The US capture of President Nicolás Maduro – and attacks on Venezuela – have no justification in international law Expert comment jon.wallace 4 January 2026

This may be the moment when Western Europe realizes that the US has abandoned the core values that united them for the past century, writes the head of Chatham House’s International Law Programme.

The White House asserts that it is defending the American people from the devastating consequences of the illegal importation of drugs by ‘narco-terrorists’ – consequences that could be compared to an armed attack against the US. However, in international law, only a kinetic assault with military or similar means qualifies as a trigger for self-defence.

‘Restoring democracy’

This leaves the argument of pro-democratic intervention. Notably, the US did not use pro-democratic action as a formal legal justification when it invaded Grenada in 1983 and displaced its communist-leaning government. Neither did it do so when it invaded Panama in 1989 and captured President Manuel A. Noriega, with a view to putting him on trial for drugs offenses.

Washington avoided doing so because it feared creating a precedent that would justify pro-democratic interventions by other countries which it might oppose. Instead, it relied on an unconvincing claim to self-defence.

In the case of Venezuela, the US alleges that Maduro stole the presidential poll of 2024, that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzales Urrutia was the true victor, and that Venezuelan authorities falsified the result of 2025’s parliamentary elections. While this is disputed, there is little doubt that the electoral process was deeply flawed. 

In 1948 the UN Declaration on Human Rights first enunciated the doctrine that the authority of a government must be based in the will of its people. 

But in classical international practice, those who exercise effective control over a country’s population and territory will be treated as the government. Considerations of legal or political legitimacy matter less. Accordingly, most governments have abandoned the practice of formally recognizing newly established governments, however they come to power. If they are effective, they are the government. 

However, in the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, the doctrine articulated by the UN Declaration on Human Rights gained in currency.

In 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected President of Haiti. But he was soon displaced in a coup mounted by a military junta. In 1994, after many failed diplomatic attempts to restore the democratic outcome of the elections, the UN Security Council formally authorized a US-led force to facilitate the departure of the generals. Faced with the imminent US invasion, they gave in and power was restored to Aristide.

Since then, a whole clutch of coups in Africa were opposed by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and its successor the African Union (AU), or sub-regional organizations. In several instances, these organizations authorized the use of force to restore democracy. Most recently, force was used to overturn the attempted coup in Benin last December with the backing of regional organizations.

African institutions and governments have also used sanctions and threats of force, where an incumbent government refused to hand over power after having lost elections. However, these instances generally required a formal election result.

This doctrine cannot be invoked in cases of creeping authoritarianism or in response to claims that elections have not been free and fair. It only applies in cases of counter-constitutional coups or where there is an election result that remains unimplemented by a sitting government. 

The doctrine is generally only applied where the UN Security Council, or at least a credible regional organization, has granted a mandate – to avoid individual states seeking regime change in pursuit of their own agendas. Clearly, in this instance, there was no mandate from the UN or the Organization of American States.

The apparent wish of the US government to work through the former Vice President of the Maduro government, Delcy Rodriguez, and her cabinet and officials, rather than putting in place those who are broadly believed to have won the elections of 2024/5, undermines any argument of pro-democratic intervention.

US courts

Mr Maduro and his wife will find little comfort in the fact that they were removed from Venezuela by way of an internationally unlawful intervention. US courts consistently apply the so-called Ker-Frisbie doctrine, which holds that they will exercise jurisdiction, irrespective of the means by which the body of the defendant was procured for trial.

The US will also refuse to extend Maduro the immunities that automatically apply to a serving president when travelling abroad. This too, is legally controversial. But as Noriega experienced before him, the US authorities are unlikely to be deterred by this fact.