DID THE U.S. VIOLATE THE NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY OF VENEZUELA? A REFLECTION AND SOME QUESTIONS FOR TEAM SOVEREIGNTY I'm hearing a lot of people saying there is no basis in international law for a foreign nation to detain the head of state of another country. It is argued that each nation is "sovereign" or immune from coercive interference by foreign nations. This is used to argue against the American detention of illegally elected dictator Nicolás Maduro. I have no principled objection to the idea of national sovereignty, and I think it is a valuable principle in international law. And I am certainly open to the argument that Trump's incursions in Venezuela may have troubling repercussions for international order, or perhaps should have been supported by a broader coalition of nations. I share people's worries about what a U.S-led "transition" might look like in practice, especially under a narcissistic figure like Trump, who seems to think he is invincible. But I do have some honest questions for people who are appealing specifically to Venezuela's sovereignty as an argument against Trump's military incursion into Venezuela: 1. First, if you are going to appeal to national sovereignty in a situation in which the acting head of State has lost legitimacy both domestically and internationally, having engaged in well documented, systematic human rights violations including torture and imprisonment and murder of his political opponents, and having effectively created an "alternative assembly" to do his bidding when the parliament was not on his side, then you should address the question: is there any limit to the principle of national sovereignty? For example, do you believe a genocidal regime wiping out part of its population on ethnic grounds enjoys legal immunity from military intervention by external powers? 2. Second, what exactly is the philosophical rationale for the principle of national sovereignty? Is the idea that you should respect the "self-determination" of a "people"? That hardly applies in the case of a brutal tyrant who has stolen the election and refused to produce a shred of evidence of his victory, while his opponents provide credible evidence to international authorities that they won decisively. Or is the idea that you should respect the legitimate government of a nation? Again, even if Venezuela was a formal aristocracy, its government has forfeited all legitimacy by illegally expropriating countless citizens and businesses, and torturing and imprisoning those who question its policies. Or is it the idea that you should respect the "integrity" of any existing political regime that has some sort of state apparatus? In that case, a Nazi regime exterminating its Jewish population, or a Mafioso regime inflicting terror on political dissenters, with some mock paraphernalia of a state ("courts," "independent police," "parliament" etc.), should enjoy special immunity from international military interventions, which hardly seems plausible. If defenders of the national sovereignty of Venezuela can point to me a coherent doctrine of sovereignty that (a) is indifferent to the democratic will of the people of the nation in question; (b) preserves regime immunity against the background of gross and systematic human rights abuses within the nation in question, and (c) continues to insist on legal immunity even when the national government has turned democratic institutions into instruments of despotism and made a mockery of rule of law within its borders, then let's have an honest conversation about Venezuela.