The President of the United States has no lawful authority to engage in acts of military aggression.

The first battles of the American Revolutionary War took place in April 1775. On April 18, Paul Revere was famously tasked with riding to Lexington to deliver news of an invasion by Imperial British forces. The British military raid aimed to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, two of the Sons of Liberty, who would help lead the effort to achieve independence and establish the democratic republic known as the United States of America.

The young republic would live under threat of imperialist occupation for decades. Despite winning the war and securing independence, establishing a new Constitution and Bill of Rights, honoring its debts and demonstrating that self-government works, the U.S. was invaded in 1812 by Imperial British forces, seeking to retake control of their former colonies, and to seize their natural resources.

After two and half centuries of independence, Americans tend to overlook those aspects of the founding aimed at reducing the risk of imperialist invasion—including key provisions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, like Congressional funding and regulation of the military and the 3rd Amendment’s prohibition on military occupation.

The entire Bill of Rights can be read as a reference for how to protect civil society, through rule of law, from actions that shift the balance toward authoritarian intrusion. It is clear that the founding charter of the United States was structured to recognize and safeguard the right of free citizens to remain free from rogue state violence.

After the Second World War, which resulted in tens of millions of deaths, the United States led a global effort to reset norms for conflict between nations. The United Nations Charter committed member states:

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small…

This new collaborative approach to maintaining peace and security would “establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained,” supporting “better standards of life in larger freedom”.

Essential to success is this shared international mission to avoid catastrophic war was the unambiguously stated standard that “armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest”. That standard was intended to align with the U.S. Constitution’s provisions aimed at limiting the use of force and prioritizing civil society, human rights, and the rule of law.

In a world where nations are not allowed to unilaterally invade and conquer other sovereign nations, or to seize their territory and natural resources, the risk of spiraling international conflict is greatly reduced. This is why, despite the Cold War and the real and menacing threat of nuclear annihilation, there has not been a third world war.

The need to not only present reasons, but to align those reasons with written laws and to win approval of a community of sovereign nations, makes it harder to simply go to war. This standard of adjudicated grounds for war also has the effect of pulling the world into the American Revolutionary mindset—that nations may not aggress and conquer other nations or assert foreign dominance over their people.

On Saturday, January 3, 2026, the same day Donald Trump announced the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the Guardian reported: 

Geoffrey Robertson KC, a founding head of Doughty Street Chambers and a former president of the UN war crimes court in Sierra Leone, said the attack on Venezuela was contrary to article 2(4) of the charter. “The reality is that America is in breach of the United Nations charter,” he added. “It has committed the crime of aggression, which the court at Nuremberg described as the supreme crime, it’s the worst crime of all.”

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter reads:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

This law was established to prevent the world from descending into cataclysmic war through a series of lawless acts of aggression. The answer to aggression is resistance and opposition, by law, and that law has largely worked for 80 years.

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution reads, in part:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land…

In other words: The President of the United States cannot violate the UN Charter without violating the Constitution. The Constitution also requires the President to have authorization from Congress for acts of war against foreign nations, which has not been given to Trump for the invasion or occupation of Venezuela.

In December, the United Nations released a report finding that Nicolás Maduro’s regime to be responsible for a decade-long campaign of state terror, disappearance, torture, and extrajudicial killings, constituting crimes against humanity. The chief investigator said “The torture, ill-treatment, and acts of sexual violence we have verified … form part of a pattern of abuse used to punish and break victims,” adding that international accountability was required.

In 2024, the people of Venezuela voted to replace Maduro and his criminal regime with leaders of the democratic opposition. Edmundo González Urrutia was elected by what the State Department found was “an insurmountable margin”, after the leading opposition candidate María Corina Machado was barred from running.

The international community should be working in a collaborative way to ensure a peaceful transition to open democracy in Venezuela, possibly with one of these leaders as the head of a non-partisan interim government.

• The United States could be leading that effort. It could defend its own values and interests, national security and alliances, and future fiscal and national security, by aligning this raid with international law.
• It could go to the United Nations and clarify that the United States will not seize Venezuela’s territory or natural resources, and argue that crimes against humanity must not be tolerated.

Donald Trump’s refusal to recognize these fundamental American values, and the character of foundational American and international law, weakens and endangers the United States and the allied cause of fostering free enterprise and open democracy.

• If the U.S. raid was a “law enforcement operation,” as has been asserted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, then surely America’s defense of human rights and liberty would require reference to the international crimes of the Maduro regime.
• The administration has had to withdraw its allegation that Maduro was leader of a “Cartel de los Soles,” after it was clarified by security analysts that the phrase is a term of art for corrupt politicians that are ruled by their lust for money (soles).
• President Trump has openly and repeatedly said his aim is to seize Venezuela’s oil industry and hand it to American companies, and to “run the country”. No American or international law provides for such a scenario; there is no such lawful authority.

By breaching the UN Charter, Donald Trump has given Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and other dictators the gift of reduced American leadership and apparent disloyalty to the universally agreed standard of non-aggression. What this means in practical terms will be revealed in time. It has, however, put the people of the U.S. in the awful position of appearing to abandon one of their greatest achievements—leadership of an international order committed to peace and shared security and development.

The United States Congress has authority to direct the actions of the Executive, including under Article I, Section 8, to specifically regulate the use of the armed forces. Congress can act, today, to bar any further military action in Venezuela, to require in written law that the administration honor the Article VI of the Constitution and the UN Charter, and to formally bar any further attempts at invasions aimed at seizing territory or natural resources of any nation.

Neither Congress nor the Courts have any lawful authority to treat rogue Presidential actions as lawful; both must honor the Constitution and the laws that prioritize freedom and human rights over arbitrary violence.