Plus, the more of a splash, the more Epstein stays out of the news.
No doubt the regime will come up with a "special military operation" equivalent to avoid calling it what it is.
Or, he could acknowledge that their is a conflict, and pretend he didn't start it but Venezuela did. Like he could claim that Venezuela invaded the US first (oh, wait, he actually did that last March, using it as the pretext for invoking the Alien Enemies Act.)
Even the ballot box isn't enough. We don't have an anti-war party in the US.
Our news media are largely captive to the military, with the embedded reporter system.
Congress has abdicated broad war powers to the president, and the courts won't intervene.
The global community can't do anything to the US. Sanctions are very unlikely.
When it's appeared to work, that has one of two causes: either the government didn't really care very much to begin with, or it was the other extremely violent group that made the government choose to appear to back the protest group in order to give into the violent group's demands while saving face. (See civil rights)
This is nonsense.
> or it was the other extremely violent group that made the government choose to appear to back the protest group in order to give into the violent group's demands while saving face
Violence isn't needed. Protest is designed to tip the balance of power.
We're three days out from 2025 and Nepal and Madagascar have already been forgotten?
Like, there is criticism of the 3.5% rule [1] for being too narrowly based. But the hot take that protest never works is genuinely one I haven't seen yet.
Are you confusing protest and terrorism?
Civil rights in the US has been, I agree, sanitized. No, civil rights didn't progress solely because the majority in power was touched that minorities demanded their rights so peacefully and insistently. There was a violent side too, that provided necessary pressure.
This is lazy and wrong. Simple answer is leadership is betting this won't lose them the Congress in the midterms because enough Americans won't care. Conceding ex ante the ballot box is literally proving that hypothesis.
Chomsky was smart and influential. But he was a linguist. Not a political scientist. The manufacturing-consent hypothesis sort of worked under mass media. But even then, it wasn't a testable hypothesis, more a story of history.
In today's world, unless you're willing to dilute the term to just persuasion in general, I'm not sure it applies.
Instead, the dominant force here is apathy. Most Americans historically haven't (and probably won't) risk life, liberty or material wealthy on a foreign-policy position. Not unless there is a draft. (I'm saying Americans, but this is true in most democracies.)
Chomsky, as a linguist, was probably better equipped to understand the implications of emergent behavior than more mainstream political scientists.
https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/595299071/president-trump-con...
Our leadership are war criminals, and should be treated as such.
Some, specifically, are war criminals who have committed crimes that carry the death penalty, and should be arrested, tried, and (if found guilty) executed.
I think you've been had with the whole "rules based order thing". You can keep winding the clock back and it's the same thing. Iraq 1, Iran, Vietnam, Korea, Somalia. When exactly would you say this alleged "rules based order" was great?
If those previous administrations had been tried for their various crimes, and the guilty parties were cooling their heels in a jail cell, then we probably wouldn't be seeing this action tonight.
and yeah who is gonna charge them ???? US have (arguably) strongest military on earth, who can put justice to them if not themselves ???? and themselves I mean US Gov. which is would never happen since every administration have "blood" in some form and another
Trump 45 could have come on board with a clean slate. Hell, Trump 47 started out without too much war-crimey cruft from his first term.
Dude went on a witch hunt and forgot to bring his pitchfork.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93Taliban_...
It must be us. It must be the American people.
This is (one of) the deepest moral failings of our voting public that we haven’t demanded it of our leadership.
You’re right that our leadership won’t do it unless the people absolutely demand it.
And… well, we haven’t demanded it.
So, the failure to bring them to justice belongs to me, and to every other American citizen that is eligible to cast a ballot.
Simpler: send them to prison at home. There is no world in which the Hague can enforce its law in America without the U.S. government's consent. At that point, skip the extra step and make war crimes actually illegal.
To be clear, war crimes are illegal here. They can carry the death penalty.
I think there's a strong case to be made for Pete Hegseth to be executed for his crimes, according to US Law.
But you're right. There's no expectation that the Hague enforce international law without the consent of the US Government. Our government should either try our leaders in our courts, or hand them in manacles and chains to the ICC and The Hague.
But I agree, I don't expect the international community to be able to do this over our objections. It's something we must do.
Asking to learn: under what law?
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441
---
There are also provisions in the UCMJ that are applicable to members of the military
---
(I also had a consequential typo in my earlier post, which I've now edited. I originally wrote they "carry the death penalty", but I meant to write "they can carry the death penalty", and it depends on the specific circumstances of the war crimes committed.)
Hmm. Filing this away for 2028 or 2032.
[1] ¶ (d)(1)(D)
This is very relevant to the second strike on the Venezuelan boat. I think the original strikes are also war crimes, but the second strike on the shipwrecked survivors is like… beyond all doubt a murder
Remember when we bombed Yemen and in the Signal chat they laughed about killing a High-Value Target while he was visiting his girlfriend? Sounds like this section would apply for her.
The US previously never faced real pressure on this, a new administration would see it as an easy win.
The U.S. is not a signatory. (Most of the world's population isn't subject to ICC jurisdiction [1].)
> All of your former allies are going to insist on it before they will even think about treating your normally again
Nobody is treating the ICC seriously [2].
To be clear, this sucks. But it's America joining China and Russia (and Iran and Israel and India and every other regional power who have selectively rejected the rules-based international order).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/27/world/middleeast/france-n...
Being a signatory is not required for being subject to ICC jurisdiction, though it is one route to being subject to it, and, in any case, not being a signatory is not an immutable condition. So the upthread suggestion that “All of your former allies are going to insist on it before they will even think about treating your normally again” is not rebutted by observing that the US is not currently a signatory of the Rome Statute.
> But it's America joining China and Russia (and Iran and Israel and India and every other regional power who have selectively rejected the rules-based international order).
No, the US despite rhetorically appealing to it when other countries are involved, has led, not followed, in rejecting the rules-based order when it comes to its own conduct.
Securing indictments and going to trial is an instance of actually trying. So you really can’t say they didn’t try, because that is factually false. It’s true they could have done more, but they didn’t do nothing as others are saying.
One thing about prosecuting a former POTUS for the first time is it has to survive the test of time. You can't behave like them if you want the prosecution to be legitimate, because they are lawless. But it was the failure of voters to do their due diligence to not elect a felon who bear the ultimate blame, as they are the final check. Now we bear the consequences. But again, not for lack of trying.
And in the 21st century? not so much. It is a different world now.
Europe is powerful but the Royal Navy couldn't go today to Hong Kong and seize control of it for example.
And military power influences diplomacy.
Negatively. That has always been the problem of the US, it's the reason why they cannot act like the most of the rest of the world. The military has way too much influence on decision making.
Which is why they have been subverted and subjugated and all their will usurped.
Americans voted for a man who promised no foreign wars and, in his first term, was relatively peaceful [1].
[1][ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_first_Tr...
Except Mexico (https://www.vox.com/policy/363146/trump-policy-war-mexico-tr...) and Iran (https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4898919-trump-iran-smi...).
But America's armed populace and the stalwart vigilance of its militias are supposed to make that impossible.
Americans were more up in arms (literal and figurative) over Obamacare and Covid lockdowns than anything Trump has done, domestically or abroad. The only rational conclusion is that they're either complicit or else they simply don't care.
Those who could effectively field a real protest or uprising are either too busy trying to keep their credit cards from defaulting, or are living on the streets addicted to drugs. General strikes? Forget it, America doesn’t have the infrastructure in place (local food sources) to sustain such a thing…
The right got Jan. 6th and the left got Portland, so resistance is possible on both sides. In any country that took things half as seriously as the US claims to, Washington DC would look like a war zone. But what are we doing? Twerking in front of ICE in frog costumes?
Once again, the people who are broadly approving of violence as a way to solve problems, and who actually have the guns, are largely supportive of what ICE is doing. Many of them are quite literally itching to pull the trigger on some libs. I've been in the middle of that crowd and seen it all close up. Those people are not the potential solution - they are a part of the problem.
Countries with oppressive regimes see revolutions if the population gets discontent enough that a strong majority wants it, or is at least willing to go along with it. That is certainly not true of US right now.
In general international law is much more lenient than people are willing to believe. e.g. it's legal to kill civilians if you are attacking a military target which is important enough
Hegseth allegedly double tapping survivors is almost certainly against the Geneva Conventions [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/us/hegseth-drug-boat-stri...
So I don't think double tapping is a war crime, any more than bombing a car with terrorists in the first place and that doesn't seem to be regarded internationally as a war crime. However, they could have done better to highlight Venezuela actual involvement with terrorism (which is real but not enough for this) rather than magically declare them terrorists just to not go through Congress
Regarding double tapping, that's exactly the modus operandi of assassinations, as the UAVs goal is not the car/ship but the people inside.
That said, the Venezuelan case is a huge overreach
There are some credible war crimes accusations (in fact, some pretty flagrant war crimes), but the most critical crime is actually not a war crime, but one precedent to their being a war at all, the crime of aggression.
And in many cases western societies tend to express the idea that inn other, dictatorship countries, people sort of "let the dictators dictate", while "westerners" not.
But I think this current case (and Trump's presidency at large) is an example of how little we can decide or influence. Even in the supposed "democracy".
I wish to believe that voting matters, but Trump showed that you can make people vote for anything if you put massive upfront effort into managing information/missinformation and controlling the minds through populism, etc. Then voting becomes... Powerless. As it has no objective judgement.
And despite possible disagreements some might voice - revolutions don't happen anymore. People can't anymore fight the leaders as leaders hold a monopoly on violence through making sure the army is with them.
Well... We as people lost and losing the means to "control" our leaders. Westerners, easterners - doesn't matter.
So now the question is how to do you capture this leadership without foreign intervention while they are still in power?
Talk is nice... but there is no real mechanism to impose what you are proposing besides this.
External or internal (which seems rarely feasible unless the government is highly incompetent) regime change realistically is the only thing that worked.
What do the Venezuelans actually think about this, given that Maduro rigged the last election in 2024 and denied them their democratic choice?
Thats probably true, but trump also tried to rig an election, so its not really up to him to unilaterally decide is it? Especially as hes bumchums with putin who shocker, rigs election, killed hundreds of thousands of his own people invading other countries.
> had the USA stayed in South Korea
Korea was a UN action, not US unilateral. but alos hugely costly in everyone's lives
Genuine request for a source here.
(They said law and order, because they couldn't say anti black)
Law and order != rules-based international order.
Anybody who wants a rules based order is extremely anti-Trump, just as they are anti-Putin.
MAGA is a rejection of the international rules-based order. Trump joins Putin and Xi in explicitly rejecting it. To the extent anyone in America is calling for a return to that order, they're doing it while criticising Trump.
This feels so foreign: since Suez the UK government has been backing the US and giving them the fig leaf of international legitimacy in their actions.
In this case probably attitude is probably similar
Your comment is just bigotry.
"Chavez was elected to a third term in October 2012. However, he was never sworn in due to medical complications; he died in March 2013.[95] Nicolás Maduro was picked by Chavez as his successor, appointing him vice president in 2013."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela#Bolivarian_governmen...
Julian Assange actually filed a Swedish criminal complaint against Nobel Foundation officials, alleging misappropriation of Nobel endowment funds and facilitating war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to María Corina Machado, and it seeks immediate freezing of funds and a full investigation: https://just-international.org/articles/assanges-criminal-co...
…that they invented from whole cloth this year just so they could award it to Trump, the most deserving president of a fake prize from one of the most corrupt organisations on Earth.
This is why the Nobel Peace Prize has become completely meaningless.
[0] https://just-international.org/articles/assanges-criminal-co...
[1] https://inside.fifa.com/campaigns/football-unites-the-world/...
They can take bribes with impunity for another 2 years. That's better than 2015 [1] and probably everything they wanted from that trophy.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/nine-fifa-officials-...
Not Venezuelan helicopters...
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Yeah. Pettiness. The ICC doesn't have jurisdiction in the United States. We aren't a signatory to the Rome Statute. (Most of the world's population doesn't live under its jurisdiction.)
I think you genuinely hold this take and it's admirable. I'm not seeing any indication (a) our militarised allies are behaving particularly differently or (b) they're concerned about us bombing stuff in the Western Hemisphere. (Versus in their backyards, creating refugee crises.)
> fallout for this is going to be a lot larger than I think you suspect
Maybe. Hopefully. I doubt it. Russia, China, Israel, France and the UK are doing fine.
Great moral measuring stick...
We have to wake up to the world where USA no longer cares about ideals like liberal democracy or allies, but is a warmongering corporatist autocracy.
You should've been keeping scores on US' wars and regime changes, you'd had lost faith long time ago.
I am against any offensive action which leads to the misery and impoverishment of people, for some stupid power games of power hungry idiots.
"Bro please just look at the expansion map. I swear bro the war started because of NATO and the US. It’s not an invasion bro it’s a forced reaction to unipolar hegemony. Just one more provocation and the bear had to bite back. Please bro just admit it's a proxy war. I promise bro if the West just stayed out of the sphere of influence everything would be fine."
The Cold War was openly about changing governments.
Correct.
Cynically: maybe Venezuela will get a bit less sympathy because it's a somewhat shittier (see emigration numbers) and less democratic government than Ukraine's. And I suspect we have a more positive view of US troops than Russian troops, despite everything (Abu Ghraib is seen as an aberration and not as the normal way of working).
Let's see if some american company is granted all kinds of rights to Venezuelan oil in the end.
Which, if it happens, should really be treated as blood oil like blood diamonds are and then sanctioned by the world
So from that perspective, I don't think US is really much different, just better at keeping its own puppets in power.
No invasion (yet). Just bombing.
This is not a useful delineation for what constitutes a military invasion. Invasion means landing troops and controlling territory.
Based on what we're being told now, this was an extraction. (Slash detention. Slash kidnapping. In any case, requiring troop transport and extraction.)
Seriously, I'm patiently waiting for the day America or Russia will do the same to Netanyahu, who is an actual war criminal. Not holding my breath.
The guy literally ran away to Russia.
If Russia was on the right, the people of Ukraine would have just hanged Zelenskyy and his gov, instead of sending their children to the meat grinder.
Let’s see if Venezuelans will put their lives on the line to protect the regime.
As a Ukrainian I would assume US forces don't intend to conduct a campaign of mass murder, rape and looting, and US government overall doesn't plan genocide and erasure of national identity of Venezuela together with annexation of its territories?
I dream that neither of these imperial powers - Russia or the US - will be allowed to inflict imperial violence, but I wouldn't be mistaken and assume that this military action will be any different than, say, JSOC in Iraq.
The conduct of VSRF in Ukraine could perhaps be compared to the US conduct in Vietnam but definitely not in Iraq.
You won't get far in your troll farm hierarchy this way.
Cynically it's different in that Trump hopefully will not going to kill 220,000+ and leave 500,000+ war invalids of US military personnel in process. Though you never know...
Hmmmm... indeed, hard to tell the difference!
Iran, I totally understand that if they want to acquire nuclear weapon but Venezuela ????
what are they want to do in Venezuela ????? Oil ??
We also have a crusade in Nigeria next on the docket for project 2026.
I'm admittedly somewhat ignorant of all the details but I don't see what the real benefit is
my only guess is that it's to disincentivize the Russians and Chinese from being more involved in South America but it feels like it could do the opposite and act as an annoying wedge
It will be a small miracle if it doesn't spark a refugee crisis.
I could foresee
* some US-backed pro-business president coming to power * GDP going up * still no completely liberal democracy but anyway better than Maduro * less emigration or maybe people start coming back
The main casualty is the notion that the US follows rules instead of doing whatever it wants. I'm not sure if I'd say democracy is a casualty as well, because (AFAIK with my non-leftist sources) Venezuela wasn't a real democracy.
All societies have such people. But civil societies prevent them from gaining significant power. Failing that, it's going to be expensive.
This society elected a known abuser. Of course this society will be abused. But also because of this society's global power, the world will also be abused.
Ironically, that prospect is approaching with each passing year
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2013/06/13/us-whites-fa...
Invading America would be like invading Afghanistan. If you wrestle a pig, expect they might even enjoy it. And yes I have fought in a civil war, I know what it's like, even without the advantage of American weapon, so no need to go down the road of me not understanding the implications. It would only embolden us, we wouldn't learn the lesson you're thinking.
(E: Honesty compels me to come back and say that it is looking somewhat likely I was wrong and will have to concede to the hawks.)
I guess it’s the only way the American people will get a grip, if the rest of the world starts punishing the US and its allies economically.
It’s going to be bumpy if/when it happens, but does anyone see any other way to reign in the warmongers? What say you, Americans? You are, after all, the only effective mechanism by which your own war mongers can be brought to justice. Everything else is doom.
Nobody is going to be buying iPhones during a world war. Yes, Europeans will stop buying American stuff. It has already started to happen.
The petrodollar hypothesis is obsolete. It has been since America became an oil exporter.
The way you're presenting it, it's never been the case. Petrodollars let America finance a massive military. The military gives it power. We aren't sanctioning Venezuela into submission. We're bombing it.
Also, oil has been traded in non-dollars for ages. I've personaly done it at a bank trading desk in Connecticut.
I see it as the world starting to become very unwilling to trade anything at all with the US, and moving to other currencies and finance systems for trade and economic transfer.
Petrodollar recycling [1] backed by U.S. military might. It was a way, in the 1970s and 80s, for us to secure our oil supplies by e.g. guaranteeing the security of the House of Saud.
The point was securing oil. The dollar benefits were a side effect. The dollar is ascendant because we're massive consumers.
> I see it as the world starting to become very unwilling to trade anything at all with the US
This has nothing to do with the petrodollar!
> moving to other currencies and finance systems for trade and economic transfer
Sure. Folks talk about this. It has nothing to do with Venezuela. (Again, oil is traded in multiple currencies and has been for at least two decades.)
And the point is, the American consumer market means less and less to a world that is sick and tired of the suffering the American people bring to it.
>two decades
Yes, that’s the point, the world is moving off the US Dollar as a global currency, and this is why America needs more endless, endless war, and its why we have endless, endless war. The rest of the world sees this all too clearly now.
I doubt Europe’s fondness for self-flagellation goes that far.
I doubt that. It's far more likely to backfire into increased support for aggressive right-wing populism of the kind Trump peddles. It also seems doubtful that Europe could really afford that economically at the time when it's already in an open confrontation with Russia and not exactly on friendly terms with China.
> does anyone see any other way to reign in the warmongers? What say you, Americans? You are, after all, the only effective mechanism by which your own war mongers can be brought to justice.
We do not have an effective mechanism for that. Even if our democracy were truly functional, people have voted for candidates who promised no more wars for >15 years now, and yet here we are. Meaningful reforms that would _perhaps_ enable this require constitutional amendments, which have such a high bar as to be unattainable in this political climate. I don't think the system can recover, but it still has a lot of capacity to do damage as it breaks down.
All of the great powers are. So are most of the regional powers. It's basically the EU and Brazil hanging on to the old rules-based international order.
Not a coping mechanism and definitely not an excuse. Just a statement of reality. This doesn't make America special. America at least sometimes trying to uphold that system is what used to make it special. Now we're back to spheres-of-influence realpolitik.
On the plus side, nothing here is permanent, this guy is out in just over three years. How much more damage could he possibly do?
There's only one way he'll be out, and voting will not be part of that
I agree however that Trump is largely self centered and this is a risk. Oil should not be the goal here, it should be the freedom of the Venezuelans.
As for foreign policy, yes the United States is a terrorist state and has been for a long time.
That should tell you everything you need to know.
And use xcancel.com rather than the largely-inaccessible source.
Now, it's also very important to even further unite the entire world against Russian agressive war.
The congress people who are military veterans recently put out a public service announcement reminding those in the military that they must refuse illegal orders, and Trump called that reminder of the law "treasonous" and said the veterans should be executed for reminding people of the law.
There should be military tribunals for all involved here to ensure that law and order is maintained. The US is losing its constitution, its rule of law. There is not country if we have two different sets of laws, one for normal people but zero laws for those following rhe president's wishes. That's a monarchy.
No. From an international-law perspective, Trump is stepping into the footprints left by Putin, Xi, Netanyahu, Khamenei and his own predecessors in D.C.
From a domestic-law perspective, this is un-Constitutional.
Which one?
There is exactly one law (Public Law 93-148, originating in the 93rd Congress as H.J.Res. 542, and passed over Presidential veto on November 7, 1973) which has as its official title the “War Powers Resolution”. Since it’s passage, it is also frequently referred to by a less-official name as the “War Powers Act” to emphasize that it has completed the process to become an official Act of Congress. The reference, especially to the exact official name, is not at all ambiguous.
There will be a decrease in oil production, marginally boosting world prices. What's probably being taken out right now is the regime's ability to react in any meaningful way to the oil embargo.
It will also allow Maduro to throw his hands in the air and blame the US for all of VZLA's ills going forward. More poverty, more suffering, more migration.
The question is whether the Venezuelan situation is more like those two, or more like Vietnam / Iraq / Afghanistan.
When have we not heard this line? When has it even been true?
We always hear it, it's never true.
> you try to move the goalposts now
I do not agree. Long-term outcomes are what matter to the ordinary people in these countries, regardless of what scores points for internet posters today. Guessing outcomes today is very premature.
> I was spot on ... I'll take the high road.
What a smug and self-contradicting statement. This is no longer a serious conversation, have a good day.
The problems started after...
So it did not eventually "prove breezy".
For some reason we wisely keep the machineries of government in place in Japan and Germany post-war and threw that lesson out the window in Iraq. Always boggles my mind, how the CPA ran things immediately into the ground.
As you say, this check has been in the mail for a while, so how are vulernable helicopters flying over caracas without any resistance? One dude with a MANPADS could take them down.
Decapitation is also the only aparent strategic goal of this operation, so it's hardly far fetched to suggest they going for 'one and done'.
Anyway, beers on me if I'm wrong :)
Presumably there are SF and/or airborne units executing coordinated strikes on the ground right now. Most likely the 160th, as they were deployed there last I checked.
https://www.clarin.com/mundo/respuesta-nicolas-maduro-explos...
Your source, in translation, describes no specific responses, but largely that "The regime ordered the deployment of military and police commands throughout the country".
This is not inconsistent with, say, the US making an offer that Venezuelan military command in charge of air defences couldn't refuse, say, to stand down and not challenge US air supremacy.
I'm not saying that this did happen, but it's one plausible scenario, particularly for a country whose core competency is literally manufacturing US dollars, the most-prized currency worldwide.
People here saying it's "unjustified" should go and talk to a displaced Venezuelan.
But a military invasion of another country to commit regime change is literally what Russia tried to do to Ukraine.
America has blood on it's hands yet again.
EDIT: If the reports are true that Maduro has been captured and the fighting stops, then that's the best resolution one could hope out of this horrible situation. I pray for the Venezuelan people.
Russia is trying to annex Ukraine. They took part of it in 2014, then came back for more, and then organized sham annexation referendums in the regions they did control. Whatever the US is trying to achieve in Venezuela, it's probably not that. All war is deplorable, but some lead to good outcomes and some to bad ones.
And to start with they were trying to achieve this through regime change via a "surgical" (by their standards) strike on the government and capital.
That failed.
America is doing this explicitly to take control of Venezuela's resources. It's no different.
Presumably we're only trying to annex their oil reserves
I know some sheltered academics on Epstein's list disagree with that but that's a hill I will die on
There have been widespread protests in Venezuela throughout Maduro’s regime, but especially after the election.
The reaction I'm seeing from second-hand and direct reddit comments from actual Venezualans seems really positive.
But afterwards, there's going to be a free-for-all struggle between ACTUAL cartels. That will be indistinguishable ftom a civil war.
* - Claims 2 years ago about the removal of Hamas; assassinations of militia leaders leading to peace
The purpose of the assassinations is security, not peace. Peace is a bilateral process and it does confer security, but if it's not on the table then you can't force the issue unilaterally.
Otherwise there would have been american aircraft shot down with russian tech. Or really any kind of support except empty words.
Yes, because as we all know Russian military technology is completely on par with that of the United States.
The open question is rather, if the S-500 system can beat the F35 stealth capabilities (nobody know that as far as I know as it was never tried). Not that russians systems are useless against ordinary planes and helicopters.
And I suspect there were deals with parts of the venezuelan military as well. The weak reaction indicates as much.
And everything else potentially dangerous, active radar and anti air systems were destroyed in the first wave of attacks. Possible with the help of special forces.
SEAD was conducted by both ground and air assets, Israel only has about 30 F-35’s and Iran is massive.
The F-35 is “invisible” ;)
Iran’s air defenses were either obliterated or rendered useless, hence how Israel was flying slow ass drones at low altitude above their capital on day 3.
The US is even more capable when it comes to SEAD.
The gap between the west and everyone else when it comes to both military technology and doctrine is massive.
It's not just the west. China is likely on par. Russia was near par in terms of defense but it's now been attrited.
The power stays in Maduros party and just goes To the VP. It’s anyone’s guess what happens next - but nothing changing is a relatively easy bet.
The Venezuelan opposition leader was extracted and moved to Europe and I assume the US wants to install her. Maybe that is more likely, but a military takeover before the US can install whatever puppet government they're hoping for.
Isn't that a justification?!
Seriously though, even the imperial ambitions from the guy feels racist :)
I guess Turkey can stop worrying on thanksgiving days.
I have a lot of conflicting views with both the "left" and the "right" these days, but it seems the so-called "conservatives" are not that conservative in their ambitions, no?
A lot of Americans don't care. They either actually don't care. Or they sort of care, but are too lazy and nihilistic to bother doing anything about it.
Like, this entire exercise is a leveraged wager by the Trump administration that this will not cost them the Senate in any of these states next year [1].
Of course being “nihilistic” is a different matter.
> Or they sort of care, but are too lazy and nihilistic to bother doing anything about it.
Typical.
Doing anything about US foreign interventions is a very tall order in a country where the vast majority are politically disenfranchised (with income and wealth as a proxy). It’s difficult enough for domestic affairs, like getting universal healthcare. Much harder to fight the war machine.
Americans did put up a fight against the interventionism of the Reagan administration. But that didn’t stop the funding of the Contras. “All it did” was force the interventions to become clandestine. (A big contrast to this admin.)
But ordinary Americans do have the largest power in all of the world to fight the war machine of their own country. That ought to be encouraged. But as usual we see the active encouragement of nihilism from comments where A Lot Of X are deemed to be useless for this particular purpose. Ah what’s the point, People Are Saying that everyone around me are useless or politically katatonic. Typical.
While yes, Congress authorized the "War on Terror", there is very obviously no possible justification for applying that to the case of Venezuela.
People keep saying that, and it bears no relation to the actual post-WW2 US military history. How many declared wars have there been since then?
That’s… just not true.
George Washington himself authorized the US Navy to attack French vessels in the Caribbean in 1798 - with no declaration of war.
> To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
> To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
> To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
> To provide and maintain a Navy;
> To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
> To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
My point is that —- regardless of appropriateness —- this is about as far from “unprecedented” as can be imagined.
Congress didn’t declare ware on Syria, or Iraq, or Yemen, or Somalia, or any number of other African countries when the US attacked them during the Biden administration.
But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.
- Lysander SpoonerYou always needed a populace that respected life, liberty, and property above all in order to have a prayer of it working out; that is long gone if it ever existed.
War Powers Act of '73.
It's some sort of DOJ operation.
Wait and see.
1. The Western countries (basically meaning USA makes the decision) may attack any country.
2. Other countries may not defend themselves nor attack any country.
Iraq, Iraq (several separate agressions on Iraq, that is not a typo), Afghanistan, Cuba, Serbia, Libya, Sirya, Venezuela... the list goes on, Venezuela is of no particular significance here.
It is not like citizens of Iran decide to attack Israel or like sponsoring terrorist orgs attacking Israel. I am not sure if Russians freely vote in referendum to attack Ukraine. These decisions are made by despots ruling these countries and then their citizens suffer. Either they die in trenches or suffer economic misery. What for? China too can live without Taiwan. Chinese people do not need to have another island belonging to their country. Only despots wants to have statues raised after them, or write their names in history books, because all other things: Power, Money, Sex they already have.
They sure as hell didn't protest much when Russia occupied Crimea and started war in Eastern Ukraine.
Hungary, Chechoslovakia, Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia, Tajikistan, Ichkeria, Ukraine, Syria... The list goes on
What deep currents are those? As a European situated close to Russia, I do not feel that this is the case.
Isn't this literally them not wanting to be left holding the paper bag?
What businesses are doing, I don't know, I am more aware of what states are doing. What're your thoughts on the expansion of military expenditure? Let Ukraine die, keep ourselves defended?
It’s telling that they consider this a possibility. If EU wanted it, they could protect Belgium. But anticipation of business as usual means that whoever distances from such decisions better, will do better.
„Let Ukraine die“ decision was made in 2022, when NATO chose not to engage directly and not to switch to war economy, rapidly scaling production of military equipment and supplies. In NATO vs Russia war, Russia had no chances, but it quickly became Ukraine vs Russia war with token Western support, where Ukraine has no chances in the long term. As for increase in military spending, it’s necessary, but whatever is done, is insufficient. It is barely enough for containment of Russia, and EU needs independent operation in Middle East and Africa, pushing out USA from the region (whatever America does there, always ricocheting on Europe, so they should be denied action without approval of allies)
It's all about Crimea and the black sea fleet and pipelines. Every time the same conflict, as Orwell put it: We've always been at war with Eurasia.
Edit: Instead of down-voting, tell me where I'm wrong. All of the facts are public information and you won't even have to leave Wikipedia.
First sentence says to look up 2014 protests and "her" supporters, second sentence says "it's" about the Black Sea and Crimea. Third sentence "we've" always been at war with Eurasia
Maybe fill in the blanks for us?
Yulia Tymoshenko (pro-West), she urged her supporters to take to the streets when the pro-Russian candidate won the election. For a long time she wanted to withdraw from the Russian/Ukrainian deal that the Black Sea Fleet could be in Crimea until 202? (can't remember the exact year right now).
When those protests erupted Russia (unofficially) sent forces to protect their interests, Crimea. The conflict then escalated to the invasion.
> Third sentence "we've" always been at war with Eurasia
We as in the West, are always at war with the east. We want a world order where we are at the top of the food chain and we'll stop any attempt to rise. If we're going to prosper the rest of the world has to remain as cheap labor.
Look into any conflict this and the previous century and you'll see the same pattern. It's always been a game och risk between the East and the West.
One interesting thing to look into is which countries along the Russian border are not Nato members. Correlate this to where there has been pro-Western protests and even coup attempts in the last decade.
The world is run by psychopaths and they have most of their populations living in ignorance of how geopolitics actually work. My most important principle in life is to judge "my side" harder. Russia and China don't have to be our enemies, but a country is easier to run if there's an external threat. And that's why Oceania in Orwells' 1984 is always at war with either Eurasia or Eastasia.
It's a big subject and it's difficult to summarize in a comment, that's why I listed a few questions to look into. I can dump facts and events all I want but the best thing one can do is to look into these conflicts themselves and find the patterns. It's always about who's allied with who, and who's extracting the resources. Gas/oil/minerals/power.
We were fine with Saddam (that we put in power in the first place) trying to exterminate the kurds, but mention leaving the petrodollar, oh no you didn't.
Expectations are higher, competition is stiffer, and the gap between bottom and top end has grown, but by and large (especially in the US), the middle class quality of life has gone up.
Obviously specific regions that failed to transition out of low value-add manufacturing and agriculture have suffered, but the vast majority of Americans live in cities doing or supporting high value work.
As long as you don't try to buy a house.
I see kids, right out of college, making more than I ever made, at the peak of my career, unable to afford a house.
It's kind of a quality of life degradation, but it's a bit more complex than just "an attainable item is no longer attainable." It has never been normal to buy a 2600 sqft, 4 bedroom home at the start of a career.
The reason construction slowed down so much is that developers fear another 2008. We have just barely gotten back onto a historically normal-ish pace of construction: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST
And this talk of "just build build build," while not wrong per se, overlooks the fact that of course prices will come down, which then discourages construction. The system is self-equilibrating. 2008 reset the equilibrium point very low for 15 years, and now the nature of the costs of construction (labor and land) means it is not advantageous for anyone to build starter homes, and it's hardly advantageous to build homes at all.
Restrictive zoning is a problem and would be a very tidy explanation of all the woes of residential in the US, but there really isn't much evidence for it mattering that much in the grand scheme of things.
The single most important factor in home prices is local income levels. This gets baked into both land prices and labor costs, which then makes it very difficult to profitably build much, and completely unprofitable to build entry level homes.
The K-shaped economy is itself causing housing unaffordability. https://www.nber.org/papers/w33576
The building industry never really recovered after 2008 because the only surviving companies were extremely cautious. In order to get more builders, there needs to be more places to build, and entry into the industry needs to be easier. It's all permitting, zoning, and discretionary processes stopping housing from being built where it's wanted to be built.
To the extent "it's all [any individual cause]", that cause is rising incomes. The second major cause of rising housing prices is cost of inputs (labor, land, material). Zoning definitely plays a role, but again: there's just no evidence that "solving zoning" will actually solve affordability. We should do it anyway because it'll solve all sorts of other problems in our built environment, but there's not good evidence affordability is one of them.
Yet this one strange paper keeps getting cited as if it were God's own truth, the holy grail of economics that changes everything that was known before.
Supply restrictions are not binary, though that's how your paper treats them, and they perform none of the causal analysis that would be needed to extend their analysis to the conclusions you are trying to draw.
Here's a random paper with completely different results that agrees with the rest of the field:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009411902...
I remember the last time the "we can't change zoning" folks passed around a paper like the NBER paper you shared, and it was one about transit-oriented-development in Chicago, where allowing small upzonings close didn't change pricing much. It was contra to the vast majority of the literature, covered only a small geographic area with fully adequate housing supply, yet for a few years nobody could suggest doing the obvious zoning reforms without people claiming that Chicago proved that upzoning doesn't change pricing.
From what I can see, those houses are being brought up by corporations, and turned into rentals.
Rental-only society is definitely possible (see Manhattan and Tokyo), but is a very different model from the traditional American suburban dream.
IMHO the main problem nowadays, especially facing young people, is housing.
Otherwise there is probably never been a greater time to be alive, generally speaking, than right now. If you believe there is, can you outline the year(s) in question and how they were better?
As for inflation, using Bank of Canada numbers (since I'm in CA), $100 of goods/services from 1975-2000 increased by 220% to $320.93, while $100 of goods/services from 2000-2025 increased by 71% to $171.22.
In a 2014 article, CPI from 1914 to 2014:
* https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/62-604-x/62-604-x2015001...
From 1955 to 2021:
* https://economics.td.com/ca-inflation-new-vintage
1971-76 and 1977-83 had double the CPI of ~2021.
While unpleasant, and higher than that of what many young(er) people have experienced, it is hardly at a crazy level. The lack of people's experience of higher rates is simply more evidence as to how stable things have generally been:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moderation
Tom Nichols argues that it is boredeom that's the problem: people want some excitement and are willing to stir the pot to get it:
* https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/08/19/donald-tru...
What changed more recently is the mask has slipped off. They don't even pretend to give a plausible reason anymore because noone will ever buy it so why bother. "All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force." That is what we are witnessing now.
The mask has been off since the ICC came into existence (at the latest). The reason why the U.S. don’t recognize the ICC is because they know they’d be defendants there one second after.
And that’s so why there is a lack of effort to justify it. The right has been compromised and will support anything the party does - deporting citizens, invading countries, making things unaffordable with tariffs.
Is it?
[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_public_opinion_o...
[b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_S...
[c] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-venezuela-u-s-military-act...
I can however not find any good public opinion for that war.
Afghanistan had the context of 9/11. All Americans knew about 9/11, and most cared strongly about it.
I doubt most Americans know anything about Yemen or know anything about any US involvement there, nor do they care.
Military strikes in Yemen aren't seen as the same war. Afghanistan and Iraq were boots on the ground, building up military bases, hearing about the occasional death of US personnel, etc. It's also decades apart.
When it comes to Yemen, the average American is probably entirely unaware of it, and the ones that do know about it are definitely going to place it in the Palestine/Israel context (which has huge mindshare circulation here, All things considered - we usually just ignore things outside of US borders and this is ultra politicized here). Maybe without that element, there would be more truth to what you were saying, but it's definitely in the Israel/Hamas war bucket as of now.
As of a few months ago, when the US began striking Yemen for purpose of defending Israel, it ha become loosely affiliated with that conflict, but the period discussed was Obama era.
On the plus side, that's probably good for the odds of success.
On the minus side, they're not paying the bill.
Second, when the US did have Venezuela's oil things were going a lot better in Venezuela for the whole population. So would that really be such a bad thing?
Third, Chavez made things so bad in Venezuela it's tough to imagine this making it worse. Oh and then he died and Maduro came ... and made things worse.
Of course leftist tankies will be mad the billionaire fake-communist "revolution" that started with Chavez and should have ended 20 years ago is now very likely over. Of course, most Venezuelans (75% according to the opposition) would describe that revolution as a nightmare.
Of course I doubt 75% of Venezuelans wanted the US to resolve it.
The costs of getting production set up at are so high compared to the relatively bleak outlook for the oil market, it's likely that Venezuelan oil isn't a hugely attractive proposition for anyone.
The action is smaller scale, but the ethics of it are the same: it’s abhorrent. The justifications are paper-thin ”the people deserve democracy”, while everyone knows the only interest served is that of the US government.
It’s some sort of dictator insurance policy. The idea that they are there because the country will likely just do it again but worse given the chance.
Also not necessarily “remove Putin by force”, it’s create instability in Russia where there’s a power vacuum if they lose badly in Ukraine.
Everyone just takes all of their American foreign policy lessons from Iraq and applies it broadly because Iraq briefly had ISIS and other extremist pop up
It’s also deeply rooted in a lack of respect for the general public in those countries, who they think will keep supporting evil regardless
Edit: Twitter? Why would anyone but the far right still be on Twitter these days?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Liberation_Army_(Colo...
I don't think so. The Near East is a simmering cauldron of ancient ethnic and sectarian hatreds. Compared to that, Venezuela is ethnically and religiously almost homogeneous.
There is no equivalent of mad clerics preaching to their flock that they have to exterminate their heretic neighbours and that God will grant them paradise for doing so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
After the Iraq war we(US allies that were dragged into this war by a bunch of lies) felt like this was very bad, but it was a blunder of one administration and the trust in the US as a whole was going to be restored.
Now, no one even pretends this is the case.
I don't understand how people can be this naive. It's the only thing the US has ever done for the entirety of it's existence! How did you miss that?
Panama and Granada in the 80s weren't that fundamentally different. And before that US had a very long history of invading or intervening in Latin American countries due to various often dubious reasons.
If anything the last few decades might have been the exception.
There might be a local debate about the legality in the US. But from the outside perspective in terms of international law, there is not much to debate. Unless i missed some UN resolution, the US has no jurisdiction in Venezuela.
Or maybe there wouldn't be any debate and people will move on to the next bombastic thing he does. Populists get away with everything by simply not engaging, people get tired and seek new entertainment and there's no actual checks and balances beyond the decency. When someone has no claim of decency, they are untouchable. No one will ever arrest them, stop them or deny them anything because they can just replace those who do not obey. Maduro, Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Orban and many others are made from the same cloth.
Quite refreshing, actually.
Earlier today I heard the argument that idealism was promoted in the West because it encourages a separation from reality and makes people easier to control.
I consider myself an idealist. I just don't believe that ignorance and delusion are the means by which an ideal can be brought about.
Your comment was chemically and biologically decomposed by microorganisms and fungi, which extracted energy from it and returned the remaining nutrients to the surrounding soil, providing a fertile ground for the growth of plants?
Wag the Dog.
If Trump had just globalised the seizure of shadow tankers, he could have dealt a serious blow to Venezuela, Iran, Russia and China.
https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-22/oil-gold...
Once a puppet regime has been established, you can bet Trump-related companies will get contracts to extract this stuff.
It's multi-faceted. Venezuela is a hive of Russian, Chinese and Iranian activity in the Western Hemisphere. That is–long run–a problem for America.
Venezuela is also a brutal dictatorship that is oppressing its people and producing waves of migrants.
Finally, Venezuela is rich in underdeveloped mineral and energy resources. (Caveat: Exxon currently pumps those wells.)
Venezuela is also not Epstein, so, idk, there's that.
Hmm, the Ukraine is a hive of American, British and German activity near Russian border. That is–long run–a problem for Russia. How does that sound?
Like a bad reason to go to war. Same here.
I'm not justifying the war. I'm just saying the reasons are–or at least reasonably can be–more complicated than one dimension.
The most costly misjudgement was on part of the Ukrainian nationalists who thought the US would protect them. The US leaders however don't feel like dying in the nuclear fire for the fans of Bandera.
You could start by watching Bush Sr.'s speech in Kiev in 1991: "Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred".[0]
Americans later did support them, of course. [1]
Fast forward to 2014:
"The night before the clashes, Right Sector called on all of its members to ready themselves for a "peace offensive" on 18 February. <...> That morning, around 20,000 demonstrators marched on the parliament building as that body was set to consider opposition demands for a new constitution and government. Around 09:45, the demonstrators broke through the police barricade of several personnel-transport trucks near the building of the Central Officers' Club of Ukraine and pushed the cordon of police aside. The clashes started after some two dozen demonstrators moved a police vehicle blocking their path to parliament." [2]
Right Sector is "the right-wing, paramilitary confederation of several ultranationalist organizations" [3]
After overthrowing pro-Ukrainian president who was predominantly supported by the Eastern Ukraine, pro-Western Ukrainian nationalistic "government" started what they cynically called Anti-Terrorist Operation in the Eastern Ukraine
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkjxf76xRTw
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/john-mccain-meets-oleh-tyahn...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity#Protest_...
You won't find any avenues in Russia named after Stalin. They were renamed after 1953 condemnation of Stalin's "cult of personality". Post-2014 regime in the Ukraine has renamed scores of streets after Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated with Nazis. The most cynical was the renaming of major avenue in Kiev leading to Babiy Yar (the place where thousands of Jews were massacred) to honor Bandera and the renaming of the avenue that used to honor Nikolai Vatutin[0], Soviet general who fought Nazis on the territory of Ukraine, after after Shukhevych[1], another Nazi collaborator and mass murderer.
You can easily find the names of these despicable people in Google Maps on the maps of Kiev and many other Ukrainian cities.
Don't know about avenues, but Russians unveiled new statue of Stalin in Moscow in 2025.
A problem for American ideology or dominance? Sure. But a valid reason for war? No. Right now America is breaking international law. Stealing oil tankers is literal piracy. Bombing a country is imperialism. These things should be done with a process that involves other countries and seeks consensus.
> Venezuela is also a brutal dictatorship that is oppressing its people and producing waves of migrants.
Agree.
> Finally, Venezuela is rich in underdeveloped mineral and energy resources. (Caveat: Exxon currently pumps those wells.)
Given how the Trump family is using every single means to become rich through their power, I imagine this is their main motivation.
> Venezuela is also not Epstein, so, idk, there's that.
I view this Venezuela war and the Somalian daycare fraud as ways the administration distracts from inconvenient issues like Epstein and affordability.
They have been assisting Russia, operating a shadow fleet of oil tankers that routinely disable transponders to evade international sanctions against each other. They've also been helping Iran to manufacture UAVs.
They are also a narco-state. The cartel there has at least partially captured the government.
Installing a more palatable leader and administration would perhaps allow the sanctions to be lifted, oil to be sold on the global market, and aid to flow in. The brain drain from the country might partly reverse.
Or, it could devolve into a civil war, insurgency, mass refugee exodus, etc.
All the above describes many countries, more or less. Why the US is targeting Venezuela in particular likely has to do with oil, geopolitical principle (Monroe doctrine) and advantage (weaken Iran and Russia), Venezuelan immigration to the U.S., distraction from Trump's failing health, personal & political scandals, "red meat" for the base and war-hawks, and the political security afforded to a "war time" president.
This deserves far more than the two little sidenotes you've dropped in here.
POTUS demonstrably does not give a fuck about countries "assisting Russia", "being repressive", "stealing elections" or "having economic/food/health problems".
These decisions require a pretty broad coalition to get a workable plan in front of Trump for him to activate for attention. So there is never 1 single reason, but my 2cents are that:
- Most of the oil export goes to China. Especially with the recent metals kerfuffle, this is a quick way to improve the US' negotiation position.
- The hawks in the army are getting restless and are clamoring for real-world modern drone warfare experience - especially if Taiwan turns hot. Getting a trial run in your backyard in similar terrain is good practice. (Assuming they'll send in an occupying force, and it's contested by china backed insurgents).
If Russian and Iran are skirting sanctions with a shadow fleet, it would make sense to disabling that fleet would weaken them. e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/us/politics/russia-oil-ta...
US has essentially taken control of trillions of dollars worth of energy, choking Russia's dependence on energy exports and making China's energy dependence on Middle East, Russia and Australia that much less resilient.
It has also basically seized Chinese investments into Venezuela.
>In turn, the United States would recognize and not interfere with existing European colonies nor meddle in the internal affairs of European countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
Does that last part apply to Venezuela? Or has the doctrine evolved?
Is this likely to increase inflation? And what does this mean for FX -- are we likely to see a further weakening of the dollar, particularly against ex EUR?
The worst-case outcome for the US is that it gets pulled into another unpopular, long-term conflict that undermines its international standing and allows assorted rogues to advance their goals (Ukraine, Taiwan, who knows what else).
The best-case outcome is that this is a successful regime change operation which nets the US a resource-rich trading partner, undermines Russia, and scares Iran. How you assess the likelihood of these outcomes sort of depends on your priors.
I would say, however, that the recent history of US military interventions doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. Venezuela is nowhere near being the cluster---- that we've dealt in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc, but who knows.
There are 2 differences that stand out.
Intelligence seems more capable nowadays compared to 2003, probably due to better cyber/SIGINT. It took 3 years for the coalition to find Saddam despite a large ground presence. I wouldn't give Maduro more than a month if the US was intent on taking him out, after the capabilities that we saw in Iran and South Lebanon the last two years that simply did not exist 2 decades ago. For the first time, war has been inverted, and it's the regime that dies first instead of the soldiers.
Second difference is the absence of political Islamism as a dominant ideology in the culture. This makes it more comparable to regime change wars against Japan and Germany in WW2 than recent wars in MENA.
Historically, fascism and authoritarianism communism have been temporary secular hysterias that come and go. Ukraine post-Maidan, for example, embraced democracy because they tried communism already and learned that it sucks.
Islamism seems more potent and durable and always rears its head in instability like in Bangladesh most recently, or the Arab Spring before. My explanation for this durability is that it is tied in with religion and is believed to be divinely ordained, rather than just a human made system that sucks.
This is unlike Christianity which is structurally secular by doctrine ('render unto Caesar').
That's historical crackpottery. Christianity went through two centuries of religious warfare starting in the early 1500s, with the German population suffering a per-capita death toll higher than WW2. Before that, it launched centuries-long crusades into the Middle East - at some point wiping out the non-Christian people of the city of Jerusalem, which was, and eventually returned to being, a multi-religious city under Muslim rule.
Radical Islamism has only existed since 1979 because of the Iranian revolution. It looks like it's on the decline now. It might have only emerged because of failed efforts at modernising. Europe and the West might have only lapped MENA because they were geographically well-placed to pillage the Americas - not because of any cultural superiority.
[EDIT: I've just read over this, and I'd like to clarify that I like Christianity and Christians in many respects, even though I'm not a Christian myself. I also like the modern West. I just hate lying, hypocritical, cowardly, proud and murderous xenophobes like you]
> I could say the same thing about radical fascism in Germany and Japan, and yet.
Germany and Japan stopped being fascist because nobody was going to let them go back to gassing people.
And would you look at that, Maduro has already been captured after 3 hours. This is why it categorically not like Iraq 2003.
There is no need to scare Iran. The mullahs are already scared shitless and were utterly humiliated this summer. They could have easily been removed, but it was decided that it was not worth it, as the next regime could be even worse. A weak, scared Iran is the best outcome.
Possibly dragging supply down, with no net effect at best.
This is going to hurt China economically, and in a way that isn’t going to be seen as targeted at China or unfair by international community.
Russia’s production and refining capacity has been seeing attrition from Ukraine’s efforts. They’re producing less oil, selling it for less, and for rubles that each buy less.
I’ve said before on HN that I thought Venezuela was intended to soak up Russian resources - this is just the next step.
Actually, thinking about it more, this makes little sense. There's very little upside (and it's far off), while there's plenty of short and long-term downside. Great geopolitical strategizing out there.
That being said, how many continents are we left from being able to call that a bona fide world war ? Can we count Africa as "in a state of war per default", leaving only Oceania ? Should Australians brace themselves ?
Edit, for the benefit of all: /s
Australians are currently paying him billions for 2nd hand nuclear submarines (which are not likely to ever be delivered), so that they can protect themselves from their biggest trading partner.
The deal is admittedly shakey, but so is most things the US is involved in these days.
Comedy is becoming reality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgspkxfkS4k
But hey, if making up a bogus threat is what it takes to sell guns…
I actually believe the majority of children who need to study geography would prefer Greenland (which has a lot of ice) to be called Iceland, and Iceland (which doesn't have a lot of ice) to be called Greenland.
I think a majority consensus would be easily achieved.
Language is defined by how people use it, not decreed top down. It would just be convenient if the very apogee of power (despite the deep state) concurred with and recognized the wisdom of the least represented in the world: children.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-e...
Venezuela accuses US of attacking Caracas as explosions rock capital
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/03/explosions-rep...
One person made a decision.
And that started a 11+ years of propaganda, political acrobatics, war, manipulation of the masses, etc etc etc. Lots of things that are good for that one person to be able to stay in power.
Back to Venezuela and Trump - it's possible that Trump is testing grounds for a similar play. If he finds an enemy he can keep fighting for a long time - he will stay president for all that time. Elections won't matter. People will vote for those who fight "the enemy". You just need to create an enemy.
I don't think any latin american country can withstand the US for any amount of time, unless it turns into a guerilla war.
> Pre 2014 no Russian person would directly wish/hope/wait for the annexation of Crimea.
is just bollocks.
> On 21 May 1992 the Supreme Soviet of Russia declared 1954 transfer of Crimea as having "no legal force", because it was adopted "in violation of the Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Russian SFSR and legislative process", but because subsequent legislation and the 1990 Russo-Ukrainian treaty constituted that fact
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Crimea
Russians were planning Crimea takeover for a long time.
As for the government - your are absolutely on point. And I don't disagree.
Russia in the last 30 years invaded and occupied Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria - not to mention the atrocities committed in Africa.
But with the exception of Syria, Russia always had genocidal intent - deny cultures, erase them, and make those countries as unstable as possible while remaining occupied.
I'm not saying what the US did was good, or right, but there's a big difference.
The US never denied the existence of cultures, languages, etc.
But if you want to go that path, some of those countries tried and were willing to do the same - or suddenly we forgot what Saddam's Iraq did?
But remind me, what did Ukraine do? They surrendered their nukes and we're a threat to no one.
I am blunt. Murder is a murder.
>"But if you want to go that path, some of those countries tried and were willing to do the same - or suddenly we forgot what Saddam's Iraq did?"
I did not and I have never claimed that Iraq, Iran etc. were good guys. They were murderous regimes. What's your point?
>"But remind me, what did Ukraine do?"
Ukraine is a victim here, so again what's your point?
You seriously need to open up just one (1) history book about how the US was founded, to understand how wrong you are on just this point.
So they invaded their own internationally recognized territory. Wonderful. By that standard Ukraine invaded Donbass after they declared themselves independent of Ukraine.
>Syria
Even more outlandish claim, considering they were invited by the government. Whether the west considered the government illegitimate or not didn't matter.
>Moldova >Georgia
in both conflicts in protection of a minority, on whose territory a larger state laid claim using Soviet drawn borders and dissolution of the USSR. Since the Ukrainian conflict started I observed lots of enthusiasm for Soviet borders on the side of Russia's detractors, which were often drawn with territories assigned as a form of favoritism, simply because communist leadership in Moscow had better a relationship with the communist leaders of one of the ethnicities in question. That way historic Armenian land of Artsakh was assigned to Azerbaijan for example -- the recent ethnic cleansing outcome of that is well known.
If the US tried to survive by just fair economics it would crumble into dust in less than a decade. Yet they use Latin America as their own backyard in order to avoid this.
And, well, as an European I have to say that France does the same with Africa in order to be semi on par with Germany. If not, their GDP would just be slightly better than Spain, if not worse because centralisation it's hell for modern times.
Some states in the US would do fine, OFC. But in order to support the whole USA, that's unfeasible. You can't have a country where a few powerhouses have to carry up the rest in a really innefective way, such as oil dependant transportation.
Meanwhile, the Chinese and Europe will just build non-polluting railways everywhere.
For example, the Israeli occupation and progressive annexation of Palestine is especially criminal because they have no intention of including the native population in their ethno-state- it's an annexation with ethnic cleansing or, if needed, genocide.
How is that relevant to Russia's invasion of Ukraine? Whenever Russia takes territory they're filling mass graves with raped Ukrainian civilians.
American forces too have committed innumerable atrocities, and there is no forgiving that, but it doesn't support the premise above that Russia is in some way cleaner.
Frankly that's just propaganda.
Putin himself has famously claimed that Russians and Ukrainians are the same people: this is the very opposite of the ideological premise to justify a genocide.
This is soviet bullshit, the Moscowitz did a lot of genocides you can find plenty of sources, so they were and are as bad as Israel because the Rusky/slavs in Ruzzia are indoctrinated to feel superior to the other non slaves in the empire and feel still a bit more superior then the rest of the slavs. You can look at the existing recent data from the Ruzzian stats and how the minorities are more in decline then the Ruskies.
So for uninformed people that might read this soviet guy comment, read a wikipedia summary of what moscowites did and Putin is still doing, I suggest not reading in detail, like reading books or interviews with vitims of this criminal empire you will fill a big amount of pain if you have empath on how this Ruscists treated humans , I will never forget the stuff Ir ead and better if I did not know the details.
Ruzzia, israle , USA all are bad but the situation is multidimensional and is not easy to say that Ruzzia is less bad then Nazis and are better then Israle etc., we cana dmit that criminal are criminals, dictators are dictators, bastardads are bastards and trolls are trolls.
In the last 100 years the trend has been been for America to invade a country and try to install a friendly government rather than formally annex them - Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria.
Oh plus all the overseas military bases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_oversea...
Also US never technically invaded Lybia, Yemen or Syria (unless you count their intervention to support the Kurdish and Iraqi governments against ISIS an invasion...)
What happened in Korea was the opposite of the invasion (of course the South Korea regime they were saving was extremely oppressive and arguably not worse at all than the one in the North at the time).
Also are you implying that the majority of military bases US has in other countries (especially in Europe) is involuntary?
https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/us_atrocities...
Which boys?
Besides, how realistic is a fear that a law abiding citizen would be endangered by the ICE?
[1] https://nipnlg.org/news/press-releases/ice-deports-man-claim...
Supposedly there's been 500k deportations, and 2.5m "self-deportations" in 2025, so what would be high here?
Edit: I also googled that man's name. A quick read of nbcs article suggests it's not clear he's a citizen. The judge said he "had a substantial claim to citizenship," which means nothing either way. He was born in Thailand.
"In his Nov. 3 brief, [a lawyer] contends Souvannarath stayed in the United States for 19 years after his removal order without challenging it or seeking proof of citizenship."
I love how you get to use unconfirmed bullshit numbers in your argument but then demand an exact count for the opposition to mix with your nonsense.
The official DHS statistics quote over 605k deported: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/12/10/thanks-president-trump-a...
The guardian says 327,000 a few weeks ago: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/22/ice-detentio...
You do the math
3/600,000 removals in 2025 = .000005% chance
So, to answer his question: not realistic at all that you'll get deported as a citizen. That's without fact checking you. I haven't seen anything about actual citizens being removed, including in the sibling comment claiming it with a reference.
Perhaps you are having trouble following the conversation. The argument put forth by OP is that ICE is endangering american citizens. That is factually true.
https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-...
I'm way more concerned with regular law enforcement endangering American citizens than ICE.
My concern covers all LEO fucking with American citizens, especially the masked and unidentified ones.
Between .0005% and .0003% chance that if ICE grabs someone up, they're a citizen. I think that's a pretty good record, actually. I don't think it's very alarming.
We have 348 million citizens, 170 got held for...days! While we conducted the most effective deportation of illegals in history.
I'm pretty sure ICE isn't going to accidentally get me. This problem may as well be non-existent.
What's real is actual citizens wrapped up in actual bullshit with regular LEO. With probably several orders of magnitude difference, wouldn't you agree? Maybe thousands per day, instead of 170 per year? Costing folks more than a few days' detention.
Why do you figure they're wearing masks?
Any attempt at holding the admin accountable would make it look a bit more like Venezuela. NA is rightfully too soft to want to ever go that route. They'll peacefully protest and that'll be it. Anything more than that would be the individuals throwing their lives away unless the whole country did it in unison.
But the dice Trump rolled could have easily fell onto a well prepared Maduro regime, which could have downed a few Blackhawks, torpedoed the ship from which they launched, captured and killed a few dozens to a few hundreds US service men, paraded them in the streets of Caracas and used them as human shields protecting the main military targets etc.
I.e, Trump could have easily committed US to a long term war and a ground invasion, without Congress authorization or allied support, and with Iraq or worse long term results.
It's actually quite an impressive feat of negotiation.
Nor is "US carries out murder campaign in Latin American country for unclear reasons"
> The president became aware of the consultations and warned his wife to be careful because it might look odd if it came out, Nancy Reagan wrote in her book.
> Nancy Reagan began consulting Quigley after the 1981 assassination attempt on her husband. She wanted to keep him from getting shot again, Nancy Reagan wrote in her 1989 memoir, "My Turn." "If it makes you feel better, go ahead and do it," she quoted the president as saying.
> The consultations were revealed to great embarrassment for the White House in a 1988 book by former White House chief of staff Donald Regan, who blamed the first lady for his ouster a year earlier. Regan said almost every major move and decision the Reagans made during his time as chief of staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes. He did not know her identity.
> The woman was in fact Joan Quigley, an heiress and Republican political activist. Quigley told The Associated Press in 1988 after her identity was revealed that she was a "serious, scientific astrologer."
A "serious, scientific astrologer", but no such thing exists, does she understand formulating null hypothesis and hypothesis testing statistics? probably not, so not scientific, any scientist actually applying the scientific method to astrology will quickly distance herself from astrology at all.
Amen to that. Now let's also do the same for all social "sciences".
Of course he now denies this so that never happened, he also said that 'doing so would not have been wrong'. Ever the lawyer. My client didn't do it, and if he did it wasn't wrong.
Nor did he ever claim that 'God influenced his deliberations'...
> "If it makes you feel better, go ahead and do it," she quoted the president as saying.
Also
> Both the president and Nancy Reagan denied that any policies or decisions were based on astrology.
So we can't really tell to what extent, if any, those consultations affected the actual policies.
In general, I don't trust politicians by default. Still, I also don't trust astrologers (and even less so), so there is no reason for me to believe the astrologer more than the president.
For example I'm not american and mostly on the right, and I think it's doubtful if it's legally justified (how does one legally justify a was anyways? it's extra-judicial almost by definition), but it makes a lot of sense, it aligns with realpolitik and it's morally good for several independent reasons. In particular it has a hugely disproportionate geopolitical impact, and less importantly it can bring a few million people from under a dictatorship.
As an interesting aside, I recently did a quick research on the Grenada invasion, widely spoken of as an embarrassing moment. It went... very well. They came, remove a budding dictatorship right after a coup, left in two months, and Grenada had no ill effects in the years after (both by subjective reporting, and by GDP per capita comparable to neighboring countries). The alternative would have been "do nothing", skip the reputational hit and have yet another hellhole in the region. The number of dictatorships that did well in recent history is exactly two, and neither was socialist (SK and Singapore).
What? There's a process for initiating an offensive war in the US and they didn't follow it. Legally, Congress must authorize it. Though that hasn't been followed for quite a few wars now.
Seems on “Illegal” side of things, for whatever that matters in ‘26 huh?
But we did have an AUMF for the absolute disasters that were the afghanistan and iraq wars. Somebody who isn't american coming in and saying "whatever, fuck it, Trump just does what he wants" is terrifying to me.
Trump would prefer it if I were killed. Should I be shot?
Just because it's ignored every time doesn't make this time okay.
This. Your logic could at least make sense with other US president, but not wanna-be dictator one doing lip service for all the authoritarians and dictators in the world. Not a good fit to fight for democracy.
It’s more than lip service.
I see we’re now living in a world where many people genuinely don’t even remember the answer to this question.
Roughly, you can legally justify a war if (i) it’s in self defense or (ii) you get a UN Security Council resolution. That’s why GWB tried to get a security council resolution before going into Iraq, as the case for self defense was pretty shaky.
Is it common for actual wars to meet these legal requirements? No. But that’s just because wars are something that generally shouldn’t happen. It’s also not common for murders to meet the requirements on justifiable homicide.
Some of the discussion of the legality of the US invasion of Panama is relevant here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pana...
Folks there's nothing new or insane here. Countries attacked other countries all throughout human history. The surprise is when they don't.
Now it's not super hard to understand why Trump is fixated on Venezuela in terms of geopolitics. There's a decision by this admin to bolster US in the western hemisphere, possibly in preparation to coming to terms with a bipolar world split between US and China. So the US is now meddling with Canada and Greenland. Now with the shift towards the right in Latam (Milei in Argentina, Bukele in El Salvador, Kast in Chile) Trump is just pushing a few more bricks to create a more uniform American-led sphere. Plus, Venezuela was very close with the Iranians and Russians, so removing this regime surely serves some strategic goals.
"Justified" in the sense of "went to congress for a declaration of war". You know, that thing Presidents stopped doing in the early 2000s.
Examples of bombings/ground invasions using WPR without congressional AUMF:
Invasion of Grenada (1983) (7,300 US troops, 19 KIA)
Invasion of Panama (1989) (27,000 troops, 23 KIA)
Airstrikes on Libya (1986) (and 2011) [Obama administration argued they did not need Congressional authorization because the operations did not constitute "hostilities" as defined by the War Powers Resolution. Therefore, they argued, the 60-day clock never started.]
Kosovo Air Campaign (1999) [The bombing campaign lasted 78 days in violation of the 60-day limit]
The Mayaguez Incident (1975)
Syria Missile Strikes (2017 & 2018)
Assassination of Qasem Soleimani (2020)
Trump commuted the sentence of a fentanyl trafficker and his crime is their whole justification.
There is the Dixie Mafia and the President all over again
The concept of "international law" here is pretty confusing because to begin with you'd need to choose who decides what counts as a violation of Venezuelas sovereignty. Presumably the people backed by the US are okay with this, and team Maduro isn't.
Presumably, if you were to agree that Maduro wasn't in fact the legitimate leader of Venezuela, you'd just consider this an internal issue with US helping in local law enforcement matters.
If you disagree and consider Maduro to be the legitimate president, presumably no amount of justification will help you see it differently. But then, I'm not sure anyone particularly cares about your opinion either.
They're talking about Venuzela stealing their oil (it's not) and of transporting drugs to the US (while pardoning drug king pins).
The reality is that there a lot of people across the political divide at very high levels of government who deeply dislike Maduro for a variety of reasons, some perhaps more pure-hearted than others.
Oil and drugs are obviously not even how they're justifying this to themselves. The oil in Venezuela isn't that interesting because it's really only US and some Canadian oil companies that are capable of extracting it. The US is always going to control oil production in Venezuela, no matter what.
But yeah, instead of focusing on all the silly statements the admin puts out you might as well just guess at the eventual steelmanned argument they'll present in writing at a later date.
> Also, shouldn't he then be doing this in many other places in the world?
No, I don't see how that would follow. I can choose to give money to a charity, but that does not mean I have to choose to give my money to all the charities in the world.
Were they? And is that the justification the US has cited? If not, you're writing fan fiction and that's not really interesting.
I'm not a supporter of totalitarian regimes including Maduro's, but the US has a track record of producing very poor outcomes for people in South America when they topple one leader in favor of a more--shall we say--"market friendly" character waiting in the wings.
As for international law, it is extremely clear, prohibiting the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. International law recognizes only two clear exceptions: self defense or a US Security Councul resolution.
This is all necessarily speculative, we might never have sufficient visibility to know all the facts.
I'm merely attempting to provide the strongest reply the administration could provide if they cared to try. I believe it's reasonably grounded in facts.
1. US government openly does not recognize Maduro as the legitimate head of state of Venezuela
2. US government does recognize Edmundo González Urrutia as the president-elect.
3. Venezuelan opposition has been heavily lobbying in an effort to get foreign governments to intervene in Venezuela
All of these things are verifiable facts, I think they can be distilled into my perfectly reasonable suggestion as to how the US could fend off such criticism.
Unilateral action by the US against a souvenir nation should be criticized regardless the nation.
There's no second party to this action, it's the US's alone. Even if we accept the electoral fraud claims, Venezuela did not ask for US intervention. The rightfully elected leader of a nation can't call for a second nation to invade and bomb their nation.
Why not?
For Venezuela, this would be something that, if any organization could call for it, it'd be the "Supreme Tribunal of Justice" [1]
And before you say it, yes I get that they are corrupt. But there are still laws. Which is why if you are going to overrule the laws of another nation, you should have at least some backing from the UN first. Deciding on your own that the the courts are wrong is just international vigilantism.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Tribunal_of_Justice_(V...
On the other hand, if much of the world agrees with you anyway, not bothering with asking the UN might not matter at all.
Decided by whom?
It's a low bar, and clearly one that the current Venezuelan government clears.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pana...
Anyway, good riddance. Maybe the Trump Administration actually has a plan for peaceful transfer of power now that they removed Maduro? The US still needs to disrupt ELN drug operations, if that's what they're really after.
It's really really difficult to paint this as inherently bad, it's hard to see how the conclusion here doesn't entirely depend on how you feel about the results of the previous Venezuelan elections.
From the perspective that regime change often goes horribly wrong? Absolutely.
From the point of view that Maduro was effectively in charge of a coup that the real elected candidates were desperately seeking foreign support to stop? Harder to see the intervention as bad, as it is probably the only way to rectify the situation.
There's no doubt that this heavily depends on one's personal views, so there's no obvious answers. At least the concern about regime change is fact-based and pretty much universal, regardless of personal beliefs. The concern about whether or not it's right or wrong for the US to go and arrest Maduro depends largely on how one views the recent Venezuelan election results, and therefore inherently relies on some major assumptions on matters where we're unlikely to ever see conclusive proof.
Of course, there are also pretty good technical reasons to believe the electoral receipts published by the Venezuelan opposition. I believe they would have been pretty much impossible to fake. That topic and others related to it have been pretty much endlessly discussed on HN already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41123155
Again, no it doesn’t. It’s the unilateral extraterritorial interventionism that’s the problem. I have no time for Maduro or his administration.
And if you think this intervention is about protecting democracy I have a bridge to sell you.
>And if you think this intervention is about protecting democracy I have a bridge to sell you.
No, I certainly don't think that. I'd suspect it's mostly about personal grievances and Trumps desire to make a show. But still I think it makes more sense to focus on the best-case justifications than trying to guess at the real reasons behind why this administration does what it does.
The actual motivations matter because they dictate the outcome. In this case the actual motivations have been stated publicly by Trump a few years ago, they want the oil back. They will happily support whoever ends up in power so long as they hand back the oil rights.
>In this case the actual motivations have been stated publicly by Trump a few years ago, they want the oil back. They will happily support whoever ends up in power so long as they hand back the oil rights.
That's obviously not credible, you can't profitably extract Venezuelan crude without US involvement. There's simply nobody else with the capabilities to do so. Venezuelan oil is particularly difficult to get out of the ground, it's tremendously difficult to extract profitably.
I see that you do not manage your finances properly. Lemme take over.
Besides I do not believe this "nobody else" BS. If there is a need and money to be made they will find someone with the tech or deep enough pockets to develop it.
There's no need and there's likely to be no money to be made. The extraction costs will probably be closer to $60 per barrel, which is more than you can sell it for.
Not your or mine problem. It is up to Venezuela to figure it out either way, at least in a reasonable world it should be.
Ah, but when it's the US it's fine. They're the champions of democracy, aren't they?
Not at all arguing that it somehow leads to justification for an illegal invasion.
In this specific case the claim comes down to assertions of a sham election. If this was indeed the case (with the lens of an international survey obviously the US view is suspect considering the attack), then the Venezuelan people themselves do not view him as a legitimate leader, which simplifies the situation.
I think my assumption that the legitimacy of a government rests in the eye of the beholder is pretty reasonable.
Step out of your American exceptionalist bubble for a second. How would you like if the inverse were true? There's some shady elections in US so Venezuela decides to throw bombs on Washington. How would you enjoy that?
>Step out of your American exceptionalist bubble for a second. How would you like if the inverse were true? There's some shady elections in US so Venezuela decides to throw bombs on Washington. How would you enjoy that?
I'm neither from the US, nor a huge fan of the US.
I do think Venezuela could probably have been right to depose Trump in a similar manner had he managed to cling to power after January 6, but that's an absurd thing to speculate about.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/us/politics/venezuela-uni...
U.S. foreign policy is bipartisan. The big plan was to keep the Russians tied up in Ukraine, get Syria (achieved under Biden) and now get China and Russia out of Venezuela.
It could work with bribing officers like in Syria, in which case there will be minimal resistance and then probably the Nobel War Prize recipient Machado will be installed.
It is possible that all of this was discussed with Russia (you get things in your backyard, we in ours).
Uh? Bush failed to assemble a coalition by providing dubious and faked proofs of supposed WMDs and chemical weapons. The Europeans and especially the French didn't fall for it. The only one who did was Tony Blair and he's still paying the price both domestically in the UK and abroad. AFAIK, Trump isn't planning to send troops in Venezuela on the scale Bush did in Iraq.
(edit: I was wrong. Italy, UK, Spain, Poland, Turkey among others.) Anyway, the point is that there was some sort of coalition.
And for months, years even, that "can't argue with success" strategy worked great. Some help from a loyal press was necessary, of course.
This is what the architects of this invasion (it's hardly Trump alone) are banking on, too. We WILL get told that suddenly life is so much better for everyone in Venezuela, and for a while it might even be true - it's very cheap for the US to provide, after all. The serious, realistic position will be that this was a shrewd thing to do, and the Nobel Peace prize committee showed great foresight and were vindicated in their choice.
But then the Furies will come knocking.
"You forgot Poland."
Can you outline how Canada contributed? Because I distinctly remember our PM at the time, Chretien, saying 'no thanks'.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Iraq_War
How about Germany?
* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/aug/06/iraq.johnhoope...
He should be tried for war crimes for dragging the UK into a war on false pretences.
Blair was accused of misleading parliament over the WMD claims and there was a limited attempt to impeach him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_motion_to_impeac...
Also relevant with regard to war crimes is this recent uncovering: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/30/tony-blair-p...
(There's lots of various opinions given about Blair which are not really authoritative, such as: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair-iraq-gov...)
So this was purely a political move on the part of Blair to cozy up to the US. Maddening.
I wish that were true, but as somebody from Denmark I can tell you that it isn't
Upon reflection, the justifications to invade Afghanistan were every bit as flimsy as the justification to invade Iraq.
What Iraq had to with it, i honestly have no idea. Somehow we pivotted from Afghanistan to Iraq
The right move by the US would have been to kill osama the way they ultimately did, through intelligence gathering and a targeted strike.
That seems like a solid casus belli.
"KERRY: ...when we went in, there were three countries: Great Britain, Australia and the United States. That's not a grand coalition. We can do better.
LEHRER: Thirty seconds, Mr. President
BUSH: Well, actually, he forgot Poland. And now there's 30 nations involved, standing side by side with our American troops."
https://www.state.gov/nicolas-maduro-moros/
[edit] Maduro remained under US federal indictment on narco‑terrorism and related cocaine trafficking conspiracy charges throughout the Biden administration.
I don't like how Trump has unilaterly decided this extreme of an action, but at the moment I am glad that this didn't fail like it did in Ukraine. I am still worried about what the aftermath will lead to. I don't think peace and democracy is having a particularly winning record at the moment.
These things are messy.
If we really want to "promote democracy" so badly, let's start with Saudi Arabia.
But if we're going to invade some country on the grounds of making it into a democracy, one does have to wonder why we don't start with the countries that are very proudly and openly not democracies.
Then you put your thumb on the scale (i.e. Texas) so you don’t cede power to the other party in the midterms and then you never need to worry about consequences for your entire term.
It’s a bit more of a problem in 2028 but Trump is term-limited so that’s someone else’s problem.
There's a pretty well established Turkic solution to that. (Change the constitution. Claim the term limit applied to the old republic and it's your first term actually and go about your day)
The people would be knowingly voting for that, and he would have to win the election of course.
After a review of the amendment, I don't believe it would be a "narrow interpretation" to read the text of the law and apply it.
Are you saying it wouldn't be okay for him to be VP and take the helm if Vance died? I think that would be okay, per my reading.
The deception/switcharoo is a different problem, not really related to running three times. Biden could have made Kamala President Day 1 as well.
Vance has been willing to ride along with Trump as long as it gets Vance to positions of higher power. But it seems to me that Vance's agenda is Vance, not Trump. I doubt that he'd play that "resign" game. (He might tell Trump that he was going to...)
Snatching a national leader of a country with which the US is not at war, has had zero force authorization, off of that leader's own soil, is completely unprecedented, no matter how bad that leader is.
Wars should not be the unilateral whim of an uncountable dictator, ever. They should not be started by the US on pretenses that continually change, have not been clearly stated to the American people or Congress, and that make zero sense to anyone involved.
The most clear explanation I have heard that makes any sense at all for this behavior is that Marco Rubio thinks he can ride this to the presidency because he knows it will be popular with a large chunk of Latin Americans, even if it is inexplicable to most Americans.
Regardless of the logistics of how wars should be conducted, the destruction of the US constitution inherent in this action is treasonous to our country's ideals.
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/venezuela-us-military-s...
The clear fly-out with rotary wing craft seemingly without a concern in the world tells me they absolutely decapitated Venezuela's air defenses.
Their intelligence must have been flawless to have this level of confidence.
This wasn't just a raid, it was an extremely visible one meant to send a message.
Edit: Bloomberg is reporting they captured and extracted Maduro
https://archive.is/2026.01.03-094534/https://www.bloomberg.c...
If you're going to flaunt nerd speak then just say JSOC.
Additionally, might it be that every dictatorship is hated by most expatriates? I think that that was the case for the 2 (or 3) countries that the neo-cons invaded, and I don't remember any of those invasions turning out well. Reckless.
Plus the opposition won the 2024 election by a landslide, but it was stolen by Maduro.
The overwhelming majority wants the regime to end.
So please get rid of the regime, the majority of the country wants to go back to democracy.
Obviously this isn’t hard intelligence — correlation isn’t causation — but when combined with more grounded indicators (verified reports, diplomatic channels, satellite data) it can be a piece of the broader picture. Just a fun example of how people try to find patterns in publicly available data.
(jk, Pentagon OPSEC is TIGHT from what I've been told)
I guess it'll just be another count added when the Dems start impeachment proceedings on November 4th.
Wikipedia [1]:
> Andrew McCabe quotes Trump as saying of Venezuela "That’s the country we should be going to war with, they have all that oil and they’re right on our back door.”
> In June 2023, Trump said at a press conference in North Carolina, "When I left, Venezuela was about to collapse. We would have taken over it, we would have kept all that oil."
PBS [2]:
> "We want it back," he added. "They took our oil rights — we had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_United_States_invasio...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-we-want-it-back-...
Apparently shale oil mostly comes out as light, so our own production doesn't feed our refineries and we've increasingly taken to importing heavy crude.
Also do these countries governments care for their own ppl? Seems like no as if they did ..they wouldn’t be corrupt 2nd to 3rd world countries & their citizens wouldn’t be fleeing to America in droves
Your family dying in the rubble of a bombed house.
As for the rest of the us, I suppose now we should sanction the US
He didn't give Trump a gold CD to invade Venezuela.
He gave Trump a gold CD so you didn't have to pay a 30-50% tariff on iPhones, and it worked.
If it was as simple as giving Trump a golden CD to stop being a moron, some billionaire would've done that already. Turns out, that problem is much harder to solve.
should be
"Venezuela’s authoritarian government has accused the US authoritarian government ..."
or (better, really)
"Venezuela has accused the US ..."
Venezuela is under a dictatorshipt that has violated human rights massively, in Caracas (the capital) there's a prison know as El Helicoide, that's the headquarterts of the SEBIN (Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia), they are the secret police and the have arrested opposition members, reporters, human rights activists, and even family members of any of the three. Their headquarters is El Helicoide, a prison that is the equivalent of Guantanamo, but in Venezuela; it is the largest torture center in Latin America.
On July 28, 2024, presidential elections were held, which were extremely difficult to reach. Negotiations with the government were necessary to allow the opposition to participate. The opposition held primary elections to determine its candidate, and María Corina Machado (MCM) (the previous year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate) won with approximately 90% of the vote. There was also a high voter turnout that the government had not anticipated, so they disqualified her, she then proposed another candidate, but this person was also disqualified, and ultimately, they had to put forward Edmundo González Urrutia (EGU), an stranger in Venezuelan politics, and had to convince him to participate in the elections.
During the campaign, the government placed every possible obstacle in their path to prevent them from campaigning, closing roads, arresting campaign workers, and issuing threats. On election day, there were several irregularities, and at midnight, the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that Maduro had won. However, MCM claimed there had been fraud and, days later, presented evidence. She had conducted a large-scale operation to collect all the electoral records from every polling station in the country, managing to gather the vast majority, which showed that EGU had won with 67%. This sparked widespread protests and severe repression, including the arrest of many members of Vente Venezuela (MCM's party). She was forced into hiding, and EGU was forced to leave the country, but only after making a deal with the government while taking refuge in the Spanish embassy. His son-in-law was also arrested and remains missing to this day.
If you ask any Venezuelan, many agree with an US invasion. The vast majority are against the regime, just like me, although many aren't aware of how dangerous Trump is, or the things he's done in the US. To me, Trump isn't so different from Chávez: he insults those who disagree with him, he doesn't respect institutions, he installs his people in positions of power, and he only cares about loyalty. That's why I'm in a very complicated position, because on the one hand, I want this dictatorship to finally end; on the other hand, I don't like Trump. He's quite capable of trying to establish his own dictatorship in his country. He's not doing this just to liberate us; he's doing it because he has his own interests.
There are also many people who have spoken ill of MCM; many have said she didn't deserve the Nobel Prize and that she's just a puppet of Trump.
I couldn't disagree more with those statements.
I don't completely agree with her; I have a somewhat different ideology than hers, but even I can see how much effort she puts into everything she does. Here in Venezuela, she's greatly admired. I'm not one to admire people or have idols. I even criticize her a bit because she never makes it clear what the plan is for getting out of this situation and always says that freedom will come soon, something that gets very tiresome, but even so, I can understand her.
Being in her position is very difficult, due to the alliances the government has made. A large part of the left worldwide has sided with the dictatorship or doesn't denounce its atrocities, and because of that, she has no choice but to ally herself with right-wing people, including Trump. I don't think she agrees with everything he does, and she's even asked him to treat Venezuelans better, but she can't anger him either, because he's the only ally who can help her with this. That's why she told him he should have received the Nobel Prize, to avoid further anger and to try to appease him.
It's also important to mention something else: the Venezuelan government has used various operations to manipulate public opinion, both inside and outside Venezuela, trying to portray itself as a legitimate government and claiming that everything the U.S. does is for the sake of oil. While this is partly true, it also attempts to tarnish the reputation of MCM and the opposition. It's possible that here, on Twitter, Bluesky, or many other sites, there are fake accounts trying to promote this narrative, so be careful what you read, because this government has committed atrocities; don't forget that.
Talking about all this is very difficult, because on the one hand this is a dictatorship that we want to free ourselves from, but on the other hand Trump is one of the worst things that has happened to the world.
Excuse me if my text seems strange, I originally wrote it in Spanish and translated it in Google Translate, although I know English, it was easier for me to do it this way.
8 million of us had to flee the country.
This is false (if by “proof” you mean “evidence” and not absolute certain knowledge).
Here’s how Wikipedia describes the election results:
US 2024 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...
> The Republican Party's ticket—Donald Trump, who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, and JD Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio—defeated the Democratic Party's ticket—Kamala Harris, the incumbent U.S. vice president, and Tim Walz, the incumbent governor of Minnesota.
US 2020 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_elections
> The Democratic Party's nominee, former vice president Joe Biden, defeated incumbent Republican president Donald Trump in the presidential election.
Venezuela 2024 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Venezuelan_presidential_e...
> The election was contentious, with international monitors calling it neither free nor fair,[4] citing the incumbent Maduro administration's having controlled most institutions and repressed the political opposition before, during,[2][5] and after the election. Widely viewed as having won the election, former diplomat Edmundo González…
Regardless I'm curious as to what is inherently immoral in arresting a dictator?
> The end does justify the means. This is obvious with even a few seconds' thought, and the fact that the phrase has become a byword for evil is a historical oddity rather than a philosophical truth.
> Hollywood has decided that this should be the phrase Persian-cat-stroking villains announce just before they activate their superlaser or something. But the means that these villains usually employ is killing millions of people, and the end is subjugating Earth beneath an iron-fisted dictatorship. Those are terrible means to a terrible end, so of course it doesn't end up justified.
> Next time you hear that phrase, instead of thinking of a villain activating a superlaser, think of a doctor giving a vaccination to a baby. Yes, you're causing pain to a baby and making her cry, which is kinda sad. But you're also preventing that baby from one day getting a terrible disease, so the end justifies the means. If it didn't, you could never give any vaccinations.
> If you have a really important end and only mildly unpleasant means, then the end justifies the means. If you have horrible means that don't even lead to any sort of good end but just make some Bond villain supreme dictator of Earth, then you're in trouble - but that's hardly the fault of the end never justifying the means.
(Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20140220063523/https://www.raiko...)
Note that it's not clear whether the end does justify the means in this specific case, and likely won't be for some time, if ever.
Law-wise I agree and it has set an awful precedent.
But in the other hand Venezuelans all over the world (certainly the Venezuelans here that I know) are celebrating. I myself am in some way relieved. This is a dictator that did unspeakable things to their own population, set proxy criminal organizations, sent hitmen to kill dissidents in my country, highly decreasing our perceived safety.
So one part of my heart is glad. Plenty of Venezuelans are. I just hope they are quick to either put Corina Machado in charge or call for elections and at last bring true freedom to that country.
Because that's what has actually happened here.
It's not like there will be peaceful and organized elections now. The template from US actions in Latin America in the past is: A puppet regime will be installed and it will be involved in heavy domestic oppression of its own.
You're saying this as if they (the people) had any control before.
A military intervention should always be the last resort. Two examples of military intervention / occupation working out in the long run are Germany and Japan in WW2. Maybe even South Korea (stabilization of a dictatorship and economic development lead to a democratic revolution later). One can be hopeful that this starts a better chapter for the Venezuelians as well.
Ignoring the fact that we have been using these examples for decades now as reasoning for going to war, these were all done after years of war. What makes you so convinced that this is "over" and the Venezuelean people can live happily ever after? History says it's far from over.
As a person living in the Americas… I’m surprised at how good this outcome is? Did we just remove a terrible regime in a comparably bloodless way?
This appears to be a prisoner’s dilemma. What just happened is probably a utilitarian win. But the president it sets could enable horrible abuses in the future.
It's way too early to tell this. I mean, hopefully yes, but it's way, way too early to tell.
You captured Maduro in an blatantly illegal act of war and until now the Regime is still there.
I hope for the people in Venezuela that this will end without a bloodshed. AFAIK Maduro has still support, especially in the poorer part of the population.
It didn't turn out well. I hope this one turns out better.
Yeah, what happens next is kind of the sticky part. That and "unintended consequences".
The Persian expats here want us to Bomb Iran. The Vietnam expats want us to go back Into Vietnam. The Cubans want us to go take over Cuba again.
People who flee country X to the global hegemon seem to be in support of invading country X.
It's a selection bias. Kinda like saying everyone who walked out on their job at company X doesn't think much of company X.
I mean heck, you can probably find Canadians who fled for one reason or another and want America to invade Canada.
I really don't put any credence into that perspective and have been trying to explain this to my Venezuelan friends that this is simply an oil grab.
They don't get it.
let me get this clear: you think this administration is somehow simultaneously raiding and deporting people to a place they are so empathetic to the refugee and asylum claim of that they are bombing it for humanity while also rejecting the asylum claims?
The administration that is pardoning major drug traffickers but bombs boats on a theory of importing a drug that they do not make. Then they destroy all the evidence that could support their claim?
This has nothing to do with the fact that this country has more proven oil than Saudi Arabia? Or their chosen successor María Corina Machado wants to privatize oil on day 1, that's just you know, random noise?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oi...
Iran is oil. Somalia is oil. Venezuela is oil. That bizarre Christmas strike in Nigeria a few days ago? oil.
When Trump said in Nov that killing Khashoggi wasn't a problem to MBS, his weird idea about making Canada the 51st state...
That Greenland thing? About reversing this ... https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/greenlan...
You can solve all Trump foreign policy mysteries with one weird trick.
People like to say "no, this is all very nuanced". I mean come on... Is Trump quoting Frantz Fanon and Hedley Bull? I mean what planet do you live on. This is a man with a golden toilet that eats at mcdonalds.
He's a crude man.
Putting her in charge just means that the country will get looted by the Western Parasite Capitalist class instead of the South American Socialist Mobster class.
Well, it's hard to know whether it's true
That can change after the action, especially depending on how the media covers it, so we will see. The past few years have greatly lessened my faith in the inherent goodness of Americans, and I believe that we have let ourselves abandon our traditional ideals.
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/53787-scant-ameri...
No matter how fucked up any country can be, US president has no right to bomb or terrorize other countries.
Votes suggest otherwise.
[0]: https://usapolling.substack.com/p/america-marches-into-anoth...
But they do.
I hate it when everyone says "Nazi Germany" instead of just "Germany".
Trump won the electoral vote.
Trump asked why the US can't nuke other countries when it has so many nukes. Trump loves war ("department of war") loves bombing other countries - always has. That he is so eager to use nukes should frighten everyone.
Same Guy: "If Europe doesn't buy more weapons from us, Russia should invade Europe, torture, plunder and kill people and do their worst."
People: "I guess I vote for that guy!"
Guy randomly bombs Iran, Yemen, Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq, Somalia and Syria - people "Huh? I didn't vote for this".
It is already a stretch to call it a democracy - which is required to insist on democratic reasoning.
Regardless, If allowed intellectual hoolahop, then most systems of governance can be argued to be democratic.
Just a post ago you identified that Mr. "Why do we have nukes if we don't use them?" was the best available option. That doesn't mean he's a good option, it means there were two choices and the other one was generally seen as the same or worse than Trump. Which given all the stuff that got thrown at Trump is an impressive level of failure.
In this case, to me, it really seems a matter of extreme information asymmetry as you'd never see in a regular market.
Does he actually mean those things, or is that some sort of joke? How do you even know? BTW, he didn't actually use Nukes, and I don't believe he will. On the other hand, he said he wanted to end wars and sounded like he was against starting new ones.
I've seen people regretting voting for Trump because of tariffs, even though they supported tariffs in the first place. They had no idea that Trump's "tariff" would mean some blanket tariffs at those rates. They thought it was some small tariffs on "key industries".
A further confirmation of the information asymmetry is that after a year, support for Trump is far below what would be needed to elect him.
I'm not sure what the solution is.
Yes, 5 year olds didn't vote for Trump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...
He did not win the popular vote.
Let's hope Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Russia follow soon.
This usually (never) goes well for the USA. (Source: pick a regime change war.)
I suppose South Korea is doing fine as well, so let’s just hope Chinese troops do not flow over their land border with Venezuela.
If we need a more recent and perhaps more relevant comparison point, Operation Just Cause had a successful outcome.
I know it’s trendy and important to mock Iraq and Vietnam but it’s not all a failures.
The fascists are also advocating for an end to foreign aid. Gonna be hard to repeat post war rebuilding efforts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202112/1240540.shtml
But you're the good guys and do that to deliver freedom and democracy so it's OK. I think you're under estimating how the world is rapidly updating their views on the US, and the lasting damage to your soft power.
And if "every Venezuelan you know" is someone who immigrated because of Chavez and/or Maduro, then you have an extremely biased sample to gauge the overall mood of their populace.
This administration is making the same mistakes - but in living memory of the first, with a less noble prize, and with complete derision of Congress and Americans' intelligence.
Trump got reelected with slogans like "no new war" and in less than a year he started at least one (arguably I'd say two with the 12 days wars as Israel knew ut couldn't win this one without American bombers) also makes me think none if this is a "mistake", just a long term plan to keep power.
--Chef Ramsay
Considering the general incompetence of this administration, this level of success with such a surgical operation seems completely out of character.
Incredibly impressive operation, whether or not you agree with it. Although the ability to operate helos over Caracas with such impunity may very well suggest high-level collaborators in the local military.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_strikes_in_...
This - almost guaranteed that this was a negotiated outcome/coup from the military.
Also it's telling i had to scroll halfway down the page to find the first non "trump therefore bad" comment. The cognitive dissonance of the posters vis a vis Machado is pretty astounding.
Even on this particular story, there are so many interesting HN-worthy details to discuss. Instead we're stuck lazily debating whether this was right or wrong.
You can find higher-quality, much more aggressively moderated conversations on topics like this on r/CredibleDefense. However, even that subreddit struggles with the traffic from high-profile events like this.
As this is an evolving situation, the OP headline has now been changed to "Trump claims US has captured Venezuelan dictator and wife" and is basically a different article at this point.
The bias in this Guardian reporting is very visible beyond just the headlines.
(I don't blame you for being confused btw)
Suggesting "US bombs Venezuela" for HN headline (still uncertainties around the "capture").
While I agree that "hypocrisy" isn't the right word here, I see where OP is coming from.
At least in American media, the use of passive voice (or as I've heard it called sometimes "exonerative voice") often obfuscates or otherwise provides cover for authorities. For example, "Tower collapses after missile strike" and "Man dies after being struck by bullet during arrest" are both technically true and yet also leave out important context (the country who fired the missile, the person who fired the gun and why).
Even if this headline is appropriate for now, it's not surprising that there should be questions over how it's worded.
It's simply about not claiming causality where it hasn't been confirmed.
They teach you this stuff in journalism school. Once it gets confirmed, the new articles describe it causally, explaining the attribution.
The only goal here is accuracy. It's standard journalistic practice.
(I'm not talking about ideological publications.)
President DONALD J. TRUMP“
Is the goal now to just put Maduro through a televised sham trial as a new cover for the Trump admin?
I believe Noriega was captured when the US invaded Panama in 1989. But yeah, this is wild (though maybe not unprecedented).
The US extradited, convicted, and imprisoned Honduras' Juan Orlando Hernández, for drug trafficking crimes (though Trump, incongruously, pardoned him in 2025).
Another notable example, the UK arrested Chile's Pinochet in 1998 on a Spanish arrest warrant claiming universal jurisdiction, though no conviction followed from that.
edit: And US Marines captured Grenada's Hudson Austin in 1983, turning him over to Grenada's new government who sentenced him to death, commuted to prison.
edit²: Two other heads of state imprisoned in the US were Alfonso Portillo of Guatemala (extradited to and convicted in US courts in 2014), and Pavlo Lazarenko of Ukraine (fled willingly to the US, convicted in 2006).
Head of state according to whom?
>Is the goal now to just put Maduro through a televised sham trial as a new cover for the Trump admin?
Would they really need a sham trial?
Have you considered this is part of a negotiated exit?
Nobody believes this bullshit about drugs. Just like nobody believed it when they committed war crimes by blowing up innocent guys fishing
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-e...
In a Truth Social post shared only moments ago, Trump wrote:
The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow. There will be a News Conference today at 11 A.M., at Mar-a-Lago. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.
The Guardian has been unable to independently verify this report."
I just woke up to this madness, and have heard nothing about it prior to today. Has this come as a surprise to everyone in the USA too, or were there murmurings leading up to it? What was the reason given? I'm presuming there was _something_, even if it was clearly nonsense?
It's justified by portraying Maduro as a drug kingpin responsible for the fentanyl epidemic in the US. He is also blamed for some gang activity.
What the hell? I hate getting too political because it ends up so toxic and divisive, but with what logic is this not insane?
Bin Laden found in Afghanistan? Invade and occupy the whole country.
Bin Laden found in nuclear-armed Pakistan? Quietly sneak in with a handful of SOF operators to shoot him in the face then GTFO.
My guess: he will be imprisoned in a 3rd country, he can't be allowed to move back to Venezuela
I hardly see how this could be considered anything but an absolute win, especially where Maduro has been considered being more and more authoritarian, rejecting democracy, and probably would've been willing to sacrifice thousands of lives in a ground war if this increasing threat was handled less finely.
Add to this the fact that Venezuela has crazy amounts of oil BUT a totally mismanaged and badly exploited extraction operation and the economy is in the toilet. Unless this somehow leads in to a Libya situation, everyone could benefit from this, compared to the hopelessness of the past.
What threat? There is no threat to the US from Venezuela. This is another Banana war.
It has only been a few hours, so nobody knows what is going to follow. Even if US does not engage further this may well trigger a civil war in Venezuela with massive casualties.
Whatever is behind this attack, it has nothing to do with drugs.
It's the new world order preached by Russia and supported by the BRICS.
The difference is that the US has the resources to play this game ruthlessly and effectively for the most part.
The coherent BRICS reply should be "we pray there's peace".
This is scary stuff.
Now, even the USA invades foreign countries!
It's not new, it's been the prevalent way of being for thousands of years - we had a brief moment of piece with the creation of the UN.
But apparently there are a lot of countries that think the UN and international law is cumbersome, and are in the way of securing their "sovereignty" (more like securing regimes) - it was obvious this was going to be outcome.
Funny enough, some of those have collapsed or are in the verge of collapsing: Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Russia...
Let's hope Europe doesn't flip to far right and start their own campaign, history shows they can be quite effective and destructive.
The best outcome is that this is just the final breath of those old regimes, and this is temporary.
For the US and its friends, the UN system and international law have always been a tool. Used when beneficial, circumvented when necessary.
> Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Russia...
Yes, the US decades-long lawfare and warfare against these countries in various domains is a great examples of the above.
Although it is 'heavy' oil, the 'brown coal' of liquid fossil reserves (i.e. low quality).
The fact that such a fuss is being made about low-grade oil is a concern in itself.
Keep in mind there's a lot of 'idle' refining capacity at the southeastern coast of the US which was built for heavy oil.
The state sponsored drug smuggling is symbolic of a country not paying sufficient fealty to its master, but is secondary to the larger strategic issues in play.
No valuable insight will be gleaned from chat boards and reddit in the immediate aftermath of these sorts of events.
It doesn't work.
And note that we can look at history and see that, sometimes, people's honest opinions about their own country and what is best for it happen to be wrong. Libyans were extremely happy when Gaddafi was killed - and now they're living in much worse conditions than when he was alive. Many Afghans welcomed the US toppling of the brutal taliban regime, and now after twenty years of brutal war, the taliban are back in power as if nothing happened.
It would be absolutely wonderful if the same fate doesn't happen to Venezuela. I sincerely wish and hope that they will have a provisional government which quickly organizes free and fair elections and that a much better leader is elected who can start reversing the damage Maduro did. I don't think this is particularly likely to happen, sadly, looking at the history and track-record of violent regime change by foreign powers. This observation remains true regardless of what the people of Venezuela think and hope, sadly.
Please don't spread Russian propaganda by taking over their talking points.
That is a big difference between war in Ukraine and war in Iraq or Venezuela.
Russia has unlimited objectives: destroy Ukrainian identity and sovereignty. Annex the country.
While USA has limited objectives, like to overthrow the government.
This is what Russians would presumably also do if able.
So your point doesn't stand
The exact same thing will happen in Venezuela: the USA will be happy with any leader that they have confidence will represent US interests, stop doing any business with Russia or Iran, and that they think will last. If instead another member of Maduro's party looks likely to win power, either now or in the near future, they will certainly not allow that to happen, even if it were to happen as a result of free elections.
Note that this is not in any way an attempt to justify Russia's actions, quite the contrary. I'm using the comparison to Russia's obviously horrible actions in Ukraine to condemn the USA's equally horrible actions in Venezuela.
They literally did. It's just they couldn't do it militarily before 2014 because of Chechnya and bad economic at the time.
In 90s they already tried to take Crimea (via politics). In 2003 they tried to take Tuzla.
The 2003 dispute over the island of Tuzla - whose status had not been clearly settled during the independence of Ukraine from the USSR - was settled diplomatically. If you call this occasion an "attempt to annex Ukraine", then we could equally say that "Romania attempted to annex Ukraine" when the countries had several rounds of negotiation and arbitration for control of Snake Island in the Black Sea.
You think Ukrainians shouldn't decide which language to use? Also russian is native for millions of Ukrainians due to ethnic cleansing done by russians for centuries.
But with Venezuela's +300bn oil barrels at Trump's disposal now, I bet the gas prices will plummeted. I wonder how the MAGA fanbase will react (probably will be happy to let just this one "nation building" project to slip through their ethics).
Most Americans can't find Venezuela on a map. (Presumably most humans can't)
They'll overlook this (and similar moves) and pay attention to domestic policy, unless we're dragged into an extended war.
In Venezuela it's extremely unclear how suddenly creating a giant power vacuum will allow the US to obtain Venezuela's oil.
On one hand, this seems classic from the Trump Admin in that rash actions have been taken with no future plans in place (cf. DOGE), on the other hand this does appear in line with the promise of "no forever wars" (no sustained US ground presence) and if the US does actually end up with the oil, then it will be at a very low cost (in terms of US blood and treasure).
International politics is anarchy. Rules are enforced by the hegemon.
Or should this only be a one way street? Is dropping bombs to disapprove of elections how we're being adults in 2026?
If China invaded overnight and absconded with Trump, I’d say I disapproved even though I don’t like him.
And even then, there's a difference between that and say if it was a sniper squadron working for say, let's pick the Azerbaijan military or any other organized state force.
But I don’t think that their leaders are actually suicidal. They’ve played their hand pretty well over the years, for their own survival and enrichment (no pun intended.)
Obviously if someone like Italy bombed us we would invade and beat the shit out of them. We did a two decade, trillions of dollars revenge tour for like 2700 people dying.
(I’m not advocating for any of this but US policy is pretty consistent. Part of the value of a US passport is knowing (and everyone else knowing) that the government will go to incredible lengths to get you back.)
Alright, is this the global rule now? Where's the cutoff? Trump is getting 41%, is that low enough? Who gets to overthrow Washington? My vote is the Swedes, they seem pretty nice.
Then what is the expected scale of a revenge tour for 48,422 fentanyl overdose deaths in 2024 and 76,282 in 2023?
We’ve pressured China to crack down on fentanyl and its precursors, which they have to some extent, but there isn’t someone to invade, really, to stop it.
Really if you want to bomb the people responsible for the overdoses it's probably the overdosers parents who abused them.
What happened to individual responsibility?
Is this even the case anymore?
The government has shown to turn a blind eye when natural disasters affect states that voted majority voted for the other party. Their own citizens.
If you were stuck overseas but are an outspoken Democrat, I would not count on your government to get you home.
Given the Jan 6th insurrection attempt (which made trump ineligible for office) I think a clear eyed spectator thinking deeply about the US political situation would find that his base will think whatever he tells them to think
Venezuelans can't delete America.
Yes, a bit of a one way street.
The rest of the world wouldn't do anything about it either, IMO. Just like they're doing for Ukraine now.
Also much more people have been to Italy,or at least know the country and it's culture compared to Ukraine. So the Fallout in Public Opinion would be way worse. China would also be salivating at an Opportunity to isolate the US, and that would be one presented on a silver platter
I don't think you can impose enough diplomatic sanctions on America to make us care, and certainly not enough to make up for deleting Italy.
Attacking one of the world largest Western economies, would turn the other ones against you
I'm just talking about reality. America can do pretty close to whatever it wants.
Boy, Americans really do have an overinflated sense of their power.
There isn’t anything stopping Italy, the sovereign state, from doing anything it thinks it could do. What is stopping it from bombing San Francisco (besides it not making sense whatsoever) would be that the US would physically stop the Italian Air Force and navy.
If you think this kind of caveman-era diplomacy is the future And want humans to be a multi-planetary species then lol, good luck.
We kinda have the obligation to ensure that Earth is not a practical hell for many people.
"Bomb San Francisco" can mean many things, and it is ultimately a Trolley Problem[0], but the answer is not a simple no.
They can try.
But i think the opinion of venezuelans has leaked and it s pretty obvious his regime is not popular at home
Yeah this is just flawed.
A trick I've learnt to get disingenious views of these events is how neatly they line up with official media/government positions. In these events, if commenters parrot media/government talking points, it's most certainly a disingenious one. Kinda like yours.
> hear what Venezuelans, the millions of Venezuelan migrants, and the citizens of neighboring countries who've had to reckon with the legacy of Chavez think about this
And yet, all you do is spout state propaganda. Funny how you haven't mentioned the millions of venezuelans who voted for maduro.
> No valuable insight will be gleaned from chat boards and reddit in the immediate aftermath of these sorts of events.
In those threads there are genuine comments. And those that parrot the official state/government propaganda - "Fentanyl", "drugs", "migrants", "venezuelan perspective".
This forum is not for you to get information about the american "public opinion". It is rather used to shape it (as a myriad of other similar forums in the "free world").
It is very unlikely this will be met with anything like a coordinated condemnation from the Europeans given Maduro's closeness to Russia. Hence giving Trump some degree of international political cover for the move.
It's like Cuba all over again.
Also, some people seems to miss the fact that South America military power is very weak, and we, culturally, are way less proned to fight and die than people in middle east.
Yeah, we know this is all about oil, and I'm interested to know what kind of democracy will emerge. But the fact is we don't have a, undeniable, dictator as neighbor, and my friends can see their families again.
But now we are looking at a civil war, if we are lucky.
For example, if Trump doesn't step down in 2028 then we should hope someone does take him out.
"War for oil" is always the easy go-to to criticize any American military action, even in countries that don't have oil.
And while Venezuela has oodles of oil, is this really the case of America wanting Venezuelan oil?
America has more oil than it knows what to do with, and because of that, prices are so low that there are lots of newspaper articles about how American oil companies have dramatically slowed exploration and production. Plus, even under the current administration, America is using more and more renewable energy sources (some states now get more than 50% of their energy from wind/solar).
With the whole Chevron situation, I'm willing to think that oil may play a role here, but again the "war for oil" seems like nothing more than a convenient slogan for a high schooler's protest sign.
Anyway be clear, I'm talking about this administration. Specifically their choice to invade Venezuela and capture their head of state, while simultaneously pardoning the ex-Honduran head of state who was convicted for the exact same thing. When I say inconsistent, I mean: they are saying (vocally and militarily) that they are anti-drug cartel, but also they are apparently pro-some-cartels? It makes no sense to me.
There's no need to really fight with the Venezuelan government over this, unless Venezuela decided that they'd rather leave the oil in the ground.
This is a super small niche, with oil margins constantly getting squeezed around the world it'd probably be tricky to convince anyone to significantly scale up production in Venezuela even if the US lifted all sanctions and whatnot.
Apparently a lot.
> The 2003 Iraq War, initiated as a U.S. unilateral action, has also been viewed through the lens of economic interests, particularly oil access. Following the conflict, significant American business opportunities arose, notably through contracts with oil companies to exploit Iraqi oil fields, marking the end of Iraq’s long-standing oil nationalization policy. Technological advancements were another key economic byproduct of these wars; innovations developed for military use often transitioned into civilian applications, influencing various sectors.
> Additionally, a trend towards privatization emerged, as private firms undertook roles traditionally held by the military, further intertwining the defense industry with the economy. This shift raised ethical concerns and sparked debate regarding the implications of privatizing military functions. Overall, the Iraq wars illustrate the complex intersection of military action, resource control, and economic interests within American foreign policy.
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/military-history-and...
US even mastermind amd helped overthrowned Iranian elected government and then only recently admitted and apologized to that but the damaged already done [2].
[1] The real reason Venezuela matters [video]:
[2]1953 Iranian coup d'état:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
This along with other direct quotes from officials is what led me to the conclusion that, yes, oil is a large factor.
The problem is that you can't cherry-pick quotes from this administration and use them as a source of truth like you could with previous administrations.
Especially from Mr. Trump, who says something and then an hour later states the opposite. (See his record on solar, electric vehicles, various personnel and congressmen.) Keeping people guessing is part of this administration's strategy, and is inherited from how he did business.
Yes it is.
> But Trump has also made his desire for Venezuelan oil clear. He said that the blockade of sanctioned oil tankers going to and from the country would remain “until such time as they return to the United States all of the oil, land, and other assets that they stole from us.” He did not clarify what land and “other assets” he was referring to.
> In a social media post, Miller also characterized the expropriations as an injustice against the US. “American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela,” wrote. “Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property.”
> And in a 2023 speech, Trump was even more pointed about his designs on the country’s oil. “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse,” he said, referring to the end of his first term in the White House. “We would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil, it would have been right next door.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-17/trump-s-v...
I get the concern about forever wars some are raising, but this clearly isn't going to be a forever war for the reasons you state. Plus if the US secures some oil and the Venezuela people get to live better lives, that's ultimately a great outcome for everyone.
It's controversial to say these days, but I think this is exactly how the West should be using it's military force – to promote democracy and freedom around the world.
Why would the US be entitled to any oil here? And how would that be a good outcome for the people of Venezuela?
> and the Venezuela people get to live better lives, that's ultimately a great outcome for everyone.
That's a big if. Ask the Iraqis how well it went when their dictator was gone. And that was with boots on the ground not just leaving a power vacuum like this.
> It's controversial to say these days, but I think this is exactly how the West should be using it's military force – to promote democracy and freedom around the world.
Wait a few decades till China does this to you and we'll see how you feel.
If you think the EU’s “diplomacy over force” approach will deter anyone, look at Ukraine.
> If you think the EU’s “diplomacy over force” approach will deter anyone, look at Ukraine.
Enlighten me, what's the policy of the USA as of last year? Because I honestly don't know. It depends who the guy last talked to. That's American foreign policy now, no plan, all based on the irrational behavior of an 80 year old.
Check social media or go ask a trusted Venezuelan / Latino, happiest I've ever seen the community, because regardless of what's comming, it looks like the light at the end of a tunnel
If USA bombs civilians because they are Venezuelan thats genocide.
If USA bombs civilians because they want to overthrow the government that's a war crime.
I know the difference, its about attacking a group by ethnicity.
If history teaches us anything, a democracy won't emerge. Nothing good comes from the US intervening in foreign affairs. This is being done to the benefit of the invaders, not those being invaded.
Idk, I sure prefer Germany / Japan circa 2026 to Germany / Japan circa 1936.
The last time the US did something similar was in Panama in 1989, and that country seems to be a thriving democracy now.
Too early to know how this will play out, but things are more nuanced than you're suggesting.
Libya
Pop-culture shows you that if you get rid off Mojo Jojo you suddenly get rainbows and flowers but reality doesn't work that way very often and it is just propaganda.
Edit: I just discovered that Noriega was also captured on January 3rd.
hard to sleep well these days
ps: if anybody knows places where people discuss this, feel free to hit me
Venezuela is playing the usual card about America trying to seize oil; US playing usual card about narcotics. You can believe what you want, or buy into whatever mainstream narrative you want, I’m not here to judge, but I’ve seen these cards played out so many times in my lifetime.
Neither makes sense to me for this level of resistance and response from the US. I have a feeling this has to do far more with Iran, Russia, and China, than Venezuela/drugs.
For instance next-door, China is active around the Darien gap region, developing roads and highways. Allegedly this is for port infrastructure, but given Chinese history of low intensity conflicts and island building techniques in the South China sea, this could be a land version of that strategy.
I need to read up about Venezuelan and Iranian Russian connections and interactions. I think the most underrated piece of news is the seizure of tankers under embargo, with blowing up drug boats as the distraction.
One thing is for sure; even the most hard core right of uneasy to support Trump in a new war, and Trump has publicly lamented the expense (of all things) of war.
Myself: no thanks. No more wars please.
Can Maduro just pay off Trump for a pardon, like Juan did?
Or is it really. Honduras doesn't have oil?
Remember the 'Arab spring' and what came after.
Was it for oil? Socialism bad? To stop drugs? I think you latter is the narrative I’m most familiar with.
Immigration would be the most logical, since this administration and political base care a lot about that, but I don’t think they’ve drawn a clear line between economic success and emigration. Logic isn’t exactly a cornerstone for these idiots.
I’m guessing we did it to flex and distract from our own economy, but usually there is at least some pushed narrative for why America did the thing?
However, fentanyl is produced mainly in Mexico and reaches the US almost exclusively via land through its southern border."
Machado seems to be the opposite of an exile until she escaped to accept the Nobel Peace Prize last month.
Machado was prohibited from leaving Venezuela by a decade-old
government-imposed travel ban and, by late 2025, had spent months in hiding
amid the risk of arrest.
> Or did a very lousy job of it.
It's more obvious than lousy.
What gives you that impression? I haven't seen a single comment that is surprised or wasn't aware of the existing history between the two nations, nor a single comment saying that "Ok, I'm glad/sad that that's over now". What comments specifically are you talking about?
Of course Venesuela isn't that similar to Panama or Granada in various ways. Given the massive amounts of internal issues, and insanely high levels of crime/murder removing the government and washing your hands might turn it into something like Haiti...
Fundamentally on the moral level removing oppressive tyrants like Sadam, Maduro, Gaddafi etc. is the right thing to do. Of course nobody ever figured out how to prevent the situation from getting even worse in the aftermath..
If the issue was what was “right” then Trump wouldn’t have cozied up to Putin and abandoned Ukraine, or cozied up to MBS and waved away his murder of a US journalist, and on and on it goes. This administration has zero moral credibility. I don’t know what will happen in Venezuela but we should all be skeptical of fruit from a poisonous tree.
Could be!
Could also be really bad.
The intended consequence here is to demonstrate to an organized crime group that being part of the government does not mean they are safe. There is no other intention, it has worked.
Only reason I know, is that if I check out any of the explore pages on IG etc. I get too many of those pages.
What's the next stage then according to the administration?
This is kind of more like a "gasp" moment, even if Maduro sucks.
Statements made by politician need not be taken as truthful.
No more democracy.
I'm not American, my 'war powers act' statement wasn't pointing at specific legislation, it was a hand wave to the past.
It rhymes.
Ironically, the current administration thinks that American courts can hold any president accountable for crimes, except the American president.
Question is whether the Supreme Court will sell us out or not.
Trump just ended the National Guard deployment in LA, Chicago, and Portland after an overwhelming Supreme Country loss: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/31/donald-trump-nation...
Soon you will be telling me the Taliban still run Kabul.
The one thing that is a given is that kidnapping foreign heads of state - no matter how despicable - is now on the menu. I'm pretty sure that this isn't the last time we see this. And the pretexts are unconvincing given how Trump dealt with that other drug dealer. I'm guessing Maduro didn't want to play ball more than anything, this feels very personal.
So, your prediction is "anything is possible".
I gotta say nobody can disagree with that.
It's actually more like grandstanding to satify oneself emotionally. It's "I am right" esque type of answer because "anything can happen" is always true.
The statement can be omitted because it literally adds nothing to any discussion.
> but anybody telling you they have a crystal ball is lying.
Then, we can add to a discussion saying which part might not be true, which assumption is incorrect, and etc.
Nobody would predict anything with 100% confidence. You make that up and state "anything can happen"-type of statement to satisfy yourself emotionally.
If those people were that sure about their predictions, they would bet on polymarket and become a billionaire already.
We're all going to die.
This too shall pass.
100%
Without a full military occupation it might just turn into another Haiti just on a much bigger scale. Of course US will probably have to intervene to "secure" the oil industry...
Oil industry in Venezuela is Chinese, or for China, this is not gonna change either.
What we are seeing here is a show, or may be also more related to Venezuela being a narco-state.
Today. She's still part of the same regime and party. It's not obvious Trump will let her stay in charge. Also the control the government had over the criminal gangs/syndicates/cartels was seemingly very weak anyway. Even if the current decapitated regime is allowed to stay it won't be very strong.
What's he going to do, kidnap her? Oh, wait.
Alternatively there's María Corina Machado who overwhelmingly won the presidential primary for that election but wasn't allowed to run.
The oil production there is completely decimated. They have huge reserves but production is low and falling because the regime doesn't do any maintenance or support of anything in the oil production and supply chain. It is very much the meme of "living in the ruins of a once great society".
>Her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, the head of the national assembly, is in Caracas, three sources with knowledge of his whereabouts said.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuela-vice-presid...
Any student of history would be skeptical. The US record after interference in a country is abysmal. Relatively recent failures: Iraq, Afghanistan. Less recent failures: Nicaragua and throughout Central America.
Why would you think Iraq would find it easy to stabilize itself post Hussein, such that you'd declare their future void already. Iraq is not yet a failure and is dramatically more stable than it was under Hussein (dictatorships bring hyper instability universally, which is why they have to constantly murder & terrify everybody to try to keep the system from instantly imploding due to the perpetual instability inherent in dictatorship).
Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Kuwait, and most of Eastern Europe (which the US was extremely deep in interfering with for decades in competition with the USSR). You can also add Colombia to that list, it is a successful outcome thus far of US interference.
I like the part where people pretend the vast interference in positive outcomes don't count. The US positively, endlessly interfered in Europe for the past century. That interference has overwhelmingly turned out well.
Why shouldn't Russia or China just do the same and interfere with the leadership of countries they don't like.
Also it is impossible to argue the cost of the war in Iraq was worth the benefit, even if we agree Iraq is in a better place now then it was under Hussein.
What an absurd thing to say. The US doesn't only overthrow dictatorships - it supports them too, as it suits its self-interest. Countries stabilise over time, that's what their people make happen. You ignore Indonesia, Iran, El Salvador, Nicaragua and dozens of disaster of US imperialism but give credit to the US when their populations rebuild them.
The US has done psome ositive things but they're the convenient accidents you've cherry picked to make your conclusion.
No strongman in charge, sorta-kinda democratic government (more democratic than almost anywhere else in the Arab world), violence has subsided, the country didn't disintegrate into pieces unlike Yugoslavia, the economy has grown moderately, and they haven't become an Iranian puppet regime.
Frankly, by the standards of the Near and Middle East, this is very much not an abysmal failure.
The insurgency that preceded this was very bad, though. No denying that. But some other modern nations have such insurgencies in their recent history, such as Ireland, and that didn't stop them from developing towards prosperity.
Because they failed doing that in Iraq and Afghanistan, both cases where they did try, and there is also Libya (where they did not try all that much, if at all, I'll give you that). I mean, they did put some of their puppets in both Kabul and Bagdad, but the puppets in Kabul eventually got swept by the Talibans, while the puppets in Bagdad switched over to Iran's side by 2015-ish.
It is unclear what will happen next, but likely the regime or large elements of it will survive. Perhaps a more moderate faction will take control? That would be the best case scenario.
America needs to be at war so that Trump can halt normal domestic process and procedure under war powers acts etc.
This is the next step.
1. it takes the Epstien files completely out of media discourse, which is what Trump wants after it was pretty much confirmed that he's a pedophile.
2. it satisfies the biggest donors to the republican party - weapons manufacturers and oil companies.
3. it allows Trump to control the narrative, and makes the media forget about the drugs that were supposedly being exported from venezuela. truth is there are effectively no drugs coming in from venezuela. i saw a deep explainer on reddit (yes, it could entirely be bullshit) that basically said that venezula produces between 0.02 to 0.08% of all illicit drugs entering the USA per year. No idea how that is calculated, but it makes sense in the context that Houndouras' president was effectively pardoned by Trump, and Hondouras by its very location is balls deep in the drug trade
Bonus: honors the practice of a republican president invading a country under bullshit premises to capture oil. Bush I and II both did so.
Trump is far from universally loved, but just imagine what the US would become if an oitside nation swooped in and captured him. 100% of the american people whould be screaming for blood.
Surely certain people won't like that but I don't think that'll create another Iraq.
Too late, Maduro is in custody - that bargain is for the next Venezuelan president to make
It may actually mean next to nothing geopolitically other than to outrage the rest of the world and make Trump look tough.
But only to his loyalists.
The people he needs at home are pretty simple. This type of thing makes it easier for his loyal propagandists to do their thing.
Very deep observation.
Maduro had to be removed, this is a win for Venezuela. On one side he's a criminal, on the other side people at the country are cheering for this [1].
He didn't even win the most recent election. I'll write that again, he was not elected.
I haven't seen a convincing argument about why it would have been better if he remained in power.
All of the reasons you list apply to many world leaders, legitimately elected or not. You must be ecstatic about the pardon of Hernández then.
That's correct. One at a time, I'd say. :)
You're way off base here. No one is arguing that he should be in power. It's the way it was done. You're also ignoring a very important question: now what?
Sorry, but the last year has not inspired confidence that this administration knows what it's doing.
After all most of the country wants him out, he's a felon and broke the law countless times since his election.
Seems like a win for the people of the US and America.
The non-intervention principle applies if you are not actively suffering intervention.
The flaw however, is that applying non-intervention in this instance, chooses to ignores the real direct hurt currently endured by non-actors (LATAM and US citizens) from the policies of Maduro.
I do concede that whatever follows may be worse.
If I'm getting poked by a neighbor for years and i finally punch back, punching is a valid response. If the neighbor then comes back later and shoots me with a gun, it doesn't mean that my act was invalid.
He sounds insufferable.
People want an Eisenhower doing these kinds of things, not whoever is doing currently doing it.
You, sir, are no Ron Paul.
Venezuela is Catholic and while it definitely has crime issues, there's no religious/fundamentalist element to the violence so the odds of anyone fighting to the death to support their failed dictator and his ideology is slim to none.
The indecision of the international community to act is what caused the suffering lasting a decade, led to the rise of ISIS and refugee crisis of enormous proportions.
Wishing the new cold war will be equally bloodless all along
So we know what many Red-Hats are seeing right now.
The "president of peace," everybody!
Similarly, how does picking on much weaker countries (some of whom are allies) seem tough to anyone? In my view it's ugly and shows weakness rather than strength.
National sovereignty is a fundamental principle of international law and cannot be selectively applied according to the interests of global powers. Donald Trump’s threats and aggressive rhetoric toward Venezuela undermine this principle by treating a nation’s self-determination as negotiable. Criticizing this stance does not mean endorsing the Venezuelan government, but acknowledging that sanctions, intimidation, and external pressure rarely affect political elites and instead harm ordinary people, deepening humanitarian crises.
Latin American history reveals a recurring pattern of foreign interference framed as the defense of democracy. From a moral standpoint, collective punishment and imposed solutions are indefensible. If such actions would be unacceptable when directed at the United States, they cannot be justified against Venezuela. A responsible international approach requires multilateral dialogue, international mediation, and genuine respect for the sovereignty of nations.
Neither the republican nor democrat base wanted this. There wasn't even an attempt at justification, the drugs argument was a complete and utter joke. They could at least do a little false flag attack.
If voting does it solve it what does?
Regardless of your opinion on Maduro, you can still acknowledge that the head of a sovereign state being captured in an unannounced/unnamed military operation by a superpower is wrong from a principled standpoint, and that it’s destabilising a country with 30+ million people if not the entire region.
Note the US administration contends that he wasn't the legitimate head of state. [1] [2]
[1] https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/marco-rubio-nicolas-m...
[2] I'm (obviously) being sloppy regarding head of state vs. head of government.
You can bookmark my comment along with the one above.
Lesson 1 of W.Spaniel course on international relationship is that "international order" is the longest running form of anarchy.
Pray you stay on the good side of the Emperor closest to your home.
It's a good thing the current emperor is old - at least we have patience and trusting biology as an option. Successions are often messy, and I don't see Emperor Trump as the kind to cautiously pick his heir.
The entire post-WWII system with the UN and international law was an attempt to change this.
That is why the 5 most powerful countries were permanently put on the security council with complete veto powers.
There are general rules against war crimes and they still happen day after day, under flimsy excuses. Bombed a hospital or a wedding party? There was a suspected terrorist there. White phosphorus over civilians? It was just for the smoke screen. Overthrew a government overseas? Freedom for those poor people.
China on the other hand doesn’t get visibly involved in almost any remote conflict and they’re obviously a (if not the) superpower.
China has everything that Russia lacks and more.
For example if your country is subject to a terror bombing campaign, it's very tempting to assassinate the one leader who had the power/respect/authority to order the attacks to start but often they're also the only leader who can order the attacks to stop
In the 1970s/1980s presumably the UK could have had IRA leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness assassinated. But it sure turned out to be useful, in the late 1990s peace process, that the IRA had identifiable, living leaders who could engage in negotiation, sign an agreement, and get the bomb makers to stop making bombs.
I think these affairs ought to be handled through international bodies. The UN seems to have no mechanism for it.
The UN deliberately has no mechanism for this because it's a talking shop intended to help avoid war by providing a talking venue. That's the whole idea, they're not the world police, there is no such thing. They're a forum.
I'm absolutely not defending any given dictator but history shows that every attempt to remove a dictator "for the greater good" is usually 1) selfishly motivated and 2) backfires horribly.
No, and in fact the comparison to Hitler felt out of place. I'm simply saying that it isn't as black and white that one should NEVER remove a head of state.
What I will concede is that catch 22 of not knowing how the future will play out, so how COULD you confidently and with wide agreement intervene BEFORE someone commits atrocities.
It's why the UN has an obsession with a tiny democracy in the middle east and ignores the multitude of brutal dictatorships which oppress and kill far more people around it and across the globe.
Since ideas don't execute themselves, who would you pick to enforce this prohibition, never mind even getting 100%(?) alignment from countries what the conditions are for "kidnap", "assassination", and "de facto head of state"?
Opinion, public or not, cannot enforce anything.
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.
Trump is a sex offender. He's also a convicted criminal. He is also completely devoid of ethics or morality.
But because of the car crash that is American politics, you have to address all of this through the theatre of the set of documents associated with the world's most infamous paedophile (who also appears to be his best mate).
It's exhausting.
[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...
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.
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 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.
With no infrastructure, and ten years of massive investment needed, I read.
It then goes on to note that output could be more than doubled in two years. That alone would put them as the 11th largest oil producer and the third largest in the Americas. The decade timeline and budget was for creating maximalist infrastructure for fully exploiting the resources.
The strongest proof that the article has that trump isn’t interested in oil is his word that he isn’t interested in oil. How much faith do you put in Trump’s honesty?
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.
Edit: I fully understand the deterrents. I'm making the case that attacking for the sake of 'liberty for all' is a farce.
edit: The person I'm responding to edited their comment, it was originally something along the lines of
"Why doesn't the US topple Russia's government then"
Edit: in case my comment doesn't make sense, the parent comment originally asked why the US doesn't try to topple Russia. Parent edited comment after my reply.
Ukraine is being spoon-fed arms and support just enough to keep them able to attrit Russia without ending the conflict until Russia is exhausted. Once Putin stuck his foot in the bear trap, there is no way he can turn back and retain power/life. I’m sure he’d love to have backed out in the first few weeks while it was still possible at this point.
It’s great for the region and for NATO, but it trades Ukrainian blood for NATO interests. Obviously Zelenskyy knows the play by now, but he and the Ukrainian people are between a rock and a hard place. It’s tragic for them, but there is a little hope at least of having earned a seat at the table if they survive. My heart (and donations) goes out to the Ukrainian people.
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…
The moment he started ignoring the US Constitution, he became one.
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.
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)
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.
This is one such event.
Maduro was a terrible dictator but toppling governments requires stronger justification, like active, extreme mass killing.
… which actually did happen under Maduro, btw.
> Protests following the announcement of the results of the presidential election in July were violently repressed with excessive use of force and possible extrajudicial executions. Thousands of arbitrary arrests were carried out against political opponents, human rights defenders and journalists; hundreds of children were among those detained. Detainees including women and children were allegedly tortured. Detention conditions continued to deteriorate. Impunity prevailed for human rights violations.[1]
Is your argument that his dictatorship wasn’t repressive or bloody enough to warrant that? I don’t think that argument has legs - I think it is reasonable for him to be ousted based on the repressive regime argument. Yes, there are bloodier regimes around the world, but that’s like a speeder complaining to a police officer, “why did you stop me? I was only doing 80, the guy in front of me must’ve been doing 90!”
To me, the strongest argument against overthrowing Maduro is geopolitical destabilization and the general, “don’t mess with other countries because it erodes the norms that keep peace around the world.”
[1]https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/americas/south-america/v...
If polls show over 95% of Venezuelans are happy with this outcome after three months, I may shift my position a bit. In general though, I think it's a bad precedent for the world superpower to bomb countries and abduct rules because the ruler is bad. Plus, Trump's motives here are not remotely pure.
And everyone is now giving proper consideration to that important fact and forgetting those pesky domestic issues.
That's not the way international relations work.
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.
Syria curtailed Russia, as you said, they lost the capacity to support it. Iran was a show of force, and something that could be done. And, Iran was very much supporting Russia -- lots of support, such as Iranian drone tech.
But from the China perspective, China was buying a lot of oil from Iran. That was cut off. And I imagine Venezuela as well, has been selling a lot of sanctioned oil to China too.
China has no domestic oil supply of note, and needs to import a LOT of oil. This could be a message to both Russia and China.
Fair, most folks are completely clueless about this being an ongoing concern for nearly 5 years now.
It was also done with carrots, not sticks.
Can't really say the same for what happened in the rest of the world.
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.
I'm in agreement with everything you said, but none of it applies.
The US (or any other country) should never intervene due to a "bad person" or "illegitimate" or "dictator"
Instead, US intervened because the policies of Maduro directly led to the flight of 8M causing harms to many countries in LATAM, and US.
If a dictator was not actively enforcing policies that made foreign innocent (bystanders!) neighbors hurt or destitute, then your argument would apply
It was not a war bullet that have killed random Chileans, or Ecuadoreans or Americans. But nevertheless, there have been hundreds of venezuelan bullets (and drugs) kiling everyday civilians. The act of aggression exists (exporting hardened criminals and economic destitutes abroad) .
That was the casus belli. The US just happened to respond in force, when other countries couldn't.
I suppose my argument is then that war was already happening, and it was declared by Chavez/Maduron on most of LATAM and USA, the moment they decided to export their problems (drugs, criminals, destitutes), into LATAM and USA, hurting our citizens.
Anyway, that is the exact argument the Trump admin is making (drugs/gangs) but they didn't take it to Congress, as required.
It is certainly an act of war.
De Jure we do need congress' permission for war, as you stated. You are correct.
De facto, limited interventions (especially, special ops missons) have not had a need for congress for a while now.
Personally, I would say no.
However, a country persecuting its citizens doesn't bode well for the neighbor's citizens own security or well being, which is usually why it often leads to some form of govt vs govt war.
A government should not act with force until its own citizens are suffering, meaning, if brazilians themselves were hurt because of US policy.
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.
Right now, us is ruled by literally fascist party and promoting the same elsewhere.
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
What would you do with 100s of millions of Americans who are not decedent from native Americans? I'm even more curious how far back in history would you go to start returning countries to their native populations?
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.
Nobody else has the right to have anything to do with it, unless that dictator is attacking you.
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"Flood the zone" is a political strategy in which a political figure aims to gain media attention, disorient opponents and distract the public from undesirable reports by rapidly forwarding large volumes of newsworthy information to the media. The strategy has been attributed to U.S. president Donald Trump's former chief political strategist Steve Bannon."
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Pay attention to the context of this moment. The timing of this invasion is no coincidence.
What is the real difference between Iraq and what just happened, except this was arguably done much cleaner, and with less BS (no having to come up with Yellow Cake, or fake WMDs, for example).
This does have the effect of hopefully waking up anyone who is still confused, but I doubt it.
[1] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2024/08/02/what-are-the-odds-...
You fool no one.
The US has many voters of Cuban origin, and the vast majority of those would be happy with a regime change in Habana.
Rubio is a well-known Cuba hawk and Trump is crazy enough to try.
Are we against democracy now?
I don't think that blog says what you think it does.
Tao is using a deliberately limited model to make a probablistic claim, not saying he'd make a 10⁸:1 bet that the election was rigged.
The election may well have been rigged anyway, it doesn't change the fact that Maduro was the one sitting in the president's chair and carrying out the president's duties.
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.
(My opinion of Maduro is that he was not a legitimate leader.)
Go type "list Russian regime change operations from the last 20 years" in chatgpt.
> “You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now,” Trump reportedly said, offering safe passage for Maduro, his wife and his son “only if he agreed to resign right away”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/01/trump-maduro-u...
The policy of no aggression applies. If a government, thru its actions (or inactions) causes massive aggression and hurt on your own people, then its your *duty* as elected official, to stop it and protect your citizens
Self-defense is literally the most important mandate a government can have.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/crime-migration-spect...
[2] https://www.cgdev.org/publication/data-against-fear-what-num...
Not arguing about other nations actions, just a reminder that if you apply many western logic indiscriminately, the resulting bad actors are very different.
9/11 did not come out of a vaccumm
Unfortunately, everyday Americans' security is deeply impacted by the clowns with office desks in DC, since the 1990s.
It's not lost on me that I may lose living relatives living in the US because of Kissinger playing RISK for a living, back in the day.
Just as the clowns in government made horrible decisions and should potentially be legally in jeopardy for them, I can also say they are getting the venezuela one, right (at least for now).
The clowns and the reasons that drive them are the same for Middle East and Venezuela. Does it make it any better that they happened to have a casus belli that you or I may sympathesize with, given that the reasons not in line with our values? Even a broken clock is right once a day.
So i chose my words wrong.
I'd argue that a state of war already existed, well before the events in the gulf. It just didn't involve formal military movements.
Is Maduro the head of a sovereign state? Says who?
We all know any attempts to frame USA choices as noble right now is dishonest.
He is an illegitimate president who has systematically violated the rights of the Venezuelan people. He has bought off the military, the judiciary, and other key institutions, hollowing out the state to ensure his grip on power.
His regime has also supported and benefited from the existence of drug cartels in Venezuela as another mechanism to maintain control and stay in power.
Together with Chávez, Maduro has ruled the country for more than 27 years, a period marked by countless atrocities against the population, from forced disappearances to torture and rape.
The result is one of the largest humanitarian and migration crises in modern history: more than 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country to escape the regime.
The international community has proven itself unwilling to act. The UN will do nothing. NATO will do nothing. No one will.
We were, and perhaps still are, watching Venezuela turn into another Cuba, with one crucial difference: Venezuela sits on vast oil reserves.
The "Crazy Red" is a pig, but at least he is the only one willing to confront Maduro. This may end up being the only genuinely positive thing he does during his presidency.
And yes, the attack is not "ideal". But in an ideal world, there would be no dictatorships, there would be no Maduro.
I say all this as a South American with family in both Colombia and Venezuela.
"In his time in office, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has stolen two presidential elections, electoral monitors and human rights groups contend, while jailing critics and overseeing an economic collapse that caused eight million Venezuelans to emigrate, including to the U.S.
But in some ways, Maduro is more safely ensconced than ever, with most opposition leaders in exile and Venezuelans too fearful to protest as they once did.
The problem for those who see hope in the military rising up is that Maduro has surrounded himself with a fortress of lieutenants whose fortunes and future are tied to his, from Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López to generals, admirals, colonels and captains throughout the armed forces."
https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-coup-tru...
How people can just read one article and think they know the world is fascinating to me.
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.
They want something, they have the means to take it, and so they take it. With no regards to others, others can fck themselves in fact. They proclaimed in loud enough and often enough in the past months.
As every agressors they can hammer together some form of excuse for doing so. Just like anyone else in similar situation did throughout the history. One of them was the leader of Germany once and was called Hitler. But we can name lots of other enemy-of-the-humanity viles from Japan, Russia, Mongolia, etc, etc. the line is long for the despicable beings.
This is not a "regardless" situation. Bookmark this because the support for Maduro AND socialism in Venezuela is strong. They will never let you see socialism succeed because then all our own oligarchs would be out on their a$$e$. This is nothing but some trumped up capitalist Monroe Doctrine BS.
Watching all the Venezuelan CIA toadies on the news this morning was so infuriating.
Both Edmundo González and María Corina Machado are fascists right wing creeps that were working with the US for this to happen.
We allow brutal dictatorships to continue subjugating tens of millions of people and killing millions in the name of convention. Our international organizations (the UN in particular) are basically ruled by authoritarian regimes. Is there no justification for external powers to effect regime change? We just have to wait and watch as the dictator kills a ton of people? Oh, and of course there is Maduro's support for Putin via sanctions evasion. Even now, Venezuelans face a brutal security force that is likely to retain power, but hopefully that power fragments.
Imo we should have done this right after the last election which Maduro stole.
If the standard is “we can capture leaders we deem illegitimate,” then you’ve effectively endorsed a world where power, not law, decides regime change. You can oppose Maduro and still acknowledge that abducting a head of state via air strikes destabilizes a country of 30+ million people and sets a precedent that will be used by actors far less selective than the U.S.
Two wrongs don’t cancel out just because one feels morally satisfying. of course, we all drink the American imperialism koolaid here.
The only thing it reinforces is the US' military superiority.
> This argument means that any time a president wants to invade a country "legally," he just has to get his DOJ to indict the country's leader. It makes Congress' power to declare war totally meaningless.
* https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/2007450814097305734#m
Also, the irony:
> the administration's position is that American courts can hold any president accountable for crimes, except the American president
The politics are baffling. There hasn't even been a case made that one could disagree with. Why are we killing Venezuelans and kidnapping their president? If this is for the greater good, where is that argument?
2. Maduro wasn't even the president. He was someone who took the country illegally with cartel people.
3. Why? Maduro was smuggling drugs in USA. Huge operations. And I guess there must be geopolitical reasons. You want China and Russia be there? And people from Venezuela were the biggest migration wave in the World last decades. You want millions of refugees?
Second off, only #3b above (geopolitics) could possibly count at all. We support dozens of dictators, don't give a darn about their people as long as it's geopolitically useful. So I've been conditioned to assume it's bullshit when someone says "we're doing it for the people there".
Third, and to your #3.. it's Venezuela. No disrespect to the people there but it's not exactly the lynchpin of international relations. Is this really worth it? For some crude which is really high in sulfur and not even that important given fracking? Even if I'm a Henry Kissinger psychopath, this still doesn't make sense.
I am saying that a wide majority of Venezolans are totally happy about this and most people here aren't concerned about this at all. They just want to talk about their pet political point.
About what are the reasons behind this I (and most people commenting here) can only have educated guess, but I wouldn't discard so easily to weaken cartels as a reason. It is the third (Cuba and Nicaragua the others) Country they got to totally control and the most important and they are powerful and organized enough to keep spreading, and they are supported by China.
Will this engagement deepen Latin American trust and respect for the US or the opposite? China makes it very clear that they do not give a shit about politics and just want to do good business, they're deepening ties that way. What's our plan? Invade random countries and tell them they better not cross us? How long does that work?
About trust and respect, I don't see any change. Leftist will keep their mantra and Normal people will mind their business.
About the 'master plan'. No one commenting here really knows. As I mentioned to avoid criminal cartels controlling three countries and spreading it is not something I would discard. Imagine if they get nukes. Or they can start to systematicallly buy politicians in USA, as they do in Mexico.
How do you know that?
What I know anecdotically from other persons from latin america is, they are happy for Maduro to be gone, but fear of venezuela becoming a US colony.
Based on what? There's a poll already about the US bombing Venezuela and kidnapping Maduro? There's a big difference between removing a leader through a legitimate domestic process and this.
Hey, we had a guy who tried to do that too! Thank goodness it didn't work out.
Right? Right?
Venezuelans, I'm sorry my shithole country is about to inflict a fascist puppet state on you. Nobody here gives enough of a shit despite all the chest-thumping and "MUH LIBERTY TREE". We'd rather have drum circles and ask for permission to dissent.
https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/world/the-united-states-hist...
edit: typo
It's a long read but that should not be a surprise to most people.
I don't think it's a coincidence that a special envoy of Xi met Maduro hours before being captured. It was probably the final straw.
[0] https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2024/08/02/what-are-the-odds-...
Any country that doesn't invest in its own tech stack gets what it deserves. This is information superiority in action; made possible by the deep proliferation of American technology. The US is now leveraging information warfare for what used to require physical force. The difference is stark. We've seen it with the Hezbollah pager attacks, high-profile targeting in Iran, and now this.
Natural selection in progress.
Good to know that possession of machine guns is finally being made illegal by the US!
A) Maduro negotiated some deal for himself and his family.
B) His whole military leadership sold him out.
(A) Makes sense if you assume that he had no other exit strategies. If he could have fled to Russia, he'd already done that. I'm thinking that Trump pressed hard on Putin not to take him. With no strong allies left, there's no exit for him. At best he'd be exposed to full-scale invasion by the US, civil war, or other internal power struggles.
(B) Makes sense if you assume that someone simply took the bait, and were flown out of Venezuela with the US operatives. But from a military perspective, it wouldn't be easy - any serious country has contingency plans, and there are many moving parts. Obviously one (or many) generals could provide these things in great detail, but there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of military personnel that will stick to their procedures once shit hits the fan.
From what I've seen, some airstrikes took out AA systems. And there's been reported some fighting back.
I don't know. (A) sounds a bit more likely to me. By any measure, the man was backed into a corner. I think his hail marry was for Putin to offer to save him. But that never happened...a big clue will be how Russia, and the Russian disinformation campaigns react to this.
Venezuela had a democracy for decades. It's the US that has been trying to destroy it for decades because the venezuelans voted for the wrong guy. It's funny how we forgot that the US also tried to remove the previous elected leader of venezuela.
It's much easier and cheaper to extract resources from a balkanized region.
"We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators" - Dick Cheney (but I'm sure it'll work out this time)
There is a whole lot of directions this can go after we arrest the dictator, but a liberal democracy magically immediately popping isn't on my list. There might be one in the future but there will be a lot of chaos and violence between now and then.
For some reason he thought it would apply to Islamic theocracies and it clearly didn't. Pattern matching Venezuela against Iraq or Afghanistan is an obvious mistake.
Shows how dumb many devs really are.
Ah ok, so this was about China. MAGA's fixation on China is certainly going to lead to more instability.
Or it's just banking oil to prepare a war with China.
Thank FSM some AI-first is going to create fusion any time soon to power the robots solving climate change.
Maduro is a dictator who stayed in power by force after losing an election. No one who believes in democracy should mourn his fall. Trump's pretexts and potential geopolitical deals especially w Russia deserve scrutiny, but the Venezuelan people deserve a chance at freedom.
As with everything Trump does, his motivations will be about personal power and enrichment. This does not contradict that Maduro was an illegitimate thug allied with others like him. However his removal was arranged (deal?) it shakes the global forces of dictatorship.
Condemning a nation's people to authoritarianism and repression because of potential bad outcomes after the fall of their dictator is a free world observer's luxury. Democracy and prosperity can never be guaranteed, but the opportunities for them should be promoted.
Ok, thanks Garry.
His voters thought Trump would be different, he would bring the troops home, put the homeland first, and that he would fight the Deep State.
In reality, he's building out Imperium Americanum, he is fighting wars without Congressional approval and proper casus bellis, he's not bringing the troops home and it is clear he represents the fucking Deep State even more than any of his predecessors since JFK. Shame on him for renaming the Kennedy Center the Trump-Kennedy Center. Which is absolutely disgusting given the reality of things!
Prime example: Invading Venezuela to steal their oil, just like his predecessors did with Syria (if you do not believe me, look where the US Army is located in Syria, and the prime locations of their oil fields).
Additionally: Trump's United States now has given Putin's Russia and Xi's China precedent to do whatever they fucking want to whoever or whatever. Because who fucking cares about international law if even the United States government, home of freedom and democracy and the rule of law, currently doesn't even give a fuck?
So now fucking what?
(And yes, as you might have noticed I AM FURIOUS AS HELL.)
Good times
And had a good laugh
Right, Russia, who has been attacking Ukraine not just for one night, but for four years, is now going to lecture the US about violations of sovereignty. Their moral high ground, if they ever had any, is long gone.
I'm not sad if Maduro's gone. I'm even less sad if this results in actual freedom for Venezuela after 20 years of nightmare.
But I am not happy about the president of the US, on his own authority, choosing to remove the head of other countries, on rather flimsy pretexts. (If he presents actual evidence that Maduro was actively and deliberately shipping drugs to the US, or worse, criminals, then I will change my opinion. But I need evidence, not just claims and bluster.)
Manuel Noriega
Shit, we did this on the anniversary.
Best it be a puny helpless country, so nobody (important) gets killed. Just some brown folk from South America, nobody cares about them.
Anything to serve the ego; absolutely no crime or moral outrage is off-limits. Long as it serves that endless pit that is ego.
Like, holy classified military secrets Batman!
Prof. Philips P Obrien's analysis is an interesting one, also highlighting Cuba's reliance on Venezuelan oil, which complicates the situation further.
Seeing how various other cases have went (James Comey, Letitia James) in this administration run by loyalists, what are the chances that he's acquitted due to prosecutorial incompetence?
0: https://xcancel.com/AGPamBondi/status/2007428087143686611
https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/us_atrocities...
He should have learned from the example of the ex Honduran president who was recently pardoned by Trump.
I'm sorry but "possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices against the United States."
When did this happen exactly ??
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-e...
r/venezuela is one placce to start. Very different tone there than the ill informed commenters here ( and I say that with detest for “that other site”)
Hopefully the Venezuelan people will have a fighting change to restore their country now.
Time will tell I suppose.
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6819579-Maduro-Indic...
[2] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/nicol-s-maduro-moros...
That's not to say that the steelmanned "why" isn't much more interesting than the real "why".
You get to choose between 'oil', 'get Epstein off the front page' or 'dementia'.
There is no way there is a coherent plan behind any of this. Trump loves dictators and drug dealers as long as they kiss the ring.
On a slightly more serious note, the charges against Maduro were actually filed in 2020: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/nicol-s-maduro-moros...
I'm not aware of a specific example. Who is a drug dealer that Trump loves?
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/02/trump-honduras-pard...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-e...
Or in the words of DJT (quoted in article):
> "We have the greatest oil companies in the world, the biggest, the greatest, and we’re going to be very much involved in it."
May the liberation of Venezuelan oil fields commence!
> Maduro and Other High Ranking Venezuelan Officials Allegedly Partnered With the FARC to Use Cocaine as a Weapon to “Flood” the United States
> Hernández Allegedly Partnered with Some of the Largest Cocaine Traffickers in the World to Transport Tons of Cocaine through Honduras to the United States
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21698603-us-v-juan-o...
[2] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/juan-orlando-hern%C3...
I will just say something else: I grew up as a kid between the 80s and 90s, when the world felt like it was going towards a brighter age of peace and respect. Berlin wall falling, China opening, Apartheid ending in South Africa, even Palestine and Israel were moving towards a more peaceful future.
But since then the world has just progressed toward darker and darker ages.
General public not caring anymore about any tragedy, it's just news, general public being fine with their press freedom being eroded, journalists being spied and targeted, more and more conflicts all around.
I just don't see nor feel we're heading where we should considering how developed and rich we are.
We should boast in how well we raise our kids, how safe and healthy our cities are, but it's nothing but ego, ego, money and money.
This is all turning worse and worse.
Yes, millions of people in the poorest nations have been raised out of absent poverty since, but beyond that, wealth has flowed to the top 1% any country you look at (check median wealth ownership in the US, basically plummeted for the average Joe since the mid 80s), the environment has gone to shit and the generational promise that the children will have it better than their parents has gone over board with asset prices ballooning.
I‘m right there with you, the societal promise of meritocracy and the middle class was broken in the early 90s and so far there is no replacement in sight.
Also, there's probably correlation between wealth inequality and war. Wealth inequality leads to radical leaders which can lead to wars.
Pretty incredible
underdeserver•8h ago
richardatlarge•8h ago
Or maybe not :(
immibis•8h ago
madaxe_again•8h ago
Like Reagan. But they’ll find some guy, I don’t know, Bob South, who will take the fall.
khazhoux•8h ago
well_actulily•7h ago
verzali•7h ago
stevekemp•8h ago
ModernMech•7h ago
JumpCrisscross•7h ago
It's a reference to "the official term used by the Russian government to describe the Russian invasion of Ukraine" [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_military_operation
teiferer•7h ago
dragonwriter•7h ago
aqme28•7h ago
ubiquitysc•7h ago
madaxe_again•7h ago
logicchains•7h ago
big-and-small•7h ago
lawn•6h ago
tclancy•2h ago
JumpCrisscross•7h ago
I'll say I'm doubtful. I think we'll bomb from afar and hope to pot Maduro.
pgsandstrom•7h ago
Mikhail_Edoshin•7h ago
I always remember that episode as I see headlines like that.
dgellow•2h ago