E-Paper
Global fallout of America’s Venezuela operation
This was not a proxy war, a covert intervention, or even a contested humanitarian operation.
The US’ military operation in Venezuela marks a rupture that goes beyond the immediate shock of force or the spectacle of power. By entering Venezuelan territory without international authorisation, seizing a sitting head of state, and transferring him to its own jurisdiction to face domestic criminal charges, Washington has crossed a threshold that the post-1945 international system was expressly designed to prevent. This was not a proxy war, a covert intervention, or even a contested humanitarian operation. It was a direct assertion that military superiority can substitute for international legality, and that sovereign equality, long the bedrock of global order, is conditional when it collides with the interests of a dominant power.
The United Nations Charter was drafted in the aftermath of catastrophic wars precisely to eliminate such unilateralism. Article 2(4) prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, allowing exceptions only for self-defence against an armed attack or for collective action authorised by the Security Council. The Venezuelan operation satisfies neither condition. There was no imminent threat to the US, nor was there any UN mandate. The attempt to frame the action as a hybrid of counter-narcotics enforcement, criminal apprehension, and democratic intervention does not remedy this defect. International law does not recognise the elevation of domestic indictments into a legal basis for cross-border military action. If it did, the principle of sovereignty would collapse into a discretionary privilege, revoked at will by powerful States.
What makes this episode particularly destabilising is not merely the breach of law, but the manner in which it was executed. The US did not even attempt to cloak its actions in multilateralism. There was no emergency Security Council session preceding the operation, no coalition of states providing political cover, and no serious effort to invoke established doctrines such as the Responsibility to Protect, which itself remains legally contested. The absence of restraint signals that Washington no longer feels compelled to justify force within the existing legal architecture. That message resonates far beyond Latin America.
Historically, US interventions in the region, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, Panama in 1989, were later acknowledged as violations of sovereignty, often justified at the time by Cold War exigencies. Yet even those actions were undertaken in a world where international law was weaker and decolonisation incomplete. To replicate such conduct in 2026, after decades of professed commitment to multilateralism and rule-based governance, represents regression rather than continuity. It suggests not a momentary lapse, but a recalibration of doctrine: That legality is subordinate to strategic convenience.
The reaction across Latin America underscores the depth of this concern. Governments with sharply differing ideological orientations, from Brazil and Mexico to Colombia and Chile, have warned that the operation undermines regional stability and revives the spectre of external domination. The principle of non-intervention, enshrined in both the UN Charter and the Charter of the Organization of American States, has been a hard-won shield for post-colonial States. Its erosion reopens historical wounds and fuels anxieties about future coercion, particularly in regions marked by economic vulnerability and political fragmentation.
Globally, the implications are even more severe. International law operates less through enforcement than through expectation. States comply not because violation is impossible, but because norms create predictability and mutual restraint. When a leading power demonstrates that such norms can be ignored without consequence, it weakens the incentives for compliance by others. Russia’s war in Ukraine has already strained this system by showing that territorial conquest could be pursued despite legal condemnation. The Venezuelan operation compounds that damage by demonstrating that even the rhetoric of legality is now optional.
China, which has long argued that western invocations of international law are selective and instrumental, has seized upon the episode to reinforce its narrative. Beijing’s condemnation of the operation is less about defending Venezuela than about delegitimising western criticism of its own conduct, whether in the South China Sea or in its dealings with Taiwan. If sovereignty can be overridden in Caracas, the argument goes, it can be relativised anywhere. Moscow’s response follows a similar logic. The danger lies not in rhetorical sparring, but in the gradual normalisation of a world where force becomes a routine instrument of statecraft rather than an exceptional failure of diplomacy.
For countries like India, which are neither peripheral nor hegemonic, the episode presents an acute dilemma. New Delhi has consistently emphasised respect for sovereignty, non-interference, and strategic autonomy, while also deepening partnerships with the United States. The Venezuelan operation tests the coherence of this position. If international law is eroded by those who claim to defend it, middle powers are left navigating an environment where alignment offers diminishing normative protection, and non-alignment offers limited insulation. The credibility of institutions such as the UN, already weakened by paralysis and politicisation, further declines, leaving States to rely increasingly on power balances rather than legal assurances.
The domestic political arguments advanced to justify the intervention do not withstand scrutiny either. Nicolás Maduro’s government has been widely criticised for authoritarian practices, economic mismanagement, and human rights violations. Yet international law does not permit regime change by external force, however distasteful a government may be. To conflate moral condemnation with legal authorisation is to collapse the distinction between legitimacy and legality. History offers sobering lessons here: interventions launched in the name of democracy often entrench instability, empower armed actors, and leave societies fractured long after the interveners depart.
The humanitarian consequences within Venezuela are already visible. Civilian casualties from the initial strikes, uncertainty over political authority, and fears of economic disruption have deepened an already fragile situation. The removal of a head of State by foreign force does not resolve internal divisions; it exacerbates them. Competing claims to authority, contested recognition, and the prospect of prolonged external involvement risk turning Venezuela into a theatre of proxy competition rather than a beneficiary of democratic renewal.
Perhaps the most corrosive effect of the operation lies in what it reveals about the current international moment. The language of a “rules-based order” has long functioned as a moral currency in global politics. It allowed powerful states to claim leadership while smaller states accepted asymmetries in exchange for predictability and restraint. That bargain is now visibly fraying. When rules are applied selectively, they cease to be rules and become tools. When institutions are bypassed, they lose relevance. And when power is exercised without accountability, legitimacy evaporates.
The Venezuelan episode does not herald the end of international law; norms rarely disappear overnight. But it does accelerate a transition towards a more transactional, less principled order, where compliance depends on capacity rather than conviction. In such a system, the costs are borne disproportionately by weaker States, while even strong ones face long-term instability as trust erodes and conflict becomes harder to contain.
The lesson of January 2026 is, therefore, not confined to Caracas or Washington. It speaks to a broader truth about the fragility of global order in an era of resurgent power politics. Law, once weakened, is difficult to restore. Precedents, once set, are difficult to confine. If the seizure of a sovereign leader by foreign military force becomes acceptable under the guise of justice or security, the distinction between order and anarchy narrows dangerously.
What remains is a stark choice. Either states reaffirm the primacy of international law, even when it constrains their immediate interests, or they accept a world where might increasingly defines right. The US’ action in Venezuela suggests that this choice is being deferred rather than confronted. The cost of that deferral will not be borne by great powers alone, but by an international system already struggling to contain the consequences of its own unravelling.
This article is authored by Amal Chandra, author, political analyst and coordinator, Students For Liberty (SFL).
