The world woke up on January 3, 2026, to news of a ‘large-scale strike’ and the capture of a sitting president. While some may debate the character of Nicolás Maduro, international law is not a matter of ‘likes’ or ‘dislikes.’ It is a matter of the San Francisco Charter.
Forty years ago, in the landmark Nicaragua case, the International Court of Justice reminded us that no state has the right to intervene in the internal affairs of another. Yet today, as we witness the same unilateralism, we must ask: What has changed? If the United Nations cannot enforce Article 1(2) and protect the self-determination of nations against its own most powerful members, we are left with a unified legal regime in name only.
Edmundo Lellis Filho is a lawyer in Brazil and the European Union. He is a member of the International Bar Association and the International Law Association (London). Currently, he is an LL.M. Candidate in International Justice at the University of London and is a retired judge of the Court of Justice of São Paulo (1991–2022).
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Introduction: The inception of the international organisation for peace and security
The history of international law is much longer. It is well known that the existence of rules governing relationships among societies organised into ancient States dates back to the fourth millennium B.C., when kings resorted to arbitration to settle differences without resorting to aggression. In this sense, already on July 16, 1923, in the lecture delivered before the Academy, in the Hague, Baron S. A. Korff explains that:
“For a long time writers on international law took it for granted that the subject of their studies was a relatively recent product of modern civilization, and that the ancient world did not know any system of international law. If we go back to the literature of the nineteenth century, we can find a certain feeling of pride among internationalists that international law was one of the best fruits of our civilization and that it was a system which distinguished us from the ancient barbarians.” Korff adds that “The explanation of the mistake of our teachers of the nineteenth century is a very simple one. They were not acquainted with the history of the ancient civilizations. In their time that branch of historical research was hardly started; most facts concerning those bygone ages were absolutely unknown. Martens or Wheaton, Laurent or Coleman Phillipson, thus invariably commenced their detailed investigations with the Treaty of Westphalia, 1648”[1]
It is correct to conceive, thought, that the creation of “international organisations” as a product of recent history, for instance, the legal foundation (1815), during the Congress of Vienna, of the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine (CCNR)[2], established to “[s]hift from fragmented feudal river tolls to a unified international legal regime”[3].
Recognising the need for peace and security, the first global intergovernmental institution is the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), established by the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes.
“Thus, while the history of intergovernmental organization began with the technical management of resources—most notably with the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine in 1815—the true inception of international organization for peace and security occurred at the First Hague Peace Conference (1899), which instituted the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Consequently, despite the ancient roots of international law, the establishment of permanent international legal institutions for peace and security is an extremely recent historical development.”
The League of Nations. The United Nations. The “genetic” flaws regarding sovereignty and enforcement
The League of Nations, which officially dissolved on April 20, 1946, represents the first global, politically organized intergovernmental institution dedicated to international peace and security. Its mandate commenced on January 10, 1920, being, then, a striking historical irony that — despite the ancient origins of international law — humanity required millennia to establish a permanent institutional framework for keeping peace and avoiding wars.
Notwithstanding emerging from the cataclysm of the First World War (1914/18), the League proved structurally incapable of maintaining the global order, ultimately failing to prevent the Second World War (1939/45). While the United Nations subsequently assumed the League’s mandate, building upon its institutional legacy, the question of its efficacy remains not contentious, but uncontroversial: The United Nations has struggled with the same existential challenges as its predecessor: inherent structural and constitutional impediments within the decision-making process[4] and the lack of a compulsory legal enforcement mechanism[5] capable of consistently constraining an aggressor state.
Moving from theoretical failures of international institutions to a real-world application: The United States invaded Venezuela. And What? Nothing.
The recent military escalations involving the United States and Venezuela serve as a poignant case study of the United Nations´ institutional paralysis.
Whether one supports or opposes the domestic administration in Caracas, international law posits that the political destiny of a state is an internal matter for its people to resolve.
The global order is anchored in the legal pillars of the United Nations Charter, which explicitly enshrines the principle of self-determination. Specifically, Article 1(2) of the San Francisco Charter mandates the development of “friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.”
When external powers bypass these mandates—invoking unilateral justifications for intervention—they do not merely challenge a specific regime; they undermine the very “unified international legal regime” that was established to prevent the “might makes right” philosophy of the pre-1899 era.
The ongoing conflict involving the Russian Federation and Ukraine, significantly influenced by a complex web of escalations with Europe, and, now, the invasion of Venezuela by the United States, further underscores the enduring ‘structural and constitutional’ flaws of the modern international order. It provides a stark evidentiary basis for the United Nations’ inability to enforce its foundational purposes—specifically the preservation of peace and the respect for sovereign equality—when those purposes collide with the strategic interests of its most powerful members.
This paralysis is not merely a political failure but a legal one, rooted in the UN Security Council’s design. Just as the League of Nations’ ‘Unanimity Rule’ rendered it toothless against the aggressors of the 1930s, the Veto Power enshrined in Article 27(3) of the UN Charter effectively grants a permanent member legal immunity.
Consequently, the ‘unified international legal regime’ remains a fragile construct, frequently subordinate to the realities of Realpolitik and the unilateral actions of states that the system was initially designed to constrain.
“The United Nations Security Council’s recent blocked attempts to address the deteriorating political and humanitarian situation in Syria have renewed calls for UN reform. From the Cold War until the present day, the fact that the UN system has failed to live up to the lofty expectations of its framers can be attributed in significant part to the threat and exercise of the veto by individual Permanent Five (P5) members of the Council. This situation can be attributed to an unequal—but politically necessary—compromise that took place between the great Allied victors of the Second World War and the remainder of the UN membership. The result was a division of powers between the Security Council and the General Assembly that has never found a satisfactory equilibrium.” Andrew J. Carswell[6]
History isn’t repeating; it’s the same mistakes coming back around. The Nicaragua case
The current U.S. strike on Venezuela (January 3, 2026) can be compared with the landmark Nicaragua v. United States (1986). the Prohibition of the Use of Force (Article 2(4)) versus the Principle of Non-Intervention emerges. But what was the Nicaragua Case legal “gold standard” useful for? The United States has never accepted that judgment, even though, by then, the State was bound to the International Court of Justice’s compulsory jurisdiction.
The “Maduro Problem” vs. The “Sandinista Problem”
In the 1980s, the U.S. justified intervention based on ideological and security concerns (the Sandinistas). In 2026, the justification targets “narco-terrorism” and regime legitimacy. Legally, however, the ICJ’s ruling remains clear: a state’s domestic political system (whether you “like or dislike” the leader) does not provide a legal basis for external military intervention.
Conclusion
The current structure and decision-making architecture of the United Nations—inherited from an era that no longer reflects the contemporary global reality—is in dire need of a comprehensive constitutional review. Without such reform, the international community will remain as precariously exposed to the ravages of war in the 21st century as it was thousands of years ago.
The “unified international legal regime” remains a hollow promise as long as the mechanisms for peace and security can be paralysed by the very states committed to regulating and protecting it.
History warns us that when the “gap between the law’s aspirations” and its institutional enforcement becomes too wide, the system inevitably collapses under the weight of its own obsolescence.
“Note: This analysis was developed by the author, a researcher in International Justice, with the assistance of an AI thought partner for linguistic refinement, historical cross-referencing, and academic formatting.”
[1] Korff, S. A. “An Introduction to the History of International Law.” The American Journal of International Law, vol. 18, no. 2, 1924, pp. 246–59. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2188393. Accessed 3 Jan. 2026.
[2] CCNR was the first intergovernmental organisation, but of regional nature. The International Telegraph Union (1865) is often cited as the first intergovernmental institution of global scope.
[3] Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine, ‘History of the CCNR: From the Congress of Vienna to the Present’ (2026) https://www.ccr-zkr.org/13020100-en.html accessed 3 January 2026.
[4] Bardo Fassbender, UN Security Council Reform and the Right of Veto: A Constitutional Perspective (Kluwer Law International 1998).
[5] E. Benvenisti and G.W. Downs, ‘The Empire’s New Clothes: Political Economy and the Fragmentation of International Law’ (2007) 60 Stanford Law Review 595.
[6] Andrew J. Carswell, Unblocking the UN Security Council: The Uniting for Peace Resolution, Journal of Conflict and Security Law, Volume 18, Issue 3, Winter 2013, Pages 453–480, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcsl/krt016
