The international system is undergoing a dangerous mutation. What once functioned, however imperfectly, as a rules-based order is fast giving way to an arena governed by raw power, selective legality, and coercive force. Norms that were meant to restrain the strong and protect the weak are being hollowed out in full view of the world.
The unilateral adventurism pursued under US President Donald Trump, beginning with Venezuela and extending toward Gaza, Iran, and Afghanistan, has not merely destabilised individual theatres. It has corroded the very foundations on which collective security rests.
For South Asia, this erosion is neither abstract nor distant. It is immediate and structural, touching borders, diplomacy, and internal stability of countries in the region. In a world where power increasingly trumps law, long-standing disputes risk being settled not through dialogue or arbitration, but through force dressed up as inevitability.
The forced arrest and extraterritorial transfer of Venezuela’s president to the United States, carried out without authorization from the United Nations Security Council, marked a decisive rupture with international legal norms. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter explicitly prohibits the threat or use of force against the political independence of any state. Yet this prohibition was brushed aside. The message was stark. Sovereignty is conditional. International law binds only when it aligns with power.
This act was not an aberration or a momentary lapse. It was a declaration of intent. In dismantling a long-standing taboo, Washington did not merely damage its own credibility. It created a precedent with global reverberations. Other states, watching closely, learned that if power is sufficient and consequences manageable, rules can be bent or ignored. The cumulative effect of such lessons is corrosive. They weaken the restraint that prevents regional crises from spiralling into wider conflagrations.
Trump’s carefully cultivated image as a transactional peacemaker collapsed under the weight of these actions. He was no longer perceived as an intermediary capable of brokering compromise, but as a catalyst of instability. This reputational implosion carries strategic consequences far beyond Washington. Any peace initiative emanating from the United States, whether in Gaza, South Asia, or the Persian Gulf, is now met with deep scepticism.
For South Asia, inhabited by two nuclear-armed states, the erosion of credible mediation mechanisms magnifies escalation risks and narrows diplomatic off-ramps.
The most immediate casualty of this loss of trust was Trump’s proposed Gaza peace plan. Even before the Venezuela episode, Muslim states within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation harboured serious reservations. The architecture of the plan was intrinsically coercive. It envisaged an International Stabilisation Force, disproportionately composed of troops from Muslim countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, tasked with disarming Hamas.
Cynical Proposal
This proposal was strategically cynical. After years of sustained Israeli military operations, marked by indiscriminate bombardment, siege warfare, and mass civilian casualties, Israel failed to dismantle Hamas. Trump’s solution was to subcontract this failure to Muslim armies, thereby externalising political cost and moral responsibility. The burden of enforcing an unjust status quo was to be shifted onto states already grappling with their own security challenges.
Gaza, however, was not an isolated theatre. Israel’s recognition of Somaliland as an independent entity, reportedly facilitated by United States backing, revealed a more insidious design. Somaliland’s leadership maintained active contact with American officials, and the strategic objective was scarcely concealed. Reports pointed to the possible relocation of Gaza’s Palestinian population to Somaliland, confinement in vast camps, and the indirect transfer of Gaza to Israeli control under the euphemism of reconstruction.
Such a scheme would amount to forced population transfer, a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention. That such demographic engineering could even be contemplated underscores the moral vacuum produced by unchecked unilateralism. When the guardians of international law are themselves its violators, the space for atrocity widens.
From Venezuela and Gaza, the trajectory advances inexorably toward Iran. Following the Venezuela operation, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly revived regime change rhetoric against Tehran. Media reports speculated about Iranian leaders preparing contingency exits, drawing superficial parallels with Syria. Tehran categorically rejected these narratives and issued an unequivocal warning. Iran, it insisted, is not Venezuela.
Unlike Caracas, Tehran commands substantial conventional forces, asymmetric deterrence capabilities, and deep regional alliances. Any attempt at regime change would ignite a conflagration extending far beyond Iran’s borders. The Persian Gulf, already a volatile artery of global energy supply, would become a battlefield. Markets would convulse, alliances would fracture, and non-state actors would exploit the chaos.
For Pakistan, an Iran conflict represents a proximate and multidimensional threat. Iran shares an extensive western border with Pakistan, cutting across sensitive and underdeveloped regions. War would generate immediate spillover effects, including border instability, militant cross-movement, and economic disruption. Pakistan’s security forces, already stretched, would face strategic overstretch at precisely the moment when restraint is most needed.
The humanitarian dimension is equally severe. An attack on Iran could displace millions, triggering refugee flows toward Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkiye, and Europe. Pakistan, already burdened by decades of Afghan displacement, would confront a dual refugee crisis with profound socioeconomic and security implications. Such pressures rarely remain contained. They strain social cohesion and create fertile ground for radicalisation.
Afghanistan further complicates this strategic geometry. Trump’s repeated fixation on reclaiming Bagram airbase betrays a sequencing logic of intervention. Venezuela, Gaza, Iran, and Afghanistan appear not as isolated crises but as interconnected nodes in a worldview that privileges coercion over consensus. Any renewed United States military footprint in Afghanistan would be logistically untenable without Pakistani cooperation.
Islamabad thus confronts an acute dilemma. Refusal to cooperate invites diplomatic retaliation and economic pressure. Cooperation risks internal destabilisation and the revival of proxy warfare that Pakistan has spent years trying to escape. This dilemma is intensified by the collapse of international norms that once constrained escalation and offered smaller states some measure of predictability.
In a world where sovereignty has already been compromised by great-power adventurism, such threats acquire dangerous plausibility, this could be exploited within South Asia.
When the United States violates sovereignty in Venezuela and elsewhere, its moral authority to restrain the use of unilateral force in Kashmir evaporates. Silence becomes complicity, and selective outrage becomes the norm.
Though India publicly champions strategic autonomy and denies external mediation in 2025, the erosion of credible mediation renders future crises more volatile. Without trusted intermediaries, India may calculate that limited aggression, covert operations, and hybrid warfare can be pursued with relative impunity.
For Pakistan, the strategic implications are severe. It confronts a convergence of threats. The erosion of international law, fears of Indian aggression, western border instability, humanitarian pressures, and hybrid warfare intersect in dangerous ways.
The central danger is not Donald Trump alone, but the cumulative effect of power displacing law. When sovereignty becomes conditional and aggression normalised, flashpoints like Kashmir transform from frozen disputes into potential detonators of systemic conflict.
If this trajectory remains unchecked, the world risks sliding into a multi-theatre crisis in which Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, Afghanistan, and Kashmir converge into a single systemic breakdown. Those who exploit disorder may soon discover that instability is indiscriminate. When international law collapses under the weight of power, its costs are borne not by its architects, but by those forced to live amid the ruins.
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