Photo/Illutration A photo posted by U.S. President Donald Trump on his Truth Social account shows him watching along with CIA Director John Ratcliffe the U.S. military operation in Venezuela from Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Jan. 3. (@realDonaldTrump/Handout via Reuters)

A national leader has been seized and taken into custody by a foreign power.

The shocking news out of Venezuela a few days ago calls to mind the image of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (1937-2006) after he was captured in December 2003 by U.S. forces.

Hussein appeared disheveled and unkempt, with a long, thick graying beard and tangled, shoulder-length hair.

Claiming that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, U.S. and British forces invaded the Middle Eastern country and, after an intensive, months-long manhunt, eventually found the deposed Iraqi leader hiding in a small underground hideout and dragged him into the light.

At the time, Washington and London cited earlier U.N. Security Council resolutions as their legal basis for the invasion. Many governments dismissed that rationale as insufficient.

Yet, looking back, one might say that the United States at least felt compelled to wrap its use of force in the outward trappings of legal formality.

The latest U.S. military action left me speechless—not only because of what was done, but because of the brazenness behind it, as if international law no longer matters at all.

In an attack on Venezuela ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump, the U.S. military seized President Nicolas Maduro and whisked him to the United States.

Whatever one thinks of the dictatorial Venezuelan leader, there should be no room in a civilized world for the outrageous notion that Washington can “run” a foreign country for an unspecified period, by force, at its own discretion.

In an essay titled “The New American Imperialism,” political scientist Francis Fukuyama warned that while “Trump’s instincts were isolationist,” he pivoted swiftly—beginning with his inaugural address in January 2025—toward behaving like “an old-fashioned imperialist.”

Regrettably, that warning now seems grimly prescient.

The larger danger is contagion. If such actions are treated as permissible, other major military powers will inevitably ask: why not us?

If, in observing the behavior of the Trump administration, Russia and China accelerate their own great-power chauvinism to rely even more openly on coercion and military might, what will follow?

The thin “rule of law” that barely covers our world will be blown away.

“Excellencies, we have come to a fork in the road,” then U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (1938-2018) warned in September 2003, amid the Iraq crisis, cautioning that unilateral or pre-emptive war could undermine the U.N. system.

The message bears repeating loudly, without hesitation and without apology: no to the rule by force.

—The Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 5

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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