System Failure: Might Does Not Make Right (The Venezuela Crisis)
In engineering, we have a grim but necessary saying: "Building codes are written in blood."
Every regulation in a modern building code, from the width of a fire exit to the strength of a support beam, exists because, at some point in history, a system failed and people died. Those rules are not arbitrary suggestions. They are the accumulated wisdom of past tragedies, codified to ensure they never happen again.
International Law is no different. It is the building code of global peace.
The Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, and the diplomatic protocols regarding the sovereignty of nations were not written by idealists in an ivory tower. They were written in the blood of two World Wars. They were drafted by a generation that had seen Europe reduced to ash and understood that without a rigid structural framework, the global system would collapse into chaos again.
This week, President Trump decided to ignore those codes.
By authorizing the military kidnapping of the president and first lady of Venezuela, the United States has taken a sledgehammer to the load-bearing walls of international order. The corruption of Maduro’s regime is irrelevant to the structural damage this act has caused.
The System Failure In a complex system, stability relies on predictability. When the world’s most powerful nation decides that "might makes right"; that we can simply snatch a foreign head of state because we have the military capacity to do so; we introduce a catastrophic variable into the global equation.
We have now set a precedent that any nation with sufficient power can violate the sovereignty of another if they dislike its leader. We have stripped the protective insulation from our own diplomats and soldiers abroad. If International Law does not protect Maduro, it does not protect us.
The Constitutional Bypass Before we even discuss the international fallout, we must address the domestic failure. This operation was an act of war against a sovereign nation. Under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, the power to declare war is vested solely in Congress.
President Trump did not consult Congress. He did not seek authorization. He acted unilaterally.
The Framers of our Constitution designed a system of checks and balances for a reason. They understood that the decision to send Americans into harm's way should never rest with a single individual. Congress is the "circuit breaker" in our war powers system. By bypassing the legislative branch, the President has effectively hot-wired the system, removing the critical safety mechanism designed to prevent impulsive, unauthorized conflicts.
A President who ignores Congress on matters of war is not a strong leader; he is an unchecked executive operating outside the law.
The Danger of "The Ends" Supporters of this action argue that the ends justify the means. They claim this will bring "stability" or "democracy" to the region. But as an engineer, I look at the data. Regime change operations imposed from the outside, without the structural support of international legality, rarely result in stability. They result in power vacuums, insurgencies, and long-term blowback.
We are tearing down a building to kill a rat, without any plan for where the falling debris will land.
A Call for Repair We must return to a foreign policy based on the rule of law, not the rule of force. We need to reinforce our alliances, not alienate them. And we need a Congress that acts as a circuit breaker, checking executive overreach before it burns down the house.
Because once you throw out the building codes, it is only a matter of time before the roof comes down on everyone.
The way we win matters.