THE HAGUE: From the smouldering wreckage of two catastrophic world wars in the last century, nations came together to build an edifice of international rules and laws. The goal was to prevent such sprawling conflicts in the future.
Now that world order — centred at the United Nations headquarters in New York, near the courtroom where Nicolas Maduro was arraigned Monday after his removal from power in Venezuela — appears in danger of crumbling as the doctrine of “might makes right” muscles its way back onto the global stage.
UN Undersecretary-General Rosemary A. DiCarlo told the body’s Security Council on Monday that the “maintenance of international peace and security depends on the continued commitment of all member states to adhere to all the provisions of the (UN) Charter.”
US President Donald Trump insists that capturing Maduro was legal. His administration has declared the drug cartels operating from Venezuela to be unlawful combatants and said the US is now in an “armed conflict” with them, according to an administration memo obtained in October by The Associated Press.
The mission to snatch Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their home on a military base in the capital Caracas means they face charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy. The US ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, defended the military action as a justified “surgical law enforcement operation.”
The move fits into the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, published last month, that lays out restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” as a key goal of the US president’s second term in the White House.
But could it also serve as a blueprint for further action?
On Sunday evening, Trump also put Venezuela’s neighbour, Colombia, and its leftist president, Gustavo Petro, on notice.
In a back-and-forth with reporters, Trump said Colombia is “run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.” The Trump administration imposed sanctions in October on Petro, his family and a member of his government over accusations of involvement in the global drug trade. Colombia is considered the epicentre of the world’s cocaine trade.
Analysts and some world leaders — from China to Mexico — have condemned the Venezuela mission. Some voiced fears that Maduro’s ouster could pave the way for more military interventions and a further erosion of the global legal order.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the capture of Maduro “runs counter to the principle of the non-use of force, which forms the basis of international law.”
He warned that the “increasing number of violations of this principle by nations vested with the important responsibility of permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council will have serious consequences for global security and will spare no one.”
Here are some global situations that could be affected by changing attitudes on such issues.
For nearly four years, Europe has been dealing with Russia’s war of aggression in neighbouring Ukraine, a conflict that grates against the eastern flank of the continent and the transatlantic NATO alliance and has widely been labelled a grave breach of international law.