How does the justification of a single, targeted act of violence by a hegemon end up reshaping the very structure of normative thinking in international relations—ultimately institutionalizing arbitrariness as an acceptable political tool?
This question matters precisely because it is not about judging a particular decision or a particular leader. It is about the mechanics of normative decay: the process by which a one-off exception, once recognized as legitimate, destroys the very possibility of a universal rule. What we are dealing with here is the public, de facto justification of the violent abduction of the lawful head of a sovereign state—an act that international law had previously classified, without ambiguity, as a grave crime.
From Norm to Exception—and Back Again, Minus the Norm
The core logical construction at work is brutally simple and rigorously sound: you cannot declare one kidnapping acceptable while condemning all others. In political theory, this follows directly from the principle of the universalizability of norms. If an action is justified in one case, it is thereby legitimized as a permissible practice.
The attempt to stop halfway—to invoke the familiar “this case is different”—destroys the very possibility of normative reasoning. A norm ceases to be a norm and turns into rhetoric in the service of immediate interest. This is the crucial point: a double standard is not a minor moral flaw; it is a mechanism for dismantling the norm itself.
The historical examples invoked—from Argentina’s Dirty War to the night-time disappearances of political opponents under various dictatorships—matter not as emotional analogies, but as logical consequences. Once kidnapping is declared an acceptable instrument of politics, any principled condemnation of extrajudicial violence becomes impossible. “We do it in the name of democracy” is, in logical terms, no different from “we do it in the name of security,” “the revolution,” or “national revival.”
Kidnapping as a Technology of Power
The public justification by U.S. President Donald Trump of abducting Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro and his wife is not an episode of foreign policy bravado, nor a mere display of toughness. It is the assertion of a principle: the physical removal of a political subject is now framed as a legitimate way to resolve international disputes.
It is true that, in classical international-relations theory, such actions belonged to the realm of war or covert operations and were therefore not openly legitimized. What is new—and genuinely consequential—is that violence is no longer concealed. It is demonstratively normalized, turned into an object of public approval and even aesthetic admiration. The fascination with “machismo” referenced in the text is a symptom of a deeper shift: legal legitimacy is being replaced by the charismatic display of force.
This marks a qualitative transition from hidden coercion to performative violence, where the act itself serves as a message to all other actors in the system: the rules no longer apply; only the will of the strong does.
Ruling Ideas and the Production of Reality
The reference to Marx and Engels on ruling ideas is not decorative. It captures a fundamental shift in how political truth is produced. In today’s environment, truth is no longer derived from facts, procedures, or evidence. It is declared by the subject of power and immediately accepted as given.
When President Trump asserts that the United Nations is effectively identical to the United States, this is not treated as a controversial political claim requiring debate. It is absorbed as a new axiom. When Venezuela is accused of “stealing American oil,” no one pauses to ask whether such an act is legally or even physically possible. The utterance itself replaces argument.
The most revealing case is the designation of Maduro as a “narco-terrorist.” Here the rupture between accusation and procedure is complete. There is no investigation, no court, no international verification. Yet the accusation instantly hardens into fact. This is a textbook example of what political theory describes as sovereign production of reality: truth is created not through proof, but through an authoritative statement.
Appointing Presidents as a Tool of De-Sovereignization
Particularly striking is the practice of arbitrarily “appointing” legitimate leaders of a sovereign state. First, Juan Guaidó was proclaimed president—a figure whose disappearance from the political stage was as swift as his sudden elevation, itself an illustration of the fictitious nature of such legitimacy. Then María Machado was presented as Venezuela’s rightful leader, despite her open calls for military intervention against her own country.
From the standpoint of international law and theories of sovereignty, this signals the abandonment of internal legitimacy as a principle. The source of power is relocated from within the state to an external actor. Sovereignty becomes a revocable license, issued and withdrawn at the discretion of the hegemon.
It is important to be clear: appeals to “human rights” or “democratic standards” no longer apply even formally. They are not observed in practice. What is asserted instead is a direct right of appointment—bringing current practice closer to classical colonial administration than to liberal internationalism.
The Destruction of Critical Thinking as a Political Technology
The text rightly identifies another, often underestimated dimension of this moment: the erosion of doubt itself. The reference to Descartes is not philosophical ornamentation; it is political to the core. Methodological doubt was foundational to rational civilization precisely because it placed limits on arbitrary power.
Today, the logic is reversed. Doubt is branded as disloyalty, while uncritical acceptance of authority’s claims is framed as maturity. The result is a mass political subject for whom thinking has been replaced by reflex. Such a subject is ideally suited to arbitrary governance, because it no longer asks about causes, consequences, or internal coherence.
The historical cases—Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen—are not listed as a catalog of tragedies, but as a recurring pattern. Each time, the promise of democracy serves as cover for state destruction. Each time, the consequences are ignored. Each time, faith in the next experiment remains intact.
Venezuela as a Diagnostic Case
In this analysis, Venezuela is not merely an object of aggression; it is a diagnostic case. It did not threaten the United States, pursue expansionist policies, or violate international military agreements. Its sole “crime” lies in its refusal to submit to external dictates.
That is precisely what makes it an ideal target. Punishing autonomy becomes a signal to everyone else: sovereignty is tolerated only insofar as it does not interfere with the interests of the center of power. In this sense, Venezuela becomes a precedent territory—a testing ground for a new model of international behavior that is post-legal, post-normative, and post-sovereign.
The defining feature of the current moment is not simply the erosion of specific rules, but the reengineering of normativity itself. International law once functioned as a system of constraints—often violated, but still acknowledged. Violations required justification, concealment, rhetorical cover. Today, justification replaces the norm, and the very fact of violation becomes a source of new legitimacy.
This is a genuine rupture. Law no longer stands external to power as a regulator. It dissolves into power, becoming its discursive extension. In this context, the public justification of kidnapping the head of a sovereign state is not an anomaly. It is a demonstrative declaration that the old game is over.
From Selective Lawlessness to a Systemic One
In classical models of hegemony, norm violations were selective. Even the harshest actions were wrapped in the language of exceptionality: a “necessary measure,” a “unique situation,” a “last resort.” This rhetorical packaging preserved the illusion of a general order in which the hegemon, too, was ostensibly bound by rules—however flexibly interpreted in its own favor.
In the case of Venezuela, that mechanism no longer functions. The justification of kidnapping is no longer accompanied by even a minimal attempt at legal camouflage. On the contrary, it is presented as an expression of strength, resolve, political will. The exception thus becomes the template, and the template becomes a signal to the entire system.
It is crucial to emphasize that, in international politics, the signal often matters more than the act itself. The physical removal or abduction of a particular leader is secondary to what is being demonstrated to all other actors: that such behavior is now permissible. From that point on, every act of extrajudicial violence carried out by any state can be logically justified by reference to the precedent that has been set.
Precedent as a Weapon
Precedent is a foundational property of the international system. In the absence of a supreme arbiter, it is precedents that define the boundaries of the permissible. When a hegemon publicly legitimizes kidnapping, it arms everyone else with the same argument—including those it considers adversaries.
This produces a paradoxical outcome. In seeking to demonstrate absolute freedom of action, the center of power undermines its own monopoly over the interpretation of norms. If kidnapping is acceptable in one case, it is acceptable in others. If the extrajudicial removal of a leader is justified by “higher interests,” the only remaining question is who gets to declare which interests are higher.
In this way, a policy intended to reinforce hegemony objectively accelerates the fragmentation of the global system. Instead of a managed hierarchical order, what emerges is an environment in which an increasing number of actors operate according to the logic of force rather than law. This is not the consolidation of control; it is its erosion.
The Discursive Substitution of Sovereignty
The discursive dimension of this process deserves particular attention. As the text correctly notes, statements by U.S. President Donald Trump are increasingly accepted as truth without verification, doubt, or analysis. This is not merely a propaganda problem. It reflects a shift in the regime of truth in international politics.
When it is claimed that Venezuela is “stealing American oil,” a substitution occurs at the most basic conceptual level. Oil located beneath the territory of a sovereign state is declared чужим—someone else’s—by virtue of an external assertion. In doing so, the very principle of territorial sovereignty, which has underpinned international order since Westphalia, is negated.
The same substitution applies to presidential legitimacy. Internal political procedures—elections, constitutional mechanisms—are relegated to secondary status relative to external recognition. Sovereignty becomes a function of approval rather than an attribute of statehood.
Mass Consent as a Resource of Power
One of the most troubling aspects of the situation is the breadth of mass consent it elicits. Enthusiasm, applause, the aestheticization of force—all point to a profound transformation of political consciousness. Without this consent, such practices could not become sustainable.
What we are witnessing is not merely manipulation, but the internalization of violence as an acceptable, even desirable, political instrument. When kidnapping, bombing, and forced regime change cease to generate cognitive dissonance, the system enters a phase of moral anesthesia. It is in this state that the most radical decisions become possible without resistance from public opinion.
The reference to Descartes is therefore precisely on point. This is not a philosophical quarrel, but a political diagnosis. The capacity for doubt is not an abstract virtue; it is a mechanism for limiting power. Its loss removes the last barrier to arbitrariness.
Repetition as Proof of Structure
Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen—the enumeration of these cases serves an analytical purpose. The repetition of the scenario points to a stable decision-making structure, not a chain of unfortunate mistakes. Each time, the same goals are proclaimed: democracy, security, stability. Each time, the outcome is the destruction of statehood, social fragmentation, humanitarian catastrophe.
The key point is that failure does not lead to a revision of the model. On the contrary, each new disaster is treated as an argument for the next intervention. This suggests that the objective is not the achievement of the stated goals, but the reproduction of intervention as a practice in its own right.
Venezuela and the Punishment of Autonomy
In this context, Venezuela represents a clean case. It does not fit the narrative of counterterrorism, poses no military threat, and pursues no expansionist policy. Its sole “crime” is its refusal to recognize an external authority as the source of its legitimacy.
That is precisely why it becomes a demonstrative target. The punishment of Venezuela is not a response to actions, but a preemptive signal to everyone else. Sovereignty is permissible only so long as it is not exercised.
Is the erosion of international law we are observing the result of a temporary crisis in the institutional order, or are we witnessing a systemic transition to a post-legal configuration of global politics—one in which violence, ideology, and arbitrary interpretations of legitimacy displace universal norms?
This question is fundamental because it moves the discussion beyond emotional polemics and moralizing, into the realm of structural analysis. The issue is not a particular case, not a single country, not even an individual political leader. It is the transformation of the very ontology of international relations.
The contemporary global environment increasingly displays signs that the old normative architecture—from the Westphalian system to the postwar order institutionalized through the United Nations—has lost not only its regulatory force, but its symbolic authority. International law is no longer perceived as a binding framework of behavior, even by those who once served as its principal architects. It is instrumentalized, ignored, or replaced with situational constructions that legitimize force.
The Normalization of Lawlessness as a Systemic Phenomenon
The text captures a crucial thesis: justifying a single act of lawlessness automatically legitimizes all analogous practices. This is not a journalistic exaggeration, but a strict logical conclusion fully consistent with the basic principles of normative theory. If the kidnapping of a lawful head of state is deemed acceptable on grounds of political expediency, the universalist character of the norm collapses. It ceases to be a norm and becomes an exception dependent on the will of the powerful.
Here it is appropriate to recall Carl Schmitt’s classic definition of sovereignty: sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception. When the state of exception becomes permanent, sovereignty mutates into arbitrariness. That is precisely what we have observed in recent years: the exception has ceased to be exceptional and has become an operational standard.
The Venezuelan case is particularly revealing. Under the leadership of President Trump, the U.S. political establishment has systematically deployed declarative legitimation—replacing internationally recognized procedures with arbitrary pronouncements. Declaring a sitting president illegitimate, appointing alternative figures without any electoral or legal basis, criminalizing a political opponent through stigmatizing labels—these are not isolated excesses. They are elements of a single technology for dismantling sovereignty.
Ideology in Place of Law
When President Trump asserts that the UN is, in essence, identical to the United States, this is not merely rhetorical extremism. It is an open articulation of a hierarchical model of world order in which universal institutions are reduced to instruments of the hegemon. Such a position is logically incompatible with the very idea of international law as a system of mutually agreed obligations.
In this context, it is essential to stress that ideology in the twenty-first century has once again become the primary regulator of international relations, displacing law. The reference to Marx and Engels is apt: the ruling ideas of an era are shaped by the ruling class. Today, however, that class is no longer confined to national elites; it is transnational, encompassing political, financial, and media structures.
The designation of Nicolás Maduro as a narco-terrorist without trial or international investigation is a textbook case of symbolic violence in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense. Reality is not proven; it is constructed through discourse. Repetition within the political and media space substitutes for verification.
Historical Parallels and the Precedent Effect
The historical analogies invoked—from Argentina’s Dirty War to the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan—are essential not as emotional comparisons, but as an analysis of the precedent mechanism. The international system operates through the accumulation of precedents. Each unpunished violation of a norm lowers the threshold for its subsequent application.
The episode of Colin Powell’s vial at the UN Security Council marked a watershed. From that moment, it became clear that even formal procedures could serve as mere decor for decisions already made. After that, trust in universal institutions declined irreversibly. Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen are not simply a series of conflicts; they are a laboratory for dismantling international legal consciousness.
The problem, it bears repeating, is not intelligence failures or isolated abuses. It is a structural rejection of epistemological humility, of the principle of doubt that René Descartes regarded as the foundation of rational thought. When doubt is branded as weakness and belief in political assertion as loyalty, rationality gives way to dogma.
Venezuela as a Stress Test for What Remains of Sovereignty
In this context, Venezuela is not an object but an indicator of the state of the global system. A sovereign country with no expansionist ambitions and no military threat is turned into a target for one reason alone: its refusal to fit into a prescribed model of subordination. That distinction matters. What is being punished here is not aggression, but autonomy.
What follows is a punitive logic of hegemony in which international law is replaced by disciplinary enforcement. Sovereignty becomes conditional and revocable. Its existence no longer depends on international recognition or internal legitimacy, but on the degree of compliance with external expectations.
The evolution of the international order described here is significant precisely because it allows us to see the current crisis not as an anomaly, but as a predictable phase in a historical cycle—one in which norms emerge, function, and disintegrate strictly in accordance with shifts in power and the ideological frameworks that legitimize those shifts. International law has never existed outside power; it has always been its function. Until recently, however, it retained a degree of autonomy in the form of procedures, rituals, and institutional shells. It is this residual autonomy that is now being dismantled.
The Westphalian system that emerged after the Thirty Years’ War was the first stable compromise among competing centers of power incapable of imposing a universal model of domination on one another. National sovereignty was not a moral breakthrough; it was the byproduct of strategic deadlock. The Protestant powers of Northern Europe and anti-Habsburg France did not decisively defeat Catholic universalism, but they rendered it unworkable. Sovereignty became a way of freezing conflict, not resolving it.
Even then, universalism was selective. The Westphalian principle applied within Europe and its colonial sphere. Beyond that perimeter, the law of force operated without disguise. This is crucial: international law was never truly universal in the strict sense; it was always a regional pact among the strong.
And yet the Westphalian model established a long-term matrix in which sovereignty functioned as a language of legitimacy even when it was violated. That gap between declared principle and actual practice became a key stabilizing mechanism. Paradoxically, hypocrisy played a stabilizing role.
Political Realism as a Compensator for Asymmetry
The realist school of international relations, fully articulated in the twentieth century, merely theorized what had long existed in practice: asymmetries of power were offset by the possibility of coalition-building. The sovereignty of weaker states was not a fiction insofar as they could embed themselves in alliances and thereby enhance their strategic resilience.
This is why even nineteenth-century imperial politics retained elements of restraint. The great powers took each other’s reactions into account. The balance of power was not an ethical principle; it was a survival mechanism for the system. International law, in this context, served as the language used to describe that balance, not the instrument that created it.
The attempt by the League of Nations to institutionalize this balance on the basis of liberal internationalism was the first effort to emancipate norms from power. The experiment failed because it was premature. Neither the ideological nor the material foundations for global governance yet existed. The League became a symbol of good intentions without the means to enforce them.
Its collapse in the 1930s was not accidental but symptomatic. International law proved incapable of integrating three competing ideologies of sovereignty—liberalism, fascism, and communism. Each offered its own understanding of legitimacy, territory, and authority. Under those conditions, a universal norm was logically impossible.
World War II as a System Reset
World War II was not only a military conflict; it was an ontological judgment on competing models of world order. European fascism lost not because it was morally bankrupt, but because it proved strategically and economically vulnerable when confronted with U.S. industrial capacity and Soviet mobilizational power.
The postwar result was a bipolar system in which international law regained relative stability—but only because it rested on a rigid balance between two ideological and military blocs. Sovereignty during this period was strictly hierarchical. Formally, it was recognized everywhere; in reality, it belonged to two centers.
The creation of NATO and the elevation of the dollar to reserve-currency status consolidated an American zone of sovereignty. The Warsaw Pact and the centralized socialist bloc defined the Soviet one. All other states were forced to choose—or to maneuver on the margins, as the Non-Aligned Movement attempted to do.
Within this framework, the United Nations did not function as an autonomous arbiter, but as a mechanism for institutionalizing the balance among the victors. The Security Council veto was not a flaw; it was the system’s core. It acknowledged the impossibility of universal consensus and translated conflict into a managed form.
The End of Bipolarity and the Illusion of a Universal Order
The collapse of the Soviet Union destroyed not only the geopolitical balance, but the very logic that had given international law its meaning. With one pole gone, law no longer rested on symmetrical force. A unipolar moment emerged, interpreted in the West as the “end of history.”
Here lay the decisive strategic error. Instead of preserving the remnants of balance and gradually adapting institutions to new realities, the victorious liberal camp attempted to convert temporary superiority into a permanent norm. International law became a tool of expansion rather than compromise.
NATO enlargement, humanitarian interventions, regime-change practices—all were framed in the language of universal values, but implemented through coercion. Sovereignty was redefined as a conditional category, valid only if a state met a prescribed ideological standard.
The European Union, in this logic, became a laboratory of post-sovereign governance. The dilution of national identity, the transfer of key competencies to supranational bodies, the prioritization of norms over politics—all were presented as a model for the rest of the world. But this model proved context-bound and poorly transferable beyond Europe.
The Simultaneity of Incompatible Systems
The contemporary world does not operate within a single transformed international system, but under the simultaneous overlay of several incompatible logics.
First, there remains an inertial Westphalian rhetoric of sovereignty, deployed in diplomatic disputes. Second, a residual bipolar logic persists, most clearly in nuclear deterrence. Third, a liberal-globalist model continues to promote supranational regulation. Fourth, the United States operates in a hegemonic mode as the sole arbiter of what is permissible. Finally, an emerging multipolar contour is taking shape, where sovereignty belongs not merely to states, but to states-as-civilizations.
These systems do not complement one another; they cancel each other out. The result is a normative vacuum in which any action can be simultaneously justified and condemned depending on the chosen interpretive frame. This is what produces the widespread sense that international law no longer exists.
The Strategic Horizon and the Risk of Global Conflict
History suggests that periods in which incompatible orders operate simultaneously almost invariably end in large-scale conflict. There are no examples of such deep normative ruptures being resolved through purely evolutionary means.
In this configuration, the risk of global conflict grows not because of the aggressive intentions of individual actors, but because of the structural incompatibility of their conceptions of legitimacy. When there is no shared understanding of what is permissible, even limited crises take on existential dimensions.
The collective West, despite internal tensions between liberal-globalist and hegemonic factions, possesses a coherent ideology. The multipolar world—represented by Russia, China, India, and other centers—has material capacity but has yet to formulate a universalizable normative model capable of competing with the Western one.
The logical conclusion of this case is difficult to accept precisely because it dismantles familiar intellectual anchors: we are not witnessing a crisis of international law, but its effective abolition as a universal regulator. A crisis implies the possibility of restoration. Abolition implies a change of regime.
International law ceases to exist at the moment when its violation no longer requires justification and instead becomes an object of public approval. That moment has arrived. The kidnapping of the lawful head of a sovereign state is no longer treated as an extraordinary crime demanding investigation and condemnation. It is presented as an acceptable—and, for some audiences, even desirable—form of political action. At that point, the norm loses its ontological status altogether.
Why This Is Neither an Excess nor a Personal Anomaly
It is crucial to stress that what we are witnessing cannot be dismissed as a quirk of a particular leader’s personality or a temporary political aberration. The figure of U.S. President Donald Trump functions here as a catalyst, not as a root cause. He radicalized and made explicit a logic that had been taking shape for decades.
That logic can be summarized bluntly:
sovereignty is recognized only insofar as it does not obstruct the interests of the center of power;
law applies only to those who lack the capacity to resist it;
norms exist as rhetorical instruments, not as binding obligations.
Within this framework, kidnapping, sanctions, forcible regime change, economic blockade, and informational delegitimization are not separate tools. They are elements of a single repressive continuum aimed at suppressing autonomy.
Why the Democracy Argument No Longer Holds
What makes the present case especially revealing is that even the traditional liberal justification—“defending democracy”—has been thoroughly discredited. Support for figures who openly call for the bombing and occupation of their own country demonstrates that democratic criteria no longer matter.
Elections, constitutional procedures, internal legitimacy are declared secondary. The only operative criterion is readiness to submit to an external decision-making center. This makes clear that the issue is not the promotion of democratic institutions, but the direct external management of political regimes.
In this sense, contemporary practice aligns not with liberal internationalism but with classical forms of neocolonialism, in which the metropole appoints acceptable administrators and removes unacceptable ones.
Systemic Consequences for Global Politics
The effective abolition of international law in its previous meaning carries consequences that extend far beyond a single region or case.
First, the weight of force—military, economic, technological—increases sharply. In the absence of universal rules, the only remaining argument is the capacity to coerce or to resist.
Second, predictability collapses. When norms no longer function and decisions are made ad hoc, strategic planning becomes nearly impossible. This raises the risk of escalation even where rational interests would not otherwise imply conflict.
Third, a militarization of thinking is encouraged. If kidnapping and forcible regime change are legitimized, the logical response is an emphasis on hard forms of self-defense. This applies to all states, regardless of their current alliances.
Fourth, the very idea of collective security degrades. Institutions designed to prevent conflict either become instruments of one side or lose credibility altogether. This does not merely weaken the system; it makes it dangerous, by creating a false sense of regulation where none actually exists.
Venezuela as a Warning, Not an Exception
In this analysis, Venezuela should be understood not as a special case, but as a warning. What is being applied to it today can be applied tomorrow to any other state deemed inconvenient. Geography is irrelevant. What matters is vulnerability and autonomy.
Venezuela’s refusal to submit to external will was interpreted not as a sovereign right, but as a challenge. The response was the dismantling of its legitimacy. This establishes a new behavioral standard: autonomy is equated with aggression, submission with virtue.
Possible Trajectories
From this logic, three basic scenarios for the evolution of the global system emerge.
The first is escalation. The absence of universal norms triggers a chain reaction of conflicts. Regional crises begin to overlap, drawing in more and more actors. The risk of global conflict rises not because anyone deliberately plans it, but because mechanisms of restraint disappear.
The second is fragmentation. The world breaks into several macro-regional blocs, each with its own rules, norms, and enforcement mechanisms. International law in the universal sense vanishes, replaced by regional regimes.
The third is conflictual hierarchy. A single center of power attempts to entrench its dominance through the systematic suppression of all alternative forms of sovereignty. This scenario is the most unstable, as it generates constant resistance and requires the continuous application of force.
Strategic Conclusions
Several conclusions with practical relevance for states and political elites follow directly from this analysis.
First: international law can no longer be relied upon as a security guarantee. It has lost universality and become an instrument.
Second: sovereignty requires material backing. Without the capacity to defend it, it remains a declaration rather than a reality.
Third: autonomous thinking and critical perception become strategic resources. The loss of the capacity for doubt is equivalent to the loss of political subjectivity.
Fourth: any justification of extrajudicial violence against an external actor inevitably rebounds inward. Normalizing kidnapping abroad means accepting its permissibility at home.
And finally, the core point: the world has entered a phase in which the struggle is no longer over the interpretation of norms, but over the very possibility of their existence. Those who fail to grasp this are condemned to play by someone else’s rules—until those rules, too, are revoked.