Baya Amouri
On 3 January 2026, a military operation was executed on the sovereign territory of Venezuela, culminating in the apprehension and coercive transfer of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to the United States. There, he was presented before federal judicial authorities to answer criminal charges. While publicly characterized as a law-enforcement action directed at alleged transnational criminal activity, this intervention, from the standpoint of international law, prima facie constitutes an unlawful recourse to force and a manifest violation of the principle of state sovereignty foundational to the Charter of the United Nations.
This analysis asserts that the operation, conducted without territorial consent, Security Council authorisation, or a circumstance precluding wrongfulness, constitutes an unlawful act of aggression. More critically, it signals a dangerous regression from a rule-based order to a system where powerful states unilaterally enforce their domestic law abroad. The precedent threatens to unravel the core architecture of the United Nations Charter (UN Charter), substituting multilateral legal process with power-based coercion and thereby undermining the very foundations of international peace and security.
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