International lawyers are fond of the old La Rochefoucauld bromide that “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.”  The point was made with greater particularity by Hedley Bull, in observing that when a state violates international law, “it usually goes out of its way to demonstrate that it considers itself (and other states) bound by the rule in question.”  In lying about the material facts or in asserting some facially plausible extension of accepted normative criteria, violators reassure the international political community that they do not seek to upend the overall system of mutual constraint.  It is not merely that, as Bull pointed out, “there is acceptance of the need to provide an explanation”; there is also acceptance of a common set of reference points for evaluation of such explanations.  Whatever may be said against distortive legal arguments, they avoid the destabilizing impact of a violator saying, in effect, “I did it because I could.”

The Trump Administration’s January 3 military operation in Venezuela has – thus far, at least – been accompanied by no such quasi-legal rationalizations.  The news conference given by President Trump and his leading cabinet officers manifested disregard not only for legal constraints, international and domestic, but also for underlying interests and values ascribable to the international community.  Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (the self-styled “Secretary of War” who has both vocally denounced and removed military lawyers who demand conformity to jus in bello norms) put the point most pithily:  “our adversaries remain on notice: America can project our will anywhere, anytime. … [Maduro] effed around and he found out.”

The Law-Defying Official Explanation

The centerpiece of President Trump’s presentation was a series of factual claims that had already been debunked:  President Nicolás Maduro, we were told, “personally oversaw the vicious cartel known as Cartel de los Soles, which flooded our nation with lethal poison responsible for the deaths of countless Americans, the many, many Americans, hundreds of thousands over the years, of Americans died because of him”; moreover, Maduro “sent savage and murderous gangs, including the bloodthirsty prison gang, Tren de Aragua, to terrorize American communities nationwide.”  It is well known that “Cartel de los Soles” is merely a sardonic characterization of regime corruption and refers to no discrete organization; that the fentanyl responsible for large-scale U.S. deaths neither originates from nor is transported through Venezuela; that the cocaine transported through Venezuela is bound principally for Europe; and that there is no evidence of Venezuelan government sponsorship of Tren de Aragua.

But even more astonishing than this invocation of notorious falsehoods was the express centering of interests and grievances of the U.S. oil industry:

Venezuela unilaterally seized and sold American oil, American assets, and American platforms costing us billions and billions of dollars. … We never had a president that decided to do anything about it. Instead, they fought wars that were 10,000 miles away.  … This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country. …  Massive oil infrastructure was taken like we were babies, so we didn’t do anything about it. I would have done something about it. America will never allow foreign powers to rob our people or drive us back into and out of our own hemisphere.

There is little point in belaboring the failure of these announced rationales to correspond to any acknowledged license for military action, whether in established doctrines of international law or in proposals for more permissive use-of-force norms proposed in service of collective interests.  Indeed, that lack of correspondence seems to have been deliberate.  It had already been foreshadowed in the Trump Administration’s failure to put forward any detailed legal rationale for lethal attacks on alleged drug traffickers in international waters – attacks on vessels that, as the U.S. Secretary of State himself has acknowledged, could easily have been apprehended in conformity with civilian law-enforcement rules of engagement (albeit without the desired effect of inflicting terror).  Moreover, the President’s off-the-cuff reference to the Monroe Doctrine (“a big deal, but we’ve superseded it by a lot. By a real lot. They now call it the ‘Donroe’ Document”) echoes the Administration’s formal November 2025 National Security Strategy document, which promises that “[a]fter years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.”

Most telling of all, perhaps, is the forsaken opportunity to associate the operation with notions of democratic legitimacy that, though never established in international law as a basis for the unilateral use of force, have long had some currency in the discourse of international community.  President Trump distanced himself from leading Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado (winner of the Nobel Peace Prize that Trump himself had expressly coveted), confirming that he had not consulted with her, and casting aspersions on her capacity to lead a transition.  (“It would be very tough for her to be the leader if she doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect ….”)  Perhaps even more notably, he made no mention whatsoever of the ostensible landslide winner of the 2024 election, Edmundo González, who had stood in for Machado after Maduro’s electoral commission had disqualified her candidacy.  Instead, he proclaimed that his own staff would “run” the country for a substantial time, though (rather incongruously) indicating an intention to rely on Maduro’s Vice President, Delcy Rodríguez, whom he characterized as “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.  Very simple.”  Even were there, as some have proposed, a norm allowing for unilateral intervention at the invitation of a duly elected government unjustifiably blocked from assuming power, the Administration has essentially confessed that its actions are not predicated on any such invitation.

Anticipating the Benevolent Rationalization

Still, one must anticipate a retrospective effort to legitimize the intervention as an effectuation of an international right to democratic governance.  (Trump is, after all, likened by some Evangelical Christian supporters to the ancient King Cyrus, who effectuated beneficent outcomes even though not a believer.)  Any argument to this effect fails as a matter of lex lata, and should also be seen to fail as a matter of lex ferenda.

Although Maduro’s re-election in 2024 has been widely condemned as fraudulent, leading many states to refuse to “recognize” his Presidency, such non-recognition is most typically intended as a matter of political disaffirmation, and must be distinguished from opinio juris as to an effective regime’s legal capacity.  Only a relatively small minority of states would appear to deny the Maduro government’s legal standing to assert rights, incur obligations, exercise powers, and confer immunities in the name of Venezuelan sovereignty.  This conclusion appears to be all the sounder since the dissolution of the 2019-2022 contestant apparatus led by National Assembly then-President Juan Guaidó, which had garnered official recognition by the OAS (albeit over significant objections) after Maduro’s previous tainted electoral victory and which had made some successful claims on Venezuelan state property in courts of states from which it had obtained official recognition.  Ostensible 2024 Presidential election winner González has not purported to establish a government in exile, nor has opposition leader Machado.  Consequently, there has been even less international coalescence around an alternative putative source of sovereign authority.  Maduro’s regime has all the while retained Venezuela’s seat in the UN General Assembly.

Even were bearers of a valid electoral mandate to have formed an alternative government that announced consent to a foreign military intervention, such consent would not have validated a unilateral use of force.  The default criterion for legal standing to issue such consent is “effective control through internal processes.”  That criterion derives both from diplomatic practicalities and from a presumption that, absent an unambiguous signal to the contrary, a populace’s acquiescence to a ruling apparatus represents its authorization of that apparatus to defend national interests vis-à-vis foreign actors.  Although the international system has validated foreign uses of force on behalf of non-seated elected governments in a handful of cases, it has done so only in circumstances (in Haiti in 1994, Sierra Leone in 1998, Cote d’Ivoire in 2011, and the Gambia in 2017) where there has been – if not an express UN Security Council authorization – extensive consultation with international organizations and a wide-ranging international consensus on the identity of the bearer of legitimate governmental authority.  To interpret Article 2(4) of the UN Charter any more permissively would be to open the door to the very kinds of armed clashes that the global peace and security order was designed to prevent.

The UN Charter-based order is best understood to represent a framework of accommodation among bearers of differing interests, capacities, and principles.  In facilitating peace and cooperation among states that are not fully trusting of one another’s intentions, it deliberately places a brake on empowered righteousness, especially where one state seeks to determine winners and losers of political contestation within another state.  Even an undoubted breach of an international legal obligation — such as the human right to political participation — does not, in itself, authorize a foreign state (nor an ad hoc “coalition of the willing”) to engage in however much cross-border exercise of power may be required to redress the breach.

Such constraint understandably induces frustration where this presumptive sovereign inviolability shields egregious conduct.  The temptations of unilateralism are manifest, even among good-faith actors.  Yet a licensing of unilateralism entails far higher costs and — given the lamentable track record of regime-change operations – far less certain benefits than might at first appear.

To Take Trump Seriously Is to Take Him Literally

The Trump Administration’s armed attack on Venezuela and seizure of President Maduro does not even purport to serve the values of the international community.  Its rhetoric dismisses communal interests and values with performative brazenness.  It evokes a pre-Charter world of “spheres of influence,” where regional powers are licensed to pursue their own ends through imposition upon weaker neighbors.  However much well-intentioned observers might wish to perceive a confluence of interests with a flawed-but-efficacious actor, even indirect validation of such patently unlawful measures would be a grave error.  The deleterious consequences would include, inter alia, the disabling of international efforts to mobilize support for weaker states against the predations of regional hegemons.  Hypocrisy, in that case, would do nothing but undermine virtue.