Rules for Thee, Force for Me: America’s Doctrine of Leader-Capture

by Gerry Nolan

Here we are watching the rules (for thee but not me) based order perform its favorite magic trick, of turning performative flexing of might into virtue by simply narrating it as law.

The United States has kidnapped Venezuela’s sitting president, Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife, via an operation carried out by Delta Forces and removed them from the country. The choreography matters. The message matters more: we can reach into your capital, take your head of state, and call it “justice.” But hey, we’ll own that it’s about oil and minerals in the next breath, so at least we are honest bandits

And the world is meant to accept it because the banner says narco-terror and the megaphone says freedom.

But strip the branding off and you’re left with something brutally simple: a doctrine of unilateral capture, the right claimed by one state to arrest another state’s leader by force, without a UN mandate, and without an authorization of war by any recognized international mechanism. This sets an extremely dangerous precedent and raises serious questions under the UN Charter.

And that’s the point isn’t it?

Because rules for thee but not for me, isn’t a slogan anymore. It’s long established Imperial hypocrisy.

For weeks, Washington has been tightening the maritime noose, seizing tankers, escalating interdictions, floating the language of blockade (armada) while insisting it’s something softer, something cleaner, something that doesn’t smell like an act of war. Yet international law is not fooled by euphemisms. A blockade is a blockade and blockade is specifically listed as a paradigmatic use of force in the legal logic of warfare.

So when Washington behaves like a global coast guard with a private statute book, seizing ships, choking ports, “quarantining” a sovereign country’s commerce, the legal argument from much of the non-West is straightforward: this isn’t law enforcement; it’s coercion by force. An illegal act of aggression.

And now, with Maduro reportedly seized, the “quarantine” graduates into the purest expression of that gangsterism logic: if we can’t reshape your politics through ballots, and we can’t squeeze you through sanctions alone, we’ll reach in and remove the human hinge of the state. That is a doctrine of permissible abduction and every American adversary with means will use the precedent.

The Taiwan mirror

Now zoom out, because the Venezuela episode is not isolated. It’s part of the same imperial grammar used everywhere else.

When China conducts drills around Taiwan, like it’s “Justice Mission 2025” drill, Washington frames it as “aggression.” But Washington’s own legal posture is far more hypocritical and laughable than its outrage suggests.

The US position, spelled out in its by its acceptance of the One China policy, is that it recognizes the PRC as the sole legal government of China and “acknowledges” (but does not endorse) the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China. Even when US messaging shifts on the margins, Washington continues to insist it remains committed to its One China policy.

Essentially Washington wants the ambiguity of a lawyer and the outrage of a revolutionary at the same time. It wants to “acknowledge” a claim when it’s convenient, then behave as if it never acknowledged it when it wants leverage. And here’s the consequence: if you accept the US legal posture as written, then Chinese drills in waters and skies surrounding territory it claims are not foreign adventurism, they are operations in its own strategic perimeter, which the US acknowledges in accepting the One China policy.

Meanwhile, the same Washington that lectures Beijing about “stability” as it tightened a maritime blockade on Venezuela now boasts of physically removing its leader. So which is more destabilizing: drills around China’s perimeter, or the normalization of leader-snatch operations? The US just handed China the precedent on a silver platter, though the difference is China will have a legal case. The US told China to stay out of its backyard with Venezuela (that’s a big backyard) China will not for a second entertain lectures from a hypocritical US administration.

And then, right on cue, the Empire’s sacred props arrive… the anointed “democracy champion,” the foreign applause, the ready-made transitional script.

María Corina Machado, foreign agent, been elevated on the world stage, and handed (not awarded) the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, the imperial participation trophy. Her allies are now openly celebrating the capture of Maduro as an “hour of freedom.”

From the Global Majority’s lens, this is the familiar script of international prizes and recognition as priming the audience for regime change, a moral lacquer applied to an illegal kidnapping operation. The halo always arrives after the target list is pre-written.

Now, you can dislike Maduro. You can detest Caracas’s governance. None of that settles the core point: external capture-by-force alongside externally curated leadership is not “self-determination.” It is the old imperial script with modern branding.

When you continue to normalize unilateral force as “justice,” then you have replaced international law with a hierarchy of impunity. But at least three can play that game.

That’s why Russia and China keep dragging the argument back to first principles: sovereignty, non-intervention, and the prohibition on the use of force except under tightly constrained conditions. They’re invoking the logic the post-1945 order is supposed to rest on.

For the US and its European gang of cowering vassals, you cannot claim the mantle of international law while behaving as if it is a menu. You cannot preach against spheres of influence while enforcing one with warships. If you want your Monroe doctrine get ready for Russia and China’s version, and don’t about the natural consequences of your own actions. You cannot lecture and sanction others for “provocations” while executing the most provocative act of all: turning sovereign heads of state into exportable prisoners.

If leader-capture becomes normalized, the world becomes an arena of legitimized kidnapping. And once that door opens, it doesn’t stay “Western-only” for long, not when the global balance of power has shifted, not when combined Eurasian and Global South capacity dwarfs that of the West, let alone declining EU.

So yes, might makes right … until it doesn’t.

Because once leader-capture, maritime strangulation, and selective legality are normalized, the world does not slide gently into chaos, it hardens into and accepts it. Law becomes costume, sovereignty becomes conditional, and power stops pretending it needs permission. The lecture circuit ends not with applause or rebuttal, but with silence – the kind that follows when every capital understands the same thing at once, that the hunt has been legitimized. And in a world where abduction is policy and force writes precedent, the next knock will not be answered with arguments, but with fire.

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/rules-for-thee-force-for-me-americas-doctrine-of-leader-capture/

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