The US clearly violated both international and its domestic law with the abduction of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro on January 3, but after lambasting Russia for doing the same to Ukraine, European leaders were surprisingly reluctant to criticise the White House for the operation, let alone take any strong measures like imposing sanctions on the US.

“International law has always been fragile, selectively applied, and reflective of power and interests, not just norms and ideals. Even an imperfect application of these principles requires the support of democratic states and international institutions. Yet most European responses to US action have failed to offer that necessary defence,” political analyst Rosa Balfour said in a paper for Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Apart from some explicit statements from France, Norway and Spain, most European leaders offered only a muted response to the US’ military intervention in Venezuela. It marks a telling moment that may now mark the end of the aspiration to set up a rules-based international order.

The uneasy accommodation with President Donald Trump’s second term was underscored as the EU tries to stick to the principles that underwrite the four-year long support for Ukraine, but at the same time the attempts to rescue what little remains of the “special relations” between Europe and the US that have dominated security and trade since the end of WWII.

“The end result is a now-familiar compromise between trying to avoid the US president’s ire and repeating the usual checklist of principles,” said Balfour, a foreign policy analyst and commentator on European diplomacy. “It is the story in a nutshell of European handling of Trump’s second administration.”

The operation in Venezuela, launched under the pretext of counter-narcotics efforts, has been defended by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who didn’t bother to conceal that the operation was the implementation of the so-called Monroe Doctrine where the US claims supremacy in the Western hemisphere. It marks a return to the Cold War era of realpolitik where “might-makes-right” to divide the world up into a series of “spheres of influence.”

Rubio went out of his way to warn Russia and China off interfering in what he called the “US’ backyard” but by doing so gives Russian President Vladimir Putin legitimacy for invading Ukraine in Russia’s backyard.  

At the same time, the US has handed China the perfect pretext for invading Taiwan and in the process to return what Beijing sees as a rebel region to the centre’s control.

“The muted European responses reflect the overbearing shadow of Washington’s influence on the continent,” Balfour noted. “Triggered by fears that Greenland will be the next stop for Trump’s adventurism or of the dire consequences of US abandonment of Ukraine.”

The strategic dilemma for Europe is profound. Some critics argue that defending the rules-based order is now naïve in a world increasingly defined by hard power. Others counter that Trump’s Venezuela intervention is merely another chapter in a long pattern of US disregard for international law—from Iraq to Iran and beyond. According to Balfour, this logic falsely equates American actions with those of authoritarian regimes.

“Clinging to the dusty principles of international law is not a denial of reality. It is essential for protecting Europe’s own interests,” she said.

Balfour also warned that abandoning those principles could unleash dangerous consequences across Europe’s own periphery. “Territorial revisionism in Europe without international principles and a rules-based playing field for negotiation could unleash potentially disastrous consequences,” she said, citing fragile regions such as the Balkans, the South Caucasus, and unresolved issues in Cyprus and Spain.

At the same time Europe’s impotent reaction underscores the growing weakness of the EU, which has failed to counter Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, despite its vastly superior economic power and marshal Trump’s support for the Ukrainian cause. During the recent rounds of ceasefire talks, all of Europe’s amendments to the originally 28-point peace plan (28PPP) were simply ignored by the US envoys at a Moscow meeting on December 3 with Putin, and Brussels has been excluded from all subsequent negotiations.

Beyond Europe’s borders, the erosion of credibility is already having global effects. “Europe’s rhetorical messaging toward the Global South is steeped in UN Charter-derived language but the practical application of those principles leaves much to be desired, to put it kindly,” Balfour said. Trump’s military operation in Venezuela blatantly ignores the UN Charters demand to respect sovereign integrity and is obviously illegal under international law.

Balfour added that the EU’s credibility has been “long eroded,” undermining efforts to build partnerships on Ukraine or secure new trade deals amid Washington’s protectionist turn.

Europe’s challenge, she argued, is to resist being shaped by US ideological frameworks or technological dominance, and instead to uphold a rules-based international order that secures both its neighbourhood and its global standing.

“A further reason to uphold the principles of the rules-based order is to reclaim the language of rights and democracy from those who now misuse it,” Balfour said, warning that phrases like “freedom” and “peace” are increasingly employed to justify repression or surrender.

“The consequences of the erosion of democratic norms at home and abroad will outlast the present European fear of—or attraction to—sphere-of-influence geopolitics,” she added.