Trump, Venezuela and rewriting the world order

WHAT the United States has done in Venezuela under Donald Trump is not just another episode in a long history of American interventionism. It marks something more destabilising: An open challenge to the basic legal restraints that have governed how states treat each other since the mid-20th century. The danger is not only what happens to Venezuela or even to Nicolás Maduro but also what this approach signals to the rest of the world about who can be seized, removed or punished by force.

At stake is the idea that there are rules, even for powerful states. Once those rules are treated as optional, the international system begins to resemble something far more chaotic and far less survivable.