The Venezuelan Crisis: From Multilateral R2P to US Unilateral Control

Abstract The 3 January 2026 US military intervention in Venezuela abruptly foreclosed what had emerged as a credible opportunity for the multilateral application of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). In the months preceding the intervention, documented repression, exhausted diplomacy, and partial regional alignment created conditions broadly consistent with the doctrine’s original intent. The intervention displaced this trajectory by reframing the crisis in unilateral security terms, bypassing multilateral authorisation and coordination. This intervention argues that the Venezuelan case exposes a central vulnerability of R2P: its effectiveness depends not only on normative legitimacy but on hegemonic restraint. When dominant powers act unilaterally, R2P remains formally uncontested yet becomes operationally unavailable. The case thus illustrates how unilateral intervention can undermine multilateral protection regimes without rejecting their underlying norms.