Sovereignty Maimed

The US military takeover of Venezuela and its President’s detention exposes an erosion of international law and the paralysis of global governance institutions

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The wee hours of January 3, 2026 will be remembered not for justice, but for the unravelling of the global legal order. In what was described by Washington as a ‘law-enforcement operation, US forces executed a military strike in Caracas, detained Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, and flew them to the United States to face federal charges, including narco-terrorism. Soon after, not surprising to an awakening world, the US announced that it would oversee Venezuela’ oil resources and political transition, a move akin to a de facto occupation of sovereign territory.

Within hours, global attention gravitated not to the enormity of the action itself, but to a question that is increasingly becoming unavoidable. Where was the United Nations? What, if anything, remains of its role as guardian of the global order it was designed to uphold?

‘The United Nations Charter is explicit: Member states “shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force” against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, except in self-defence or with Security Council authorisation. Despite the grand verbiage, the US operation stands in contradiction to that framework: it was unilateral, militarised and executed without a UN mandate.