By K S T Qureshi

The arrest of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, and their captivity in New York has become a prism through which competing understandings of democracy, power and international order collide. When read alongside broader precedents, such as the removal of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, capture of Emmanuel Noriega, the pattern becomes clearer. More recently, the fall of Sheikh Hasina following a student-led uprising completes this picture, revealing three distinct yet intertwined narratives. Together, they do not resolve the question of American interventionism; rather, they expose its enduring contradiction-ridden commitment to custodianship of democracy by wielding power and coercion.

At one pole lies the critique of American power as fundamentally corrosive to democracy. From this perspective, the seizure and detention of Maduro and Flores exemplifies the reduction of democracy to empty rhetoric. Democracy here is defined by processes such as due process, legal transparency, respect for sovereignty and the subordination of force to law. When a powerful state unilaterally captures individuals and detains them within its own jurisdiction, democracy ceases to function as a constraint on power and instead becomes its justification. The doctrine of might is right, long associated with imperial politics, quietly reasserts itself. The United States, in this reading, does not merely fail to defend democracy rather it actively hollows it out by normalising coercion under moral pretexts.

Standing in opposition is a second narrative that treats American action as a form of international democratic policing. Here, democracy is not reduced to procedure alone but understood as substantive legitimacy. Maduro’s ascent through a rigged election rejected by the United States and the West nullifies his claim to lawful authority. Sovereignty, therefore, is conditional where a regime that subverts elections, suppresses dissent, and governs without consent forfeits protection from external intervention. Within this framework, the arrest of Maduro and Flores is not lawlessness but enforcement, which is an assertion that democracy is a universal standard rather than a domestic preference.

Historical precedents are central to this defence. Saddam Hussein is portrayed as a ruler who waged a prolonged war against Iran, terrorised his own population, killed thousands of people, and invaded Kuwait. His removal was framed as the neutralisation of a tyrant to destabilise despotism rather than a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. Similarly, Muammar Gaddafi is depicted as a despot who denied his people education, rights, and political participation, keeping society deliberately subdued. Manuel Noriega’s capture and imprisonment similarly fit this pattern, as he was pursued by the United States for drug trafficking and for dismantling democratic governance in Panama, and removed as a leader deemed incompatible with regional stability and the rule of law. Western intervention, in this telling, appears as reluctant but necessary surgery that is destructive in method, but corrective in intent.

The third strand emerges where these two positions intersect and clash most sharply: the removal of Sheikh Hasina through a mass student uprising. Those critical of American power interpret this event as further evidence of covert manipulation. Sheikh Hasina’s repeated elections, not accepted by the United States and the West, are seen as the pretext for external engineering of regime change. Popular mobilisation, rather than being an autonomous democratic eruption, is reinterpreted as a convenient instrument. Democracy, once again, appears subordinated to geopolitical calculation.

Defenders of American custodianship read the same episode differently. If Sheikh Hasina’s electoral processes lacked credibility and democratic substance, then her removal – whether openly or covertly facilitated – fits squarely within the logic of democratic enforcement. Student uprisings are not puppeteer-crowds but triggers, releasing social pressures that authoritarian systems have artificially contained. Covert involvement is acknowledged as ethically uncomfortable, yet justified as pragmatism in contexts where formal democratic mechanisms have been systematically neutralised.

What distinguishes these positions is not their commitment to democracy, but their diagnosis of its vulnerability. The critical view sees democracy endangered primarily by excessive power where the stronger the actor, the greater the threat to law, accountability, and moral restraint. The custodial view sees democracy endangered by weakness where fragile institutions, manipulated elections, and entrenched autocracy that cannot be corrected from within. One fears the normalisation of coercion; the other fears paralysis in the face of authoritarian entrenchment. Read together, these narratives reveal that American interventionism functions simultaneously as negation and assertion of democratic principle. The same actions – arrests, regime change, covert encouragement of uprisings – can be interpreted either as violations of democracy or as its last line of defence. The United States thus occupies an ambiguous role. So, it is accused of dismantling democracy through force, on the one hand, and credited with rescuing it from hollowed-out regimes, on the other hand.

The combined story of Maduro, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Noriega and Sheikh Hasina does not yield a clean verdict. Instead, it exposes a contradiction at the heart of contemporary global politics. Democracy is said to be universal; so, it cannot be enforced selectively. Sovereignty is invoked as sacred; thus, it is suspended when legitimacy is questioned. Power is condemned for overreach, yet relied upon when institutions fail. In this unresolved tension lies the true character of the American paradox where democracy is defended in its name, violated in its execution, and endlessly debated in its consequences.