Lex Fortioris in Practice

Throughout human history, the arc of domination has rarely bent toward justice—unless justice served the interests of the powerful. From the Assyrian Empire’s brutal vassalage systems to European colonial extraction, from the transatlantic slave trade to Cold War proxy interventions, dominant social groups, kingdoms, tribes, and nation-states have consistently leveraged their strength not to uphold law, but to reshape it in their image. The principle often unspoken but ever-present is lex fortioris—the law of the stronger. In this doctrine, might does not merely make right; it rewrites the rules entirely, rendering legality a flexible tool of control rather than a shield for the vulnerable. The recent U.S.-led military operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro stands as a stark, modern manifestation of this ancient practice—where a superpower, cloaked in the language of justice, violates international law with impunity, exposing the hollowness of a global order that binds only those without the means to resist.

The abduction of President Maduro on January 3, 2026—conducted by U.S. military forces without Venezuelan consent, UN authorization, or Congressional approval—was not a law enforcement operation. It was an act of international aggression disguised as judicial accountability. Over 150 aircraft descended upon Caracas. Venezuelan military installations were bombed. The sitting head of state was seized from sovereign territory and flown to the United States to face charges of “narco-terrorism” in a federal courtroom. Simultaneously, U.S. officials declared that Venezuela’s vast oil reserves would now be “made available” to American companies, and that Washington would effectively oversee (run) the country’s political transition. This was not regime change by covert coup or economic strangulation—methods long familiar in U.S. foreign policy—but regime change by direct military kidnapping. And yet, rather than global condemnation translating into consequence, the world witnessed a chilling demonstration of how power immunizes itself from accountability.

International legal consensus is unequivocal: the operation violated the foundational tenets of the post-1945 order. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, ratified by the U.S. Senate, explicitly prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Self-defense? No imminent threat existed. UN Security Council authorization? None was sought or granted. The operation thus constitutes not merely a breach of sovereignty but a potential crime of aggression—the very offense the Nuremberg Trials deemed “the supreme international crime.” Even under U.S. domestic law, the absence of Congressional authorization for such a large-scale military deployment raises serious constitutional questions under the War Powers Resolution. As Professor Ziyad Motala of Howard University observes, this was not law enforcement—it was “international vandalism, plain and unorned.”

The U.S. government justified its actions by claiming Maduro’s 2018 re-election was illegitimate—a convenient pretext that collapses under even modest scrutiny. If electoral legitimacy is the threshold for sovereignty, then dozens of U.S.-allied regimes would be equally vulnerable. The current president of Syria, al-Sharaa (a former al-Qaeda leader), seized power through violence —yet the U.S. governement engages with his government and invited him to the White House. More pointedly, Donald Trump’s 2016 victory was met with widespread domestic and international allegations of foreign interference, voter suppression, and institutional manipulation. Yet no foreign power sought to “rescue democracy” by abducting him. The selective application of the “illegitimacy” argument reveals it not as a legal principle, but as a political weapon—one deployed only against adversaries who refuse to subordinate their resources and policies to U.S. interests.

This is not an anomaly but continuity. As Professor Motala reminds us, regime change is “a habit with a long paper trail”—Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Iraq (2003). Each intervention was justified by moral panic or security rhetoric, yet each served U.S. economic and geopolitical interests. What makes the Maduro abduction unprecedented is its brazenness: the open, militarized seizure of a head of state under the guise of a criminal indictment. It signals a new doctrine: that the world’s sole superpower need not hide behind proxies or sanctions. It can simply take.

And here lies a profound strategic miscalculation. For weaker nations, the abduction of Maduro—however brutal and illegal—may prove to be not their final defeat, but the beginning of the hegemon’s unraveling. On the surface, the operation appears as the ultimate assertion of American omnipotence: a sitting president snatched from his capital like a common criminal, oil fields reallocated by decree, sovereignty erased by drone strike. But real power is not only measured in warplanes and embargoes. It is sustained by legitimacy, moral authority, and the willing compliance of allies and onlookers. By acting in such naked violation of the very “rules-based order” it claims to defend, the United States has exposed its foundational hypocrisy. The spectacle of a nation that built its postwar identity on human rights, democracy, and the rule of law now abducting a foreign leader without trial or treaty sanction has triggered global revulsion—not just from traditional adversaries, but from erstwhile partners in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and even Europe.

This is where the true vulnerability of imperial power lies—not in battlefield loss, but in reputational implosion. When citizens in Jakarta, Nairobi, and Buenos Aires take to the streets to decry U.S. aggression, when non-aligned nations accelerate de-dollarization, when even European courts begin questioning the legality of U.S. extraterritorial actions, the cost is not merely symbolic. It is the erosion of the soft infrastructure of empire: trust, deference, and the belief that American leadership serves universal values rather than narrow interests. History shows that empires rarely fall from military defeat alone; they collapse when their moral claim to rule evaporates. Empires tend to become vulnerable when their legitimating rhetoric diverges sharply from their governing practices; this divergence undermines internal cohesion and makes external shocks decisive rather than survivable. The U.S., by devouring the principles it once proclaimed, may have handed weaker states their most potent weapon—not arms, but the global court of opinion. In this light, the abduction of Maduro may become less a symbol of U.S. strength and more a monument to its self-inflicted delegitimization—a moment when the world finally saw the emperor not just without clothes, but actively tearing them off in service of raw conquest.

The implications for the international system are catastrophic. The UN, already weakened by structural inequities like the Security Council veto, is rendered impotent when the host state—the very nation entrusted with safeguarding the institution—becomes its chief violator. The U.S. has repeatedly flouted its obligations under the UN Headquarters Agreement, denying visas to leaders like Palestine’s Mahmoud Abbas, effectively gatekeeping global diplomacy. If access to the international stage depends on Washington’s approval, then multilateralism is a façade. Law becomes what the powerful say it is—until they decide it no longer suits them.

Lex fortioris has always operated beneath the surface of civilization. But in the 21st century, it no longer hides. The abduction of Maduro is not a deviation from international order; rather, it is the order’s logical conclusion when law is subordinated to power. As Motala warns, “Law cannot survive as a slogan. Either it restrains those who wield the most force, or it is merely rhetoric deployed against those who do not.” The world now faces a choice: either rebuild a truly equitable legal architecture—one not hostage to a single veto, currency, or capital—or accept that sovereignty, justice, and law exist only at the pleasure of the strong. Until then, the kidnapping of a president will not be remembered as a crime, but as a lesson: in the realm of nations, the law belongs to those who can enforce it upon others—unless, through their own hubris, they convince the world that such law was never real to begin with.