Caracas, Venezuela. DOUGLAS/Adobe Stock

The arrest of the sitting president of Venezuela in January by the US military has sparked a debate about the implications for international law. Experts are clear, however, that despite concerns recent events do not mark the end of international law.

Following months of military build-up in the region, Nicolás Maduro was arrested together with his wife Cilia Flores during a US operation in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. The country’s president, who had ruled since 2013 and retained power after disputed elections in 2024, was taken to the US to face charges, including narco-terrorism. Maduro has pled not guilty to the charges against him.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sought to justify the arrest, noting that the US wasn’t at war with Venezuela but ‘against drug trafficking organizations’, stating that Maduro was an ‘illegitimate president.’ Meanwhile, President Donald Trump said that the US would ‘run’ Venezuela until ‘a safe, proper and judicious transition’ could take place, and that American oil companies would enter the country.

Markus Beham is Co-Chair of the IBA Human Rights Law Committee. He says the US has ‘demonstrated a willingness to pragmatically pursue their national security and economic interests, weighing these above the reputational costs in international relations. This also presents a counterweight to trajectories taken in multilateral fora that the US feels have increasingly led in the opposite direction of their own state interests.’

The ambivalence regarding the motivations of the US intervention in Venezuela might set a precedent for other powerful nations involved in multilateral disputes. ‘These actions send a message that the US is willing to use force first and manage legality later, especially when security and economic interests – like energy – are at stake. Framing the operation as “law enforcement” while deploying military power blurs the line between accountability and aggression, and risks normalising unilateral force,’ says Annette Idler, Associate Professor in Global Security at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

Maduro lacked support among regional leaders, with Rafael Ioris, Professor of Latin American History and Politics at the University of Denver, telling Global Insight that the Venezuelan president was ‘kind of an easy target. No one was ready to support Maduro anymore.’ Some regional leaders openly welcomed Maduro’s removal, highlighting for example that millions of Venezuelans had fled the country during his time in power.

Meanwhile, some world leaders may have been reluctant to speak out against the arrest of a man whose government committed what a UN fact-finding mission called ‘grave human rights violations’ while he was in power – a finding the Venezuelan regime rejected – and thereby harm other strategic interests. Yusra Suedi, a lecturer in international law at the University of Manchester, says this cherry-picking approach undermines international law, which ‘cannot survive as a menu of optional rules. Its legitimacy depends on consistent application, without fear or favour.’

Leaders in the region will have watched the arrest of Maduro closely, in some cases perhaps fearing that threats made by President Trump are more than just political posturing – especially when economic interests are at stake. At the same time, the operation in Venezuela as well as the US bombings in Iran in June were well-planned and predicted to have minimal risk.

In January, the Trump administration escalated its rhetoric towards Greenland, a semi-autonomous island belonging to Denmark, a NATO member like the US. At one point, President Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Western nations standing in the way of his stated aspiration to own Greenland. After discussing the matter with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in late January, the US President appeared to enact a U-turn, ruling out the use of force.

‘When there is real pushback and credible risk, escalation tends to stall,’ says Elsa Wyllie, an officer of the IBA War Crimes Committee. In the case of Greenland, aggressive posturing has repeatedly shown to be responsive to sustained resistance and political cost. Wyllie believes that the lesson for small states is not that coercion is inevitable, but that they still have an important role to play. ‘Collective, coordinated pushback still matters,’ she says.

America’s action in Venezuela has caused some to question the future of international law and the current world order. There is, however, no need to ring the death knell for international law, says Beham, who’s Chair of Public, International and European Law at the European University Viadrina. ‘That would reveal both a lack of understanding of its character and structure as well as of the relationship between political process and normative constraints,’ he says. Also, foreign interventions by the US are nothing new. ‘If international law is in crisis, this has to be considered a defining feature as opposed to a story of decline,’ says Beham.

While the body of international law still exists, its effectiveness depends on consistent political backing. The real danger for global security, says Idler, is when powerful states treat legality as optional and the system becomes one of ‘might makes right’.

While there have been previous incidents that suggest an uneven application of international law, the military intervention in Venezuela has removed any remaining ambiguity. It has made explicit what had previously remained implicit, says Wyllie, an international human rights and criminal defence lawyer with Arendt Chambers, Vancouver. ‘The deeper shift is that the era of a relatively consistent hegemon is now clearly over,’ says Wyllie. ‘The cracks have existed for some time. What has changed is the pressure – and the speed with which it is now forcing those cracks open.’