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.
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.
Germany waged war on just about the whole world, the response to that was one of defense, not offense.
> 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.
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 EU doesn’t even recognize Maduro as the legitimate leader of Venezuela and he forced the democratically elected president into hiding!
Where is the right you're seeing?
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!
> 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.
Isn't that good for the US? I mean at least it reads a lot better that totalitarian and terrorist regimes preinstalled.
Afghanistan failed miserably.
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.
European Parliament resolutions and reports explicitly described the process as lacking transparency and integrity such as not publishing detailed polling station results, meaning the results could not be independently verified, and concluding the election was neither free nor fair.
You may recall María Corina Machado was barred from running shortly before the election itself.
For example “A few minutes after midnight, with 80% of the votes counted, the CNE declared Nicolas Maduro the winner, with 51.2% of the vote, followed by Edmundo González with 44.2%. The CNE did not publish the results by polling station, claiming - without providing evidence - that a cyberattack had made it impossible to upload the results to its website. However, the CNE did not release the results by any alternative method. The lack of detailed results prevented independent verification of the overall results announced by the CNE The CNE canceled three postelection audits that could have verified the alleged cyberattacks. This included a second citizen verification exercise. The integrity of the elections was damaged by the lack of transparent information. In a parallel effort, the opposition - through party representatives, observers, and citizens — collected and published online more than 80% of the results forms produced by the voting machines. According to these results, González received 67.1% of the vote, and Maduro received 30.4%. The Venezuelan government claimed - without providing evidence - that the results forms published by the opposition were forged. However, the result forms published were deemed legitimate by external auditors and academics. The Carter Center reviewed the data in the results forms and found it to be accurate.”
I've heard that American elections are rigged too. That still isn't an open invitation for an invasion by another nation to kidnap government officials on US soil. Even if Maduro had abandoned elections entirely and installed himself as king it wouldn't justify what the US has done.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Venezuelan_presidential_e...
IMO, the US doing piracy around it is way more concerning than kidnapping a dictator that sent the military against its people, architected a couple of famines, and forced a double-digts percentage of their population out of the country.
Still, this won't lead to anything good. Because the entire US Executive is composed of incompetent sadistic people right now. But it could be a good thing for Venezuela in different circumstances (but I imagine anybody capable of making good change there would refrain from doing so).
I certainly don't, and I don't speak for the person you replied to but I figure most people commenting here don't think that either
> The Bolivarian regime came to power in a free and fair election
Hugo Chavez was elected president legitimately in 1998, so it's true that the Bolivarian regime came to power fairly. But just about nobody that's paying attention thinks Maduro won the presidential election in 2024. Elections were held, Maduro lost (by a huge margin), and he continued being president anyway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Venezuelan_presidential_e...
Remains to be seen.
Personally I'm not. This is like kidnapping the CEO of Kroger because your eggs are too expensive, and then telling everyone you did it because he wasn't listening to his employees enough.
We can't undo this and this was a very big stick we used. I highly doubt this was done with the interests of the common American in mind.