Power play

The US invasion of Venezuela has strained international law to breaking point

For more than three decades, the phrase "rule-based international order" has served as both a guiding principle and a rhetorical shield for Western foreign policy. Rooted in post-Cold War triumphalism, it promised a world governed by law rather than force, norms rather than power, and institutions rather than unilateral action. Yet the illegality of the United States' military operation in Venezuela suggests that this rule-based international order has been seriously undermined, rather than merely weakened or eroded.

In 1989, political theorist Francis Fukuyama famously declared the "end of history", arguing that liberal democracy — characterized by the principle of the rule of law, where all people, institutions and entities are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated; and where the state itself is bound by law, and government authority is legitimately exercised only in accordance with laws adopted through an established procedure — presented the final stage of human political evolution. Ideological conflict, he suggested, had reached its conclusion, with no viable alternatives remaining. This claim, widely celebrated at the time, shaped Western strategic thinking for decades. It helped legitimize a new approach to global governance in which state sovereignty could be overridden in the name of universal values, particularly human rights.

The consequences of that intellectual shift were profound. Under the banner of a "responsibility to protect", humanitarian intervention emerged as a justification for armed action against sovereign states. West-backed non-governmental organizations and civil society actors were elevated to unprecedented prominence, while traditional norms of non-intervention — enshrined since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 — were steadily weakened. Governments deemed insufficiently democratic or morally acceptable found themselves increasingly vulnerable to external coercion.

Ironically, many of the most consequential interventions carried out under this framework violated international law. NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 and the US' invasion of Iraq in 2003 both occurred without authorization from the United Nations Security Council. Yet these earlier operations were at least framed within a moral discourse, justified by claims of counterterrorism, weapons of mass destruction, or humanitarian protection, and wrapped in the language of a "rules-based international order".

The Venezuela case marks a qualitative break. This time, the US directly applied domestic law — specifically anti-drug enforcement — to seize a sitting foreign head of state, openly subordinating international law to unilateral domestic legislation. It raised a fundamental question that remains unresolved: If sovereignty is no longer inviolable, who decides when it may be breached, and according to what criteria?

That question has now acquired terrifying urgency. The US invasion of Venezuela — and the forcible seizure of its sitting president — did not merely prove Fukuyama wrong. It marked a serious undermining of the very rule-based international system that once constrained great powers from exercising their "sphere of interest" or "sphere of influence". What the world witnessed in Venezuela was not just a military operation or a regime-change maneuver, but the grave violation of the Westphalian principle of state sovereignty by US special forces.

Nearly four centuries ago, the Westphalian system established the idea that states possess supreme authority within their territorial borders. While imperfect, it provided a legal and diplomatic framework that prevented powerful nations from simply bullying weaker ones. That internationally agreed framework is now effectively dead. Every world leader awoke to a new reality: geography no longer offers protection from US displeasure.

The precedent is staggering. If the US can unilaterally seize a foreign head of state on the grounds of domestic concerns or disapproval of another country's political system, what prevents any major power from asserting law-enforcement authority anywhere in the world? Once sovereignty can be overridden by domestic political calculations in Washington, international law ceases to function as law at all. What remains is merely the rule of the strongest — the law of the jungle.

This historical pattern is now repeating itself in the US. As countries become accustomed to apprehending disfavored leaders beyond their borders, their own domestic character begins to change. Imperial powers require fundamentally different institutions, ethical foundations and power relationships between rulers and ruled compared with constitutional republics. Ultimately, a society that endorses imperial domination abroad cannot indefinitely preserve internal power checks and balances at home. The process is always gradual, marked by the steady justification of power where security rationalizes excessive securitization measures, order excuses violations of legal justice and defense legitimizes conquest.

International law, already under immense strain, was effectively sidelined the moment US forces crossed Venezuelan airspace. The UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations — cornerstones of post-World War II global governance — were deemed irrelevant in a single operation. The justification offered by the US leadership, centered on domestic political concerns, is particularly alarming. It establishes a doctrine under which US internal priorities override international sovereignty everywhere.

This is not the rule of law. It is the rule of force. The implications extend far beyond Latin America. Europe's response to the US invasion has been notably divided, with disagreement over whether to symbolically protest or take substantial concrete measures. This hesitation exposes a long-standing contradiction in European foreign policy: a commitment to universal norms in rhetoric, paired with selective enforcement in practice. The memories of Yugoslavia's disintegration under NATO bombs and the destruction of Iraq under false accusations remain vivid, particularly in the Global South.

For many years, multilateral cooperation and international institutions have been eroded to the point where they can no longer deliver the outcomes envisioned by the existing system, signaling a "crisis of functionality" within the liberal international order. As multilateral mechanisms increasingly fail to operate effectively, the existing order's capacity to govern and respond to transnational challenges in a deeply globalized world has diminished, pointing to a "crisis of scope". The inability of the current order to provide a secure, equitable and stable global environment in line with the prescription of liberal principles and expectations has undermined its normative appeal, resulting in a "crisis of legitimacy". The rise of the Global South in general is reshaping the global distribution of power, marking a "crisis of Western authority".

For decades, the US has accused China of failing to comply with the rule-based international order. Today, that accusation rings hollow. Washington itself has repeatedly violated international law, withdrawn from multilateral institutions and reshaped global norms to serve its immediate interests. What was once presented as "US dominance" defined by leadership and the provision of public goods is now increasingly "US coercion", marked by global tariffs, extraterritorial enforcement and even territorial ambitions.

The tragedy lies not only in the collapse of the international rule-based order, but in the hopes that sustained it.

The undermining of the rule-based international order did not take place quietly in a conference room or through diplomatic revision. It occurred violently in front of the eyes of the world. Contrary to Fukuyama's imagined "end of history", the US invasion of Venezuela has shown that imperial empires do not coexist peacefully with constitutional government; they ultimately consume it.

The author is a Yunshan leading scholar and the director of the European Research Center at Guangdong Institute for International Strategies at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and an adjunct professor of international relations at Aalborg University, Denmark. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.