The arrest of Venezuela’s leader in Operation “Absolute Resolve” isn’t just another ugly episode in a long, messy decline of international norms. It is a bright-line moment: a superpower used force on foreign soil to seize a sitting head of state and bring him to the United States to face charges.
Plenty of people will argue the target “deserved it.” That’s the point. International law was never built to protect only the sympathetic. It was built to restrain everyone—especially the states most capable of acting with impunity.
And yet, if the story ends with a burst of outrage and then nothing practical—no consequences, no enforceable limits, no credible mechanism to stop the next escalation—then we are not watching a “rules-based order” collapse. We are watching it be replaced by a permission structure: whatever the strongest actor can do, becomes doable.
This wasn’t inevitable in 2013
The temptation is to say Venezuela has been an open wound for more than a decade, so the final rupture was only a matter of time. But the timeline matters.
Nicolás Maduro’s legitimacy crisis did not begin as a globally settled fact in 2013. He won a narrowly contested election that year and faced an opposition challenge; the much wider, more formal international split hardened later—especially around the disputed 2018 election and the 2019 presidential crisis.
That distinction doesn’t rehabilitate Maduro. It clarifies the argument. The claim that “everyone knew” and therefore force was inevitable is a post-hoc justification—one that erases the difference between condemnation, sanctions, diplomacy, and military action.
Panama is the wrong comparison—and the right warning
Supporters of “Absolute Resolve” will reach for Panama in 1989, when the U.S. invaded to topple Manuel Noriega. But that precedent is less comforting than it sounds.
Yes, Panama’s National Assembly declared a “state of war” with the United States days before the invasion. And yes, the U.S. executive branch notified congressional leadership.
What matters is the reaction: the UN General Assembly condemned the invasion by 75–20, with 40 abstentions, and the OAS voted 20–1 to censure it.
In other words, even in an era of American unipolarity, there was a concerted attempt—imperfect, symbolic, but real—to say: this is not lawful, and it should not become normal.
Venezuela wasn’t met with silence—just weak leverage
The claim that “nobody has challenged” the U.S. action doesn’t hold up. The UN system and multiple governments have raised legality concerns, and legal experts have argued the operation lacked a lawful basis under the UN Charter framework.
But the deeper critique survives: condemnation is not the same as constraint. In a Security Council system where a permanent member can veto accountability—and where many states are reluctant to risk retaliation—“opposition” often collapses into statements with no teeth.
That gap between rhetoric and enforcement is where “world order” really dies: not when leaders stop talking about rules, but when rules stop changing outcomes.
Greenland is the tell
The speed with which the conversation pivoted to Greenland shows how quickly a precedent can metastasize.
The White House has confirmed active discussions about acquiring Greenland, with Reuters reporting that options on the table include potential use of the U.S. military. And in public messaging, senior figures have leaned into a blunt theory of the case: that power, not “international niceties,” is what governs the world.
You don’t have to believe a military takeover is likely to see the damage. Once the world accepts that force can be used to seize a leader in Caracas, it becomes harder to say “unthinkable” with a straight face when the map shifts north.
The U.S. is saying the quiet part out loud
This isn’t just improvisation. The U.S. 2025 National Security Strategy spells out a worldview that is tired of underwriting global burdens and skeptical of an expansive, permanent international role.
Read generously, it’s realism and prioritization. Read strictly, it’s a statement that the old bargain—American power wrapped in institutional legitimacy—is fraying. When a superpower stops caring whether its actions are broadly recognized as lawful, the incentives for everyone else change fast.
And that leads to the most dangerous second-order effect: states that feel exposed will scramble for deterrence. In a world where rules don’t protect you, “strength” becomes the only insurance policy anyone trusts.
What Europe should do—now, not after the next shock
Europe can’t “replace” the United States. But it can do something more achievable and more valuable: make it harder for the strong to rewrite the rules unilaterally, and easier for smaller states to survive without turning every dispute into an arms race.
1) Build a wider European security compact
This is bigger than the EU. It means institutionalizing defense cooperation with the UK and Norway, and building reliable coordination with partners like Canada and Switzerland.
If unanimity becomes a veto for urgency, coalitions should move ahead without the holdouts.
2) Treat economic resilience as national security
Europe is structurally more trade-exposed than the U.S., which makes “law of the jungle” geopolitics especially costly. World Bank data shows trade as a share of GDP is roughly ~50% in Germany and France, ~59% in Italy, and ~70% in Spain—versus about ~25% in the United States and ~43% in China.
That exposure can be weakness—or leverage—depending on whether Europe acts collectively.
3) Lead a “rules with enforcement” agenda
Europe should stop performing virtue and start designing machinery:
- clearer standards for extraterritorial arrests and regime-change operations
- a coordinated sanctions doctrine that doesn’t collapse into exceptions
- a serious push for accountability mechanisms that don’t depend on a veto-wielding Council
This won’t fix everything. But it changes expectations—and expectations are what stabilize systems.
4) Use Greenland as a forcing function, not a panic button
If Greenland becomes a crisis, Europe should avoid the familiar reflex of buying time with an embarrassing compromise that teaches the wrong lesson.
A shock can end alliances—or it can re-found them on clearer terms. The difference is whether Europeans choose to be a serious actor with capabilities, or a market that hopes someone else will enforce the rules.
The uncomfortable conclusion
If the new era is defined by force, then Europe needs strength—military, yes, but also institutional and economic. Not to imitate empire, but to stop the world from devolving into a competition where the only stable currency is coercion.
The “order” may be failing. The choice is whether to build a successor—or drift into a system where every country concludes that survival requires becoming dangerous.