Comment by esarbe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by esarbe | Hacker News Reader

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Your argument is perfectly well suited to justify the imperialist Russian aggression against Ukraine.

My point is that there's no entity with the authority to declare a government illegal - besides the UN security council. Next thing you know China invades Taiwan and it will be hard to argue with "sovereignty of nations". Nobody - not even the US - cares about it anymore, right? We just declare a government as illegitimate and presto - no need to justify it anymore. Here we go for some more foreign wars.

This is not about "liberating Venezuela" from a dictatorship. It's just about placing a new dictator at the head of Venezuela, equally illegitimate and equally authoritarian. Venezuela has become an US protectorate for the foreseeable future. At least until the oil runs dry [1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01/03/world/trump-united-s...

> Your argument is perfectly well suited to justify the imperialist Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Once you accept that there may be cases where you need to interfere with another country’s internal affairs, you can make up all sort of justifications to interfere (or not) in any given case. So yes, Russia would argue that the specific circumstance justify their actions. I would argue they don’t, but clearly Russia doesn’t care about me (and frankly wouldn’t care even if my opinion was that there is never a justification for interfering).

> My point is that there's no entity with the authority to declare a government illegal - besides the UN security council.

Now that’s an interesting claim. Why does the security council have this authority? From where do they derive that authority? Just 15 nations can declare your government “illegal”? Unless of course the government you want declared illegal happens to be one of those 15 I guess. So some nations internal affairs are more sacrosanct than others? And what happens when the UN declares your government “illegal”. Can anyone just waltz their military in and overthrow your government despite the fact that no one is supposed to have the right to interfere with the internal affairs of another country?

> This is not about "liberating Venezuela" from a dictatorship.

You appear confused because I never argued that it was. I merely objected to the idea that there was never a justification to interfere with the internal affairs of another country.

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