Forgive me for being a dumb , who doesn't know much about politics etc... but am i missing something? Because it looks like the US has just invaded another country, bombed it, presumably killing people, maybe even non-combatant citizens? taken their leader prisoner and is now claiming they're going to take over that country, how is that not either a war, a crime or both? Shortly after declaring that United States would “run the country” at a news conference, Mr. Trump seemed to suggest that his plan was to pressure Mr. Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, to simply obey him.Look, when the U.N. charter was written, eighty years ago, it included a
critical prohibition on the use of force by states. States are not
allowed to decide on their own that they want to use force against other
states. It was meant to reinforce this relatively new idea at the time
that states couldn’t just go to war whenever they wanted to. In the old
world, the pre-U.N. charter world, it would have been fine to use force
if you felt like drug trafficking was hurting you, and you could come up
with legal justification that that was the case. But the whole point of
the U.N. charter was basically to say, “We’re not going to go to war
for those reasons anymore.” We’re still in the early hours, but the arguments that have been made in
the run-up to this full-scale effort have largely focussed on
self-defense against drug traffickers, who they claim are being
supported or maybe even directed by Maduro and his administration. The
problem is that that really doesn’t work under international law. There
is a right of self-defense under the United Nations charter, which
allows states to use force in self-defense against an armed attack. But
it’s never been used for something like drug trafficking. And so all of
these boat strikes that have been taking place over the past couple of
months, which have been justified as self-defense, don’t fall within
anything that anyone would recognize as self-defense under international
law. Self-defense generally requires that there’s actually an armed
attack. And it seems like they’re making a similar argument here to
justify the capture of Maduro and the use of force on land in Venezuela. That raises the question of how the U.S. president intends to run Venezuela if Ms. Rodríguez balks. Mr. Trump has not said how this could happen and on what legal basis, leaving multiple experts in international and national security law puzzled.It appears to violate the United Nations Charter, a treaty the United States has ratified. Under Article 2(4) of the charter, a nation may not use force on the sovereign territory of another country without its consent, a self-defense rationale, the authorization of the U.N. Security Council.Boggles my mind that post-Iraq people have made the serious argument with Iran and now Venezuela that quick actions that take out a leader or a military target are going to inevitably lead to pro-US regimes taking over previously hostile countries and that pro-US populations will just appear on the ground that will go along with whatever the US wanted. Maduro's regime is still intact. His allies still control all the security services. Iran's regime still has an iron grip on local military and police forces. Even if DT's people don't know it, there is no way for them to secure Venezuela or anywhere else with a hands off approach unless they have a ton of boots on the ground...otherwise they need to put them there. Trump didn’t attack Venezuela because it produces fentanyl. It doesn’t. He didn’t attack Venezuela because President Nicolás Maduro controls the Tren de Aragua gang. He doesn’t. He didn’t attack Venezuela because Maduro is the head of the Cartel de los Soles. It doesn’t even exist. In 2003, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney at least pretended their illegal invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam Hussein wasn’t about Iraq’s oil. It was about democracy! WMDs! Al-Qaeda!Donald Trump, weirdly, shamelessly, and luckily for us, has been brutally honest on the subject of Venezuela and his motivation for regime change in Caracas.
It’s about the oil, stupid! Continued bombing and assaults alone either strengthens the local regime because an outsider is attacking them...or the systems in place degrade to a point where the country collapses into civil conflict. During the "drug boat" strikes, he consistently shifted the focus to Venezuela's oil, falsely claiming they "stole from us" by controlling their own resources. This reveals the true agenda; it was never about drugs or security.
