The U.S. military operation against Venezuela and the capture of its sitting head of state represent a critical stress test for international law, reflecting a pattern in which geopolitical imperatives override foundational principles of the international legal order—namely, state sovereignty, non-intervention, and the prohibition on the use of force enshrined in the United Nations Charter. This episode raises two fundamental legal questions. First, can claims of transnational criminality, domestic indictments, or counter-narcotics objectives justify the use of force against a sovereign state without authorization from the United Nations Security Council? Second, are claims that this act should be considered an exercise of self-defense under Article 51 legally valid?

Invoking law enforcement rationales to justify military action blurs the boundary between criminal jurisdiction and armed conflict, thereby undermining the jus ad bellum framework (the conditions under which states may lawfully resort to force). Such practices risk normalizing a precedent in which powerful states unilaterally determine the legality of force, eroding the collective security architecture upon which the post-1945 international legal order rests.

This paper argues that the Venezuela case demonstrates the supremacy of power over law as an emerging structural condition of international order. The precedent thus stands as both a warning about the consequences of subordinating law to power and a test of whether international law can reclaim its normative authority.

The Venezuela Operation: Legal Analysis
The UN Charter's prohibition on the use of force (Article 2(4)) constitutes the cornerstone of modern international order. It represents jus cogens—a peremptory norm from which no derogation is permitted. In Nicaragua v. United States (1986), the International Court of Justice affirmed that the prohibition on force constitutes customary international law binding on all states, with self-defense strictly defined to require an actual armed attack. The prohibition is categorical, admitting only two narrowly construed exceptions: self-defense in response to armed attack (Article 51) and Security Council authorization under Chapter VII. These exceptions are purposefully limited because the prohibition serves an existential purpose—preventing recurrence of catastrophic wars. 

U.S. military forces captured President Nicolás Maduro in an operation characterized as executing an arrest warrant on charges including narco-terrorism. Neither predicate for lawful use of force existed. Venezuela posed no imminent threat justifying anticipatory self-defense. Drug trafficking does not constitute an armed attack under Article 51 or customary international law. Characterizing counter-narcotics as defensive military action would dramatically expand circumstances permitting force, effectively nullifying the prohibition's constraining effect. More importantly, the justification relied on unsubstantiated claims rather than evidence, which in fact pointed in the opposite direction. 

For example, most of the U.S. drug flow comes from Mexican cartels, against which no action was taken. Moreover, the President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted of trafficking massive amounts of cocaine to the U.S. and serving a sentence on U.S. territory was pardoned by President Trump while he conducted operations against Venezuela. These inconsistencies expose how selective enforcement undermines any claim that the operation represented principled law enforcement rather than politically motivated regime change. 

Moreover, the U.S. also did not seek any authorization from the UN Security Council. The Council's unique authority to authorize force ensures it is authorized only when sufficient international consensus exists, thereby conferring legitimacy. Therefore, bypassing the Council represented substantive rejection of the collective security architecture under the UN Charter.

The trouble does not end with the inability of the Trump Administration to provide a credible justification for the operation under international law, nor with its failure to seek authorization from the UNSC. It also had far-fetched implications regarding the immunity granted to heads of state under international law, and the dangerous repercussions of citing domestic law for international pursuits. 

First, Head-of-State immunity – affirmed in the ICJ's Arrest Warrant case (2002) – ensures diplomatic channels remain open regardless of the gravity of alleged offenses. International law maintains a clear distinction between peacetime legal cooperation and military force. States deal with transnational crimes through extradition treaties, mutual legal assistance, and diplomatic negotiations—mechanisms respecting territorial sovereignty. When states abandon these for military “arrests”, they blur the line between law enforcement and armed conflict. The fusion of criminal indictment and military intervention sets a precedent that states have the unilateral right to overthrow governments deemed illegitimate by them. 

This is not the only thing. The principle of sovereign equality means states possess equal legal status regardless of size, wealth, or power. But when powerful states treat weaker states as if their sovereignty were conditional upon approval, they undermine the principle of giving weaker states whatever security international law provides. While head-of-state immunity remains formally intact as doctrine, its practical observance appears to be now contingent upon power relationships rather than legal obligation. If heads of state cannot rely on immunity protections, they face incentives to avoid situations exposing them to capture, degrading international relations and making diplomatic resolution more difficult.

Second, when states invoke domestic criminal jurisdiction as authorization for military operations, the prohibition on the use of force loses all meaningful content. Every state possesses the authority to criminalize conduct and issue warrants. If such domestic processes justify military force across international borders, the prohibition becomes meaningless. Any powerful state could issue indictments against foreign leaders for alleged crimes and then claim legal authority to use military force to execute those warrants. This would effectively grant unlimited discretion to employ force wherever domestic law provides a pretext. 

Consequentially, the U.S. justification of the operation as extraterritorial law enforcement authorized by domestic indictments is concerning. Vice President J.D. Vance's statement that “you don't get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas” encapsulates this paradigm: asserting global policing authority grounded solely in domestic law and entirely bypassing the international legal processes. 

Precisely because of this, the operation caused domestic political division within the United States. Democratic lawmakers condemned the operation, deeming it a violation of international law, arguing that it “sends a horrible and disturbing signal to other powerful leaders across the globe that targeting a head of state is an acceptable policy” and that Venezuela posed no imminent threat, nor was the use of force authorized by the Congress. 

This conflation also signaled a deeper disregard for the structure of the international law, under which legitimacy or illegitimacy of a government in domestic political terms bears no relation to whether military force can lawfully be used against it under international law. The UN Charter framework deliberately separates questions of governmental legitimacy from the legal constraints on force precisely to prevent powerful states from unilaterally deciding which governments deserve sovereignty protection. Therefore, the characterization of Maduro as an “illegitimate dictator” operating a “drug-trafficking operation” attempted to merge judgment with legal authority—suggesting that perceived illegitimacy or criminal conduct somehow strips a state of its sovereignty protections. This reasoning contradicts the fundamental structure of the jus ad bellum framework, which prohibits force regardless of the target state's domestic governance or alleged criminal activities.

The Venezuelan operation constituted a forcible regime change—physical removal of a sitting head of state accomplished through military force. The jus ad bellum framework provides no exception for regime change. This categorical prohibition reflects fundamental judgment: however attractive regime change might appear in individual cases to further self-interests, authorizing it generally would grant powerful states unlimited discretion to employ force against weaker states whose governments they disapprove of. Behaving in this manner, the U.S. systematically violated international obligations and employed force unilaterally without regard to legal limitations, and with repercussions.

Systemic Implications
Two schools of thought dominate debate on international order. One thinks of the international system as anarchical, where no higher power exists to enforce rules and order. Therefore, states are driven solely by self-interests and act based on their power. Put simply, they exploit power asymmetries to compel other states to do what they want them to do. Under this school of thought, there is doubt as to the extent to which international law could meaningfully constrain state behavior. The other contends that international law and norms offer a framework for 'expected behaviour'. If the international system is considered a social interaction—states benefit from complying with these laws and norms to accord legitimacy to their actions. At the very least, even if their actions are motivated out of self-interests, states typically seek to justify their conduct through the rhetoric of international law and norms for legitimacy. This normative structure is weakened when states bypass these laws and norms to achieve interests solely based on their power. The Venezuela case validates this by illustrating how the UN Charter was eroded by extracting compliance through exploitation of power asymmetry.

The normalization of legal exceptionalism represents structural transformation. When powerful states justify violations through moral claims or domestic legal processes, they establish patterns embedded in state practice. The erosion of institutional authority constitutes the most pernicious long-term consequence. When powerful states bypass the UN framework, they reduce incentives for compliance, degrade predictability, and recast international law as rhetoric rather than a binding rule. 

Most dangerously, the Venezuela precedent creates incentives for reciprocity and contagion. If the United States can justify military force as law enforcement against indicted heads of state, other states could likely claim similar authority. Russia could assert rights to seize Ukrainian leaders it has indicted; China could claim authority to capture Taiwanese officials based on domestic warrants. This reciprocal erosion escalates tensions and dismantles the legal framework constraining interstate violence for nearly eight decades.

This represents a critical juncture where the system must either reassert law's authority or accept power's supremacy. International law's authority depends on consistency between principles states publicly affirm and standards they apply to themselves. When this consistency breaks down, law loses its power to constrain state behavior, reducing international order to mere power politics dressed in legal rhetoric.

Conclusion
The Venezuela precedent underscores profound transformation in international law's operation. The unilateral use of force justified through domestic criminal indictments represents a decisive departure from the collective security logic embedded in the UN Charter. From the jus ad bellum perspective, the actions fail comprehensively to satisfy the narrow exceptions to the force prohibition. Neither self-defense under Article 51 nor Security Council authorization can be credibly invoked. The extraterritorial seizure of a sitting head of state, absent lawful international process, undermines the principle that sovereignty is not conditional upon political alignment as determined by external powers. When powerful states openly bypass international legal mechanisms, they weaken compliance incentives, accelerate normative fragmentation, and legitimize reciprocal unilateralism.

The central question facing the international community is whether the legal order can recover its constraining force or whether the supremacy of power over law becomes the defining characteristic of twenty-first-century international relations. The endurance of the international legal system depends not on rhetorical reaffirmation but on consistent and universal application of its principles. How the international community responds to the Venezuela precedent will determine the future character of international order.