The easy response from the unduly passionate Magats is that anyone who isn’t praising Trump’s exercise of presidential fiat by invading Venezuela and seizing its illegitimate dictator must love Maduro. These are not deep thinkers. Outside of the few nations with whom Trump holds dear feelings, nobody doesn’t think Maduro was a monster whose removal from power isn’t a good thing. That, however, doesn’t mean engaging in an unlawful invasion of a sovereign nation without authority is magically a good thing.
Ilya Somin sums it up well.
Maduro is getting what he deserves, even if for the wrong reasons. But the US attack is illegal, and it is far from clear whether it will really lead to a beneficial regime change in Venezuela.
I shed no tears for Maduro, who is a brutally oppressive dictator and not the legitimate ruler of his country (given his falsification of the 2024 election results). His real crime is not drug smuggling or “narco-terrorism” but repression and murder on a massive scale, creating the biggest refugee crisis in the history of the Western Hemisphere. The recent history of Venezuela is an abject lesson in the perils of “democratic socialism.” That sort of regime leads to poverty and massive human rights violations – and doesn’t stay democratic for long.
But what about Noriega, the simpletons reply?
Defenders of the legality of Trump’s actions cite the 1989 invasion of Panama, which was undertaken in large part for the purpose of apprehending Panamian dictator Manuel Noriega; like Maduro, Noriega was charged with smuggling illegal drugs into the US. But the 1989 Panama precedent does not actually justify Trump’s actions. On December 15, 1989 (five days before the US invasion), Noriega foolishly announced that Panama and the US were in a “state of war,” thereby creating conflict between the two countries that did not exist in the Venezuela case. In addition, Panamanian forces had killed or wounded two US military personnel in the Panama Canal area, and detained other American citizens. Unlike Noriega in 1989, the Venezuelan regime did not declare war on the US or otherwise initiate a military conflict. Thus, congressional authorization is needed to make any US military intervention constitutional.
If one doesn’t choose to think very hard and appreciate the huge legal distinction between what happened in Panama and what happened in Venezuela, then it might serve as a precedent. Even so, that still doesn’t make it legal, even if unlawful action was committed before.
To repeat, that does not mean that the action is in fact lawful—and it pretty clearly isn’t under the U.N. Charter. It only means that the long line of unilateral executive branch actions, supported by promiscuously generous executive branch precedents, support it. As I wrote in connection with the Soleimani strike: “our country has—through presidential aggrandizement accompanied by congressional authorization, delegation, and acquiescence—given one person, the president, a sprawling military and enormous discretion to use it in ways that can easily lead to a massive war. That is our system: One person decides.”
Or to put it more succinctly, “Past illegal actions don’t justify future ones.”
To add insult to injury, Trump demeaned the Nobel Peace Prize winning opposition leader, María Corina Machado, as lacking the “respect” needed to take charge of Venezuela, and the winner of the 2024 election, Edmundo Gonzalez. Instead, Trump announced that he would run it through his proxies, El Presidente and Shah of Iran Marco Rubio and his sidekick, Slick Pete, otherwise leaving intact the same criminal regime in control of the country, except with a new boss. Much as Venezuelans cheered the demise of the hated Maduro, they didn’t vote for The Donald to take over using the same terror regime.
According to Trump, the former Vice President, now president, has agreed to be his puppet to facilitate his seizing the nation’s massive oil reserves, which could be used to flood the United States with gasoline, crash the price at the pump and pretend there was no inflation and tariffs worked. Thus far, Delcy Rodríguez has given no indication that she wants to be Trump’s newest bestest gal. When the cheering at the seizure of Maduro subsides, Venezuelans may find the “victory” pyrrhic, as their country is stripped of its oil while the rest of the criminal regime continues to abuse its power.
And then there’s the question of whether Trump’s actions have stripped the United States of any moral authority to condemn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or China’s inchoate seizure of Taiwan. Hey, if we can invade and seize the head of state because we consider him illegitimate and a criminal, can’t other nations do the same with the same degree of legitimacy? While it’s understandable that the accusation of massive drug smuggling seem more criminalish than anything Putin can throw at Zelenskyy, that’s more a matter of our perspective. It’s easy to hurl allegations of treason and worse. Justifying an attack on a sovereign nation isn’t very hard, particularly when the nature of the accusation is subjective and primarily rhetorical.
Then again, was the United States in any position to assert moral authority against anyone these days?
Trump didn’t bother to seek authorization for any of his actions from Congress, nor even mention to the Gang of Eight that this was going to happen, even though initiating a foreign invasion is one of those things only Congress can authorize. When some other country declares war against the US, the president has different powers than when the president is the one to do the invading. But Trump says Congress “leaks,” which it does, but doesn’t change what the Constitution requires.
Then again, does either the Constitution or Congress really matter anymore? To some of us, the answer is yes, archaic though it may be.
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Scott,
Your TDS is showing. Why can’t you just acknowledge that “Operation What Epstein FIles?” was a brilliantly executed military success? Remember that, at the rate of 25K lives saved per boat strike, Trump has already save almost two and half million American lives. With this one move that number could become billions… maybe even trillions of lives saved.
Powerful countries routinely ignore “international law” and the UN Charter. The US has a long history of military adventurism and unilateral interventionism. Reflection on historic examples suggests such actions have the potential to go badly wrong, but that it probably makes more sense to evaluate their prospects from a utilitarian perspective rather than whether they are “legal.”
“…’but that it probably makes more sense to evaluate their prospects from a utilitarian perspective rather than whether they are ‘legal.'”
No, not ever, when it comes to government.
I would go further than your scare quotes and say there is no law behind “international law.” That term is just a way of stating “international norms” in a normative way. Still, that is not the point here. The illegality cited by Somin is that Trump’s actions are illegal because they lack proper congressional authorization and Goldsmith is concerned that we would be violating treaties we have signed, such as the Fourth Geneva Convention (which of course creates the interpretive wiggle room used to prevent those documents from becoming Robert Jackson’s “suicide pacts.”) Neither is suggesting that there is a Galactic Senate (or anything above the UN) to appeal to or to request enforcement– the sine qua nons of real law.
This one might be more/also appropriate.
https://youtu.be/jBd0YqO_-2I?si=IJcn3QznT6DALwnG
“Outside of the few nations with whom Trump holds dear feelings, nobody doesn’t think Maduro was a monster whose removal from power isn’t a good thing.”
SHG you are an American and most Americans are propagandized with the American religion of Neoliberalism. The essence of Neoliberalism is that for any problem that cannot be solved by the automatic operation of “free” markets any attempt at solution otherwise is both futile and wicked and therefore forbidden. The problem of poverty of poor people is such and Maduro is wicked in attempting or pretending to attempt to solve it in Venezuela by misappropriating Venezuelan natural resources which rightly belong to businesses in the Global North except of course for a generous commission to the Venezuelan elite to manage their exploitation on behalf of Northern business.
Poor people are poor because they are bad character and the only legitimate way to help them is by prosecution followed by righteously applied punishment and if they fail to respond correctly yet more punishment.
Are the majority of North Americans correct or is Neoliberalism another version of a common nonsense belief justifying the interests of an elite group in society over the majority.
I do not know but I am certainly suspicious of the majority American beliefs that you SHG and most supporters of both dominant US political parties believe.
What in the bloody fuck are you trying to mumble?
I’m not clear about what you mean with this sentence, “Poor people are poor because they are bad character and the only legitimate way to help them is by prosecution followed by righteously applied punishment and if they fail to respond correctly yet more punishment”. Are you espousing this yourself, suggesting that Scott is doing so, or ascribing it to American Neoliberals? Could you clarify this for me, please?
TIA
Minor correction, I left out the word “of” it should read …. “are of bad character ….”.
Hal.
What I really meant to express is that this is my perception of the opinions in this matter of members of the respectable classes in the US who believe in the religion of Neoliberalism. The perceptions of members of the unrespectable classes in Venezuela ie. poor people may differ.
I do not know what the reality is just that the majority of Venezuelans and the majority of the respectable classes in the US may have different opinions of what is reality, the rest of us do not know and must withhold judgement.
A quote from a Guardian article today:-
“Venezuelans have endured a repressive, kleptocratic and incompetent regime under Mr Maduro, widely believed to have stolen the last election.”
This is certainly the belief of a lot of US citizens and of members of Venezuela’s elite that Maduro stole the 2024 election but this does not mean that he did. Groups of homo sapiens individuals are only capable of believing their own particular othodoxies and it it is possible for there to exist apparently contradictory beliefs. It is in my view for Maduro and his party could have won the election with the support of the majority of that nation’s poor people while the US and the Venezuelan elite believe the opposite.
I’ve lived in some of the various shit holes around the world. Give it a year or two and someone no different than Maduro will in power. The only difference is which nation/power block becomes their patron and the poor will still be poor.
The Bosnia airstrikes 1995 and the 2011 Libya intervention were done without seeking congressional approval. Bluntly stating Venezuela will have a US run puppet government is the uniquely Trump error. Even China came up with a more reasonable public alternative for its invasion of Tibet (and parts of India) in an effort to control of the regions water.