In Caracas, two packages were prepared in a single night. The first was Maduro himself: a figure who has carried the title of "President" for years, yet whose political legitimacy has long been exhausted by machinery of bribery and repression. The second, however, was a far more expensive package, one with a much heavier historical cost and impossible to compensate: International Law.
When that plane took off, it didn’t just carry a dictator away; it carried the "idea of rules"—woven around the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force—and buried it in the waters of the Atlantic.
As an international law expert, when I look at this scene, I do not see the manifestation of justice; I see the law "running aground." Let us put aside the hamartia and examine this wreckage.
Maduro: Not a Hero of Liberty, But a System Apparatus
Let us be blunt from the start: We are not buying the fairytale that Maduro is a "victim" or an "anti-imperialist hero." The anatomy of the regime’s survival in Venezuela is that of a classic authoritarian structure. We are talking about an order where elections are drowned in legitimacy debates, institutions are hollowed out, and public support has been replaced by a "loyalty stock exchange."
Maduro’s flight from the "Petrodollar" system and his war on the Greenback did not stem from that romantic idealism inherited from Hugo Chavez, as some might assume. This was a purely pragmatic and dirty necessity. The financing of the "black money" required to keep the regime afloat necessitated evading American oversight (specifically the OFAC radar). Thus, the issue was not "freedom," but "cash flow." While "sovereignty" was being sold in the shop window, the backroom was busy with the panic of sanction evasion. Therefore, trying to write a democratic epic over the identity of the victim is, to put it mildly, naivety.
Jus Cogens and the Gun Behind the Law
However... The guilt of the prey does not legitimize the banditry of the captor.
The action taken by the United States is a clear, distinct, and indisputable violation of the prohibition on the use of force enshrined in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which forms the backbone of international law. In law, there are untouchable rules—"jus cogens" (peremptory norms)—that are not left to the discretion of states. You cannot simply "package" and abduct a head of state via a cross-border operation based solely on your own domestic court rulings, without a UN Security Council resolution and without the conditions of self-defense being met.
The US was able to put its gun on the table, but it failed to put any legitimacy alongside it. There is a mountain of difference between placing a gun behind the law and placing a gun in place of the law. Washington chose the latter, laying dynamite at the foundation of the very order it established.
The Compass of Markets: Fear and Distrust
So, how does this "Cowboy Justice" affect global finance? Markets operate not on sentiment, but on risk premiums.
In the short term, the reflex we will see is fear. When uncertainty rises in the global system, money paradoxically seeks shelter in the source of the problem—the most liquid haven, the dollar. The dollar’s fever may rise temporarily.
But in the medium to long term, the picture shifts. Where there is no legal predictability, the concept of "reserve currency" erodes. The US using its judicial power as a financial weapon, as an element of blackmail, will spook central banks and increase the strategic importance of gold, the historical safe haven. Actors like China and Russia will place this lawlessness on the table as the strongest proof of their "de-dollarization" thesis. The US has taken Maduro, but it has ripped the "neutrality" label off the dollar.
For Turkey, this is not a "distant storm." Considering the US audacity to place its domestic law above universal law (extraterritoriality)—as seen in processes like the Halkbank case—this is a serious warning flare regarding our sovereign rights. Rising risk premiums are always bad news for economies like ours that require external financing.
Monroe’s Ghost and the Master-Slave Dialectic
The crux of the matter, however, is not merely legal, but philosophical and historical.
This operation is not an isolated incident. It is the 21st-century update of the doctrine James Monroe read to Congress in 1823; the hubris of "This continent is my property," camouflaged by the slogan "America for Americans."
Philosophically, the relationship the US has established with Latin America resembles Hegel’s "Master-Slave Dialectic."Washington codes the states to its south not as equal "subjects" of international law, but as "objects" that must exist for its own welfare. The treatment meted out to Maduro today is no different from what was done to Arbenz in Guatemala yesterday, to Allende in Chile, or to Noriega in Panama. The names change, the methods change, but the "Big Stick" policy remains constant. The phrase attributed to Roosevelt regarding Somoza—"He may be a son of a bch, but he’s ourson of a bch"—remains the unchangeable constitution of American foreign policy. The fact that the Argentine administration applauds this lawlessness is nothing more than a recurrence of that historical syndrome of kissing the master’s stick.
When law is transformed into a sheath to legitimize the actions of the powerful, there is no longer an "order" to speak of. All that remains is the bitter truth Thrasymachus threw in Plato’s face thousands of years ago: "Justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger."
FINAL WORD
The packaging of Maduro is not the toppling of a dictator; it is the complete peeling away of the veneer of "democracy and law" from Pax Americana. The US has donned that old colonial warden’s uniform from the dusty shelves of the Monroe Doctrine and sent a dangerous message to the world: "Law does not grow in my backyard; only those I allow may live." However, history has taught us that an empire built solely on fear begins its collapse the very day it consumes its own legitimacy.