sovereignty

In January 2026, the United States executed a transnational arrest operation against a sitting head of state. This case study examines how legal reclassification, incentive inversion, and precision force combined to validate Kinetic Law Enforcement as a viable replacement for war against mid-tier regimes.

Kinetic Law Enforcement is a doctrine where a hegemon applies domestic criminal law extraterritorially and enforces it with military force, allowing regime decapitation and asset seizure without declaring war.

The physical extraction of a sitting head of state by a foreign power—framed as a law enforcement action rather than an act of war—is a distinct and rare projection of power.