On 3 January 2026, the United States carried out strikes in and around Caracas while President Trump announced that US forces had Nicolás Maduro transported out of the country, pointing to domestic criminal charges and a broader political project of “running” Venezuela during a “transition.” Here, once again, we encounter an archetype of the very conduct the post-1945 legal order sought to render unlawful, by substituting unilateral force with collective security, sovereign equality, and juridically constrained power.

Now imagine a powerful state crossing borders, bombing a capital, and seizing a head of government, only to retroactively recast the act as “law enforcement.” Is this merely an aggressive interpretation of international law, or something more consequential? A system in which legality is defined by capability rather than principle? If so, the pattern should feel disturbingly familiar.

The law is unambiguous at the point of entry. The UN Charter categorically prohibits both the threat and the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. That prohibition is widely recognized in international jurisprudence and doctrine as a peremptory norm at the core of the modern international legal order. Its exceptions are deliberately narrow and exhaustively enumerated in two cases, either authorization by the Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the Charter, which alone confers collective legitimacy for the use of force  or the inherent right of self-defense under Article 51. That right arises only in response to an actual armed attack, as consistently interpreted by the International Court of Justice, and is further constrained by the customary........

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