by Alessandro Spinillo, thinc. Legal Counsel
On January 3, 2026, the United States conducted a striking military operation in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of Nicolás Maduro. Beyond its immediate geopolitical impact, the operation raises a deeper and more consequential question: whether contemporary international law — and in particular the law of self‑defense — remains fit for purpose in an era of hybrid threats, transnational criminal‑terror networks, and states that support those criminal activities.
The Maduro operation reflects a model of action that combines criminal law enforcement with military force. U.S. authorities, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, justified the mission as the execution of a criminal indictment against a figure accused of leading a transnational narcotics network, while deploying military assets to overcome organized armed resistance. In doing so, Washington implicitly treated large‑scale drug trafficking organizations and their state sponsors not as ordinary criminal actors, but as entities capable of posing grave national security threats.
This legal framing has been echoed at the highest levels of the U.S. government. CNN reported that a classified memo from the Department of Justice (DOJ) characterized the operation as an extraterritorial law enforcement action conducted under presidential authority as Commander-in-Chief pursuant to Article II of the U.S. Constitution. President Trump, for his part, publicly declared that the United States is “at war with drug cartels” and classified the issue as a non-international armed conflict (NIAC).
The threat environment surrounding Venezuela’s government has been characterized by some analysts and policymakers as including terrorist proxies and foreign actors that amplify the danger. The Maduro regime had long been closely aligned with Iran — historically a key sponsor of Hezbollah — and has been described by critics as hosting and tolerating activities by Hezbollah operatives and other militant actors connected to Iranian influence in the region. Such connections, alongside allegations of cooperation with violent transnational criminal syndicates, illustrate how varied non‑state threats can intertwine and reinforce one another to create a single operational ecosystem posing a combined threat to U.S. national security.
These developments illustrate a reality that international law can no longer ignore: modern threats do not conform to the classical state‑to‑state war paradigm. Terrorist groups, organized crime syndicates, insurgent movements, and hostile state actors increasingly operate as a single ecosystem — financing, training, protecting, and amplifying one another across borders. When such networks inflict large‑scale harm, destabilize entire regions, and deliberately target civilian populations through narcotics, violence, and coercion, it becomes artificial to deny states the right to defend themselves merely because the attacker does not wear a uniform or represent a recognized government.
Interestingly, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN Security Council did not explicitly invoke the doctrine of self-defense in her public statement regarding the Maduro operation. This is in contrast with prior U.S. operations against high-value targets such as Osama bin Laden or Qassem Soleimani, where self-defense was explicitly cited as the legal justification. The absence of this reference highlights the novelty and complexity of the operation: hybrid threats blur the traditional categories of armed attack, law enforcement, and national security, creating conceptual uncertainty even for the United States. This gap underscores the urgent need to clarify and expand the customary law of self-defense to address these modern realities.
The prevailing interpretation of Article 51 of the UN Charter has often been read narrowly, confining lawful self‑defense to traditional armed attacks by states or clearly identifiable armed groups. Yet this restrictive reading does not reflect the full scope of customary international law — nor the deeper intellectual tradition that shaped the law of nations.
Centuries before the UN Charter, Francisco de Vitoria articulated a broader understanding of self‑defense grounded in natural law. For Vitoria, the right of self‑defense arose whenever a political community faced unjust violence or grave harm, regardless of the formal status of the aggressor. What mattered was not the attacker’s label, but the reality of the threat and the necessity of defense. This classical conception recognized that sovereignty entails not only territorial authority, but also the duty — and the right — to protect a community from existential danger.
From this perspective, Article 51 should be understood not as a ceiling on self‑defense, but as one expression of a wider customary and moral principle. Where transnational criminal‑terror networks, bolstered by proxies and foreign militant support, conduct sustained, organized, and strategically coordinated violence — often with state tolerance or sponsorship — states retain the inherent right to defend themselves. The Maduro operation can thus be seen not merely as a controversial episode, but as part of an emerging practice through which states assert a more realistic and historically grounded doctrine of self‑defense.
Crucially, if such operations are recognized under international law as lawful responses to hybrid threats, other countries would be far more willing to support the United States in similar actions when faced with analogous threats to shared security. This would not only strengthen cooperative responses to transnational violence but also enhance collective deterrence against networks that seek to exploit the current conceptual gaps in international law.
Hybrid warfare, narco‑terrorism, and state‑enabled criminal violence are reshaping the threat landscape. If international law is to remain credible, it must evolve accordingly. Reclaiming a broader customary understanding of self‑defense — one that reflects both modern security realities and the intellectual legacy of thinkers like Vitoria — is not a radical departure from international law. It is a return to its foundations.
