The year 2026 began with a display of blatant disregard for international laws by the global hegemon, the United States, as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, along with his wife, was apprehended from their residence in Caracas and subsequently airlifted to the US in the wee hours of January 3. Maduro was captured to face a 2020 federal indictment in New York, on charges, including narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, and possession of machine guns and destructive devices. On January 5, he was brought to a Manhattan federal court where he pleaded not guilty to all charges. During the hearing, he claimed he was a ‘prisoner of war’ and had been ‘kidnapped’. Following recent developments, many now consider the words of this autocrat—who has stifled dissent at home and stole elections—more credible than those of the oil-stealing ‘leader of the free world’.

Big powers often pick and choose between which international laws they want to follow. Might is often right for them. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, directly violating the UN Charter’s principle of territorial integrity. China has used its superior naval and maritime power to assert ‘historical’ claims and build military installations in disputed waters of the South China Sea. But the Trump administration has taken interventionism to another level by capturing a sitting head of state inside his own country. Maduro was an autocrat and he might also have been involved in some dubious dealings. Yet if that is the benchmark for the ouster of leaders from power, then perhaps half the world leaders would have to be similarly removed.

Most members of the international community condemned the capture as a ‘flagrant violation of international laws’, ‘assault on sovereignty’ and an ‘illegitimate armed attack’. Even US allies France and Spain have condemned the military action. In an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council held on January 5, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the US military incursion violated the UN Charter and the principle of state sovereignty. With the Americans themselves violating the fundamentals of the post-World War II global order that they helped shape, with what right will they speak against Russia if it conducts a clandestine operation like the US and captures Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy? Or if China invades Taiwan? These are no more just rhetorical questions. As a small state, precariously sandwiched between great powers China and India, Nepal has much to worry about if a regional power—or even the ‘sky neighbour’ in the US in current form—were to similarly assault our sovereignty.

Again, the US has acted recklessly by intervening in Venezuela and now threatening to do so in Greenland, Colombia and Cuba. It gives these other states, big and small, the dangerous message that if they are to be safe they need to defend themselves, perhaps with nuclear weapons. In any case, if the boundaries of sovereign states can be so blatantly violated and their rulers so easily removed by outside powers—and seemingly without any consequences for the aggressor—then the rules-based international order that the US likes to harp on will soon be dead and buried.