President declares Venezuelan airspace 'closed.'

On Saturday, on his social network, the President of the United States posted that the airspace over Venezuela was, by his order, “closed.” The post used capital letters. It instructed all parties, “drug dealers and traffickers as well as airlines,” to “consider it closed in its entirety.”

This is, in international law, a category mistake. Sovereign airspace, as defined by Article 1 of the 1944 Convention on International Civil Aviation, belongs to the country underneath it. Venezuela’s airspace is the airspace of Venezuela. The United States can declare a no-fly zone over Venezuela, can intercept aircraft entering Venezuelan airspace, can shoot at airplanes; but the United States cannot, in any legal sense, close the airspace. Closing the airspace is something Venezuela does. The country one wants to close the airspace of is generally not the country one consults before doing so.

The Federal Aviation Administration, by Sunday afternoon, had issued no formal NOTAM. The Defense Department, by Sunday afternoon, had issued no formal regulation. The State Department had not notified the International Civil Aviation Organization. What had happened is that the President had posted a sentence in the genre of an executive order without the form of one. Airlines had to decide what to do with the sentence on a Saturday afternoon.

Iberia rerouted. Avianca rerouted. Caribbean Airlines suspended Caracas service. American carriers had stopped serving Venezuela in 2019, so the question for them was academic. International carriers, however, were obliged to read the President’s social-media post as if it were a regulation, because the consequences of treating it as one were lower than the consequences of treating it as not one. This is the structure under which we now operate. The President’s social-media post is a soft regulation. The aviation industry obeys it because the alternative is to be shot at.

The Venezuelan government, on Sunday, called the announcement “an act of war” and asked the United Nations Security Council to convene. The Security Council, on Monday, convened. The American ambassador said the post was not a declaration of war and was, in fact, “consistent with the President’s longstanding authorities.” The President’s longstanding authorities, in this matter, are not what the President says they are. They are what Article 1 of the 1944 Convention says they are.

We are now closing other countries’ airspace by Truth Social.

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