<p>The capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by United States forces marks a watershed moment in the further erosion of rules based international order (RBIO) revealing once more the propensity of great powers to instrumentalize international law and human rights for strategic ends. For Asia, this episode is not a remote Western Hemisphere anomaly but a cautionary signal that the guardrails once thought to constrain great power behavior are increasingly contingent, contested, and conditional.</p><p>I touched on the RBIO's increasing fragility and weakness last year (Arugay <span>2025</span>). To the shock of many, 2026 started with this Venezuelan operation while even leaders like Putin were on holiday. The Venezuela operation illustrates the enduring logic of superpower exceptionalism, in which great powers claim latitude to reinterpret or suspend norms that otherwise bind the rest of the international system. Legal analyses overwhelmingly view the forcible seizure of a sitting head of state, on the territory of another sovereign without its consent or UN authorization, as a prima facie breach of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and the customary rule of non‑intervention.</p><p>US officials have framed the action as a law‑enforcement–driven “extraction” grounded in criminal indictments and the illegitimacy of Maduro's regime, blurring the line between domestic jurisdiction and the Charter's strict regulation of the use of force. This move resembles earlier efforts to justify targeted killings or transborder operations as sui generis responses to “rogue” actors, thereby chipping away at the collective security framework that formally vests coercive authority in the UN Security Council.</p><p>The narrative surrounding Maduro's capture also reveals how human rights and democracy promotion can be mobilized as selective tools rather than consistent principles. Washington has long criticized Caracas for authoritarianism, corruption, and egregious human rights abuses, yet the means chosen to address these violations involve conduct that prominent jurists argue undermines due process guarantees, non‑refoulement protections, and the prohibition against arbitrary detention when viewed through an international human rights lens. Elsewhere in the world, particularly in Southeast Asia, widespread human rights violations have not resulted in military intervention like in Myanmar (Barber and Teitt <span>2021</span>).</p><p>Such selective universalism is familiar to observers in Asia who have seen rights‑based rhetoric invoked to justify certain interventions while comparable abuses by allies or strategic partners elicit muted responses. The Maduro precedent thus feeds broader perceptions, particularly in the Global South, that the liberal order's normative vocabulary is hierarchically applied, with great powers positioning themselves simultaneously as norm entrepreneurs, enforcers, and—increasingly—exceptions to the rules.</p><p>This signalling reverber
委内瑞拉总统Nicolás马杜罗被美国军队抓获,标志着以规则为基础的国际秩序(RBIO)进一步受到侵蚀的分水岭时刻,再次显示出大国为了战略目的而利用国际法和人权的倾向。对亚洲来说,这一事件并不是遥远的西半球异常现象,而是一个警示信号,表明曾经被认为约束大国行为的护栏越来越偶然、有争议和有条件。我在去年(2025年8月)谈到了RBIO日益脆弱和薄弱的问题。令许多人震惊的是,2026年始于委内瑞拉的这次行动,当时连普京这样的领导人都在度假。委内瑞拉的行动说明了超级大国例外论的持久逻辑,在这种逻辑中,大国声称有重新解释或暂停规范的自由,否则这些规范会约束国际体系的其他国家。法律分析压倒性地认为,未经另一个主权国家的同意或联合国授权,在其领土上强行夺取现任国家元首的行为,显然违反了《联合国宪章》第二条第四款和不干涉的习惯规则。美国官员将这一行动描述为以刑事起诉和马杜罗政权的非法性为基础的执法驱动的“撤离”,模糊了国内管辖权与《宪章》对使用武力的严格规定之间的界限。这一举动类似于早先的努力,即将定点清除或跨境行动视为对“流氓”行为者的独特回应,从而削弱了集体安全框架,该框架正式赋予联合国安理会(UN security Council)强制性权力。围绕马杜罗被捕的叙述也揭示了人权和民主促进如何被动员为选择性工具,而不是始终如一的原则。长期以来,华盛顿一直批评加拉加斯的威权主义、腐败和严重侵犯人权行为,然而,解决这些侵犯行为的手段所涉及的行为,著名法学家认为,从国际人权的角度来看,这些行为破坏了正当程序保障、不驱回保护和禁止任意拘留。在世界其他地方,特别是在东南亚,普遍的侵犯人权行为并没有像缅甸那样导致军事干预(Barber and Teitt 2021)。亚洲观察人士对这种选择性普遍主义很熟悉,他们曾看到以人权为基础的言论被用来为某些干预行为辩护,而盟友或战略伙伴的类似滥用行为却得到了沉默的回应。因此,马杜罗的先例引发了更广泛的看法,尤其是在全球南方,即自由秩序的规范词汇是分层次应用的,大国同时将自己定位为规范的企业家、执行者,以及越来越多的规则例外。这一信号在其他大国声称享有特权安全空间的有争议地区也产生了反响,包括西太平洋和欧亚大陆。马杜罗案降低了以执法为幌子实施斩首式行动的门槛,有可能使这样一种观点正常化,即强国可以单方面打破国内刑事管辖权与国际安全之间的区别,尤其是在与它们认为非法的政权打交道时。亚洲各国政府并非对这些事态发展漠不关心,它们的反应突显出对主权作为中小大国保护规范的未来的深切担忧。东南亚国家的领导人和外交部长强调,即使是对治理或人权的严重关切,也不允许单方面使用武力,一些人明确警告说,军事行动削弱了实力较弱的国家用来对抗胁迫的法律屏障。以缅甸问题为例,通过东盟等多边渠道进行冲突管理仍然是合适的途径(Haacke 2025)。对亚洲来说,马杜罗的行动加剧了地区秩序中三个相互关联的困境。首先,它使寻求在与美国的安全伙伴关系和与中国的深度经济相互依存之间取得平衡的中等大国的对冲策略复杂化。华盛顿公然违反规范的事件使这些国家更难维持美国“基于规则”的接触与中国的自信之间的鲜明规范对比,这可能会推动一些政府走向更明确的中立或安静的重新调整(Kuik 2016)。其次,该案件加剧了台湾海峡、南中国海和朝鲜半岛等热点地区关于领导人目标和政权更迭的争论。
{"title":"Rules, Power, and Interests: Superpowers and a Turbulent World Order","authors":"Aries A. Arugay","doi":"10.1111/aspp.70063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/aspp.70063","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by United States forces marks a watershed moment in the further erosion of rules based international order (RBIO) revealing once more the propensity of great powers to instrumentalize international law and human rights for strategic ends. For Asia, this episode is not a remote Western Hemisphere anomaly but a cautionary signal that the guardrails once thought to constrain great power behavior are increasingly contingent, contested, and conditional.</p><p>I touched on the RBIO's increasing fragility and weakness last year (Arugay <span>2025</span>). To the shock of many, 2026 started with this Venezuelan operation while even leaders like Putin were on holiday. The Venezuela operation illustrates the enduring logic of superpower exceptionalism, in which great powers claim latitude to reinterpret or suspend norms that otherwise bind the rest of the international system. Legal analyses overwhelmingly view the forcible seizure of a sitting head of state, on the territory of another sovereign without its consent or UN authorization, as a prima facie breach of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and the customary rule of non‑intervention.</p><p>US officials have framed the action as a law‑enforcement–driven “extraction” grounded in criminal indictments and the illegitimacy of Maduro's regime, blurring the line between domestic jurisdiction and the Charter's strict regulation of the use of force. This move resembles earlier efforts to justify targeted killings or transborder operations as sui generis responses to “rogue” actors, thereby chipping away at the collective security framework that formally vests coercive authority in the UN Security Council.</p><p>The narrative surrounding Maduro's capture also reveals how human rights and democracy promotion can be mobilized as selective tools rather than consistent principles. Washington has long criticized Caracas for authoritarianism, corruption, and egregious human rights abuses, yet the means chosen to address these violations involve conduct that prominent jurists argue undermines due process guarantees, non‑refoulement protections, and the prohibition against arbitrary detention when viewed through an international human rights lens. Elsewhere in the world, particularly in Southeast Asia, widespread human rights violations have not resulted in military intervention like in Myanmar (Barber and Teitt <span>2021</span>).</p><p>Such selective universalism is familiar to observers in Asia who have seen rights‑based rhetoric invoked to justify certain interventions while comparable abuses by allies or strategic partners elicit muted responses. The Maduro precedent thus feeds broader perceptions, particularly in the Global South, that the liberal order's normative vocabulary is hierarchically applied, with great powers positioning themselves simultaneously as norm entrepreneurs, enforcers, and—increasingly—exceptions to the rules.</p><p>This signalling reverber","PeriodicalId":44747,"journal":{"name":"Asian Politics & Policy","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/aspp.70063","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146136800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}