The declaration by U.S. President Donald J. Trump purporting to “close” Venezuelan airspace is not merely legally baseless—it is a blatant and unlawful assertion of extraterritorial authority, incompatible with the most fundamental principles of the international legal order. No State, under any circumstance short of a United Nations Security Council mandate or the express consent of the territorial State, may arrogate to itself the power to determine the status of another State’s airspace. The attempt to do so constitutes an act of interference that is legally void and politically unacceptable.
International law is unequivocal. Article 1 of the Chicago Convention codifies a rule of customary international law: every State exercises complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory. The declaration issued by the United States directly violates this rule. It is an attempt to substitute unilateral fiat for the binding multilateral norms that govern international civil aviation. Such conduct cannot be tolerated without eroding the foundational principle of sovereign equality upon which the entire system of international law rests.
The United States has no jurisdiction, no mandate, and no authority to impose any form of airspace restriction on Venezuela. There is no Security Council decision authorizing such a measure, no invocation of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and no legal justification that could remotely legitimize this action. By asserting a prerogative it does not possess, the United States has acted outside the law and in defiance of the international community’s collectively agreed rules.
This declaration is not a harmless political gesture; it is a coercive act aimed at undermining the territorial integrity of a sovereign State. Airspace is an intrinsic component of territory. Attempting to control or declare it “closed” is an intervention in the internal affairs of Venezuela and a violation of the prohibition of the threat or use of force under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. Even absent military deployment, the threat inherent in such a unilateral proclamation is unmistakable. It signals an intention to impose American will through coercion rather than through law or diplomacy.
Moreover, the attempt to influence the conduct of international airlines or third States through this declaration is equally illegitimate. A unilateral statement by a foreign government cannot alter the rights or obligations of third parties under the Chicago Convention or ICAO regulations. Any airline that refrains from entering Venezuelan airspace does so out of political pressure or fear—not out of legal obligation. The United States cannot unilaterally rewrite the legal framework of international aviation, and any effort to do so must be categorically rejected.
To allow such an act to pass without firm opposition would establish an extremely dangerous precedent. If one State is permitted to unilaterally “close” the airspace of another, the entire edifice of international civil aviation collapses. Sovereignty would become contingent on geopolitical power rather than on law. The multilateral system would be replaced by arbitrary and coercive unilateralism, with devastating consequences for the stability, safety, and predictability of international air navigation.
For all these reasons, the declaration must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. It is legally null and void, incompatible with the Charter of the United Nations, contrary to the Chicago Convention, and in flagrant violation of the principle of non-intervention. It represents an attempt to assert control where none exists and to impose unilateral coercive measures outside any legal framework. The international community has an obligation to reject this behaviour decisively in order to uphold the integrity of international law and to prevent further erosion of the principles that safeguard peace, sovereignty, and order among nations