On 3 January 2026, the United States announced a dramatic military intervention in Venezuela that reverberated across the international system. What had until then remained a combination of sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and indirect coercion turned into an overt military operation, with immediate implications for international law, regional stability, and great-power relations. Beyond the shock value of the intervention itself, the episode quickly emerged as a test case for the resilience of the rules-based international order.
Major powers such as China and Russia immediately denounced the intervention, framing it as an act of hegemonic unilateralism and a dangerous precedent undermining the post-1945 international order. Several Latin American states also expressed strong opposition, with Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico issuing similar declarations rejecting the U.S. action and warning of its destabilizing potential for the region. Elsewhere, governments called for restraint and respect for international law, concerns echoed during an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.
The significance of the Venezuelan crisis, however, lies not only in the action taken by Washington, but in the reactions it provoked – or failed to provoke – among its allies. While the intervention triggered swift and often unequivocal responses from several global and regional actors, it exposed a more complex and revealing dynamic within Europe. Faced with a clear breach of sovereignty carried out by its closest security partner, the European Union and its member states struggled to articulate a coherent and confident response.
This uncertainty matters. It indicates that European governments are not merely divided in their assessments. They also lack a settled framework in order to act when the legal principles they promote and their strategic dependencies to the US collide. Rather than reflecting deliberate neutrality, Europe’s response reveals hesitation about how – and even whether – to translate normative commitments into political positions when a close ally commits violations. 
The U.S. Intervention and Europe’s Commitment to International Norms
The European Union has consistently presented itself as a defender of international law, grounded in the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention, and multilateralism. Article 21(1) of the Treaty on European Union explicitly enshrines these principles as guiding norms for EU external action. The U.S. intervention in Venezuela – particularly the capture of President Maduro – stands in direct contradiction not only to these commitments, but to core rules of the international legal order.
Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. By conducting military strikes on Venezuelan territory and forcibly removing a sitting head of state without international authorization, the United States violated this foundational norm. From a legal perspective, Venezuela’s sovereignty and political independence – central pillars of the post-1945 order – were effectively disregarded.
Some argue that the intervention can be morally justified, given allegations of crimes against humanity and the widely contested legitimacy of Maduro’s re-election. Yet this line of reasoning conflates moral judgment with legal authorization. Under international law, the use of force is lawful only under two conditions: self-defense in response to an armed attack (Article 51 of the UN Charter), or authorization by the UN Security Council under Chapter VII. In this case, neither condition was met. Venezuela had not attacked the United States, nor did the Security Council approve the operation.
The intervention, therefore, constituted a breach of the principle of non-intervention, which prohibits external interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. This principle is reaffirmed not only in the UN Charter, but also in the Charter of the Organization of American States, which explicitly bars intervention among member states. From a legal standpoint, the Venezuelan operation represents a frontal challenge to the normative framework Europe claims to uphold.
Contradiction to European Diplomatic Principles
Beyond exposing the incompatibility between U.S. actions and European principles, the Venezuelan crisis reveals a more uncomfortable reality: Europe’s commitment to these principles is more fragile than it often claims, and its response reflects a deeper lack of confidence in its own capacity to act. To demonstrate strategic pluralism or diplomatic finesse, the European response should have articulated a clear position on how to judge the U.S. intervention.
The structure of the EU’s joint statement is indicative of the approach adopted by European institutions in response to the U.S. intervention. It opens with an appeal to restraint and de-escalation, followed by a reaffirmation of core principles of international law and the UN Charter. The statement then recalls the EU’s longstanding position on Nicolás Maduro’s lack of democratic legitimacy and emphasizes the need to address transnational challenges such as drug trafficking and organized crime. It concludes by stressing continued engagement with the crisis, including close contact with the United States and support for efforts aimed at restoring democracy in Venezuela. Taken together, this sequencing reflects an attempt to combine normative commitments, political assessments, and strategic coordination within a single framework, without explicitly pronouncing on the legality of the military intervention itself.
At the same time, this institutional positioning did not produce uniform responses across European capitals. A first tension therefore emerges in the relationship between national and EU-level action. European reactions were uneven, dividing between a limited number of governments that articulated clear national positions and a larger majority that relied primarily on the EU’s collective statement. While Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and France’s Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot explicitly condemned the violation of international law, other leaders – including French President Emmanuel Macron – adopted more ambivalent positions, criticizing the method while welcoming the political outcome. Moreover, these divergences do not merely reflect differences in strategic culture or threat perception; they point to uncertainty about how far European states are willing – or able – to defend their stated principles when doing so entails political or strategic costs in their relationship with Washington.
The fact that most member states ultimately deferred to the institutional level should not, however, be read as evidence of EU weakness per se. On the contrary, it confirms that the European Union remains a legitimate and accepted framework for external action, capable of articulating a common position reaffirming commitment to international law, sovereignty, and multilateralism. Yet the nature of this coordination matters. The EU’s collective statement functioned less as an expression of shared strategic will than as a mechanism of political delegation, allowing member states to avoid assuming individually costly positions. The resulting unity was therefore largely procedural. Rather than resolving disagreements, it absorbed them – producing calibrated language that preserved formal coherence while avoiding a clear judgment on the U.S. intervention. In this sense, the EU-level response operated as a lowest common denominator, maintaining alignment while postponing substantive choices and revealing the difficulty of translating normative commitments into a unified strategic posture when core interests and alliances are at stake.
Strategic Dependence on the United States
The hesitation of European leaders to clearly position themselves on the Venezuelan case is indeed deeply linked with the dependence on the United States for security. Europe’s restrained response to the Venezuelan intervention underscores this dependency, which is particularly acute in the context of the war in Ukraine, where U.S. military, intelligence, and logistical support remains indispensable. As a result, European governments face a dilemma that they appear ill-equipped to resolve: confronting Washington risks weakening the transatlantic alliance, yet remaining silent risks further eroding Europe’s normative credibility.
Reducing Europe’s reaction to this dilemma alone, however, risks obscuring a more troubling dimension of the U.S. intervention. Donald Trump explicitly framed the operation as a contemporary extension of the Monroe Doctrine, reaffirming U.S. dominance over the Western Hemisphere and signaling a return to unilateralism and regional hegemony. Historically intended to exclude European involvement in the Americas, the doctrine’s modern revival underscores Washington’s willingness to shape outcomes unilaterally in its immediate neighborhood.
However, this type of doctrine, which emphasizes hyperpower, directly conflicts with the principles of multilateral governance and respect for sovereignty that Europeans uphold. Moreover, the intervention was accompanied by explicit references to Venezuela’s oil sector, including plans to reverse nationalization and secure American economic interests, which reinforces the perception that strategic and economic control – not democratic restoration – lies at the heart of the operation.
If normalized, such logic carries implications far beyond Venezuela because it suggests that territorial sovereignty can be overridden in the name of strategic interest, even in regions traditionally considered outside the scope of direct U.S. intervention. From this perspective, the Venezuelan crisis is not an isolated episode, but a warning signal for Europe itself – particularly given that several EU member states retain territories and strategic interests in the Americas, including France and Denmark. In this sense, the episode raises broader questions about how Europe would respond if similar unilateral logics were applied closer to its own political and territorial boundaries.
What the Venezuelan Crisis strategically means for the EU
The implications of the Venezuelan crisis extend in fact well beyond Latin America and into Europe’s own security and political architecture. In particular, repeated statements suggesting a possible U.S. willingness to assert control over Greenland, if translated into action, would raise profound legal and strategic questions for both NATO and the European Union. Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, a sovereign state and NATO member. Any attempt to coerce control over Greenland against Denmark’s will would constitute a violation of Danish sovereignty and a breach of the alliance per se.
Legally, such a scenario would indeed place NATO in uncharted territory. Article 1 of the North Atlantic Treaty obliges members to resolve disputes peacefully and to refrain from the threat or use of force inconsistent with the UN Charter. An act of coercion or aggression by one NATO member against another would directly contradict this obligation. But while Article 5 is designed to address external aggression, the Treaty provides no mechanism for managing intra-alliance violations of sovereignty.
For the European Union, the implications would be equally serious. Article 42(7) TEU establishes an obligation of aid and assistance among EU member states in the event of armed aggression. Although Denmark maintains defence opt-outs, an attack on Danish sovereignty would place the EU under intense political and legal pressure to respond. The absence of precedent would force the Union to confront fundamental questions about its ability to act as a security provider when threats originate not from an external adversary, but from within its closest alliance framework. It would also raise the question of whether the U.S., led by the Trump II Administration, can still be seen as an ally.
From Territorial Defence to the Protection of People
Yet the Greenland case is not only – or even primarily – about military security or territorial sovereignty. It is also a test of what Europe claims to defend. Unlike traditional territorial disputes, Greenland raises the question of whether the European Union can credibly position itself as a defender of the people of Greenland, rather than as an actor perceived to protect territory for strategic or profit-based motives. The island is increasingly central to global competition over rare earths, energy resources, and Arctic shipping routes. Great powers – most visibly the United States, but also China – approach Greenland through a logic of extraction, access, and geopolitical leverage.
In terms of visual media representation, this tension is vividly illustrated in the television series Borgen, which, beyond its fictional narrative, captures a real political dilemma: how small or peripheral communities become objects of great-power competition, reduced to strategic assets rather than treated as political subjects. Greenland’s population, its autonomy, and its right to self-determination risk being subordinated to external economic and security interests. The relevance of this depiction lies not in popular culture but in the insights it offers into contemporary geopolitics.
For the European Union, this highlights the importance of framing the Greenland issue in other terms than sovereignty and alliance politics alone. What is at stake is the Union’s ability to formulate a response that is both autonomous – grounded in decisions taken in Europe and consistent with its founding principles – and oriented toward the protection of those principles in practice. This is also a question of legitimacy: the EU derives its authority as a global actor from the values it upholds, and it is this normative legitimacy that underpins its capacity to act. In this sense, only a response centred on the protection of the people of Greenland – its political autonomy, social rights, environmental integrity, and freedom from coercive economic arrangements – would allow the EU to distinguish itself from other great powers. In doing so, Europe would demonstrate that its commitment to international norms is not limited to abstract legal principles but extends to the concrete protection of people against domination.
The Venezuelan crisis, however, casts serious doubt on the EU’s capacity to meet such a challenge. In strictly military terms, a U.S. takeover of Greenland remains highly unlikely for two reasons. Because it would lack broad domestic support in the United States, and because Washington already maintains a substantial military presence on the island. The issue, therefore, is not the plausibility of an outright intervention, but the difficulty European leaders have shown in articulating a clear and consistent position even in response to hypothetical scenarios.
This hesitation is revealing since it highlights how constrained Europe’s capacity for action becomes when its commitment to international law, sovereignty, and the protection of peoples is tested not by distant adversaries, but by the strategic behaviour of powerful partners. In such contexts, principles alone prove insufficient. If Europe cannot credibly defend populations against coercive practices – whether through overt military intervention in Latin America or through resource-driven and strategic pressure in the Arctic – its normative claims risk remaining largely declaratory. The question that follows is therefore unavoidable: what value do international norms retain when those who invoke them lack the power, autonomy, or political will to uphold them?
Norms Without Power Are Fragile
The Venezuelan crisis ultimately forces Europe to confront an uncomfortable but unavoidable reality: international norms do not defend themselves. They endure only insofar as political actors are willing – and able – to uphold them, even when doing so entails strategic costs. In this sense, the episode does not signal the collapse of a rule-based international order. One could even argue that such an order has never existed in a fully coherent form. Yet the fact that states continue to invoke these norms indicates that they retain significant symbolic and political force. What the Venezuelan case exposes, therefore, is less the disappearance of norms than the consequences of their selective enforcement and of the constrained agency of those who claim to defend them.
For the European Union, the implications are particularly stark. Europe’s commitment to sovereignty, non-intervention, and multilateralism is not merely a matter of external posture; it is constitutive of the Union’s political identity. These principles have long been presented as the foundation of the EU’s legitimacy as a global actor and as what distinguishes it from purely power-based approaches to international politics. When Europe hesitates to defend them in practice – especially in cases involving close allies – it risks hollowing out the very norms it claims to champion and undermining what gives its external action its distinctive character.
Thus, this tension points directly to the question of strategic autonomy. Too often framed narrowly in terms of military capability, strategic autonomy should also be understood as the capacity to act consistently with one’s own legal and political commitments. The Venezuelan crisis illustrates how Europe’s continued dependence on the United States constrains not only its security choices, but also its normative agency. When Europe cannot credibly oppose a clear breach of international law for fear of weakening an alliance, its ability to shape the international order is fundamentally limited, and it risks being sidelined as a meaningful actor.
This weakening is not only detrimental to Europe’s image. It also creates permissive conditions for further norm erosion. The inability to uphold foundational principles signals that violations may occur without meaningful political consequences, thereby weakening the deterrent function of international law. In this sense, the Venezuelan episode is not only significant in itself, but also as part of a broader pattern in which selective enforcement contributes to the normalization of coercive practices.
At the time of writing, the war in Iran had not yet begun. However, subsequent development, marked by the limited reference to international legal frameworks in the actions of the United States and Israel, and by Europe’s relative marginalization in the process, illustrates how the weakening of normative constraints can reverberate across different geopolitical contexts.
At the same time, the recent refusal of several European governments to respond to Donald Trump’s request for support in the Strait of Hormuz may signal an emerging shift in posture. It suggests the possibility, however tentative, that Europe can begin to adapt its institutional, legal, and strategic tools in order to preserve its autonomy of judgment. Such adaptation entails strengthening defence capacities, clarifying decision-making competences between national and EU institutions, and reinforcing the connection between legal principles and foreign policy practice.
Whether this development constitutes a durable turning point remains uncertain, but it nonetheless points to the potential for a recalibration of Europe’s role, one in which its normative commitments could be more consistently aligned with its capacity for action. Absent these elements, Europe risks remaining a normative actor in discourse, but a reactive one in practice
