It's funny how we accept the importance given to that statement. when he's just some dude who took control of a country and gave himself that title. As if the social construction means anything in this situation.
I found it hard to figure out which side the GP came down on, but perhaps it's not taking a side and merely pointing out the irony and the death of legitimacy. Maybe there is no such thing as government anymore, and it all comes down to goons with guns.
This stands in contrast to the ideals of a society based on laws and rules, where corruption is a notable exception.
We stand on the precipice of abandoning what the world worked so hard for decades to build...
The relationship with SA has materially changed.
1. The United States is willing to violate South American sovereignty.
2. South America has offered little resistance to this incident.
Things like genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, violating other countries sovereignty with no strong justification, development of nuclear weapons, etc.
So there's a bunch of red lines that clearly some countries will step over the sovereignty line, thankfully so!
I'm not saying the US was right about what they did in Venezuela, but clearly Maduro wasn't recognized as the president of Venezuela by venezuelans and many countries.
Restrictions on building nuclear bombs are defined in the voluntary Non-Proliferation Treaty, and is not applicaple to non-parties (India, Israel, Pakistan, South Sudan).
Every foreign intervention done by US / NATO through-out has backfired, and worsened the problem it tried to solve.
Case in point: CIA covertly arms Afghan Mujahideen fighters to wage war against the Soviet Union by proxy in the 80s - 90s. But David Hasselhoff did a song, so the Soviet Union fell apart, and Afghan fighters pivoted to civil warfare as Taliban.
Sadam Hussein was a rogue US puppet-dictatorship gone wrong. But 'freeing' Iraq from Hussein entailed destroying their entire civilisation. Just the mayhem caused a million deaths through starvation, sectorial violence, collapsed healthcare, terrorists roaming the streets, etc.
We also destroyed Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Libya, Yemen, Guatemala, Chile, etc. (At least for a while)
The UN has a body that regulates nuclear energy, called IAEA, and they can definitely bring violations to the Security Council.
> Every foreign intervention done by US / NATO through-out has backfired, and worsened the problem it tried to solve.
That's quite a bold claim:
- first by focusing only in the US / NATO, and leaving out interventions of the UN. Why is that?
- would you say that the people in Kosovo are worse than they were before NATO intervention? Or South Korea with the intervention of the UN? Or even Ukraine today with the help of NATO?
- it's funny you blame the CIA for the consequences of the Afghanistan war, yet you don't blame the USSR who invaded Afghanistan in the first place!
It's like for you, the USSR losing the Afghanistan war was a bad thing, and the collapse of the USSR as well, and the CIA was to blame for all of that? What's going on there?
As for Saddam, he shouldn't have invaded Kuwait, let alone the other atrocities.
You seem to have a lot of grievances towards US / NATO, and very little against USSR and Russia "interventions".
Like what they did in Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, and the other atrocities in Africa, and Asia with their neo-nazi paramilitary group.
Anyway, I don't defend everything the US / NATO / UN did - but one thing is sure (up until today), none of them expanded their borders and attempted to annex land.
NATO member states are free to pursue interventions, but they then do not get NATO protection.
It is, but it's kind of a thin lie.
How's sovereignty going for ukraine? Hong kong? Chechnya, South ossetia, and abkhazia? Puerto Rico? Western Sahara? Parts of Sudan? Border regions of bhutan? South american fisheries? People trying to set up micronations?
Whether there was also cooperation from the Venezuelan military, failure to shoot down helicopters, etc, is a different matter.
Speaking like a man without access to a discombobulator.
Declaring yourself president means nothing. I’m the president of planet earth and nothing changes. Similarly he could go by grand pimp and it would be just as meaningful.
Legitimacy comes from all the people backing up his claim to control of the country. Further governments care about legitimacy because it’s way easier to assassinate leaders than win wars and leaders don’t want to be at risk. It’s pure self interest protecting each other.
Whether Maduro is a baddie or not, taking military action requires buy-in from the UN Security Council. Specifically: nine affirmative votes from the 15-member council, provided that none of the five permanent members (China, France, Russia, UK, US) cast a veto. And it's only allowed to 'maintain or enforce international peace and security'. The charter contrasts this to building
The US should've consider how their war-plans 'maintain or enforce international peace and security' before commencing. Or even fabricate' sexed up Dossiers' on weapons of mass destruction like when the US invaded Iraq.
Self-defence is the only valid excuse for using arms without prior security council approval and acting without a plan for peace and security.
Maduro was a piece of…let’s keep this polite and say “work.” Everyone agrees. Does that mean what the US did was acceptable? There’s a lot of nuance and context being glossed over here.
It’s like with Iran. “Their government was horrible.” Ok, but that’s not why we attacked them. The Trump admin has explicitly said that wasn’t the motivation, but they randomly bring it up whenever they need to shift tactics. It’s a moral appeal supporters use to paper over the political realities and actual motivations.
Edit: toned down the intensity a bit.
The longer I am alive the more I realize that power is all that matters, and that rules are nice but only for the peons. "Acceptable" in this case means pretty much nothing and is a word that is philosophic in its meaning. You can yell into the clouds that something is unacceptable or unfair and it may be true in some ethical/moral sense, but it matters none. Power will always win out and if someone came to the WH and did the same thing, then there would only be one reason for it -- that there is somebody more powerful than the US and is able to get away with things like this. The masses would scream, cry and maybe some would be happy, but it wouldn't matter whatsoever. Maduro might have been bad (a great excuse for the masses to avoid revolts) but ultimately, the government made a decision to do it and that's that.
Trump lost in 2020. Harris lost in 2024. We have all sorts of external influence and nonsense happening in our social/political lives and yes many states are messing with people's ability to actually vote, but when it comes to what happens in the voting booth, US elections are incredibly secure and fraud/ballot tampering is so rare that calling it "rare" doesn't properly emphasize reality.
The vote count was accurate, Trump won, and we are all paying a horrible price for the self-inflicted chaos and regression that has ensued.
>Not that anyone would challenge it
If there were legitimate grounds to question it there is no way we wouldn't see action on it
Maduro was replaced by his equally unelected second. It is not as if Venezuela became democracy or something. Instead, a bunch of leaders got promotion including the main torturer.
I find it mind boggling that it is called regime change. Regime remained in place.