Don’t Follow the False Sirens of International Law

By John Yoo

Thursday, January 08, 2026

 

President Donald Trump’s critics have focused their fire on the legality of the United States’ astounding snatch-and-grab of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. But their attacks mistakenly claim a strict, formalistic authority for international rules that have never governed American actions in world affairs and would prove little obstacle to our rivals, such as China and Russia. Following these false sirens of international law would diminish American leadership, harm our allies, and lead to a more disordered, less peaceful world.

 

In an earlier National Review article, I addressed the domestic legal question of the constitutionality of the January 3 attack on Caracas. I argued that the Constitution’s grant of the executive power and the role of commander in chief has given presidents the initiative to use force abroad, subject to Congress’s power of the purse and impeachment. I observed that presidents have long engineered regime change in quick wars without any ex ante congressional authorization, including President Barack Obama’s overthrow of Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi, President Bill Clinton’s air war in Serbia, and President George H. W. Bush’s invasion of Panama and arrest of Manuel Noriega. Such interventions stretch back not just decades but centuries, to Thomas Jefferson’s dispatch of a fleet on a “training exercise” to overthrow the Barbary pirates.

 

But a war can satisfy domestic constitutional standards and still violate international law, and vice versa. Now, both domestic and international opponents of the Trump administration are pressing the claim that the United States has committed unprovoked aggression against Venezuela in defiance of all international law. We should not be surprised to hear U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’s statement that he is “deeply concerned that rules of international law have not been respected with regard to the 3 January military action.” Or those from Russia, which had the chutzpah to decry the United States “as some kind of a supreme judge,” which claims the right “to invade any country” and to act “irrespective of notions of international law, sovereignty and nonintervention.” China chimed in that “such hegemonic acts of the U.S. seriously violate international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty.”

 

We should not expect any consistent approach from nations like Russia and China. Russia wrapped its arms around international law even as its troops continue to conduct a brutal war of aggression in Ukraine, while China called for all to abide by international law even as it practices for an invasion of the island democracy of Taiwan. Perhaps more surprising were criticism from our allies, who are even now begging for greater U.S. military involvement in Europe, and even American officials. France’s U.N. ambassador announced that the January 3 attack “runs counter to the principle of peace dispute resolution and runs counter to the principle of non-use of force.” Democratic senators found much to their liking in France. California Senator Adam Schiff labeled the attack a “brazen illegal escalation.” Former American military and diplomatic officials agreed that the Maduro operation violated fundamental rules of international law.

 

These critics present a straightforward case. Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter forbids the use of force against the “territorial integrity” and “political independence” of its members. Article 51 of the Charter provides exceptions only when nations act in their self-defense or participate in military operations approved by the U.N. Security Council. Trump critics rightly observe that the Security Council has not approved the use of force against Venezuela. They further reject any claim of self-defense based on Venezuelan support for drug cartels and the drug-trafficking that kills thousands of Americans a year. They do not see any “imminent” armed attack by Venezuela, which many international legal authorities concede would also permit the preemptive use of force in self-defense.

 

But this wooden interpretation of international law has never ruled — and should never rule — the American use of force in world affairs. The U.S. must have the ability, as a sovereign nation, to use force in its self-defense against not just imminent armed attacks but also looming threats that could mature into grave challenges to our national security. Take for example, a Democratic president’s greatest achievement during the Cold War to head off a nuclear threat. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy imposed a naval blockade of Cuba in order to prevent the Soviet Union from basing nuclear missiles just 90 miles from American shores. Neither Cuba nor Russia had engaged in an armed attack on the United States, nor did the U.N. Security Council (where Russia enjoys a veto, along with the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and China) approve the use of force. Nevertheless, leaders and scholars hailed Kennedy’s restrained — but early — use of force to prevent the Soviet deployment in Cuba from radically altering the balance of nuclear power.

 

Venezuela presents a different type of national security threat, but one that raises the same question of prevention as the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to its federal court filings in the Venezuelan deportation cases, the Trump White House believes that Venezuela is waging a covert war against the United States by using drug cartels to smuggle drugs into the United States (along with associated gang members) that kill tens of thousands of Americans a year. These attacks are part of a broader violent campaign designed to oppose American influence in the Western Hemisphere and to destabilize American society. Maduro was not only the president of Venezuela but one of the heads of one of the drug cartels. The United States can claim that international law recognizes its right to use force to stop Venezuela from inflicting such sinister harms on its people, even if they do not take the form of conventional armed units in uniform crossing our border. By requiring for an imminent armed attack, international law would handcuff the United States from acting earlier, with less force, to prevent looming from threats and irregular attacks from developing into massive harms.

 

Except for a few moments during the Obama and Biden administrations, the United States has refused to hide behind obsolete, formalistic views of the laws of war and has long embraced a pragmatic approach to the use of force. Instead of blindly following the U.N. Charter’s ban on war, the United States has acted to protect international peace and security. The U.N. Charter aims to prevent the great power wars that destroyed Europe in 1914 and 1939 but which have largely disappeared during the “long peace” of the postwar world. It seeks to outlaw the aggression practiced by Nazi Germany in Europe and Imperial Japan in Asia then, and Russia in Ukraine now. But the United States has not read international law to prevent it from promoting international peace and security by stopping civil wars, humanitarian catastrophes, rogue nations, and terrorist groups.

 

Indeed, the United States would never have adopted the U.N. Charter if it were understood to prevent the United States from taking decisive military action to prevent growing threats to its security or to regional stability. As historians have shown, the U.S. delegation to the U.N. drafting conference did not understand the charter to limit Washington’s freedom to use force. Senators, for example, raised doubts that the new treaty prohibited the very Monroe Doctrine that President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have invoked. But in a May 1945 meeting, John Foster Dulles, a U.S. delegate to the drafting of the charter and future secretary of state, explained: “At no point would the member states give up their right to use force in all circumstances.” Under his logic, the United States could still wage war to advance the United Nations’ goal of maintaining world peace and security. American State Department officials reassured senators that “there was certainly no statement in the text under which we would give up our right of independent action.” They explained that “if the Security Council fails to agree on an act, then the member state reserves the right to act for the maintenance of peace, justice, etc.”

 

Critics of the Trump administration demand that we agree to a vision of international law that has come completely free of its moorings. The purpose of the U.N. Charter’s rules was to prevent wars of aggression, not to outlaw the use of force to shore up international peace and stability. Trump has said that the United States would take oil revenues not for itself but for the reconstruction of Venezuela. It is enforcing a Monroe Doctrine which, contrary to the views of Democratic critics, allows not the United States to place whatever leader it wants in every South American country but instead seeks to keep the nations of the Western Hemisphere free from foreign influence. Here, the Trump administration is not engaged in World War II–style aggression but is instead preventing the further looting of Venezuela at the hands of Cuba, Russia, Iran, and China. The Monroe Doctrine properly seeks to keep South America from becoming a base of operations for hostile, antidemocratic powers to use to subvert our allies and threaten our own security.

 

Idolatry of the U.N. presents a clear dividing line between Republican and Democratic political leaders, who believe that parchment barriers will stop the likes of Russia, China, and Iran. President Trump can point not just to the removal of a vicious dictator like Maduro, who has oppressed his own population, looted his nation’s natural resources, and turned his country into a pawn of Cuba and Russia. He can also proudly raise up his stunning action against the Iranian nuclear program, which has helped stop an aggressive actor from destabilizing the region. Iran not only pursues nuclear weapons, which could lead to WMD proliferation and a nuclear arms race with its neighbors, but has also spent the past three decades supporting terrorism, destabilizing its neighbors, and seeking to destroy Israel.

 

Wrapping ourselves in a straitjacket of international institutions and laws would limit American freedom of action in a dangerous world and subordinate our sovereignty to the whims of “the international community.” This not only paralyzes American initiative, but it also tethers our national interest to a failed experiment. As the United Nations enters its eighth decade, it suffers from a crisis of ineffectiveness and corruption. Instead of its own troops and weapons, the U.N. must rely on the goodwill of its members. And even the possibility of decision, without the reality of troops, is remote because of the power of the five permanent members of the Security Council — the U.S., the U.K., France, Russia, and China — to veto any intervention. China and Russia are authoritarian regimes that generally oppose any intervention into what they consider “internal” affairs, especially the repression of political and economic freedoms. Nations like the U.S. and its allies that accept the higher responsibility for maintaining peace and advancing free-market democracy become lawbreakers. The U.N. serves as a defense bar for dictators.

 

Critics of the Trump administration fear more than trust American power. They hope to reassure the inchoate international community by submerging our national interests into an international law only taken seriously by the Western democracies. They hope that the U.N. and other international institutions can help tame America into an ordinary nation that is no different than the other great powers. But the United States still carries the burden of maintaining international peace and stability, and must have the speed, flexibility, and decisiveness to prevent looming threats. Bind down the United States with utopian visions of international law, and both the United States and the world will suffer for it.