U.S. President Donald Trump said he does not need international law to guide his foreign policy, insisting his \u201cown morality\u201d is sufficient as Washington faces global backlash over a clandestine operation that seized Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an interview with the New York Times<\/em>, Trump said adherence to international law \u201cdepends on how you define it,\u201d adding, \u201cI don\u2019t want to hurt people,\u201d while signaling willingness to wield hard military power. His comments follow Saturday\u2019s pre-dawn strikes in Caracas, where explosions were reported near key military sites before U.S. forces extracted Maduro\u2014an action critics call a clear breach of the UN Charter\u2019s prohibition on the use or threat of force against another state\u2019s territorial integrity or political independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump has since said the United States will \u201crun\u201d Venezuela temporarily and leverage the country\u2019s oil resources, while offering cooperation to interim leader Delcy Rodr\u00edguez\u2014warning in a separate Atlantic<\/em> interview that she could face consequences \u201cgreater than Maduro\u2019s\u201d if she resists U.S. plans. He has also hinted at possible action against Colombia\u2019s leftist government and renewed interest in asserting control over Greenland, after previously ordering strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Legal scholars and UN officials cautioned that sidelining international law risks a broader unraveling of global norms. Yasra Suedi, professor of international law at the University of Manchester, called the stance \u201cextremely dangerous,\u201d arguing it could encourage powers like China or Russia to mirror U.S. behavior in flashpoints such as Taiwan or Ukraine. UN special rapporteur Margaret Satterthwaite warned of a slide back toward an \u201cimperial era,\u201d while Northwestern University political scientist Ian Hurd said U.S. interventions in Latin America\u2014from Chile to Haiti\u2014offer a \u201cgrim record\u201d that seldom yields long-term benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Capitol Hill, senators are pursuing measures to curb further Venezuela operations absent congressional authorization, intensifying a domestic fight over war powers as the administration signals a more aggressive global posture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. President Donald Trump said he does not need international law to guide his foreign policy, insisting his \u201cown morality\u201d is sufficient as Washington faces global backlash over a clandestine operation that seized Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. In an interview with the New York Times, Trump said adherence to international law \u201cdepends on how you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7030,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7037"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7042,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7037\/revisions\/7042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}