Donald Trump and his senior officials have hailed Operation Absolute Resolve, the raid on Caracas and the capture and abduction of Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, as an outstanding military success.

It’s also easy to argue it was a blatant and unashamed violation of international law. And it signals a further erosion of what is left of the rules-based international order.

The temptation for the White House now is to declare victory and quickly move on to other targets while the world is still stunned by the audacity of kidnapping a sitting foreign leader. The people and leaders of Cuba (long an obsession for Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio), Colombia (the largest supplier of cocaine to the US) and Mexico (the key route through which fentanyl gets into the US) will be deeply worried about their future prospects in a Trumpian world.

As will Greenlanders, particularly in light of Trump’s comments over the weekend that the US “need[s] Greenland from the standpoint of national security”. Not to mention the ominous tweet by Maga influencer, Katie Miller – the wife of Trump’s influential deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller – showing a map of Greenland in the colours of the US flag.

The US president certainly won’t be discouraged by the meek response from many European officials. This has been deeply disconcerting, signalling that many of the most ardent defenders of international law appear to have given up pretending it matters any more.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, was first out of the block, with a post that started by pointing out Maduro’s lack of legitimacy as president and ended with an expression of concern for European citizens in Venezuela. She just about managed to squeeze in that “the principles of international law and the UN charter must be respected”. But this sounded like –........

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