United States President Donald Trump has dismissed international law, saying only his “own morality” can curb the aggressive policies he is pursuing across the world after the abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro.
“I don’t need international law. I’m not looking to hurt people,” Trump told The New York Times on Thursday.
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Asked whether he needs to abide by international law, Trump said he does, but it “depends what your definition of international law is”.
Trump has shown a willingness to use the brute force of the US military to achieve his foreign policy goals.
On Saturday, the US launched an early-morning attack on Venezuela, with explosions reported across the capital Caracas and at Venezuelan military bases.
US troops ultimately abducted Venezuelan President Maduro from Caracas in what critics say was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”.
The attack on Venezuela appears to have supercharged the belligerence of the US president, who received the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize Award last month.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Trump said the US would “run” Venezuela and exploit the country’s vast oil reserves, though his administration has said it would cooperate with interim President Delcy Rodriguez.
Still, the Trump administration said it would “dictate” policy to the interim government and repeatedly threatened a “second wave” of military actions if US demands were disobeyed.
“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump said of Rodriguez in a Sunday interview with The Atlantic.
Earlier this week, Trump also suggested that the US may carry out a strike against Colombia’s left-wing President Gustavo Petro, and he has escalated his campaign to acquire the Danish territory of Greenland.
In June, Trump joined Israel’s unprovoked war against Iran, ordering the bombing of the country’s three main nuclear sites.
Trump aide Stephen Miller has criticised the post-World War II international order, saying that, from here forward, the US would “unapologetically” use its military force to secure its interests in the Western Hemisphere.
“We’re a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower,” Miller told CNN on Monday.
But experts warn that disregard for international law could have catastrophic consequences for the entire global community, including the US.
International law is the set of rules and norms that govern ties between states. It includes UN conventions and multilateral treaties.
Margaret Satterthwaite, the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, told Al Jazeera earlier this week that US statements dismissing international law are “extremely dangerous”.
Satterthwaite said she is concerned the world may be returning to an “age of imperialism”, stressing that degrading international laws may embolden Washington’s adversaries to launch their own acts of aggression.
“International law cannot stop states from doing terrible things if they’re committed to doing them,” Satterthwaite told Al Jazeera.
“And I think that the world is aware of all of the atrocities that have happened in Gaza recently, and despite efforts by many states and certainly by the UN to stop those atrocities, they continued. But I think we’re worse off if we don’t insist on the international law that does exist. We’ll simply be going down a much worse kind of slippery slope.”
Yusra Suedi, an assistant professor of international law at the University of Manchester, warned against the belief that “might is right” and the trend towards disregarding international law.
“It signals something very dangerous, in that it gives permission to other states to essentially follow suit – states such as China, who might be eyeing Taiwan, or Russia with respect to Ukraine,” Suedi told Al Jazeera.
Ian Hurd, a professor of political science at Northwestern University, said history illustrates the perils of US policies in Latin America.
The region has witnessed more than a century of US invasions and US-supported military coups, leading to instability, repression and human rights abuses.
“There are innumerable examples historically of this, from Panama to Haiti to Nicaragua to Chile in the ’70s and on and on,” Hurd told Al Jazeera.
He added that Trump’s policies in Venezuela are “in line” with how the US has previously attempted to decide how other parts of the Americas are governed.
“You can see that in every one of those cases, the US came to regret its choice to intervene. These never work well.”
