Is the US–Venezuela Crisis Another Failure of the UN?

The United States’ military action to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has reignited an old and uncomfortable question: is the global system for maintaining peace, built around the United Nations, still capable of restraining powerful states? Coming after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and amid the continuing devastation in Gaza, the episode has sharpened doubts about whether the UN can still fulfil its most fundamental promise — preventing the unilateral use of force.

What exactly happened, and why it has unsettled the UN system

The reported US operation targeting Venezuela’s sitting president represents a direct use of force against a sovereign state without authorisation from the UN’s collective security machinery. Under the UN Charter, such force is lawful only in two circumstances: when authorised by the Security Council, or when exercised in self-defence in response to an armed attack.

In the Venezuelan case, neither justification appears straightforward. This has pushed the crisis into familiar territory where major powers act first and international institutions respond later — if at all. For many observers, the episode echoes earlier moments when the UN was sidelined rather than consulted.

How the Security Council is meant to prevent this — on paper

Responsibility for maintaining international peace and security rests primarily with the United Nations Security Council. It consists of 15 members: five permanent powers — the US, Russia, China, France and the UK — and ten elected members serving two-year terms.

For the Council to authorise military action, at least nine members must vote in favour and none of the permanent five may exercise a veto. This structure was deliberately designed after World War II to ensure that no enforcement action could be taken against the major powers without their consent, while also encouraging them to manage global order collectively.

Why the veto has become the system’s central fault line

In practice, the veto has increasingly paralysed the Council. When a permanent member is directly involved in a conflict — whether Russia in Ukraine or the US in Venezuela — meaningful action becomes nearly impossible. Even the most widely acknowledged violations of international law can be shielded from collective response.

Legally, this is not a malfunction but a feature of the system. The UN Charter places no enforceable limits on veto use, even when it is exercised to protect a state’s own actions. There is also no judicial body empowered to review or overturn Security Council decisions. The result is a stark hierarchy: the very states entrusted with upholding international peace are structurally insulated from accountability.

Can the Security Council be reformed — or replaced?

Reform is often invoked, but rarely with realism. The Charter does allow amendments, including changes to the veto system, yet any such reform requires the consent of the permanent five themselves. This makes meaningful alteration functionally impossible.

More radical proposals — dissolving and reconstituting the UN under a new charter — face even steeper odds. They would require an unprecedented level of global consensus at a time when geopolitical rivalry is deepening, not receding. Any redesign that diluted veto power would almost certainly be blocked by at least one major power.

Why focusing only on the Security Council misses half the picture

Yet equating the UN solely with the Security Council risks misunderstanding what the organisation actually does. Beyond the Council’s chamber, the UN’s sprawling institutional machinery continues to function daily.

The Secretariat supports peacekeeping missions, mediation efforts and political negotiations. Specialised agencies coordinate humanitarian relief, public health responses and development programmes. Human rights bodies document abuses and keep international scrutiny alive, even when enforcement is absent. None of this prevents great-power war, but much of it mitigates human suffering in quieter, less visible ways.

The uncomfortable truth about the UN’s future

The Venezuelan crisis, like Ukraine and Gaza, underscores a hard reality: the UN-led peace and security system cannot restrain its most powerful members. In that narrow but critical sense, it is failing — not accidentally, but by design.

At the same time, abandoning the UN would mean losing the only global framework that coordinates humanitarian aid, sets norms, and provides at least a common language for diplomacy. The choice confronting the world is not between a perfect institution and a flawed one, but between a deeply imperfect UN and no universal institution at all.

For now, the UN’s future may lie less in dramatic reform than in endurance — preserving what still works, containing the damage where it cannot act, and waiting for political conditions that make collective restraint possible again.