, and still produced the best lived human outcomes at scale to date.

Fourth: build capacity again—material, strategic, and moral.

Norms without capacity do not preserve peace; they invite tests. This means defense industrial readiness, energy resilience, border and migration competence, counterintelligence seriousness, and the willingness to impose costs where deterrence requires it.

Finally: treat multilateralism as a tool, not a substitute for power.

Institutions can amplify strength; they cannot conjure it. A West that wants a stable order must stop acting as though process is the engine. Process is the dashboard.

Afterword: the more polemical take

Western elites keep reaching for “international law” the way a sleepwalker reaches for the bedside table—by habit, not by sight. They speak as if naming the norm substitutes for enforcing it. But there is no authority behind it for the actors that matter most.

So the scandal isn’t disagreement about Venezuela. The scandal is that so many of our leadership classes still talk like we live in a world where legitimacy language can replace power, unity, and competence. That was a comfortable posture in a more unipolar era. It is a dangerous posture now.

In a multipolar environment, moral declarations without strength don’t preserve order. They advertise weakness. And weakness is not neutral: it invites tests.

 Footnotes

^[1] Reuters (Jan 3–4, 2026): reporting on the U.S. operation capturing Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores and transferring them to U.S. custody.

^[2] Reuters (Jan 3, 2026): UN Security Council to meet over U.S. action; UN Secretary-General calls it a “dangerous precedent”; meeting requested with backing from Russia/China.

^[3] Reuters (Jan 3, 2026): Caribbean airspace restrictions and flight cancellations following the operation; later lifted.

^[4] Reuters (Jan 4, 2026): Venezuela’s Supreme Court orders Delcy Rodríguez to assume interim presidency after Maduro’s detention.

Direct Reference Links

[1] Reuters — “Mock house, CIA source and Special Forces: The US operation to capture Maduro”
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/mock-house-cia-source-special-forces-us-operation-capture-maduro-2026-01-03/

[2] Reuters — “UN Security Council to meet Monday over US action in Venezuela”
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/un-chief-venezuela-us-action-sets-dangerous-precedent-2026-01-03/

[3] Reuters — “US lifts Caribbean airspace curbs after attack on Venezuela”
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-airlines-cancel-flights-after-caribbean-airspace-closure-2026-01-03/

[4] Reuters — “Venezuela’s Supreme Court orders Delcy Rodriguez become interim president”
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuelas-supreme-court-orders-delcy-rodriguez-become-interim-president-2026-01-04/