Maduro, from Sovereign to American Defendant... or The last night of Raiss Maduro...
The scenario is now factual: capture, transfer to New York, indictment for narcoterrorism. A historic precedent. Now it's time for "Debates" or "Opinions." From head of state to cartel leader: the Maduro case, or when power redefines the law.
An incumbent president is extracted from his palace: Bombs are dropped in the distance; diversion of attention and paralysis of defense systems; A perfectly mastered and executed scenario. A head of state has been abducted by a foreign army and then paraded in handcuffs before the cameras in New York: the scene recalls the end of Manuel Noriega in 1989.
This time, it's not the Panamanian general but the revolutionary Nicolás Maduro, a sort of Bolivarian relic, head of the Venezuelan state since 2013, now officially prosecuted for narcoterrorism by American justice and incarcerated in Brooklyn. The message is crystal clear: when a superpower decides, a president can cease to be a subject of international law to become just another cartel leader. Power will determine both the qualification and the fate: in a different unfolding, Gaddafi and Saddam met different ends but also at the hands of foreign powers.
The keystone of this operation is less military than narrative. Washington does not present Maduro as a political enemy, but as the mastermind of a transnational criminal conspiracy, extending the indictment already filed in 2020 before the New York federal court. This simple categorical shift, from political to penal, from sovereign to trafficker, allows it to bypass the contemporary obsession with sovereignty, head-of-state immunity, and the need for a UN multilateral mandate. The image is no longer that of an invasion, but of an "extraterritorial police operation" aimed at protecting American public health, a narrative well-honed since the "war on drugs" in Latin America.
It feels like watching a TV series scene: DEA agents and special forces, reading of rights, transfer to a federal detention center, solemn announcement by the prosecutor. In reality, it's a demonstration of strategic power. The arrest of a head of state in his bed, with his security apparatus caught off guard and possibly complicit, signals less a military victory than a systemic humiliation: that of a regime that dreamed of being an anti-imperialist bastion and discovers it cannot protect its own president. The Chavista "tiger" reveals itself to be a paper tiger: strong on slogans, weak in real capacity.
Jurists will rightly recall that international law protects the immunity of sitting heads of state, except in very narrowly defined exceptions. But history offers another, less comfortable lesson: from Noriega to the International Criminal Court's warrants against Omar el-Bashir or Vladimir Putin, the boundary between sovereignty and penal responsibility has steadily eroded. Already in 1998, the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in London on the basis of a Spanish warrant inaugurated the era of universal jurisdiction against former leaders. Today, with Maduro, another step is taken: this is no longer a sick ex-dictator on a medical visit, but a sitting president, captured by force and tried abroad for narcoterrorism endangering specifically American citizens.
The international reaction underscores the brutality of this epochal shift. A few capitals denounce a "cowboy method" contrary to the UN Charter; others take refuge in cautious verbal indignation, quickly diluted in press releases. But the most striking aspect is elsewhere: many leaders who, just yesterday, posed complacently with Maduro, accepted his decorations, and praised his "Bolivarian courage," suddenly discover they have short memories. The archives are full of these now-embarrassing embraces: they remind us that diplomacy loves grand words, sovereignty, dignity, resistance, as long as they cost nothing. Abdelmadjid Tebboune must today regret his recent insulting remarks toward the powers and others who have explicitly recognized the Moroccanness of the formerly Spanish Sahara.
In the Maduro affair, Donald Trump has found his formula: topple a regime without uttering the word "war," capture a president without recognizing him as such. The operation de facto violates the spirit of international law, but it cloaks itself in the language of American criminal law, with its charges, judges, juries, and procedures. In Congress, a few voices raise alarms about the precedent created. However, U.S. political history shows that, when faced with what is defined as a "vital interest", fight against drugs, terrorism, territorial protection—partisan quarrels quickly give way to a reflex of unity.
Now, the scene shifts to the New York federal court. Maduro, very wealthy, will be supported by prestigious lawyers, will challenge the legitimacy of the procedure, denounce a political trial, and attempt to turn the courtroom into an anti-imperialist platform. The U.S., for its part, will highlight its fight against a "narco-state" that allegedly flooded their market with cocaine in league with Colombian armed groups and criminal networks. At this stage, it matters little whether judicial truth is fully established: the image of the Venezuelan president in the defendant's cage will weigh more durably than all televised speeches.
For part of Latin America and beyond, this arrest elicits real relief: that of seeing a leader accused of authoritarian drift, massive corruption, and collusion with narcotrafficking finally answer before a judge. This sentiment is understandable. But should we stop there? For this episode recalls a disturbing truth: sovereignty, in the current international system, has become conditional. Conditional on the ability to defend oneself, to weave effective alliances, to not cross certain red lines set by others. Conditional, above all, on the narrative that the powerful impose on the rest of the world.
The Maduro case must neither make us forget the brutality of his regime, nor mask the precedent it creates. It has provoked the exile of more than 8 million people. That a president suspected of serious crimes be judged, many will applaud it. That a power arrogate to itself the unilateral right to abduct and try him on its soil, without an indisputable international mandate, should worry even its allies. These tools, once created, risk no longer being confined to a single "enemy." Those who reassure themselves today thinking they will never be the target of such practices risk discovering, tomorrow, to their detriment, that the narrative has changed there too.
It was the last night of Raiss Maduro...
