Mahmud Tim Kargbo: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 7 January 2026:
Caracas did not awaken to a coup declared or a government dissolved. It awoke to interruption. In the hours before dawn, parts of the city fell into darkness. Electricity failed across several districts. Communications faltered. Then came the reports, first fragmented, then multiplying, of explosions near military installations on the outskirts of the capital and the low, sustained thrum of helicopters overhead.
According to multiple accounts circulating in regional media and diplomatic channels, United States forces struck selected military bases around Caracas, deploying scores of Black Hawk helicopters as airspace was rapidly sealed.
The city’s power grid was reportedly disrupted as the operation unfolded. By morning, Nicolás Maduro was no longer in the presidential palace. He had not appeared on state television. No statement had been issued. The president, it was said, had been taken.
Whether each element of those reports withstands independent verification remains to be determined. What is not in dispute is the outcome. Venezuela’s sitting head of state had vanished from Miraflores, and within hours, confirmation emerged that he was in United States custody.
The state itself did not collapse. Ministries functioned. Security forces remained visible. Yet the centre of authority had been removed by force, not process.
It is this sequence, disruption, military action, and extraterritorial detention, that has unsettled capitals far beyond Latin America. The question confronting governments and legal scholars is not whether Nicolás Maduro should face scrutiny. It is whether the method reportedly employed to seize him marks a decisive shift in how power is now exercised across borders.
If upheld as lawful, the extraterritorial capture and transfer of a sitting head of state would constitute one of the most consequential assertions of unilateral force since the end of the Cold War. Its significance lies not in the fate of one deeply contested leader, but in the precedent such an operation may establish.
The international order built after 1945 was never grounded in moral consensus. It was grounded in restraint. What now hangs in the balance is whether that restraint still governs power, or whether power has begun to dispense with it.
At the core of that order lies Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, which affirms the sovereign equality of states and prohibits the use of force against their territorial integrity or political independence. Alongside it stands the doctrine of head of state immunity.
This principle was not designed to sanctify wrongdoing, but to prevent domestic courts from becoming instruments of geopolitical retaliation. Together, these doctrines have functioned as stabilisers within a system defined by rivalry.
The reported seizure of Maduro presses directly against those limits.
From Doctrine to Dock
Legal theory became tangible on Monday, 5 January 2026, inside a federal courtroom in Manhattan. Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, appeared before a United States judge under the supervision of federal marshals. Speaking through an interpreter, Maduro identified himself not as a defendant, but as the sitting president of Venezuela. He stated that he had been taken from his home in Caracas.
Defence counsel immediately challenged the legality of his removal, citing jurisdictional overreach, immunity, and violations of international law. The court acknowledged that these arguments would be addressed in due course. For the moment, procedure prevailed. Custody was maintained. Bail was not sought. The fundamental legal questions were deferred.
For critics, the sequence was instructive. Domestic criminal process advanced swiftly and with confidence. International legality was postponed. Law was not dismissed outright, but it was not permitted to constrain power at the moment power was exercised.
The Case for Exception
Supporters of the operation advance a sharply different argument. They contend that Maduro stands accused of transnational crimes, including narcotics trafficking and cooperation with armed non state actors. Such conduct, they argue, falls outside the scope of legitimate state functions and therefore nullifies the protections normally afforded by immunity.
They further argue that Venezuela’s political institutions lack democratic legitimacy, weakening its claims to sovereign protection. In this reading, the operation is framed not as a violation of international law, but as its enforcement. Failure to act, they suggest, would entrench impunity and signal that sovereignty may be used as a shield for criminal enterprise.
Critics respond that selective enforcement corrodes universality. If legitimacy is determined unilaterally, sovereignty becomes conditional and immunity a political instrument rather than a legal doctrine. Exceptional jurisdiction, once normalised, risks becoming a routine mechanism of coercion rather than a carefully bounded remedy.
The Currency Beneath the Courtroom
Beyond the legal debate lies a deeper structural context. Venezuela is not merely a contested state. It sits atop the largest proven oil reserves in the world, exceeding 300 billion barrels. For decades, that oil was traded predominantly in United States dollars, reinforcing a monetary system that emerged after the collapse of Bretton Woods.
This arrangement ensured sustained global demand for the dollar. It allowed Washington to finance deficits, absorb economic shocks, and project power with unmatched flexibility. Energy, currency, and geopolitical influence became mutually reinforcing.
Venezuela’s gradual effort to loosen its dependence on this system unsettled that balance. From 2018 onward, Caracas pursued alternative settlement mechanisms, expanded financial cooperation with China, and aligned itself more closely with BRICS initiatives aimed at reshaping the global monetary order.
Given its resource base, Venezuela was uniquely positioned to lend weight to long term de dollarisation at a moment when confidence in the existing system was already under strain.
Historical memory has sharpened suspicion. Iraq’s decision in 2000 to price oil in euros preceded invasion and regime change. Libya’s proposal for a gold backed African currency collapsed alongside the Libyan state following NATO intervention. Whether coincidence or pattern remains debated, but such episodes continue to inform perceptions across the Global South.
The Human Cost, Too Often Abstracted
Lost amid strategic calculations is the human toll of Venezuela’s collapse. Since 2015, more than seven million Venezuelans have fled the country, one of the largest peacetime displacements in modern history. Hyperinflation destroyed savings and wages. Public services deteriorated. Malnutrition and preventable disease spread.
For many Venezuelans, the debate over sovereignty, jurisdiction, and monetary order feels distant. What matters is survival, dignity, and the possibility of return. Any analysis that ignores this reality risks reducing a national tragedy to an abstract contest of power.
Precedents That Still Cast Shadows
History offers sobering comparisons. In 1989, Manuel Noriega was seized by United States forces in Panama and transferred to Florida to stand trial. In 2001, Slobodan Milošević was extradited to The Hague under intense international pressure. In 2003, Saddam Hussein was captured following invasion and later tried by a domestic tribunal operating under foreign occupation.
Each case differed in circumstance and legal justification. Each was presented as exceptional. Each altered norms in ways that outlasted the individuals involved. The Maduro case now enters that lineage, raising a cumulative question rather than a comparative one. At what point do exceptions become practice.
An Order Under Strain
The timing of the operation has intensified global unease. The petrodollar system faces unprecedented pressure. Russia has expanded energy trade in non dollar currencies. Iran operates largely outside dollar channels. Saudi Arabia has openly discussed alternative settlement mechanisms.
China has built parallel payment systems linking thousands of banks worldwide. BRICS has accelerated efforts to bypass Western financial chokepoints.
Against this backdrop, the Maduro seizure appears to many less an act of confidence than one of anticipation.
International reaction reflects this anxiety. China, Russia, Iran, and several Latin American governments condemned the operation as a violation of sovereignty. Emergency debates at the United Nations exposed widening fractures within the rules based order.
Even within Western legal circles, scholars and former officials questioned the precedent of detaining a sitting head of state without collective authorisation.
Inside Venezuela, the anticipated collapse did not materialise. Acting President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in amid protests and pledges of continuity. Authority did not dissolve. If anything, nationalist sentiment hardened, echoing patterns observed in earlier interventions.
A Final Act
Venezuela is no longer merely the site of a criminal prosecution or a regional crisis. It has become a proving ground for the balance between law and power in an era of currency fragmentation and strategic rivalry.
When power outruns law, the global order does not collapse in spectacle. It adapts quietly, according to the rules of those willing to act first.
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