Nicolás Maduro woke up today in a federal cell in New York. That physical, concrete and cold fact weighs more than all the international law libraries combined. While analysts argue on the news channels about immunity, Vienna treaties and diplomatic attacks, reality imposes its only immutable rule, that brutal English maxim for its honesty: might be rightor might makes right.
To understand what happened, we must first stop lying to ourselves about what International Law really is. For decades we were sold the idea that it is a safety net, a strict code that protects nations equally. That’s false. International Law is not law: it is protocol. It is a set of etiquette rules that countries respect as long as there is no vital interest at stake. It’s like a traffic light in the middle of the desert, where you stop out of habit, without a physical barrier that forces you.
Here appears the cruelest distinction in geopolitics, the one that divides the world into two categories. There are countries that have sovereignty and countries that suffer from “arrogance.”
True sovereignty is not decreed in a Constitution: it is exercised. It is the factual ability to prevent another from entering your house. It is backed by economics, technology and, ultimately, military force. Sovereignty is the ability to say “no” and the other has to accept it.
“Arrogance,” on the other hand, is the disease of weak states. It is a mixture of pride and emptiness. It is the delusional belief that patriotic symbols, inflammatory speeches and national pride function as magical shields against reality. These countries believe that they are untouchable because they are right or because they occupy a seat in the UN, but they forget that, on the world stage, law without force is just an opinion. Venezuela, under Chavismo, lived for years in that state of “arrogance,” shouting anti-imperialist slogans while its real defense capacity rusted. Today reality entered through the door and took the leader, demonstrating that arrogance does not stop planes or commands.
What happened is not new, although the global stupor suggests otherwise. History had already warned that immunity is a luxury of the strong. It happened in Panama in 1989 with Manuel Noriega and in 1960 with Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. But the true legal architect of Maduro’s destiny is not a military man, but a judge, and the ghost that today walks the halls of the New York Court is that of DEA agent Kiki Camarena.
When the United States orchestrated the kidnapping of doctor Humberto Álvarez Machaín in Mexico in 1990, the defense stated the obvious: it is illegal to kidnap someone in another country. However, the US Supreme Court responded with a legal cynicism that today seals Maduro’s fate. In the ruling United States v. Alvarez-Machainruled that cross-border kidnapping does not invalidate the trial.
That day the law of the jungle was legalized and it was confirmed that the sovereignty of the weak is a dead letter. American justice told the world: “we don’t care how you got to this chair; if we kidnap you, deceive you or buy you, now you are here and we are going to judge you.” The principle of male captus, bene detentusor “badly captured, well detained.”
Therefore, any legal advice that today invokes the violation of airspace or the illegality of extraction is an exercise in futility, similar to trying to stop a tank by reciting poetry. International Law is more like a dream: immaterial and ethereal. The operation that put Maduro in Brooklyn is the awakening. And in reality, the law is not what the texts say, but what force is capable of imposing. The rest is just arrogance.
Things as they are
Mookie Tenembaum addresses international topics like this every week with Horacio Cabak on his podcast The International Observeravailable on Spotify, Apple, YouTube and all platforms.
