Comment by boramalper

Especially when no nation wants to touch this (e.g., Starmer being very quick to say that the UK wasn’t involved, etc.), it only reinforces that any power willing or able to make a bold move like this will likely not face much opposition (also see Russia in Ukraine).

> A worry is the step will encourage other regimes that feel they have might to remove leaders they do not like and replace them with marionette-like figures

Go type "list Russian regime change operations from the last 20 years" in chatgpt.

Can't rule out Leopold's Congo scenario, as the first comments do not look good:

* resource extraction focus

* dismissal of local leadership (Machado "does not have the following or respect" -- Nobel hurting?)

* no transition plan to self-governance (perhaps it is early)

* military occupation ("not afraid of boots on the ground", "military will protect oil operations")

These things happened today subsequent to Venezuela:

North Korea ‘has fired ballistic missile towards the Sea of Japan’ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/03/north-korea-ha...

UK and France carry out strikes against Isis target in Syria https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/politics/uk-france-s...

It's not just encouraging, it's almost making it a necessity. Putting aside one's respect for law may be a matter of responsibility when your competitors are gaining advantage by not playing by the rules.

The UN permanent security council members are (or were meant to be) precisely the countries that are so powerful they can choose to invade you and nobody can stop them. The hope was that by letting them veto you, they'll veto you instead of invading you.

Xi Jinping is probably sending thank you cards to Trump right about now.

That's the point of being a permanent member of UN Security Council -- it's a position of power, not of subordination.

Even if you'd accept this warped logic, I don't see how you'd get from "this was just a slightly more complex police action" to "we're gonna run the country from now on and take over the oil sector", legally speaking...

Might makes right.

I think the (disputable) argument is that, for global stability and equilibrium reasons, there should be a general prohibition against kidnapping/assassination of de facto heads of state, regardless of whether they were legitimately elected or are dictators.

I contend my net worth is actually 9 figures

It's also widely acknowledged that elections in Russia are rigged, and yet the US was quite angry at Ukraine over Russia's (false, as it turned out) claim that Ukraine attacked Putin...

> Note the US administration contends that he wasn't the legitimate head of state. [1] [2]

Trump contends that Biden wasn't the legitimate President because the 2020 election was rigged.

If Trump ends up contending the 2026 mid-terms are not legitimate is that valid too? Are they able to act on those contentions to… do stuff?

The 3rd section of the 14th amendment[1] states that no person having engaged in insurrection[2] shall hold any office, civil or military, in the United States. So technically Trump isn’t a legitimate head of state either.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

[2]https://www.npr.org/2025/12/31/g-s1-104190/capitol-riot-trum...

Well Russia contends Zelensky isn't the legitimate head of state of Ukraine.

So did the EU parliament and a whole range of European countries

Honestly, I'm getting increasingly fascinated with the utterly absurd logic that states are putting into their justifications for war.

You get "preemptive self defense" that urgently requires "buffer zones" on foreign territory, which then mysteriously become your own territory and have to be defended with even more buffer zones.

Some Terror Regime of Literal Nazis is doing Unspeakable Atrocities to its own population which practically forces you to invade the country purely out of empathy and the goodness of your heart. Nevermind that the population has never asked for the invasion and will in fact be worse off through the war than before - and that this other state who is your ally is doing the exact same things, but then it's suddenly "realpolitik" and just the way the world works.

Someone has broken the law of his own country. "Internal affairs" or grounds for invasion? Depends if he is your ally or enemy.

Pardon the cynicism, but my growing impression is that war justifications only serve as discussion fodder for domestic audiences and have very little to do with the actual war.

You know the president said that the Epstein files were a democrat hoax, right?

I feel like at this stage the US administration could contend that the moon is in fact made of cheese and news agencies would respond by running news stories about the implications of this on future possible lunar missions.

> I could easily see situations where some of these could be beneficial for the greater good.

The greater good of whom? Regardless, we have international organizations where action can be taken by a coalition is states, which provides not only legitimacy but also some level of judicial control.

This is so obviously an imperialist power play for the world's largest oil reserves. That some would portray this as acting for the greater good is beyond ridiculous.

I could go along with this to some degree if any country would be able to act the same way the USA is doing; then there would be a balance of power. But as it is, only a small number of powerful nations are able to act like this, without military repercussions.

So if Venezuela wanted to forcefully reverse a coup in the USA? Or Canada wanted to reverse election fraud in the USA?

They can’t. So the USA shouldn’t either.

Unless you can tolerate living by the whim of a more powerful bully.

Which I, as a non-us resident/citizen, am forced to tolerate now, but don’t like.

So no, I don’t think nations can justify interfering in sovereign nations by force for any reason.

I appreciate your world view and politico-science philosophical approach, but Venezuela has natural resources, is close to the USA, and decided to mingle with American competitors.

Venezuela was supported via economic trade with nations not aligned with US objectives in exchange for security guarantees that would supposedly prevent US intervention.

More concretely: Russia was supposedly supporting them through economic activity and arms trades. Russia is overextended in Ukraine which is providing an opening and a cautionary signal to any other state that has Russian support that, in fact, any Russian security guarantees aren’t backed by more than words. See Iran and Syria as well.

This is very transactional and a spheres of influence move. It’s also pressuring Russia to find an Ukraine deal fast. The longer they’re in Ukraine the more their global sphere of influence is being reduced due to their inability to fight multiple military fronts at once.

Unclear how China fits in the picture.

> Whether any one country should be global police or not is a very difficult question to answer

I don’t think it’s that difficult to answer, and the answer is “no” for two main reasons:

1. I don’t think the US has the greater good of humanity in mind nor even of its citizens except a minority, when it’s policing around.

2. Even if we were to assume otherwise (that the US concerns itself with the greater good), “who will watch the watchmen?” Especially when its institutions are being undermined day by day…

> What about dictators? What about military coups and forcefully reversing them?

Once upon a time, “forcefully” doing anything with any country for any reason was considered an act of war. I agree that bad people should be removed from power. But the consequences associated with doing so forcefully (i.e., engaging in acts of war) need to be fully acknowledged and dealt with. The U.S. (and others) have played this game of “military actions” for so long that we, the regular people, have taken up that language uncritically as well. Once force enters, it is an act of war. Period. A discussion about whether country A should declare a war to remove the leader of country B is a much more honest and accurate one than vaguely positing whether country A can “capture” the leader of country B.

Right, and in theory that all sounds very thoughtful and morally calibrated—until you remember that U.S. foreign policy decision-making has roughly the transparency of a raccoon operating a shredder at midnight. There is no clear, open process where the U.S. earnestly weighs “dictator versus coup versus fraudulent election” on some ethical flowchart labeled For the Greater Good. Instead, it’s often more like: Is there oil? A lot of oil? Like, cartoonishly large amounts of oil? Because if there is, suddenly democracy becomes very important, very quickly.

And yes, we’re told—solemnly—that every intervention is about democracy, human rights, and justice, which is fascinating because those principles have an uncanny habit of aligning perfectly with strategic interests. Venezuela is a great example, where the rhetoric about freedom somehow managed to coexist with very unsubtle comments about wanting “all that oil.” At that point, the moral argument starts to feel less like a difficult philosophical dilemma and more like a PowerPoint slide hastily slapped over a resource grab labeled “Don’t Look Behind This.”

So while you’re absolutely right that the question of global policing isn’t black and white, the problem is that U.S. interventions often aren’t shades of gray either—they’re shades of green. And once that’s the pattern, claims about benevolent intent stop sounding like hard ethical reasoning and start sounding like a press release written by someone who assumes the audience has the memory of a goldfish.

Maduro is obviously authoritarian. But if the US want to make the world a more democratic place by going to war I could think of a long list of countries they could attack before Venezuela.

there's a lot of assumptions here, but granting it's a difficult question: this is why the legislature holds the responsibility to decide, not the executive.

Basically the entire theme of the Culture novels by Iain. M. Banks.

Look at the track record of past US interventions. In hindsight, they almost never "beneficial for the greater good". Things turn to chaos quickly.

It would be true if the invading dictator didn’t have ulterior motives and dubious intentions.

> Whether any one country should be global police or not is a very difficult question to answer, but at the same time I could easily see situations where some of these could be beneficial for the greater good.

I would argue that it should be the UN that does something like this, if it's done at all. I would like to see a world in which there was a top-level body that would arrest a dictator, the same way the US government would arrest someone who tried to become dictator of an American state.

But it wouldn't be up to the governor of one of the other states to do it without the agreement of the rest of the country. That would be chaos.

Sadly I don't think anyone is coming to save us.

Intervening in another nation, for whatever purposes, requires much more discussion and negotiations than there was here.

And where do you stop?

If Trump is prosecutor, judge and executioner all in one, then who is a good person and who is a bad person?

So...

Nicolás Maduro Moros of Venezuela - drugs - bad... (got kidnapped by Trump)

Juan Orlando Hernández of Honduras - drug - gooood.... (got pardoned by Trump)

> What about dictators? What about military coups and forcefully reversing them? Election fraud?

My country, USA, yearns for freedom. Please someone, anyone, liberate us!

It's never anybody's business to remove a dictator but its own people. End of story.

Nobody else has the right to have anything to do with it, unless that dictator is attacking you.

If Trump becomes dictator tomorrow, is Xi allowed to invade and capture him? Or is it reserved only for small and weak countries while the big ones can do whatever they want?

Both countries involved are currently dictatorships. Consider the role reversal: Would it be good if Maduro invaded the USA and kidnapped Trump? Why or why not?

It's very black and white. It's an internal affair, and no one elected the USA to be the police of the world.

We could also argue that even internally in the US, the current president was not democratically elected. Maybe you agree that another state should go there and remove him, just because.

I for one would support a Native American take over of the White House, and giving them back their country. You seem to support this logic

How about the country doing the capturing stays the fuck out of the business of all the other countries instead ?

Escalations like this push the doomsday clock closer and closer to midnight, no matter how well intentioned, and I can't say I think Trump has good intentions anyway. America is just privateering, these days.

So we can justify, say, deposing the king of Saudi Arabia? Or Zelenskyy on the pretext that he hasn’t held a timely election? Or the president of Taiwan on the basis of illegitimacy of the election? Regardless of Maduro’s sins, this is a massively destabilizing action and I expect we will see unpleasant downstream effects even if, in a vacuum, the action was justifiable and legal.

If only there was some process in the constitution for Congress to declare a war or something.

> I think we can both agree that lawfully and democratically elected leader of country A having a lawfully and democratically elected leader of country B captured is bad, for all the obvious reasons. What about ${WHATABOUTISM}?

I think a regime that is hell-bent on kidnapping foreign leaders at the whim of it's glorious leader by circumventing any of it's checks and balances, such as congress approval, is clearly and by far the worst problem.

And calling the US under the Trump administration "democratic" is a hell of a stretch, even as a thought experiment.

Yes, obviously it's the US defending Democracy, and not salivating about the Oil reserves, like Trump and other conservatives did on TV the last weeks

Having lived roughly 50 years on the planet, I recognise this as both a view I used to hold and as pretty naive.

Why then doesn't the US attack other countries that fit the description? It's another dangerous precedent.

Edit: I fully understand the deterrents. I'm making the case that attacking for the sake of 'liberty for all' is a farce.

The world is full of dictators, one of them just a few miles from Florida, yet the USA only seems interested in dictators with plenty of oil.

You fool no one.

Yeah, I'll defer judgement of this for 5 years, after we see: results in Venezuela. How this emboldens other wannabe agressors elsewhere in the world, and where the erosion of respect for rules of UN charter will lead.

Until then, the only conclusion I’m comfortable drawing is this: anyone confidently declaring that kidnappings, bombings, and killings are great for democracy, without waiting to see if there are any real long-term benefits, isn’t offering serious analysis. They’re just enthusiastically clapping for violence and hoping history does the cleanup later.

How did that work out for Iraq?

It wasn't a good day for the million Iraqi civilians that the US murdered.

Completely agree.

Are we against democracy now?

Maduro is the elected president. Don't spread misinformation.

Amusingly what you described translates to USA actions if you are from a country in the middle east. For example did you know that there are at least 5M emigrants of Afghanistan in Iran?

Not arguing about other nations actions, just a reminder that if you apply many western logic indiscriminately, the resulting bad actors are very different.

So if China came in and "helped" the Venezuelan people to get rid of Maduro, you'd feel the same way? Of course not.

> then you’ve effectively endorsed a world where power, not law, decides regime change.

This has always been the case throughout the vast majority of human history including current day.

You are sovereign if you can prove it, and you aren't sovereign if you can't.

"International law" is something superpowers ignore at will. It is not "wrong" or "right", it simply is.

What's that have to do with it being a sovereign state? By that standard, neither Russia nor China are sovereign states.

And it's not like the US gives a shit about democracy outside its borders. The CIA overthrew Jacobo Árbenz in the 50s, supported the military coup in Brazil in 1964, pinochet and Hugo Banzer in the 70s. This is normal behavior for the US in Latin America. It's nothing to do with concern for Venezuela's citizens.

There's really no benefit in arguing on the basis of the definition of sovereignty. There is no definition. It's a self-evident state: if you assert that you are sovereign, and you can back it up, then you're sovereign. That's it.

I am going to assume that if you were old enough at the time that you thought Iraq had WMD's?

How people can just read one article and think they know the world is fascinating to me.

What's kind of shocking to me is that no matter how obvious they make the motives this time, and how clearly Venezuela doesn't pose a threat, I'm still reading the same Bush-era justifications ironically being offered in the comments.

Substack is another good platform for nuanced discussions. The Notes feature is a bit like Twitter but with +20 IQ points. Literally the first post that popped up when I opened the app:

https://substack.com/@jaysophalkalyan/note/c-194741864?

Yep - Reddit is unfortunately now where the simpletons hang out. This is far better, you can have intelligent debates

I think I agree. For anyone paying attention, the new rules have been officially established and I don't think they bode that well for previous international order. Still, I am only processing the news and I guess I will need to watch the conference now.

That's empirically wrong. Also nearly every single Venezuelan who's left the country since Chavez is against Maduro

No, they lost the 2024 election by a landslide, it’s one of the reasons of what happened today.

Something like 50% of the population of the world live under rulers who were not democratically elected. Should the US taxpayers fund all of their removals?

On top of that, removing a ruler without any plan for follow-up frequently makes things worse, not better. We seem to have already forgotten that removing the leadership of Iraq led to the rise of ISIS and its horrifying consequences.

This is a point worth discussing imo. To what extent is the state of a nation and the conditions of its people, the responsibility of the people itself, even if they're oppressed?

The Russians were oppressed and had a revolution about it. Then they didn't like Communism anymore and broke up the USSR about it. Taiwan had a military dictatorship that was killing and jailing people in the thousands, and managed to overthrow it with absolutely zero outside intervention in the 90s, all while the PRC salivated over taking the country even back then.

I'm not sure I think "citizens should just be left to suffer under brutal regimes," but I also want to avoid a prejudice of low expectations. I also wonder, to what degree do citizens bear shared responsibility for the crimes their government commits against others? How responsible for the invasion of Ukraine are Russians for not deposing Putin? How responsible are Americans for the destabilization in southeast Asia, the middle east, south America?

Russia is already doing horrible things without this pretext, so I dont think this argument holds.

Pulled what off? Russia was trying to occupy Ukraine, not just kill Zelensky (though they’d obviously like to do that).

Trump announced that the plan is to “run Venezuela” but there are no troops on the ground, the US controls no territory. This isn’t The Wizard of Oz where you kill the wicked witch and the flying monkeys leave. This is only just starting.

High probability that trump gets distracted by something else and forgets, but if not welcome to the next three years of your life.