Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro
From the beginning of his presidency, Donald Trump has threatened to destabilize the international legal order. Early in his second term, he claimed he would “take back” the Panama Canal, make Canada the 51st U.S. state, acquire Greenland, and “own” Gaza. Foreign policy experts shook their heads, reluctant to take Trump seriously. After all, his declarations seemed erratic and poorly thought out. Yet even speaking the words did damage. As we argued in Foreign Affairs last summer, Trump’s threats reflected a troubling lack of commitment to the legal structure the United States and its allies created 80 years ago. The norm against the use of force, embodied in the UN Charter, was already under strain. But Trump’s open disregard of this prohibition threatened to trigger its collapse.
That was before the United States invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president, Nicolás Maduro, on January 3. The military operation, undertaken without UN Security Council authorization, without congressional authorization, without a claim of self-defense, and without even a plausible legal rationale, represents the most harmful attack yet on the rules-based order. It is not just the existing international legal system that is in jeopardy now. At risk is the survival of any rules at all—and with them any constraints on the exercise of state power.
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