Those who equate democratic action with tyrannical abuse in the name of international law will not be remembered as cautious but as complicit.
The United States’ decision to act decisively against Nicolás Maduro has already triggered a familiar chorus of condemnation. Once again, the language of “international law” is being weaponized not to defend human dignity but to protect tyranny.
This moment is not unprecedented. In 1989, the United States intervened militarily in Panama to remove Manuel Noriega, a narco-dictator who had turned a sovereign state into a criminal enterprise. Then, as now, critics warned of catastrophic precedents. Then, as now, they were wrong.
History judged that intervention not as an act of imperialism, but as the overdue enforcement of accountability when all other mechanisms had failed. President George H. W. Bush understood what many of today’s Western leaders appear to have forgotten: that law divorced from justice degenerates into farce.
