Thank you dear subscribers, we are overwhelmed with your response.
Your Turn is a unique section from ThePrint featuring points of view from its subscribers. If you are a subscriber, have a point of view, please send it to us. If not, do subscribe here: https://theprint.in/
There was a time when presidents spoke carefully about other people’s revolutions. Not because they lacked opinions, but because they understood consequences. Today, a few keystrokes suffice. A foreign society is urged to “take over its institutions.” “Help is on the way.” Applause follows. International law quietly steps back.
This is not moral courage. It is diplomatic vandalism.
Let us be clear. Condemning repression is legitimate. Expressing concern over human rights is routine. But when the President of the United States publicly exhorts citizens of another sovereign country to seize their institutions, the language crosses from advocacy into interference. That distinction matters. It is the difference between law and chaos.
The prohibition on intervention is not an ornamental clause in the UN Charter. It is the spine of the post-1945 international order. Article 2(7) exists precisely to prevent powerful states from weaponising internal unrest elsewhere. History taught this lesson brutally. From Hungary to Chile, from Afghanistan to Libya, foreign encouragement of internal political takeover rarely ends in liberal democracy. It ends in civil war, proxy conflict, and shattered states.
Supporters of such presidential rhetoric argue that words are not weapons. International law disagrees. In its landmark 1986 judgment in Nicaragua v. United States, the International Court of Justice held that intervention becomes unlawful when it seeks to influence another state’s political system through coercion. Coercion does not require tanks. It can consist of economic pressure, diplomatic threats, or—crucially—political encouragement issued with the authority of a foreign state.
That authority is the point. A president is not a celebrity activist. He is the state. His statements are attributable conduct. When he speaks, the world hears not opinion but power. Promising “help” while urging institutional takeover is not neutral solidarity. It signals backing. It invites escalation. It alters calculations on the ground, often with lethal consequences for those encouraged to believe that external rescue will arrive.
This is why international law draws a bright line between general human-rights advocacy and regime-change signalling. The former is permissible. The latter is corrosive. Human rights treaties do not authorise foreign leaders to incite institutional seizure. Nor does the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, which applies only to mass atrocity crimes and only through multilateral UN processes. Unilateral megaphone diplomacy dressed up as moral urgency is not R2P. It is something far older and uglier.
The deeper danger lies beyond the immediate target country. International law survives on reciprocity. Once the leading architect of the rules demonstrates that sovereignty is optional when inconvenient, others will follow. Beijing will not forget this language when speaking about Taiwan. Moscow will cite it when justifying “protective” interventions. Regional powers will invoke it to legitimise interference in neighbours they find troublesome.
The United States cannot credibly insist on territorial integrity in one breath and cheer institutional overthrow in another. Sovereignty is not a buffet. Either it restrains everyone, or it restrains no one.
There is also a question of prudence, which international law assumes but does not enforce. Encouraging people to confront entrenched regimes from afar is easy. Living with the aftermath is harder. When protesters are crushed, foreign leaders do not bleed with them. When societies fracture, external cheerleaders move on. Law exists precisely to dampen this moral recklessness.
None of this is a defence of authoritarianism. Brutality deserves condemnation. But international law was never designed to reward virtue; it was designed to restrain power. Its most important function is not to judge the wicked, but to discipline the strong when temptation beckons.
The office of the presidency carries weight because it is meant to rise above impulse. When presidential statements resemble street chants rather than statecraft, the dignity of the office suffers and the legal order weakens. This is not merely a stylistic lapse. It is a strategic one.
International law does not collapse in dramatic moments. It erodes through precedent, applause, and selective amnesia. Each time a powerful leader treats non-intervention as optional, the rule-based order loses another brick.
And when it finally gives way, no tweet will rebuild,
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.