The United States’ capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro has prompted unease about how the international legal framework will be applied in future crises, with critics warning the move could erode longstanding limits on the use of force. The episode is playing out under the shadow of the U.N. system and its enforcement tools, and it has surfaced new questions about whether similar actions could follow elsewhere.
At a Security Council meeting on Monday, U.N. Undersecretary-General Rosemary A. DiCarlo told the body 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 (U.N.) Charter.” Her remarks came as Maduro was arraigned after his removal from power in Venezuela, following the U.S. operation.
The Trump administration has maintained that capturing Maduro was legal. The administration has also declared that drug cartels operating from Venezuela are unlawful combatants and said the U.S. is now in an “armed conflict” with them, according to an administration memo obtained in October by The Associated Press.
U.S. officials said the operation included taking Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their home on a military base in Caracas. The mission means they face charges of participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy, AP reported. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, defended the military action as a justified “surgical law enforcement operation.”
The move, according to AP, fits within the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy published last month, which lays out restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” as a key goal of the president’s second term. In parallel, critics said the approach risks becoming a template for other governments seeking to justify force outside conventional constraints.
Worry rose beyond Venezuela after Trump also put Colombia and its leftist president, Gustavo Petro, on notice. In remarks to reporters Sunday, Trump said Colombia is “run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.” AP reported that 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 viewed as a major cocaine trafficking hub.
Some world leaders condemned the Venezuela mission by invoking the non-use of force principle underpinning international law. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the capture of Maduro “runs counter to the principle of the non-use of force, which forms the basis of international law,” and 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.”
Russia’s U.N. envoy also attacked the operation. During the Security Council emergency meeting, Vasily Nebenzya said the mission to extract Maduro amounted to “a turn back to the era of lawlessness” by the United States, and called on the 15-member panel to “unite and to definitively reject the methods and tools of U.S. military foreign policy.” In Kyiv, Volodymyr Fesenko, chairman of the board of the Penta think tank, said Russian President Vladimir Putin has long undermined the global order and weakened international law, and added, “Unfortunately,” that “Trump’s actions have continued this trend.”
The legal debate has also fed speculation in Europe and Asia about how the strategy might affect other flashpoints. Trump’s Sunday comments about Greenland—saying it is strategic and that Russia and China have ships there—drew a direct response from Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who said in a statement that Trump has “no right to annex” Greenland and reminded that Denmark already provides the U.S., a NATO ally, broad access through existing security agreements.
In Beijing, criticism focused on sovereignty and the precedent set by singling out state leaders. AP reported that China described Maduro’s capture as a “blatant use of force against a sovereign state” and said Washington is acting as the “world’s judge.” On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the United States had “wantonly trampled on Venezuela’s sovereignty and security.”
The European Union also weighed in. In a statement about the mission, the EU said “the principles of international law and the U.N. Charter must be upheld,” and that members of the U.N. Security Council “have a particular responsibility to uphold those principles.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a close Trump ally, offered a contrary view, saying international rules “do not govern the decisions of many great powers” and that “this is completely obvious.”
AP reported that the debate over Maduro’s capture is increasingly being framed by some leaders and analysts as a test of whether the post-World War II international legal order can withstand a return to power-driven enforcement, potentially affecting conflicts ranging from Ukraine to the Middle East and raising new questions for diplomacy across the U.N. system.