Comment by Etheryte

> 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.