One criticism of the U.S. raid to arrest Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is that it will embolden other countries to violate international law. But international law — which generally prohibits military attacks, except in cases of self-defense — has only ever been as meaningful as the ability to enforce it. President Donald Trump is exposing some uncomfortable truths about how the world works.
The Trump administration has carefully framed the Caracas raid as a domestic U.S. law-enforcement operation rather than a military attack, unveiling a new criminal indictment of Maduro after he was seized. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff emphasized that federal agents were on the ground in Caracas as well as soldiers, and he referred to Maduro and his wife as “the indicted persons.” Vice President JD Vance posted, “You don’t get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas.” During a Monday arraignment in a federal court in New York, Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors could indict many autocrats around the world for U.S. criminal offenses. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III indicted Russian government operatives for hacking emails during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. China plays a major role in fentanyl importation to the United States. Yet a U.S. bombing raid in Moscow or Beijing to support the capture of government officials is inconceivable. Washington certainly couldn’t get away with calling such an attack “law enforcement.”
The reach of U.S. law in hostile countries, in other words, depends on the power and location of the country targeted. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 announced a U.S. “police power” in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. invaded Panama in 1989 to arrest its president, Manuel Antonio Noriega, for drug trafficking.
The Panama precedent for Trump’s Venezuela action is strong. The heart of the 25-page indictment against Maduro is that he provided “law enforcement cover and logistical support for the transport of cocaine through Venezuela, with knowledge that their drug trafficking partners would move the cocaine north to the United States.” If prosecutors can prove this to the satisfaction of a New York jury, Maduro will be convicted.
One wrinkle is the doctrine of sovereign immunity for heads of state, which Trump knows something about because of the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision granting him partial immunity in U.S. courts. The Maduro indictment stresses that he isn’t Venezuela’s legitimate head of state because he stole an election, but there’s no U.S. law requiring that foreign rulers hold their offices democratically.
Just five weeks ago, Trump pardonedthe former president of Honduras, who had been sentenced in 2024 to 45 years for his role in trafficking drugs to the U.S. It wouldn’t be surprising if Trump eventually cuts a deal with Maduro to cut short what promises to be a protracted U.S. legal process. If there is a democratic transition in Venezuela, Maduro might even be extradited home to stand trial for his crimes.
From a purely legal perspective, the justification for capturing Maduro is stronger than for the Trump administration’s strikes on boats suspected of carrying drugs in the region. The objective of “Operation Absolute Resolve” was to arrest, rather than kill, people suspected of a crime, who are now receiving due process. The military also targeted a government compound rather than intentionally targeting civilians.
The Trump administration has worthy foreign policy objectives in Venezuela, including the ejection of Russian, Iranian and Chinese influence. It’s grafted a highly debatable legal justification onto a classic U.S. exercise of power politics. But the lesson isn’t that international law will now be violated with impunity. It’s that international law is always a flimsy constraint on state behavior, and the United States needs other tools to defend itself and its friends.
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