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Tag: war powers

  • Trump, the New Chimera: A Hybrid of Stalin and Hitler on the World Stage

    Trump, the New Chimera: A Hybrid of Stalin and Hitler on the World Stage

    by Amal Zadok

    When a president says only his “own morality” limits his power and that he “does not need international law,” while a mother of three is shot through her windshield by an ICE officer on an American street, the mask is off. This is no longer a debate about policy; it is the birth of a regime that reserves law for the weak and bullets for anyone who get in the way. 

    A president who crowns himself

    Trump’s statement to The New York Times that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality” is the distilled creed of authoritarianism. In his own words, there is “one thing” that can stop him: not Congress, not courts, not treaties, but his “own mind,” followed by the contemptuous aside, “I don’t need international law.” 

    This is not some late-night tweet; it is a formal doctrine announced from the Oval Office. In that interview, he waves away the UN Charter, the ban on aggressive war, and decades of treaty obligations as optional restraints that apply only if he personally decides they should, implicitly trampling the Charter’s prohibition on the use of force and the core idea that even great powers are bound by law. 

    He prides himself on using military strikes, invasions, economic strangulation and political coercion as tools of personal will, not as acts accountable to any external standard. A president who claims that law is binding only when he feels like it has ceased to be a constitutional officer and has slipped into the role of a sovereign who believes that legality is a costume he can put on for international conferences and drop whenever he wants to unleash force.

    From “rules-based order” to rule by fear

    For years, Washington preached a “rules-based international order” to other states. Now Trump publicly shreds that script and replaces it with a gangster’s logic: power first, rules never. He openly treats treaties as disposable, walks away from arms-control agreements, and shrugs at the possible collapse of the last major nuclear restraints with a fatalistic “if it expires, it expires.” 

    The message radiates far beyond Washington. If the United States claims the right to strike where it wants, topple whom it chooses, and threaten nuclear and non‑nuclear states alike without even pretending to obey international law, why should Moscow feel bound in Ukraine or Beijing in Taiwan? The “order” that once at least pretended to restrain the strong becomes a stage on which the biggest actor improvises violence while lecturing others about norms. 

    Trump’s “own morality” is not a safeguard; it is a surrender of civilization to personality. It tells every future strongman—from Budapest to Brasília—that law is ornamental and that the only crime is losing. 

    The ICE bullet in Minneapolis

    While Trump claims he does not need international law abroad, his domestic security machine is being trained to treat American streets like occupied territory. In Minneapolis, 37‑year‑old Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen, a mother of three, was shot and killed by an ICE officer while sitting in her car on a cold Midwestern street, neighbors watching from their windows as sirens and shouts shattered the night. 

    She was not a cartel boss or a terrorist; she was a neighbor, a writer, a woman who had come out—according to local accounts—to care for those around her. The official story shifts like a propaganda broadcast. DHS officials insist she “failed to comply,” that she “attempted to run over” an officer. Local witnesses describe confusion and conflicting commands, with one officer telling her to drive away from a stuck ICE vehicle and another simultaneously trying to pull her from the car; body‑camera and bystander video show agents swarming the vehicle, one officer stepping into her path, firing at close range as she attempts to drive off, her car then crashing down the street as her life bleeds out on the asphalt. 

    Minneapolis city officials have said openly what federal spokespeople will not: that this was “a federal agent recklessly using power that resulted in somebody dying.” The FBI has now taken over the investigation after the state’s own Bureau of Criminal Apprehension backed away, a sign of just how toxic and politically charged this killing has become, while community grief vigils name her not as a suspect but as a poet, a newcomer, a mother. 

    The same contempt for accountability that lets a president shrug off the UN Charter now underwrites a culture in which an ICE bullet can end a citizen’s life and the first instinct of power is to justify, not to repent. 

    The quiet architecture of a police state

    This is how police states are built in real time—not with a single spectacular coup, but through a series of “operations,” “raids,” and “emergency deployments” that normalize the presence of armed federal agents in daily life. In Minneapolis, thousands of federal officers were deployed in what DHS bragged was the “largest operation ever,” turning a U.S. city into a live‑fire training ground for an internal occupation. 

    The use of ICE, a civil immigration agency, like a paramilitary police force is not an accident. It is a deliberate fusion of domestic and foreign logics: the border mentality imported into the heart of the city, where neighbors blowing whistles to warn each other become suspect, where legal observers and bystanders are treated as obstacles, and where a parked car is one nervous trigger pull away from becoming a coffin. 

    Trump’s doctrine—that only his conscience limits his power—seeps down the chain of command. If the man at the top says law is malleable, if he publicly promises to back his officers no matter what, then every badge and gun on the street hears the same message: you are the law. This is exactly how Stalin’s NKVD and Hitler’s Gestapo operated—not because every officer was a monster, but because the system told them that their violence was always already justified. 

    A monstrous hybrid of Nazism and Stalinism

    The horror of the current moment is not that America has become identical to Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union; it is that it is mutating into a hybrid that borrows the worst tools of both. From Nazism, Trump borrows the cult of the leader whose “moral sense” legitimatizes everything, the theater of strength, the glorification of “law and order” as a shield for state brutality. From Stalinism, he borrows the idea that internal enemies lurk everywhere, that entire communities (immigrants, protesters, “anarchists,” “terror sympathizers”) are fair game for sweeping repression. 

    When federal agents can snatch people off streets, deploy to cities over local opposition, and now kill a mother in her car under the banner of immigration enforcement, the line between democracy and dictatorship is not “eroding.” It is being redrawn in blood. When a president announces that courts, laws and treaties are lower‑tier obstacles compared to his “own mind,” he is not defending America from enemies; he is positioning himself as the only real branch of government that matters. 

    This is how hybrid tyrannies work. Elections still occur, some courts still function, newspapers still print—but the security services learn that their real loyalty is owed upward, not outward. The constitution becomes a script for public ceremonies, while the real constitution is whatever the leader and his loyalists can get away with. 

    The conscience that kills

    Trump insists he is “not looking to hurt people,” even as he lists lethal operations as achievements, even as his policies unleash missiles abroad and militarized raids at home. His “own morality” apparently allows for the bombing of foreign soil without authorization, the kidnapping or coercion of foreign leaders, the tearing up of refugee protections, and now a domestic climate in which federal officers gun down a woman in Minneapolis and are treated as heroes in waiting. 

    There is a cruel symmetry here. Abroad, he claims the right to ignore international law in the name of “national strength.” At home, his security forces act as if ordinary Americans are foreign subjects in a pacification campaign. The shared logic is simple: the people at the receiving end of American power—Venezuelan civilians, Iranian technicians, migrants at the border, a mother in a Minneapolis sedan—do not matter as rights‑bearing human beings. They matter only as problems for the leader’s will to solve. 

    When a man with this worldview sits in the Oval Office and tells a major newspaper that only his conscience can stop him, the world should stop pretending this is normal politics. This is not conservatism, populism, or even crude nationalism. It is the theology of the police state: one man’s inner voice elevated above constitutions, courts, treaties, and the screams from the street where Renee Nicole Good died. 

    An ultimatum to real patriots

    So the question is no longer what Trump will do next; the question is what Americans are going to do about an America that the Founders would not recognize. A republic whose president claims to stand above law and whose federal agents kill unarmed citizens in the name of “order” is not the republic Madison and Hamilton were arguing for; it is the nightmare they wrote the Constitution to prevent. 

    The Constitution does not ask “real patriots” to clap for strongmen; it demands that they use every peaceful tool it provides—speech, press, assembly, petitions, jury service, litigation, elections, impeachment, and relentless oversight—to drag power back under law. It calls legislators to defund and dismantle rogue operations, judges to enforce rights without fear, civil servants to refuse illegal orders, and ordinary citizens to organize, vote, strike, and resist until no man’s “own morality” can ever again stand in for the rule of law. If Americans will not use those tools now, when a mother lies dead in Minneapolis and a president boasts that only his conscience can stop him, then the Constitution will become nothing more than an antique in a glass case—and the hybrid monster of Nazism and Stalinism will finish the work it has already begun. 

    References 

    1.The New York Times. (2026, January 8). Trump addresses Venezuela, Greenland and presidential power in wide‑ranging interview. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/us/politics/trump-interview-power-morality.htm

    2.The New York Times. (2026, January 8). Trump said his global power was limited only by his ‘own morality’. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/briefing/trump-interview-oval-office-apple-ceo.html

    3.Bluewin. (2026, January 9). USA: Trump: Only my sense of morality can hold me back. https://www.bluewin.ch/en/news/international/trump-only-my-sense-of-morality-can-hold-me-back-3041854.html

    4.Moneycontrol. (2026, January 8). ‘Only my morality can stop me’: Trump claims sweeping war powers, shrugs off international law. https://www.moneycontrol.com/world/only-my-morality-can-stop-me-trump-claims-sweeping-war-powers-says-he-doesn-t-need-internatio-article-12812335.html

    5.Financial Express. (2026, January 8). ‘I don’t need international law’: Trump says only his own morality limits his global power. https://www.financialexpress.com/world-news/us-news/only-one-thing-can-stop-me-trump-says-he-dont-need-international-law-boasts-12812091/

    6.World Socialist Web Site. (2026, January 8). Declaring ‘I don’t need international law,’ Trump moves to assert unlimited warmaking powers. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/09/qyot-j09.html

    7.Al Jazeera. (2026, January 8). FBI takes over investigation into ICE agent killing of woman in Minneapolis. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/8/fbi-takes-over-investigation-into-ice-agent-killing-of-woman-in-minneapolis

    8.ABC News (Australia). (2026, January 7). What led to an ICE agent fatally shooting a public observer in Minneapolis? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-08/ice-shooting-minneapolis-minnesota-immigration-crackdown/106209128

    9.NBC News. (2026, January 7). Renee Nicole Good, woman shot by ICE officer, was out ‘caring for her neighbors’. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/renee-nicole-good-minneapolis-ice-shooting-victim-caring-neighbor-rcna252901

    10.Colorado Public Radio. (2026, January 7). Woman killed by ICE in Minneapolis originally from Colorado. https://www.cpr.org/2026/01/07/fatal-minneapolis-ice-shooting-colorado-woman/

    11.CNN. (2026, January 8). ICE officer who shot woman in Minneapolis was dragged by a car in 2025, video shows. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/08/us/ice-agent-minneapolis-shooting-car-dragged-invs

    12.NBC News. (2026, January 8). ICE officer who fatally shot Minnesota woman was dragged by a car during a prior enforcement stop. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ice-officer-fatally-shot-minnesota-woman-was-dragged-car-june-immigrat-rcna252992

    13.City of Minneapolis. (2026, January 6). Minneapolis responds to fatal shooting of woman by federal agent. https://www.minneapolismn.gov/news/2026/january/fatal-shooting-response/

    14.PBS NewsHour. (2026, January 8). Woman killed by ICE agent was mother of 3, poet and new to Minneapolis. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/woman-killed-by-ice-agent-was-mother-of-3-poet-and-new-to-minneapolis

    ©️2025 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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  • Kidnapping a President: How Trump Turned Law into a Weapon and Gave Putin and Xi a Green Light

    Kidnapping a President: How Trump Turned Law into a Weapon and Gave Putin and Xi a Green Light

    by Amal Zadok

    Trump’s armed kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro is not just another reckless intervention; it is the moment the United States openly abandons the legal order it uses to judge its enemies. One operation in Caracas manages to break core rules of international law, trample the Constitution’s allocation of war powers, and weaponize domestic criminal statutes into a pretext for cross‑border regime decapitation. This is not mere hypocrisy; it is a structural shift toward a world where armed force wears the thin mask of law while tearing out the law’s foundations.​

    Start with the international plane. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, except in self‑defence against an armed attack or with Security Council authorization. None of those conditions existed: Venezuela had not attacked the United States, there was no imminent armed assault, and the Security Council had authorized nothing. Airstrikes around Caracas and the insertion of US forces to seize a sitting head of state are the paradigmatic use of armed force that the Charter was written to forbid, regardless of how loudly Washington chants “narco‑terrorism” or “democracy.”​

    The raid also violates the principles of sovereign equality and non‑intervention in Articles 2(1) and 2(7) and in customary international law. Forcibly removing a president and floating the idea that the US might effectively “run” Venezuela is not influence; it is a direct assault on the political independence of a UN member. That is why UN officials and governments well beyond Maduro’s circle have called the action illegal aggression and a “dangerous precedent” for the global order.​

    Head‑of‑state immunity is the next pillar smashed. Customary international law grants sitting heads of state full personal immunity—immunity ratione personae—from foreign criminal jurisdiction and enforcement measures while they are in office. This shield does not endorse any leader’s morality; it prevents foreign courts and special forces from becoming tools of regime change. By abducting Maduro and hauling him before a New York judge, the United States has effectively claimed that its recognition policy decides who is a head of state and who can be treated as a common fugitive.​

    The extraterritorial kidnapping itself is a further violation. Even advocates of muscular US power concede that seizing a foreign leader from his own soil without consent is a “flagrant violation” of sovereignty and an unlawful abduction under general international law. Several experts argue that the scale and character of the raid reach the level of an “armed attack,” meaning Venezuela would, in principle, enjoy a right of self‑defence against the United States. In one stroke, Washington transforms the law it invokes into a weapon, while shredding the central norm designed to keep interstate violence in check since 1945.​

    Inside the United States, the pattern is equally stark. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, and the War Powers Resolution requires prior consultation “in every possible instance” and prompt notification when American forces enter hostilities. Trump’s own officials had previously acknowledged that ground operations in Venezuela would require congressional authorization—and that they did not have it. Yet the raid went ahead as a fait accompli, with Congress informed after the fact and forced to choose between retroactive acquiescence or a politically suicidal confrontation with an emboldened executive.​

    The UN Charter is also a ratified US treaty and, under Article VI of the Constitution, part of the “supreme Law of the Land.” When a president orders a military operation that plainly contradicts Article 2(4)’s ban on the use of force, he is not just flirting with illegality abroad; he is directing the state to act against a binding treaty that sits at the top of the domestic legal hierarchy. Some constitutional scholars therefore describe the raid as a dual illegality: a violation of international law that simultaneously undercuts the treaty‑supremacy structure of US law itself.​

    The criminal‑law angle exposes the tyrannical core. Extradition treaties, mutual legal assistance and due‑process guarantees are supposed to govern cross‑border arrests; they do not authorize special forces to “pick up” a foreign head of state at gunpoint because US prosecutors filed an indictment. By leaning on the old Ker–Frisbie doctrine—that illegal abduction does not by itself bar a trial—Trump turns a controversial judicial rule into an executive license for kidnapping. What would obviously be kidnapping, conspiracy and unlawful violence for any private actor is rebranded as “policy” when ordered from the Oval Office.​

    At that point, “tyranny” stops being rhetorical and becomes descriptive. A leader who can unilaterally launch cross‑border raids, ignore Congress’s war role, violate binding treaties and twist criminal procedure into a shield for his own extralegal violence is not meaningfully bound by law. He is constrained only by raw power and political calculation. That is exactly the model Russia and China have been waiting for Washington to normalize—and Trump has just handed them the script.​

    Trump has not just broken rules; he has opened a doctrinal Pandora’s box. Moscow can now point to the Maduro operation when it justifies the seizure or assassination of Ukrainian officials as “counter‑terrorism” or enforcement of Russian criminal law. Beijing can frame a lightning move on Taipei as a domestic law‑enforcement action against “secessionist criminals,” citing the American precedent that great powers’ indictments and security narratives override borders, immunity and the UN Charter. The United States spent decades preaching a “rules‑based international order”; in Caracas, it demonstrated that, when the stakes are high enough, what really rules is force wrapped in legal costume.​

    If this stands, the world slides from an imperfect legal order—full of double standards and selective enforcement—into something harsher and more honest: open season, where each great power hunts in its sphere and cites the others’ crimes as precedent. The kidnapping of Maduro is more than a scandal; it is a template that Russia, China and others will eagerly adapt, armed not only with missiles and special forces, but with the very legal arguments Trump has ripped from their cage—a ready‑made script for twenty‑first‑century tyranny dressed up as law.​

    References

    1. ABC News. (2026). Were the US actions in Venezuela legal under international law?​
    2. Le Monde. (2026). US attack on Venezuela: What does international law say?​
    3. The Conversation. (2026). Were the US actions in Venezuela legal under international law? An expert explains.​
    4. Chatham House. (2026). The US capture of President Nicolás Maduro – and attacks on Venezuela – have no justification.​
    5. Global Affairs. (2026). International Law and Venezuela’s Maduro.​
    6. Opinio Juris. (2026). The United States’ Attack Against Venezuela: Might Does Not Make Right.​
    7. UN News. (2026). US actions in Venezuela “constitute a dangerous precedent”.​
    8. Justice in Conflict. (2026). Maduro’s Indictment, Head‑of‑State Immunity, and the United States.​
    9. Huquq. (2026). The Maduro Case and the Fractured Foundations of Immunity.​
    10. Brookings. (2026). Making Sense of the US Military Operation in Venezuela.​
    11. CNN. (2026). Trump’s Legal Authority in Venezuela, Explained.​
    12. Bloomberg. (2026). Did Maduro’s Seizure Violate US and International Law?​
    13. PBS. (2026). Fact‑Checking Trump’s Claims After U.S. Strike on Venezuela and Capture of Maduro.​
    14. The New Yorker. (2026). The Brazen Illegality of Trump’s Venezuela Operation.​
    15. BBC News. (2026). US Sharply Criticised by Foes and Friends Over Maduro Seizure.​
    16. SBS. (2026). From Russia to Iran, Venezuela’s Allies React to the Capture of Maduro.​
    17. Time. (2026). How the World Is Reacting to the U.S. Capture of Nicolás Maduro.​
    18. CNN. (2026). Maduro’s Capture Is a Blow to China. But on Chinese Social Media …​
    19. CBS News. (2026). How Could Trump’s Move Against Venezuela Impact China, Russia, Iran, Cuba?​
    20. Völkerrechtsblog. (2026). The U.S. Strikes Against Venezuela and the Credibility of the Anti‑Aggression Norm.​
    21. ABC (Australia). (2026). The Venezuela Strike Sets a New Low for the World Order.​
    22. CSIS. (2026). The Maduro Raid: A Military Victory with No Viable Endgame.​
    23. The New York Times. (2026). Is It Legal for U.S. to “Run” Venezuela After Maduro’s Capture?​
    24. The Conversation. (2026). Trump’s Intervention in Venezuela: The 3 Warnings for the World.​
    25. The New York Times. (2026). Global Ripples From Venezuela.​
    26. Empire Unchained Blog. (2026). Empire Unchained: How the US Capture of Maduro Shattered the Post‑War International Order.

    Appendix: Summary of Laws Broken Internally and Externally by Trump in the Kidnapping of Maduro

    • UN Charter Article 2(4): Prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state; breached by airstrikes and the cross‑border raid without self‑defence or Security Council authorization.​
    • UN Charter Articles 2(1) and 2(7) & customary non‑intervention: Require sovereign equality and non‑interference; violated by forcibly removing a sitting president and floating effective US control over Venezuela’s politics.​
    • Customary head‑of‑state immunity (immunity ratione personae): Grants sitting heads of state full personal immunity from foreign criminal jurisdiction and enforcement; ignored by abducting Maduro to stand trial in a US court.​
    • Customary prohibition of extraterritorial abduction: Forbids kidnapping persons, especially senior officials, from another state’s territory without consent; violated by the armed seizure in Caracas.​
    • US constitutional allocation of war powers: Congress’s power to declare war and War Powers Resolution consultation and notification requirements were sidestepped by launching the raid without prior authorization or transparent notification.​
    • Treaty‑supremacy structure (Article VI of the US Constitution): The UN Charter is binding US law; ordering action that breaches Article 2(4) undermines the supremacy of ratified treaties in the domestic legal hierarchy.​
    • Extradition and criminal‑procedure norms: Established mechanisms (extradition treaties, mutual legal assistance, due process) were bypassed in favour of a unilateral military kidnapping justified by a domestic indictment.​
    • Functional domestic criminal norms (kidnapping, conspiracy, unlawful violence): Conduct that would clearly constitute serious crimes for private actors is insulated by presidential power, effectively placing the executive above the law it imposes on others.​

    ©️2025 Amal Zadok. All rights reserved.

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