19 January 2026
Let’s trade democratic institutions for democratic freedoms!
by Leonid Nikitinsky
Source: Novaya gazeta
The Donald Trump phenomenon (Trumpism) is characterized by the de facto dismantling of the concept of checks and balances, first enshrined in the US Constitution of 1787, as well as by a shockingly frank realpolitik. In Congress, the question of whether the operation to seize Maduro was lawful, from their (US) point of view, is only now being debated, but the deed has already been done, and the sovereign head of state of Venezuela is in the hands of the US judicial system. Had the operation been coordinated with Congress, it would simply have been impossible.
Everyone understands that drug trafficking is more of a pretext than the actual goal of the special military operation, but on the surface, it looks to be a case of inflicting lesser harm in order to prevent a greater one – that is, of actions carried out under conditions of extreme necessity.
Maduro is accused of distributing cocaine on US territory, and it is on this basis that he will be tried here and under the laws of this country. This is a rather dubious construction, justified solely by references to US law, and it certainly does not render the seizure itself lawful. In theory, US security services should in such a case have approached Venezuela with a request for Maduro’s extradition, rather than abducting him.
Thus, Trump, acting as the head (sovereign) of the United States, at this place and time disregarded not only US parliamentary procedures, but also the law of Venezuela as well as international law protecting the country’s sovereignty.
This alongside other rapid actions by Trump (the detention of shadow fleet tankers, and who knows what else to expect from him) can be interpreted either as violations of the sovereignty of other states, or – following the principle of ‘the king is dead, long live the king’ – as the emergence of a new framework of international law, in which the United States lays claim to the role of ‘global policeman.’ The future will show to what extent this claim is justified, but it has been stated quite openly.
Sovereignty is Being Eroded
No one today can predict how the international balance of power will look even five years from now, but it is useful to consider current trends through the lens of such concepts as ‘sovereignty’ and ‘sovereign’.
The internal and external essence of sovereignty marks the boundary that separates national and international law.
Sovereignty is defined as the supreme authority of the sovereign within national borders and the independence of the state from other countries in its external relations. It is a political concept, but the real substance of sovereignty depends, first and foremost, on the economy.
One can imagine a hypothetical, dynamic map of sovereignties on which today the United States, a united Europe, and China would stand out (whereas only some forty years ago China’s place was occupied by the USSR). Yet even their sovereignty is not absolute, since all are dependent on one another to a degree never seen before – all the way down to the level of spare parts. The alternative to such economic interdependence could be politically motivated autarky, but it is unlikely that a state adopting an isolationist stance could develop successfully.
Our ‘map’ must be overlaid with the complex patterns of bilateral and multilateral treaties that bind states to one another. This is international law, under which states cede part of their sovereignty in exchange for guarantees of compliance with collective rules, military assistance, economic support, and so forth.
An example of such an agreement is the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe of 1975 (the Helsinki Accords). Within its framework, the USSR in particular, in exchange for economic concessions, undertook obligations – albeit insincerely – to observe the human rights and freedoms widely recognised in the West. Today, the question of whether human rights pertain solely to the internal dimension of state sovereignty or also to its external aspect remains disputed (in 2022, the Russian Federation adopted the former position by withdrawing from the Council of Europe).
However, unlike at the national level, there are no ‘institutions’ at the international level that would guarantee compliance with previously reached agreements and/or with the balance of power as it has actually taken shape. The UN is paralyzed by the very structure of the Security Council, whose permanent members veto one another’s initiatives. Individual states regulate emerging conflicts themselves, using either ‘soft’ power (in the form of sanctions) or hard military force. The bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities by Israeli aircraft, joined by the United States, in the absence of a casus belli, was justified in the spirit of ‘extreme necessity’ – preventing the creation of nuclear weapons in this highly unpredictable country.
Modern international law originated in the form of treaties between European states and until recently retained its ‘innate’ European character, an integral feature of which is the principle of equality among subjects. In recent years, an increasing number of countries have been asserting their claims on the international stage, where law is understood as hierarchical inequality; yet even before this, the issue had always been one of merely formal equality, which is not the same as a real balance of power.
The globalization of the world economy has called into question not only the external but internal sovereignty of countries with weak or unevenly developed economies: greater concentrations of soft and hard power are amassed by stronger states, enabling them to dictate terms to weaker ones.
The economic sovereignty of individual states is being eroded, yet their political claims are growing against this backdrop.
Sovereigns Concentrate Power in Their Hands
In the constitutions of most countries, including Russia, the ‘people’ are proclaimed the bearer of sovereignty, but this is a fiction. After the fall of monarchies, where the status of the sovereign rested on tradition and religion, it became necessary to re-establish the concept of the ‘sovereign’ as the holder of supreme power. Thus was born the construct of representative democracy, in which the ‘people’ delegate their sovereignty to a directly or indirectly elected head of state, who then becomes the real sovereign. He acquires not only control over lawmaking, but also the ‘right’ in cases of extreme necessity (invariably ‘in the interests of the people’), to suspend any law.
The ‘people’ by definition are not particularly competent and vote for those who are generous with promises. The importance of populism increases in direct proportion to the growing influence of mass media and social networks in popular society. The alienation between voters and the elected grows, and the latter begin to substitute themselves for the people.
Yet such a sovereign is not free in making decisions: he chooses those that will help preserve his popularity – so, ultimately, the rule of ‘sovereigns’ is the rule of the crowd (ochlocracy).
The decline of parliamentary and legal procedures has objective causes: in the twenty-first century, the pace of political and economic challenges has accelerated, driven by technological changes unprecedented by earlier standards. Power organized according to parliamentary principles simply cannot keep up with them.
Under these conditions, the emergence of figures with characteristics similar to Trump, including unpredictability and extravagance, at the helm of states is not a chance occurrence but a historical pattern. However, such figures are ambitious and prone to rivalry with one another, which increases the risk of international conflicts.
Meanwhile, the ‘sovereign,’ towards whom real power shifts in these circumstances, is not immune to erroneous decisions – decisions that a complex and detailed parliamentary procedure is designed to prevent. In an environment of accelerated change, the cost of such mistakes can be enormous, though the ‘sovereign,’ often bears no responsibility for them.
Human Rights: The Final Bastion of Democracies
Today, global conditions for democracies are poor. This does not mean that winter will not eventually give way to summer again, but the timing of its arrival is not yet visible from here.
Trump speaks almost openly about the fact that democratic rights and freedoms mean nothing to him. In reality, what he steps over first and foremost are democratic institutions. So be it: in a situation where sovereigns have ridden the wave of populism and political technologies, the struggle for democratic institutions at the national level loses its meaning anyway.
From a humanist perspective, it remains meaningful to defend civil liberties – above all, freedom of speech, conscience, and assembly. Because the path to democratic institutions has been known since the seventeenth century and has already been travelled once: it is the slow path of enlightenment.
Stability and predictability are not only the result of the application of law, but are also its condition. In an unpredictable world, no law – international or otherwise – is possible. When, under which flag, and at what cost, a new normal (stability) will be established is something we cannot yet know – just as we cannot know who will succeed President Trump after three years of the turbulence brought about by his personal imprint.
Translated by Annabel Pedgley
