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Refusing to play by the rules

Trump administration’s abduction of a head of state throws into question the future of international law.

By Danylo Hawaleshka
Published On 19 Jan 2026

History Illustrated is a weekly series of insightful perspectives that puts news events and current affairs into a historical context using graphics generated with artificial intelligence.

World Wars I and II killed about 100 million people combined. To avoid a third world war, they made some rules. But in recent years, those rules have increasingly been ignored. And United States President Donald Trump just took it to another level, one that many say may help upend the international rules-based order intended to keep us safe.
The rules include the United Nations Charter, signed in 1945. It bans the use of force against any state unless it is in self-defence or approved by the UN Security Council.
The year prior, 44 countries signed the Bretton Woods Economic Order to mitigate destabilising financial crises. It created the IMF and the World Bank. Similarly, humanitarian law and war crimes were laid out in the Nuremberg Charter in 1945 and the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
But a crack in the veneer of the global order appeared in the 1980s, when the US violated international law by militarily supporting the Contras in their fight against the government in Nicaragua. That order took another hit in 2003, when a US-led coalition invaded Iraq without UNSC approval or a clear justification of self-defence.
The US, however, is not alone. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is also seen as contravening rules designed to avoid global conflict.
And the humanitarian horror that is the genocide being perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza simply defies comprehension. In the process, it upended the world order by undermining the UN Genocide Convention.
The Trump administration’s abduction of a head of state, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, has been widely condemned as illegal and unconstitutional, Maduro’s authoritarianism notwithstanding. Despite the condemnation, Trump has similarly threatened Greenland, Colombia, Iran, Mexico and Cuba.
Trump’s flouting of the rules has been called “neo-royalism”, defined as a world dominated by elite billionaires, many of them tech bros, aligned with a king-like political leader. Seemingly in line with that, Trump sees his power limited by one thing only.
In neo-royalism, the state is sidelined, says political scientist Abe Newman. Interviewed by Mother Jones, he warned that these powerful cliques do not “play by the same rules”. Right now, it seems Trump assumes “might makes right”. Unfortunately, we have seen that it often does not end well.