Snatching Maduro From Venezuela Was Illegal — and Damaging

America’s incursion into Venezuela for the extraction of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife to the US for trial was illegal under both international and US law. Announcing that the US intends to “run” Venezuela so as to benefit from its oil and mineral resources is also nakedly unlawful. The most basic building block of all international law is the principle that sovereign countries govern themselves in the interests of their own citizens.

This script should sound familiar. President Donald Trump is doing to Maduro, Venezuela and the international legal order exactly what he’s been doing to the constitutional order in the US over the last year. He is openly breaking the law, with nothing resembling a credible legal justification, while assuming — correctly — that he won’t suffer any meaningful consequences.