The United States intervention in Venezuela to abduct President Nicolás Maduro is not law enforcement extended beyond its borders. It is international vandalism, plain and unadorned.

Power has displaced law, preference has replaced principle and force has been presented as virtue. This is not the defence of the international order. It is its quiet execution. When a state kidnaps the law to justify kidnapping a leader, it does not uphold order. It advertises contempt for it.

The forcible seizure of a sitting head of state by the US has no foothold in international law. None. It is not self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. It was not authorised by the UN Security Council. International law is many things, but it is not a roving moral warrant for great powers to perform regime change by abduction.

The claim that alleged human rights violations or trafficking in narcotics justifies the removal of a foreign head of state is particularly corrosive. There is no such rule. Not in treaty law. Not in custom law. Not in any serious jurisprudence.

Human rights law binds........

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