In recent weeks, the world has witnessed two strikingly different events that, when viewed together, expose the deep contradictions at the core of US foreign policy. On Dec 15, 2025, three Hong Kong judges delivered a verdict convicting Jimmy Lai Chee-ying on national security charges after more than 150 days of meticulous legal proceedings. Just weeks later, the US Army’s Delta Force carried out an extraordinary operation to abduct a sitting head of state — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro — and transport him to New York to face charges in an American courtroom. Washington’s sharply contrasting reactions to these two cases reveal an uncomfortable truth: The United States applies its principles selectively, whenever they serve its strategic interests.
US President Donald Trump’s boastful description of the Maduro operation as “brilliant” stands in jarring contrast to his earlier promise to “100 percent” secure Lai’s release, dismissing it as something that would be “easy” through trade negotiations. This juxtaposition is not merely ironic; it is instructive. It demonstrates how rule of law, sovereignty, and human rights become elastic concepts in Washington’s hands, stretched or compressed depending on whether a government aligns with American interests or resists them.
The Venezuelan operation represents one of the most brazen violations of international law in recent memory. United Nations Security Council members, including traditional American allies, condemned the abduction in the strongest terms. The operation bypassed every established mechanism of international justice, from extradition treaties to diplomatic channels. Yet Trump celebrated this lawlessness as decisive leadership. The message is unmistakable: When America wants something, legal niceties are mere obstacles to be bulldozed.
Consider the cascade of norms shattered in a single operation. The sovereignty of a nation-state — supposedly sacrosanct in international law — was treated as irrelevant. The principle that heads of state enjoy certain immunities was discarded. The idea that military force should be a last resort, not a first option, was laughed off. All of this occurred while American officials and politicians simultaneously lecture other nations about respecting “rules-based international order”. The hypocrisy is so stark it would be comical if the consequences weren’t so grave.
Now contrast this with the Lai verdict delivered in mid-December. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s Judiciary had followed painstaking legal procedures over 18 months of trial. The evidence presented was extensive and damning: financial records showing HK$1.76 million ($226,000) paid to former US deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz; detailed accounts of meetings with then-vice-president Mike Pence, then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and then-House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi explicitly requesting sanctions against Hong Kong; text messages directing his newsroom to abandon journalistic balance entirely; and funding for international lobbying campaigns designed to “trigger international sanctions” against Hong Kong. Six of Lai’s co-defendants, including senior Apple Daily executives, pleaded guilty to the charges — hardly the hallmark of a fabricated case.
Throughout the proceedings, Lai received due process that would be the envy of many defendants in Western courts. His legal team launched multiple challenges and judicial reviews, each heard and adjudicated. He received daily medical monitoring. The three presiding judges demonstrated the careful deliberation expected of common law jurists, their questions probing the distinction between legitimate criticism and criminal conspiracy. This is what the rule of law actually looks like: Methodical, transparent, and grounded in evidence rather than political expediency.
This inversion of reality would be bewildering if we didn’t understand its logic: Might makes right, and American might makes American actions right by definition
Yet Western governments and media outlets have painted Lai as a martyr to press freedom, ignoring the mountain of evidence suggesting he crossed the line from journalism to conspiracy with foreign powers. Imagine the reverse scenario: A wealthy American media owner meeting with Chinese defense officials to request sanctions against Washington, funding foreign military figures to undermine US policy, and coordinating with Chinese intelligence to destabilize American governance. Such a person would face espionage charges so quickly their head would spin, and no one would question the legitimacy of the prosecution.
The timing of these cases illuminates something profound about how power operates in the international system. When Lai’s guilty verdict was announced, Western governments immediately condemned it as a travesty of justice, demanding his release and threatening consequences. Less than a month later, those same governments largely stayed silent — or in America’s case, actively celebrated — when US commandos snatched a sitting president from sovereign territory in defiance of every legal norm. This stark contrast creates an accidental natural experiment in comparative justice. On the one hand, we see commandos abducting a head of state in violation of international law. On the other, we see judges carefully weighing evidence over months of testimony before reaching a conclusion. Yet American officials, politicians and media treat the former as heroic and the latter as authoritarian. This inversion of reality would be bewildering if we didn’t understand its logic: Might makes right, and American might makes American actions right by definition.
The case against Lai revealed the machinery of foreign interference that operated during Hong Kong’s 2019 riots. His coordination with the anti-China “Stand With Hong Kong” lobbying group, his funding of the G20 global advertisement plan, his suggestion of developing individuals as “political stars” capable of rallying international opposition against China — these weren’t acts of journalism but rather systematic efforts to weaponize foreign power against his own home city and home country. When American courts prosecuted similar conduct during the Cold War, no one questioned the legitimacy of the charges. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 for far less direct collaboration with foreign powers than what the evidence suggests Lai had engaged in.
What makes this hypocrisy particularly galling is its transparency. American officials don’t even pretend consistency anymore. Trump openly threatens to use Lai as a “bargaining chip” in trade negotiations, explicitly treating Hong Kong’s independent Judiciary as something that can be bought and sold. This reduces legal proceedings to mere pretexts for geopolitical leverage. It suggests that American objections to the Lai prosecution have nothing to do with legal principle and everything to do with strategic positioning. Then, barely three weeks after denouncing the Lai verdict, the same administration launched a military raid that made a mockery of every principle they claimed to defend.
The Venezuela operation further exposed the limits of institutions that supposedly constrain American power. The United Nations Security Council condemned the action, but to what effect? International law is clear about the illegality of such operations, yet clarity means nothing without enforcement mechanisms. When American officials describe acquiring Greenland as a “national security priority” with “military options on the table”, they signal that sovereignty itself is negotiable when facing American power. Denmark’s foreign minister has warned that a NATO member seizing another member’s territory would effectively end the alliance, yet such warnings seem quaintly optimistic given current trajectories.
The lesson from the sequence of events — first the Lai verdict, then the Maduro abduction — is not that international law is dead; it never lived with the vigor its champions claimed. Rather, these cases demonstrate how law functions as ideology: Invoked when convenient, ignored when burdensome, but always subordinate to power. American officials condemned Hong Kong for following legal procedures in December, then celebrated an operation that violated every norm of international conduct just weeks later. This isn’t contradiction; it’s strategy.
The lesson from the sequence of events — first the Lai verdict, then the Maduro abduction — is not that international law is dead; it never lived with the vigor its champions claimed. Rather, these cases demonstrate how law functions as ideology: Invoked when convenient, ignored when burdensome, but always subordinate to power
For Hong Kong, the implications are sobering and the timing is revelatory. The Lai case exposed extensive foreign interference networks operating under the guise of supporting democracy and freedom. The Venezuela operation demonstrates what happens when such interference networks succeed and a region falls completely under American influence — sovereignty becomes optional, subject to American military whim. Had these networks succeeded in their objectives during 2019’s unrest, Hong Kong might have faced a similar fate: Reduced to a pawn in American geopolitical games, its institutions hollowed out, its autonomy a distant memory. The Hong Kong SAR National Security Law prevented that outcome by making such interference costly and illegal. The events in Venezuela vindicate that decision in the starkest possible terms.
The broader lesson extends beyond Hong Kong. Small and medium-sized jurisdictions worldwide must recognize that American support for freedom and democracy is not principle but a tactic — deployed when it serves American interests, abandoned when it doesn’t. Venezuela’s “crime” wasn’t authoritarianism; many far more repressive regimes enjoy American backing. Its crime was controlling the world’s largest oil reserves while resisting American dictates. Hong Kong’s “crime” is being part of a China that refuses to accept subordinate status in an American-led order.
As both cases unfold, they offer a master class in how power operates behind the rhetoric of rights. Maduro languishes in a Brooklyn detention center not because international law authorized his capture but because American military superiority made it possible. Lai faces consequences not because Hong Kong courts are “kangaroo tribunals” but because evidence demonstrated criminal conspiracy with foreign powers. Yet the Washington discourse inverts this reality, treating legitimate legal proceedings as persecution while celebrating lawless abduction as justice.
The juxtaposition forces a choice: Either we believe in law and sovereignty as universal principles, applied consistently regardless of strategic interests, or we acknowledge that these are merely tools of power, invoked cynically and discarded readily. The events of December and early January make clear which option describes our actual international system. The only question is whether we have the honesty to admit it.
The author is the convenor at China Retold, a member of the Legislative Council, and a member of the Central Committee of the New People’s Party.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
