The problem isn't Maduro, it's the precedent [View all]

Overthrowing a dictator sounds morally just. No one mourns a tyrant. But international law wasn't built to protect the good, but to restrain the powerful. That's why it prohibits force almost without exception: not because it ignores injustice, but because it knows that if each country decides whom to "liberate" by force, the world reverts to the law of the strongest.

The problem isn't Maduro. The problem is the precedent. When military force is used to change governments without clear rules, sovereignty ceases to be a limit and becomes an obstacle. Today it's "overthrowing a dictator"; tomorrow it will be "correcting an election," "protecting interests," "restoring order." The law doesn't absolve dictatorships, but neither does it legitimize unilateral crusades.

The uncomfortable question isn't whether a tyrant deserves to fall, but who decides when and how. Because history teaches something brutal: removing a dictator is easy; building justice afterward is not. And when legality is broken in the name of good, what almost always follows is not freedom, but chaos, violence, and new victims. The law exists to remind us of this, even when it's inconvenient.