The US arrest of Venezuela’s sitting president Nicolás Maduro is not law enforcement, it is coercion dressed up as justice. The United States was not at war with Venezuela. There was no UN mandate. There was no imminent threat. What remains is a unilateral strike against a sovereign state, and that is precisely what international law exists to prevent.

If Washington believes crimes were committed, the path is clear and well-established: multilateral action through the United Nations, international courts, or diplomatic pressure backed by global consensus. Anything else is not accountability, it is muscle-flexing. Bypassing these institutions signals that rules apply only when convenient, and that power, not law, decides guilt.

This sets a dangerous precedent. If the world’s most powerful country can raid another nation to seize its leader without war or mandate, what stops others from doing the same? Today it is Venezuela. Tomorrow it could be any state deemed “unacceptable” by a stronger rival. That is not a rules-based order; it is a return to gunboat diplomacy.

Equally troubling is the denial of Venezuelans’ agency. Political legitimacy, however contested, must ultimately be decided by a country’s people, not by foreign commandos. External force does not strengthen democracy; it discredits it.

Normalize this doctrine and international law collapses into selective enforcement. Sovereignty becomes conditional. Stability becomes optional. The cost will be paid not by great powers, but by smaller nations everywhere.