Nicolas Maduro affair: Souleymane Bachir Diagne denounces “a serious attack on international order”
Faced with the recent international operation which led to the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on his own soil and then his transfer to the United States, the philosopher and academic Souleymane Bachir Diagne issued a solemn warning on the risks that this event poses to the global legal and political order.
In an analysis broadcast this Sunday, Mr. Diagne described the operation, unprecedented in the contemporary history of international relations, as a “serious attack on the international order”, considering that it calls into question the fundamental principles of law which govern relations between sovereign States.
“The astonishment was worldwide,” he observed, pointing out that few experts could have anticipated that a sitting head of state could be forcibly exfiltrated to another country to be detained there. Beyond the gesture itself, the Senegalese-American professor insisted on the symbolic and legal implications of the operation.
For Professor Diagne, Maduro’s capture is not simply an isolated event: it illustrates a shift towards the law of the strongest, to the detriment of established law and multilateralism, the cornerstone of international relations since the end of the Second World War. He thus questioned: “What about international law? What about multilateralism, supposed to be a natural brake on this type of desire? »
In his reflection, Diagne also called for a collective reaffirmation of the mechanisms of international law and the need to preserve peaceful coexistence between sovereign nations. “The idea of living together, in the permanent search for peace, must remain our compass,” he insisted.
The academic finally mentioned the importance of checks and balances in political systems, particularly in the United States, as safeguards against possible abuses by a powerful executive, emphasizing that these would play a crucial role in tempering excesses which weaken the international legal framework.
