Bending and breaking international law is nothing new for the US, argues Saied Reza Ameli. What is different is the Trump administration’s triumphalism and celebration in committing acts of wanton illegality. In doing so, it pushes the world towards a state of permanent war.
Introduction
In the pre-dawn hours of 3 January 2026, beneath a charcoal sky over Caracas, an act of extraordinary force unfolded that will be inscribed in the annals of international law as a blatant assault on the sovereignty of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. According to official statements from the United States presidency, a large-scale military operation — publicly codenamed Operation Absolute Resolve — was launched against the capital and surrounding regions, involving air strikes and special forces incursions into Venezuelan territory. These strikes reportedly occurred without invitation, without mandate, and without the imprimatur of any United Nations Security Council resolution, rendering them a prima facie breach of the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force against a sovereign state.
Witness accounts and state media reports describe a chaotic night in which explosions rocked Caracas, military installations were hit, and elite units of the United States Armed Forces forcibly entered the residence of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Both were taken into custody and, within hours, transferred out of Venezuelan territory to the United States, where they now face federal charges.
The language favoured by the US administration — “captured”, “taken into custody” — cannot obscure the juridical reality: this was a forcible transfer of a sitting head of state carried out without consent and against the express protestations of the Venezuelan government. At his initial court appearance in New York, Maduro himself decried his detention as a kidnapping by a foreign power, asserting emphatically that he remained the legitimate president of his country.
From the vantage point of established international norms, this night was not an isolated law-enforcement action; it was extra-legal rendition at the level of state violence. There was no extradition treaty invoked, no judicial warrant presented to Venezuelan authorities, and no shared legal process observed on the ground in Caracas. Instead, what unfolded was the projection of American military might across national borders to snatch the leader of another nation and transport him thousands of kilometres to face trial on US soil.
The prima facie implications are stark: this was not, as some in Washington would have it, a necessary strike against transnational crime. It was an unequivocal exercise of power that trampled the most basic principles of sovereignty and self-determination recognised under the law of nations. In describing it as such, we dissolve the euphemisms of the US state media and put a name to the act — a targeted abduction of a foreign president — and we do so without hesitation, for to do otherwise would be to collude in the obliteration of norms that are meant to constrain powerful states.
The Trump administration’s sanitised claim that the forcible seizure of President Nicolás Maduro was merely an extended law-enforcement action collapses under even the most minimal scrutiny of international legal norms. At the heart of this distortion is a misuse of “rendition” and “extradition” which, in the vocabulary of law, are fundamentally distinct. Extradition is a formal, reciprocal judicial process: one sovereign state requests the surrender of an individual from another, typically under a treaty obligation, with consent, transparency and judicial oversight. Rendition, by contrast, refers to the simple transfer of persons between jurisdictions and — in its “extraordinary” iteration — specifically denotes extralegal kidnapping without legal process or consent. It has been widely documented as illegal practice, historically used by the US in covert counter-terror operations prior to 2008, precisely because it removes all legal safeguards.
No Venezuelan authority ever authorised the removal of a sitting president, nor was any judicial extradition procedure invoked that met minimal principles of due process. Instead, US forces conducted a military “extraction”, deploying weaponry and tactics akin to a war operation and forcibly transferring Maduro to American soil where he now faces criminal charges. This constitutes a grave violation of sovereignty and the UN Charter. The Charter explicitly forbids the use of force against the political independence or territorial integrity of another state absent Security Council authorisation or self-defence — neither of which apply here.
The use of domestic criminal indictments to justify cross-border military force represents a dangerous conflation of internal law enforcement with unilateral imperial enforcement, effectively granting the US President a roving licence to extract any foreign leader indicted in US courts. This conflation corrodes the very foundations of international law, undermining sovereign immunity and the normative framework that distinguishes lawful cooperation from extra-legal abduction.
Even on its own terms, the US narrative fails. There was no mutual legal assistance treaty invoked, no Venezuelan judiciary involved, and no transparent extradition hearing in Caracas. What occurred was force masquerading as law, and force trumping legal process.
The concept of a “show trial” is not incidental; it frames the entire operation as political theatre, where legality is retrofitted to justify predation — a performative spectacle designed to legitimise power rather than uphold justice.
The forced transfer of a foreign head of state does not end with the abduction. It requires legitimation. This is where the show trial enters as an ideological instrument, transforming naked violence into a spectacle of righteousness. The purpose of such trials is not adjudication, but retroactive moral laundering: to make an illegal act appear inevitable, lawful, even virtuous.
The architecture of the show trial is well rehearsed. First comes the seizure; then the indictment; finally, the carefully choreographed courtroom drama. In the case of President Nicolás Maduro, US authorities relied on long-standing criminal charges previously issued by the US Department of Justice, charges that had existed for years without jurisdictional force precisely because Venezuela is a sovereign state. What changed was not the evidence, but Washington’s willingness to replace law with force.
Mainstream media in the US and much of Europe played a predictable role. Through repetition rather than investigation, abduction was rebranded as “arrest”, rendition as “extradition”, and coercion as “accountability”. This pattern mirrors earlier cases; the detention of Manuel Noriega following the US invasion of Panama in 1989, and the post-hoc legal rationalisations that followed extraordinary renditions during the so-called “War on Terror”, later condemned by the European Court of Human Rights and documented by Human Rights Watch. In each case, legality followed force, never the reverse.
The spectacle depends on selective legality. US courts are elevated as universal arbiters, while international courts — notably the International Criminal Court — are dismissed, sanctioned, or ignored when they threaten US or allied officials. It represents the ideological core of American exceptionalism, in which law is wielded as a weapon and as an instrument of domination rather than upheld as a binding restraint on power.
Political Economy of Extraction
The abduction of President Maduro did not arise in a vacuum. For more than two decades, the United States has pursued a relentless campaign of economic strangulation and political destabilisation against Venezuela, revealing a consistent architecture of pressure that long ago displaced any pretense of respect for sovereign equality. That campaign first hardened in the early 2010s with a series of targeted sanctions and expanded dramatically after 2017, when Washington declared Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to US interests, providing legal pretexts for unilateral coercive measures. These included asset freezes, blocking access to credit, sanctions on the state oil company PDVSA, and the systematic criminalisation of Venezuelan officials.
Economic terror has been the weapon of choice. Sanctions have not merely punished elites; they have throttled the entire economy, slicing revenue streams, paralyzing vital imports, and shrinking national income. Some independent estimates suggest these coercive measures cost Venezuela hundreds of billions in lost revenue, as production collapsed under the double burden of sanctions and forced tanker seizures. In late 2025 and early 2026, the situation escalated further with US naval interceptions and blockades of tankers carrying Venezuelan crude — measures described by Caracas and several international voices alike as piracy and maritime law violations.
Equally telling was Washington’s political strategy. In 2019 the United States led an internationally contested effort to recognise Juan Guaidó as “interim president” despite his lacking widespread domestic support — a classic manoeuvre in US regime-change playbooks that served to delegitimise the constitutionally elected government and justify intensifying pressure.
This sequence of actions — sanctions, economic siege, legal delegitimisation and, ultimately, military abduction — leaves little doubt that the seizure of Maduro was the product of long preparation rather than sudden improvisation. It was the inevitable culmination of years of coercive conditioning designed to create a political environment in which the US could claim moral or legal authority to escalate into kinetic force. In this longue durée of hostility, every US action has chipped away at Venezuela’s sovereignty to enforce power — and power always with an eye to oil and geopolitical leverage.
If there were ever any doubt that the purported “law-enforcement” narrative surrounding the forcible capture of President Nicolás Maduro masked a deeper strategic calculus, it was dispelled with the blunt language of economic interest that quickly emerged thereafter. Venezuela is not merely another oil-producing nation; it possesses the largest proven crude reserves on Earth, estimated at roughly 303 billion barrels, a figure that dwarfs those of Saudi Arabia and places Caracas at the centre of global energy geopolitics. Oil is the lifeblood of Venezuela’s economy, and it has been a structural driver not just of its internal politics but of its fraught relationship with Washington.
Sanctions imposed by the United States have not only devastated Venezuela’s oil sector — contributing to the collapse of its production from historic levels of around 3.5 million barrels per day to barely over 1 million after 2019 restrictions — but have also formed part of a broader Washington strategy that targets major oil producers such as Iran and Russia. According to the US Congressional Research Service (CRS), U.S. sanctions frameworks currently aim to reduce crude oil trade from Iran and Venezuela by as much as 3.3 million to 4.0 million barrels per day, roughly 3–4 per cent of global supply; in Iran’s case, oil exports observed under sanctions fell by around 80 per cent between April 2018 and October 2019 as Tehran’s crude was squeezed by financial and trade prohibitions designed to cut its export revenue to near zero, while sanctions on Russia focus on restricting access to finance and production technology even as its overall output has held steady or risen under counter-measures.
That precondition materialised with astonishing speed following the abduction. Within days, President Trump convened meetings with executives from ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips — firms that had previously lost assets in Venezuela’s nationalisation drive — to chart a path back into Venezuelan hydrocarbon riches. Trump framed this as an economic opportunity both for Venezuela and for the United States, promising to “move forward rather than relitigate past losses” for firms owed billions due to earlier expropriations. Chevron has signalled readiness to expand production in joint ventures with PDVSA, while ExxonMobil has floated the possibility of returning pending legal and security reforms.
Personalised Aggression as Policy
The forcible rendition of President Maduro is not an aberration in Donald Trump’s political repertoire; it is a logical extension of a governing philosophy that prizes unilateral force and political theatre over diplomacy and multilateral restraint. Trump’s leadership has normalised a brand of foreign policy in which military might and performative punishment are elevated above the rule of law, international institutions and any restraint that might impede executive prerogative.
This pattern predates the Venezuelan crisis. In June 2025, under Trump’s direction, the United States escalated its involvement in the southwest of Asia conflict between the Israeli regime and Iran, participating directly in airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities — a move condemned internationally as an unnecessary escalation with no legal basis. Trump announced the operation himself from the White House, emphasising the destruction of key sites as a strategic victory, even as diplomats and legal experts warned that striking sovereign territory without clear Security Council backing transgressed international norms.
This appeal to force as policy extends across Trump’s international engagements. Throughout his first term and into his second, he has exhibited contempt for the institutions most designed to moderate the recourse to violence — from the United Nations to the International Criminal Court — dismissing their legitimacy and attacking their authority when it conflicts with his personal or strategic designs. The United States’ withdrawal from numerous treaties and multilateral frameworks under the Trump administration underscores a foreign policy approach rooted in unilateralism and an “America First” agenda, prioritizing perceived U.S. national interests and sovereignty over collective global governance and cooperation. For the Trump administration, international law is treated as optional so long as it fails to serve American interests.
It is therefore no surprise that when faced with an opportunity to project power into Latin America, Trump responded instinctively with force. The seizure of Maduro was trumpeted as a triumph of American justice, even as it tore apart the fabric of international jurisprudence. In Trump’s worldview, the projection of American might is synonymous with rightness; moral texture, legal constraint and respect for sovereignty are hindrances rather than guides to action.
Indeed, in Washington, the rhetoric of defending freedom has become indistinguishable from the rhetoric of punitive domination. The same administration that prides itself on combating “narco-terrorism” or “illicit regimes” does not hesitate to place boot on necks, under colour of legality, to reshape entire nations. The Venezuelan abduction thus serves as a casus exemplaris for Trump’s style to command and coerce; and always, to prioritise American dominion over global order.
The abduction of President Maduro must be situated within a longer legacy of United States’ foreign policy where exceptionalism morphs into impunity, and where the rhetoric of a “rules-based order” increasingly rings hollow against the concrete record of regime change, covert removals, punitive sanctions, and their devastating human consequences.
Across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the United States has repeatedly intervened to shape political outcomes in sovereign nations — from direct invasions, to backing coups in Iran in 1953 and the overthrow of Guatemalan governments in 1954, to covert operations in Chile (1973) and the protracted sanctions and military pressures against Iraq in the 1990s and 2000s. In each instance, the claim was that American action served a greater good, even as local populations suffered crippling economic deprivation, social breakdown, or mass casualties. These episodes prefigure the logic now applied in Venezuela where unilateral force is valorised, and international law becomes an optional veneer.
This pattern extends beyond violent overthrow to the manipulative use of sanctions as tools of political coercion. Broad economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela for nearly a decade — under successive US administrations — have been documented as having catastrophic effects on the country’s economy, responsible for the collapse of production, severe shortages, and a humanitarian crisis that has driven millions into exile. While frames of “democracy promotion” or “counter-narcotics” have been deployed, the tangible outcomes of sanctions have been widespread deprivation. This historical context underscores that the abduction was not an isolated policy aberration, but the apex of continuous pressure designed to degrade Venezuelan sovereignty.
The architecture of impunity is further bolstered by the contradiction between America’s self-portrayal as defender of a rules-based order and its repeated practice of exceptionalism. The rhetoric of upholding international norms sits uneasily alongside actions that flout principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter, including prohibitions on the use of force and respect for sovereign equality. This dissonance is structural, cultivated through a foreign policy establishment that selects adherence to international law based on convenience rather than principle.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Venezuela, where Trump’s administration has justified the abduction of a foreign head of state by invoking domestic criminal law, weaponised to cloak imperial ambition. Such legal exceptionalism lays bare the underlying assumption of American practice that while others must bow to international law, the United States may reinterpret it when it suits strategic interests.
What this Signals to the World?
If a sitting head of state can be abducted by a foreign power and paraded before its courts, then sovereignty is no longer a principle — it is a privilege, selectively granted. The message this sends to the world, particularly to the Global South, is chilling in its clarity. Independence endures only so long as it does not obstruct American strategic or economic interests.
This act shatters one of the few remaining pillars of international order. The assumption that political leaders, however contested, are protected by diplomatic immunity and territorial jurisdiction. The United Nations Charter, drafted in the aftermath of catastrophic world war, was explicit in its intent to prevent precisely this form of unilateral coercion. By disregarding it, the United States signals that treaties are conditional and that power, not law, is the final arbiter.
For smaller states, the implications are existential. If Venezuela’s president can be seized, so can any leader who resists alignment — whether in Africa, Latin America, or Asia. The precedent rewards compliance and punishes autonomy. It teaches governments that survival depends not on legality or democratic legitimacy, but on proximity to Washington’s favour.
The erosion does not stop at sovereignty. Conflict-containment norms — painstakingly constructed to prevent escalation between states — are weakened when abduction replaces diplomacy. What incentive remains for negotiation when force is quicker, cheaper, and theatrically more satisfying? As former UN officials have warned in statements, such acts invite retaliation, mimicry, and the normalisation of cross-border violence.
International law survives only if powerful states submit to it. When they do not, it becomes decorative — cited in speeches, ignored in practice. The Venezuelan case this marks not merely a regional crisis, but a global regression — a step towards a world in which might is once again right, and legality a postscript.
The forcible seizure of Venezuela’s president, therefore, was not an unfortunate excess, nor an overzealous application of justice. It was an act of state kidnapping, executed through military force, rationalised through legal theatre, and motivated by long-standing political and economic aggression. To describe it otherwise is to participate in the erasure of meaning that power depends upon.
Donald Trump did not invent this machinery. But he stripped it of inhibition. Where previous administrations cloaked coercion in euphemism, Trump embraced spectacle; where others hesitated at legal thresholds, he stepped over them openly. In doing so, he revealed the underlying logic of US power with unusual clarity.
History is unambiguous about where such practices lead. When abduction becomes policy, war becomes routine. When sovereignty is conditional, peace becomes fragile. And when force is rewarded with legitimacy, restraint evaporates.
The kidnapping of a president in the dead of night is not merely an assault on Venezuela. It is an assault on the idea that any nation — however small, however defiant — has the right to determine its own fate without fear of removal by a foreign power.
If this crime is allowed to stand as precedent, it will not remain exceptional. It will become method. And a world in which kidnapping is governance is not one moving towards order, but towards permanent war.
Saied Reza Ameli is Professor of Communications and Global Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran.