EU has forgotten Pascal’s rule that ‘Law without force is impotent’

The European reaction to America’s seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has largely mirrored what one sadly has come to expect from the once proud continent: Pious proclamations regarding international law coupled with the sullen recognition of a forceful development Europe was powerless to prevent. These leaders would do well to recall Blaise Pascal’s famous observation: “Law without force is impotent”.

Few among Europe’s elite doubt that Maduro’s regime was illegitimate and ruinous. It is widely accepted that he and his left-wing United Socialist Party stole the last presidential election and probably the one before that as well. The EU had recognised National Assembly President Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate president until he lost that post after a largely phoney 2020 vote, and also stated Maduro was democratically illegitimate after his fraudulent 2024 re-election.

Yet it clearly escaped no one’s notice that these announcements had no effect. Maduro remained president, his socialist policies driving the Venezuelan economy into the ground and forcing millions of Venezuelans to flee their homeland.

Law has power only when some entity has the will and ability to enforce it. That has always been a problem for international law, as no global entity possesses the monopoly on legitimate force that every successful national government has. 

The United Nations has been unable to fulfil its intended role as that entity because its internal structure thwarts its ability to do so. When any one of the five permanent Security Council members wants to protect its clients, its veto prevents even the most egregious violators on global law.

Economic sanctions also fail to deter or correct those bent on ruling tyrannically. Cuba, North Korea, Iran – the list of global tyrannies that survive despite punishing sanctions is long. These nations survive by channelling all available resources to the state and its agencies tasked with internal repression, along with the overt or covert support of larger tyrannical states.

This observation surely dismays those who pine for an international rules-based order. They may look to the last few decades when such a thing appeared to exist but conveniently ignore the fact that the United States was the only nation with military power and global reach.

American economic might also reigned supreme. Every significant nation in the world depended on access to the American consumer, assured under the rules set by Washington’s preferred free trade regime.  

Law thus depended on the merchant’s persuasion and the Marines’ coercion.

Maduro’s forceful arrest thus has some justification, if the consensus belief that his presidency is illegitimate is sound. That is not the justification that President Trump is using but is nonetheless one that could soothe the consciences of jurisprudes and European leaders alike.

 This nonetheless poses many uncomfortable problems for Europe. It has long relied on Washington’s acceptance of the global rules game to exert its influence without possessing hard power. As long as American presidents played the game, Europe could have its cake – low defence budgets, regular trade surpluses with America, and global influence to curb arbitrary use of American power – and eat it too.

The trouble is that it has finally dawned on many Americans that this arrangement weakened America and strengthen its mortal foes. Trump may be acting imprudently even under this framing, but it is clear that the fundamental weakness at the core of any reign of international law has finally come home to roost.

Europe once was the master player of this game of global intrigue and power exertion. Its reach extended so far that only a handful of countries today – Turkey, Iran, China, Japan, and a few others – have never been ruled as colonies by a European power. 

Even these lands were dramatically affected by the colonial era. Indeed, the current political courses of all these countries have their roots in how they dealt with their powerlessness in the face of European dominance.

These considerations ought to provide further impetus for the re-emergence of European nations as serious powers. To be heard in a multi-polar world, one must possess and be willing to exert hard power when necessary. It will take years for these nations to possess such might and might take even more for them to act in coordination often enough to effectively push back against American, Chinese, or Russian intransigence.

There is a ray of hope, however, for those who do not want to see a return to the pure law of nature. Ideas have consequences, and most people in Western nations have a clear sense of what legitimate governments should do. 

Legitimate governments extend rights, substantive and procedural, to all citizens within their borders. They do not launch wars of pure aggression, acquiring territory and population simply to tie the subject areas to an imperial capital. They conduct such wars as they do embark on with restraint, avoiding the pure butchery and savagery that marked most human conflicts before the modern age.

Those ideas limit President Trump even as he appears omnipotent at home. America is still a democracy, and popular support for the extraction of Maduro is directly tied to the injustice of his regime.

It’s one thing to seize a drug-dealing dictator; it’s another to invade peaceful Greenland.

Pascal’s famous saying had a corollary: “Force without justice is tyrannical”. European leaders should continue to point out unjust acts, even at the risk of angering its historical patron. For in democracies, it is the people rather than the ruler whose conscience one must catch.