When power breaks rules

Redefining regime decapitation as law enforcement blurs the line between war and policing.

On January 3, the United States declared that it had initiated massive military actions in Venezuela, seized President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and transported them to New York to be prosecuted. Maduro, perceived as an autocrat who carved out the democratic institutions and seen as a rebellious figure in Latin American opposition to Washington, was at the centre of the spectacle, which is profoundly disturbing. An incumbent president captured in one of the foreign military operations is not merely another melodramatic story in an already shaken world. It is an instance that subtly redefines the limits of permissible authority.