Power, Legitimacy and Intervention: The Maduro Case

 Power, Legitimacy and Intervention: The Maduro Case

An Interview with İbrahim Selvi

Ocak 04.2026 21:58

Kapadokya/Türkiye 

Q: How do you assess the intervention against Nicolás Maduro?

İbrahim Selvi: The intervention did not occur because Maduro was weak. It occurred because he misused power. He isolated his government from social sensitivity, dismantled political balance, and severed the circulation of legitimacy. Power that loses balance eventually becomes exposed, regardless of how strong it appears militarily.

Q: Many argue that this intervention violates international law. How do you respond?

İbrahim Selvi: Law has never been written ahead of history. It is always produced after crises. International law itself was born from wars and destruction. What we are witnessing today is not lawlessness, but the inadequacy of outdated legal frameworks to regulate a rapidly changing global reality.

Q: What role should the United Nations have played?

İbrahim Selvi: Ideally, this should have been a UN-led process. However, the UN is structurally late. It was designed for a 1945 world — slow-moving crises, state-centric conflicts, and consensus politics. Today’s world is fast, fragmented, and transnational. The UN simply cannot meet contemporary global demand.

Q: Does that make the U.S. intervention legitimate?

İbrahim Selvi: It was not legally orthodox, but it was a functional response to an institutional vacuum. The United States did not step in because it sought moral superiority, but because the mechanism responsible for global legitimacy failed to act. This is not an endorsement of power — it is a diagnosis of systemic paralysis.

Q: Some claim Maduro remained a strong leader until the end. Do you agree?

İbrahim Selvi: Strength is not measured solely by force. State power rests on three pillars:

Physical force

Legitimacy

Social consent

Maduro reinforced the first while dismantling the latter two. When legitimacy collapses, power becomes unsustainable and externally permeable.

Q: You argue that this is not a Venezuela-specific issue. Why?

İbrahim Selvi: Because the same dynamics apply everywhere. If internal political peace collapses, elections lose credibility, institutions become partisan tools, and society fractures, even the strongest states become fragile. In such cases, external pressure does not appear foreign — it resonates internally.

Q: What is the main lesson of the Maduro case?

İbrahim Selvi: Intervention is not directed at the weak; it is directed at the isolated.

A state does not fall when it loses its enemies — it falls when it loses its society.

Q: Are we witnessing the collapse of international law?

İbrahim Selvi: No. We are living through a post-legal transition period. Old norms no longer function, and new ones have not yet been codified. Until this gap is filled, even justified interventions will remain dangerous precedents.

Q: Your final assessment?

İbrahim Selvi: Protecting obsolete legal forms to shield authoritarian abuse is wrong. But normalizing raw power without rewriting global legitimacy is equally dangerous. The future depends on whether we can transform force into law — not the other way around.

İbrahim Selvi

Journalist & Political Analyst