The U.S. military operation to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro has provoked anger from both U.S. allies and adversaries. Where the United Nations warned of setting a “dangerous precedent,” European powers tried to have it both ways, admitting Maduro “lacks legitimacy” while softly condemning the intervention or avoiding a clear comment. Not one major European leader said it was the right thing to do. This moral equivocation is justified by appeals to “international law” and warnings that China and Russia might act more aggressively in America’s stead.
Let’s be serious.
Did Russia respect principles of international law when it assassinated dissidents in London and Berlin, or when it sent assassins after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky? Does China follow these principles in Xinjiang Province and Hong Kong? Does Iran obey them while arming proxies to slaughter people across the Middle East? Does North Korea show fealty to international law when it uses its population as a slave army?
“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” Thucydides wrote during the Peloponnesian War. This is what history teaches. Until recently, at least. After all, the post-World War II international order marked a break from history not because of a new human awakening but rather because American dominance constrained how power was used. Imperfect, it nevertheless provided an unprecedented measure of global peace and justice.
The Europeans forget this. They say the rules exist in and of themselves as sacred guardrails of order. The problem is that the order needs someone to defend it. In an ideal world, yes, those principles should be protected. But we do not live in an ideal world. The truth is that international law only works when the United States and its allies decide to enforce it, normally against weaker autocracies. Hence why we’ve had tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia but not for Russia, despite its systematic record of invading neighbors, or for China, despite its oppression.
Outside the West, respect for the rule of law has always been thinner. The U.N. did not stop Soviet tanks in Hungary or Prague, or Russian tanks in Georgia and Ukraine. It did not stop genocides in Africa and Europe. It did not stop regional wars. The only power capable of upholding something resembling international justice was America.
Moreover, in a world where everyone else violates rules, those defending freedom cannot afford to be more Catholic than the Pope. And if intervention is ever justified, it’s in the case of Maduro. He is a drug trafficking dictator who led the country with the world’s largest oil reserves into oppression and destitute poverty. Indeed, international law is designed to stop precisely the sort of evils Maduro was responsible for!
American military power, for all its flaws, guards a political tradition that restrains despotic authority, tolerates dissent, and is designed to be lawfully challenged from within. It’s inherently better than Beijing’s or Moscow’s rule of governance. Europeans should remind themselves of history in this regard.
After all, their democratic stability and prosperity were built by American might after World War II and defended by the U.S. against Soviet tyranny. If Europe wants a rules-based order of a different kind, it needs the means to enforce those rules. At present, it does not have them. In turn, when European leaders refuse to call good and evil by their names at a moment of consequence, they only underline their own irrelevance.
MADURO PLEADS NOT GUILTY IN NEW YORK ON DRUG CHARGES: ‘I AM A DECENT MAN’
Xi Jinping is undeterred by European statements or fear of condemnation. He is deterred by American military power in the Pacific. As an extension, acting decisively in Venezuela signals to Beijing and to Moscow that the balance of power still favors those defending the existing order. When that resolve wavers, their threats increase. Authoritarian regimes understand this and aid each other accordingly. The Western world should be no less serious about backing its own.
The Venezuelans celebrating in Miami, Santiago, and the streets of Caracas understand that there is a moral difference between those who defend freedom and those who excuse oppression.
European leaders should take note of their example.