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You - and Venezuela - should solve your own internal problems at your own time table. Foreign intervention more often than not translates into puppet regime installation.


Beyond this, if you are from Venezuela it's difficult to stay in the middle beyond the outcomes, it is completely different when prople talk without living or being an expat.


> should solve your own internal problems at your own time table

That's not how international geopolitics works. There are many means in which nation states pull levers to take on problems that exist in other countries. Sanctions, diplomacy, trade barriers, propaganda, military interventions, threats, etc. are all tools that are used by nation states around the world every day.


The post you replied to didn’t say things are not like that. He said things should not be like that.


> He said things should not be like that.

Why should they not be like that? Absolutist non-intervention is not a realistic strategy in a universe where nation states border each other and their actions affect each other.


Correct me if I'm wrong but the bulk of human history shows that interventions has largely been disastrous in terms of long-term effects.


As a German, I can say I‘m very happy for the intervention some decades ago, but it’s of course just one example, potentially a bad one, and likely cannot be generalized — just wanted to throw this into the ring as a positive example.


Which country was Venezuela at war with?

Germany waged war on just about the whole world, the response to that was one of defense, not offense.


> Which country was Venezuela at war with?

> Germany waged war on just about the whole world, the response to that was one of defense, not offense.

I find it useful to distinguish legality from morality of the move of capturing Maduro and his wife.

One way I approach it is to ask myself: if one could have Maduro returned to Venezuela today, would one? Perhaps the answer that most people would give is yes (i.e. everyone would be better off), but I'm not so sure.


And some of them are levers that we should not tolerate.

I'm not sure who Trump is doing favors for here, but much like when it was Bush doing favors for Haliburton, we could end up with decades of pointless war which neither of the corrupt parties that started it take any responsibility for cleaning up.

Whether through politics or sabotage, its appropriate to intervene if somebody is about to stick you with the bill for something like this. We can't be all "boys will be boys" about it. The consequences are often too severe.


The US only exists due to the foreign intervention of France, and the at-the-time foreign intervention of a few Indian tribes, to help overthrow the crown regime. You might note the domestic efforts were also a dominating force, but I have no reason to believe anti-Maduro domestic efforts were not an instrumental force in making such a smooth operation possible for the US.


Iraq worked out quite ok after 20 years if my contacts there are to believed.

Afghanistan failed miserably.


Sadam was there because of the US (1959), and he was removed by the US, and not because he was a ruthless dictator.

Bin Laden & Afghanistan same (though obviously he was not their head of state) but much worse. Afghanistan has been abused by so many people it is hard to reason about it without having to go back a century or more.


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We live in a world where even regional nuclear war will trigger a nuclear winter that starves people across the earth. Nationalist isolationism makes no sense in the modern world.


You know, you’re right. Nationalist isolationism makes no sense in the modern world. It’s a good thing we got Maduro and are supporting Ukraine.


That's complete nonsense. We've already nuked the planet thousands of times to no effect.


That's a very, very bad take and I'm really surprised that you can't see the difference between helping people defend themselves vs interfering in a foreign country because their leadership does not want to give you access to their natural resources on a pretext.


Are you really trying to paint Maduro’s authoritarian regime, who traffics people and drugs, and helps Russia evade international oil and arms sanctions and the US arresting of him as “their leadership doesn’t want to give America access to their natural resources”?

The EU doesn’t even recognize Maduro as the legitimate leader of Venezuela and he forced the democratically elected president into hiding!


Are you arguing two wrongs make a right? This most recent wrong would likely gestate an even worse authoritarian regime than the earlier wrong.

Where is the right you're seeing?


By that logic the US shouldn’t get involved in any other foreign entanglement or global police action because of unintended consequences. Tell me, who from the international community will seize Russian shadow fleet oil tankers evading sanctions!

Wait! Crap!

We can’t sanction Russia - if we do it might destabilize the Russian dictator and if he goes out a worse authoritarian regime might come to power!


Which nation did Maduro invade again? Did you confuse Venezuela with Russia?

> By that logic the US shouldn’t get involved in any other foreign entanglement or global police action because of unintended consequences.

Strawman. No-one is claiming that.


> translates into puppet regime installation.

Isn't that good for the US? I mean at least it reads a lot better that totalitarian and terrorist regimes preinstalled.


Meh. The US has a history of installing totalitarian or terrorist governments. The middle-east is a lovely example; the US was responsible for the likes of Osama Bin Laden (CIA asset), for the installation of Saddam Hussein, and many many more.




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