Not taking sides here, just trying to steelman: some Venezuelans might be so done with Maduro, that they consider US getting the oil profits to be a fair price.
This is all irrelevant - it's completely unacceptable for the US President to send the military into another without Congressional approval, and to kidnap a leader at all (especially without a declaration or war or UN authorization).
The War Powers Act actually does allow this. Congress has to be back filled within 48 hours after the action (and they were). He can also station troops up to 60 days without congressional approval.
As Jonathan Turley reports https://jonathanturley.org/2026/01/03/the-united-states-capt... this operation will be justified as executing the criminal warrant (issued by the Biden DOJ and outstanding since 2029) and responding to an international drug cartel, a very similar legal framework to the one used against Noriega in 1989 - which was tested in multiple US courts. So like it or not there is longstanding court affirmed precedent supporting that earlier operation, which will now be used to defend the actions in Venezuela.
Does this mean trump will be pardoning Maduro on receipt of a sufficiently large bribe? That seems like the only explanation for recent pardon of former Honduran president Juan Hernandez.
Even before Trump v. United States, Maduro would have enjoyed immunity as a head of state. They still need him as a source of info on the generals. And if the drug smuggling explanation works, cartel details justifying maneuvers in Mexico.
So a thought experiment: If China were to put out a warrant for Trump's (the most unpopular president in US History, someone the majority of Americans disapprove of, a convicted criminal, and a pedophile who raped young people and has not been brought to account for these crimes as of yet) under the pretense that some of his victims were Chinese nationals and then invaded the Whitehouse to forcibly remove him to China, would that also be legal and justified ? What would you expect the reaction in the US to be ?
To be very clear I do not support this -- out leaders should be held to account to their people, not foreign invaders deciding for us. Even if it seems unlikely that they ever will be, it's our process and people.
This argument doesn't really hold water because the jurisdiction of a nation isn't the whole world.
If we have a warrant for a Sovereign or someone else with Diplomatic Immunity we -- at the very least -- should not invade their territory to carry it out. That's not how the civilized society works, and that's not how we want it to work as evidenced by the thought experiment above.
If we are at war with a nation or people, and reject the premise of their fundamental sovereign or diplomatic nature of course it's a different story since we are talking about a fundamental disagreement of reality. There's a separate process for that weighty decision by the US people's representatives.
well, there are ICC warrants. They do ignore diplomatic immunity. And opinion of many people that, for example, Netanyahu should be at least arrested if he lands in Europe and at most "somebody" should send extraction team to kidnap him
It seems like we should not invade another sovereign country unless we are at war -- a weighty process we should undergo because it's how the will of the people manifest in power.
The US isn't a participant to the ICC, so I'm not sure what exactly your implication is... ?
I do not think we should invade Israel and kidnap their leader. I believe the people of that country should self-govern within their sovereign rights. I don't think China should invade the US and kidnap it's leader. I believe the people of the US should self-govern within their sovereign rights. I don't believe the US should invade Venezuela and kidnap their leader. I believe the people of Venezuela should self-govern within their sovereign rights.
i was pointing out that diplomatic immunity (of head of state) that you mention is trashed by ICC warrants (in countries who are party to it. i.e. good chunk of europe).
so, in the moment that something as basic as diplomatic immunity can be violated by warrants for investigation (not for trial), invading another country to arrest somebody based on warrants that you had issued domestically is not that big of leap
You are talking about a after a country has decided that they want to participate in the this process by ratifying their participation intentionally. How does this relate to a unilateral invasion ?
Vienna Convention (1961): This treaty standardized the rules, making diplomatic immunity a binding obligation for its over 190 signatory nations
And then comes ICC (via Rome statue, ratified by 125 countries and half a dozen of them in process of withdrawal) and trashes with it warrants diplomatic immunity.
So in case international law/treaty from 1961 is all of sudden not binding, why wouldn't uniliteral invasion (actually it looks like it more of arrest operation) (which is probably prohibited by some other international treaties) not be ok ?
I do not understand the point you are making. You cite a treaty that countries explicitly agree to protect diplomats while they are guests in another country -- I'm not sure what relationship this has with one sovereign nation using force to rendition someone from another country.
The only country that has agreed to the terms of the ICC here is Venezuela -- but there is no ICC arrest warrant for anyone involved, nor is the US acting on behalf of the ICC nor does it have any authority to do so.
The invasion (which was required to perform the arrest, since it was within the territory) was definitely an invasion and morally wrong.
As noted several times, there are many ways that this could have been done that are in accordance with civil society it. It wasn't, and that is bad.
my point is that diplomatic immunity is international law. signatories to rome statue said that they will violate it (diplomatic immunity of Israeli head of state) because of icc warrant.
this is violation of international law that multiple countries openly stated that they will perform.
essentially it means that international law is not binding and selectively enforced. this is slippery slope.
if you can ignore vienna convention why not ignore whatever other part of international law that prohibits invasion ?
PS. UK and France just bombed ISIS in Syria. Is it also invasion and morally wrong ?
I still do not understand your point because as you state there is no conflict between the two agreements, and further there are no pair countries involved that mutually agreed to the ICC:
- Diplomatic Immunity (through various treaties): Countries that participate will respect diplomats
- ICC: Countries that agree will participate in ICC judicial process
From what I can tell, you seem to be under the impression that there's some conflict here. If that is your position then you are wrong. A country can both simultaneously respect foreign diplomats and work with the ICC to ensure that local citizens are held accountable in the ICC.
BUT, a further point -- international law can never be binding. It's between sovereign peers, and is based on the concept of reciprocal benefit. International treaties give the participants some benefit in exchange for something else. This has to be the case because there is no superior entity to arbitrate violations of the law. If you don't keep up your end of the bargain, you risk the other participants not keeping up their end of the bargain.
This is, for example, why having the top US officials committing war crimes is bad -- it's not because some superior nation will inflict justice upon the violator (because no such entity exists) but because other signatories have no legal obligation to not commit war crimes against us (although, many people are morally opposed to most war crimes and wouldn't commit them anyway).
A further note about your PS, which seems unrelated to the topic is that bombing isn't itself an invasion (it may be part of one), but for my opinion I think that killing people without due process is bad and should be a last resort for defense.
I've had some additional time to reflect on this thread and I think I can spot the core disconnect.
Do you believe that the Vienna Convention requires that countries treat their diplomatic representatives in some special legal way ? For example, do you believe that the Vienna Convention obligates the US to extend diplomatic immunity to the US Ambassador to France ?
If so, that's backwards. It doesn't obligate one country to treat their own diplomats specially inside their own legal system, it defines how participants of the treaty will treat FOREIGN diplomats. The benefit of being part of the treaty is that your diplomats are treated specially when they are in foreign lands, and the cost is you treat foreign diplomats specially when they are in your land.
The currency of treaties is reciprocity.
A treaty can never be binding, there exists no superior entity for which to bring your appeal which can then ultimately use their monopoly on force to extract justice -- each nation is sovereign and a peer in that respect.
Finally, I didn't address your last paragraph but I will now: It does not matter if the USA calls it a law enforcement operation and not invasion, it was still an invasion. It was an invasion because it meets the definition of the word. But ALSO it wasn't a law enforcement operation because the laws of the US do not apply in Venezuela. Also, it's illegal in the US to use the US Military for enforcing US laws except in times of invasion... although it sadly specifies that the US must be the entity being invaded, not just there be an invasion.
So it sounds to me like you are stating that you are okay with the original premise that it would be okay for China to come to the US Whitehouse and forcibly remove Trump to China to stand trial for the crimes he may have committed against Chinese nationals ?
I would love to live in a world where every government was democratically elected by an informed populace and never tried to assert authority outside it's borders.
> not how this works
When you say this, what exactly are you referring to?
Just because something is happening doesn't mean it's according to the law or even morally justified. We are discussing whether it is lawful, not whether it actually happened or whether they are capable of doing it with or without consequences.
You believe in something which has never existed and will never exist. In international relations, there has never been anything besides "might is right". Anything else is an illusion. At most something that leaders pay lip service to, when it aligns with their own goals.
The law of the jungle is reality. World War II was won by terror bombing civilians. It is lamentable, but reality is reality. So to say "that's not how it works" is denying reality.
“Never”? Not once in the Story of Us has any dispute between large groups of humans been resolved by anything other than a superior application of brute force? Strong claim, but I’ll run with it.
And you appear to believe this is a pretext for humans to ignore their own laws and commit atrocities, when they could choose otherwise.
It may be reality that jungle law is currently how humans almost always handle conflict at nation-state scale. Non sequitur that it should remain so.
Unfortunately thats how the politics and economics of violence work when you are the most powerful country in the world (n.b. I am not American and think this situation is deplorable, but the legal facts and construction support Trump’s actions)
You act as if they don't have loopholes for this or that there will be consequences when the military industrial complex is behind things. Were there any consequences for Iraq WMD BS
Why? It's not a war they were just capturing someone to face charges. In the same way we didn't need to declare war against Pakistan to go in and get Osama
This is wrong and hilariously short sighted. Other countries don't respect America due to military might - they do so because of decades of mutually beneficial trade agreements. Soft power is infinitely more useful than hard power.
Both play a significant role. Many countries absolutely respect us because of our military might. They rely on it because they don't want to divert funding from welfare to build out their own militaries. As such, they ally with us, creating inroads to trade et al.
Obviously, there's more than just military might, we have the most innovative and powerful economy on the planet as well.
However, with a country like Venezuela, where none of our allies truly care what we do (sure, they might blow hot air but whatever), we are free to use hard power to achieve our objectives.
People who don't live in a superpower. People who care about international law. People who would rather the most powerful countries didn't act like bullies whenever it suits their interests.
"Who cares?" was glib on my part, I admit. It was obviously stated from the perspective of an American relying on that power, towards other Americans.
However, international law has always been a thin veneer over the reality of international relations. History shows that nations act in their own self-interest, regardless of the "rules."
The concept of one country "bullying" another is irrelevant moralizing. You are applying playground rules (or the rules of civil society) to a global stage defined by anarchy: there is no "teacher" to stop the "bullying" here. It is a zero-sum game of security and power. At this level, "bullying" isn't a meaningful concept, only leverage is.
Should the world be this way? I wish not. Political realism is a grim framework. Unfortunately, game theory tells us that so long as any one superpower believes in realism, the rest of us must as well, or risk getting outmaneuvered. And Russia/China certainly believe in it.
The United Nations was created to avoid future world wars by managing conflicts. If the US decides as the world's superpower to go on an imperialist rampage through the Americas without regard for what the UN, Europe or Russia & China thinks, eventually the rest of the world is going to team up like the Allies during WW2.
The UN is simply ignored by all superpowers, and many lesser powers. Failed experiment. It is, at best, a forum for communication, but with no real enforcement capacity of any "rules."
> "Who cares?" was glib on my part, I admit. It was obviously stated from the perspective of an American relying on that power, towards other Americans.
> there is no "teacher" to stop the "bullying" here.
It's funny how the same person can mention "realism" and then proceed to "leverage" in the same conceptual realm of thought about the present day US. Just wait until three to four (insignificantly) smaller powers collude, target, and act against you like hyennas do, then try applying your leverage of ... what exactly?
"Realism" is not being used in the sense of the colloquial word, but as in "political realism," the framework that governs international relations between most superpowers today and in which "leverage" through hard or soft power is the core concept.
That's explicitly been the case since 45 was elected a second time. Even if we get an adult in charge again, there is no guarantee of stability anymore with the way the population is.
Like who? Biden a puppet with dementia, Obama invading Libya and helping kill Gadaffi (and actually killing his family), as well as drone strikes on individuals in lots of middle eastern countries, Bush and Iraq/Afghanistan, Clinton and .. Iraq? but also war on drugs and Mexico border fence. Previous Bush - Iraq again?? Before that, South America again.
Biden became worse in the last year, but he wasn't a 'puppet', certainly not like the current president is. I'm not a fan of Obama's actions but he at least gave justification instead of inventing it and lying like Bush.
Kamala was the obvious choice and the only adult running in the last election, but she lost largely due to sexism, racism and gullibility of the red state population.
Assuming we get to have another election, we'd hopefully have someone like Bernie or Elizabeth Warren.
Democratic rejected Kamala resoundingly in the primaries, and then the Democratic leadership tried to force her down everyone's throat. That's on them, not the voters. They asked people to eat a sandwich some shit on it instead of a shit sandwich and not surprisingly voters weren't too enthused.
No, it's on the voters, 100%. A primary would have been messy. She may not have been everyone's first choice, but she was 100% the responsible choice. People screwed over the country out of spite, but that's 100% in line with how immature and uneducated the US population is. Not to mention bigoted in various ways.
Obviously she was not everyone's first choice. She was almost no one's first choice. Democrat voters let her know that when they only gave her ~7% support in the 2020 primaries. Maybe a messy primary that everyone feels a part of would have been better than a few leaders of the Democratic party attempting to anoint the next president. Maybe you think it was the responsible choice, but that certainly isn't what Obama thought in 2024, since he was pushing for open primaries before his hand was forced into endorsing Harris.
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both performed significantly better than Harris did in the 2020 primaries. Maybe one of them would have been the responsible choice.
> Obviously she was not everyone's first choice. She was almost no one's first choice.
Right, but that's irrelevant. It doesn't matter that she wasn't the ideal choice, it only matters that she was so much significantly better than the alternative.
Clearly that was a miscalculation then. Maybe because when people vote, most people don't think "Who is better - Trump or Harris?", they think "Do I like my party's nominee?"
Bernie Sanders vs. Trump. That would have been interesting. Two populists, but also two geriatric white men. Trump would have the advantage of insults and better media savvy, but Bernie would have the advantage of not being Trump (and not being tied to Biden either).
If Trump successfully stole the election in 2021, I'm sure there would have been many Americans who would be happy for Canada or England or France to capture him and put him on trial..
That will really be up to the new Venezuelan regime to decide whether it was an act of war or not. I don't think Maduro will have much ability to declare it as such.
Is your position that if someone commits a coup, some other country or the international community can't go in and uninstall that person from power?
Regardless of whether the leader of a country was a dictator, elected or not, another country going in and kidnapping the acting leader within the borders of his own country is an act of war.
This doesn't depend on what the successors think. They might later declare this act of war was necessary for the liberation or whatever, but it's still an act of war.
You may agree with the act, but it's an act of war.
Well, I'm certain Maduro considered it an act of war. But he's not president any more. Does the current President of Venezuela consider it an act of war?
> Well, I'm certain Maduro considered it an act of war. But he's not president any more.
It doesn't matter what Maduro thinks. It doesn't matter whether he's a bad guy or a dictator. The situation after the fait accompli also doesn't matter.
What matters is that the military of a country crossing the borders of another country without permission, to conduct a military operation, and kidnapping the (de facto or legal, doesn't matter) leader of said country is an act of war.
There's no "it depends". It might be a justified act of war, but it's an act of war.
It boggles the mind that you dispute this. You seem to be confused, mentally adding "evil" or "illegal" to the words "act of war".
> Does the current President of Venezuela consider it an act of war?
> Is your position that if someone commits a coup, some other country or the international community can't go in and uninstall that person from power?
I find the assumptions behind your question fascinating.
Where did I say anything about what a country can or cannot do? A country can do whatever its military might and ability to absorb repercussions allows it to do.
This is completely unrelated to whether the path the country does decide to take constitutes an act of war or not.
If you're asking me whether I like that the US is playing world police and deciding who must face the law, and take them by force anywhere in the world, weeeell... let's say it's really messy to try to justify the US when it supports some coups, some dictators, and some brutal regimes, but acts against others, and the overall rule seems to be "if they play ball with the US it's ok, if they don't then war".
A small consolation is that the US is seemingly stopping their horrifying practice of extraordinary renditions and torturing suspects abroad, outside the scrutiny of US society and institutions. I think that was Bush era, but maybe it persisted during Obama too.
> It's not a war they were just capturing someone to face charges.
Invading a foreign country with military force is a war even if the purpose is to effect an arrest. And when the President claims that the intent is also that the US will run the country afterwards, its even more clearly a war.
> In the same way we didn't need to declare war against Pakistan to go in and get Osama
Congress had already exercised its power to declare war with an open-ended declaration almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks, which covered the operation direct against the head of al-Qaeda.
I have yet to see it in this thread, but the WSJ reported that the "crime" they "extradited" him for is running a drug cartel and dumping tons of cocaine into the US.
I know this is what they claim (well, they also say because of oil and because he was friends with US rivals, but that's less defensible), but anyone really believe this is about drugs? Was there ever any proof Maduro was a cartel boss?
They are getting their message very confused. Is this about drugs? About the Venezuelan elections? About oil? All of the above? None of the above? Who knows anymore.
Bombing a capital city and kidnapping its political leader and hijacking its oil tankers is not the same thing at all. Not to mention Pakistan was and is officially an ally of America, and despite them harboring terrorists, officially Osama was a criminal there too.
Look, you don't just regime change, It didn't work in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan. It only really kinda worked in Kosovo, but even then it was touch and go, require lots of troop time and a load of money and ongoing international police.
And yet, it's not a justification for what was done there, and it's not a justification for what was done in this case either. Wasn't a justification in Iraq with Saddam for that matter. I remember the day the Iraqis pulled that statue down, they seemed very happy to be able to do that. And then...
My understanding is that the US military is not so great at the "hearts and minds" game, to put it politely. It doesn't take much time for locals to be outraged by macho assholes acting like they own the place. Makes the recently dethroned dictator look somewhat decent in comparison.
if we’re going to steelman we have to acknowledge that many venezualans liked him too.
we can’t simultaneously say we don’t like corruption of socialist governments while literally bombing another nation and imprisoning political enemies just so we can have its oil for our cronies.
Trump said Machado doesn't have support to be leader and endorsed Maduro's VP as willing to work with the US. It seems unlikely the Venezuelan people are going to see any benefits here. They will get more of the same.
There should be a sitcom where Assad, Yanukovich, Snowden, and the Venezuelan VP are sharing an apartment in Moscow. In the Christmas episode, Putin shows up and teaches them the true meaning of Christmas.
Trumps approval rating isn't great either but I doubt many people would see that as justification for another country kidnapping him in the middle of night to charge him with "has an army with machine guns" before taking American oil
If Trump made himself king and dragged the US so far into corruption and poverty that another country could so easily capture us, yeah I'd be fine with them bagging him.
On top of that, I don't think the common Venezuelan laborer was getting much benefit out of the Maduro regime capturing the oil wealth. From the point of view of the less fortunate, there isn't much difference between a Venezuelan elite enriching themselves off the local oil vs an American elite enriching themselves off the local oil.
Claims of sovereignty are meaningless, what happens is whether those claims hold up in real life, and in this case they clearly don't.
A country is either powerful enough to enforce sovereignty, or it is not actually sovereign; so this hand-wringing about "Venezuela's sovereignty" is meaningless. It's already been proven false, to some extent.
The US is free to do what it wants with Venezuela, or virtually any non-nuclear country in the world. Always has been, really. It simply doesn't exercise said power very often.
Is this then a call to assassinate local politicians you don't agree with? Some might makes right thing? We're all at least momentarily able to overpower or mortally harm one another, but often don't choose to. Why do you think that is?
You seem to be mistaking my comment for a moral stance.
I am not making a call to do anything, I am simply describing the nature of international relations throughout the vast majority of human history (including the current day), in a framework most commonly defined as realism.
Superpowers act in their self interest, ignoring "international law" when the benefit meaningfully exceeds the cost. They can do this because there is no one to stop them. They will do this because it is in their self interest.
Americans will probably benefit from this action, or at least that is the administration's thesis. Is it moral? No, but discussions of morality are irrelevant on the world stage, which is a zero-sum game defined only by leverage.
I think I assumed you're commenting for a reason because it doesn't make sense to make these comments otherwise - they're more or less vacuously true, and there's no value to them outside of an assertion of some sort.
> the world stage, which is a zero-sum game
I'm not at all convinced this is true.
You should think about the question posed in my first comment - why do you think we don't choose to overpower one another regularly to take what we want?
svnt and HN's misunderstanding of international relations and the concept of "sovereignty" is what my comment is directed at: in discussions about superpowers on the world stage,
(a) moralizing is simply irrelevant, discussions about whether this is "good" or "bad" are childishly naive and have no place - only whether it was advantageous or not; and
(b) sovereignty is meaningless if a nation does not have the hard/soft power (and the will) to back it, just as if you declare your house a "sovereign nation" it will not be respected unless you are able to back it up.
Perhaps this is an obvious/vacuous truth to you, but most HN'ers are clearly failing to grasp this.
> why do you think we don't choose to overpower one another regularly to take what we want?
Because it is not always advantageous to do so. When it is clearly advantageous, nations tend to do so (as evidenced by virtually all of human history, including the current era.)
So much of the past decade has been the internet infecting the population with 19th century thinking like this. Alliances are a thing, and might makes right is something we have told ourselves for generations that we oppose. I am so tired of this nihilism dressed as edge.
Please leave a substantive comment instead of just calling something a "redditism" and "appalling."
You may not like the framework of realism but it is the reality of international relations today (and throughout most of history.)
Rules-based international order has always been a thin veneer over the fact that nations will always act in their self-interest regardless of what they say.
Finally, game theory tells us that as long as one superpower behaves according to the principles of realism, the rest must as well, or risk getting outmaneuvered.
People don't like to see difficult to accept facts stated plainly. And sometimes equate a statement of unfortunate fact with endorsement of status quo.
More on topic, I hoped there would be some support from Colombia, Russia, and China in place to help with this situation. Instead it seems like Maduro took an exit deal and left the country at the hands of the GOP who openly promulgate the idea that the US should lord over all other countries in the western hemisphere.
There's nothing substantive to the comment I'm replying to.
It's explaining in too many words that might makes right. We all know that.
On the other hand I believe, but I could be wrong, that the many comments of the sort in this thread are a way for some people to cheer these sort of actions without being too obvious about it because they know it's not a good look in some circles, hn being one. So rather than chanting usa usa usa like their gut tells them too, they resort to such emotionally distanced statements, obvious to everyone, pretending to simply constate the gap in military capabilities of the US versus other powers.
There's a massive difference, and that difference is that American oil companies, unlike the Venezuelan state run industry, are actually very competent at extracting oil. This means more good paying jobs, more state revenue, and massive economic growth. Contrary to the claims of most of the economically illiterate morons commenting here, having a functional local oil industry run by foreign companies will actually be great for Venezuela.
your comment sounds alot like nationalist chest thumping, the reason they were unable to do much with their oil is much more related to the usa deciding they would sanction the country meaning basically worldwide they can't sell the oil
Definitely not, but the furthest away the ones profiting from something are, the worse it can get.
It is definitely not a guarantee that a local enriching elite will at some point lead to something better, but most examples that come to mind about "colonies" (places very far from a center of power), resulted in said places to develop much harder.
But neither the Venezuelan elite nor the American elite will tolerate any hint of democracy. And neither elite will be satisfied with merely exploiting the oil.
