What if he was the leader of a brutal coup and the legitimately elected government requested foreign help to have him removed?
It's really really difficult to paint this as inherently bad, it's hard to see how the conclusion here doesn't entirely depend on how you feel about the results of the previous Venezuelan elections.
It shouldn’t be difficult to see this as bad, but I guess the future will tell. I hope for the sake of the Venezuelan population things go better than the last time the US decided to initiate regime change.
Depends on the point of view. I certainly agree that there are many very good reasons to see this as bad, but I don't think that concerns about Venezuela's national sovereignty rank very highly on that list.
From the perspective that regime change often goes horribly wrong? Absolutely.
From the point of view that Maduro was effectively in charge of a coup that the real elected candidates were desperately seeking foreign support to stop? Harder to see the intervention as bad, as it is probably the only way to rectify the situation.
There's no doubt that this heavily depends on one's personal views, so there's no obvious answers. At least the concern about regime change is fact-based and pretty much universal, regardless of personal beliefs. The concern about whether or not it's right or wrong for the US to go and arrest Maduro depends largely on how one views the recent Venezuelan election results, and therefore inherently relies on some major assumptions on matters where we're unlikely to ever see conclusive proof.
Of course, there are also pretty good technical reasons to believe the electoral receipts published by the Venezuelan opposition. I believe they would have been pretty much impossible to fake. That topic and others related to it have been pretty much endlessly discussed on HN already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41123155
“The concern about whether or not it's right or wrong for the US to go and arrest Maduro depends largely on how one views the recent Venezuelan election results”
Again, no it doesn’t. It’s the unilateral extraterritorial interventionism that’s the problem. I have no time for Maduro or his administration.
And if you think this intervention is about protecting democracy I have a bridge to sell you.
It's only unilateral if you reject the electoral fraud claims.
>And if you think this intervention is about protecting democracy I have a bridge to sell you.
No, I certainly don't think that. I'd suspect it's mostly about personal grievances and Trumps desire to make a show. But still I think it makes more sense to focus on the best-case justifications than trying to guess at the real reasons behind why this administration does what it does.
By that definition no foreign intervention could ever be unilateral because you can always find some local group to support you. By that logic the English conquest of Ireland was locally supported because the Earl of Desmond supported them.
The actual motivations matter because they dictate the outcome. In this case the actual motivations have been stated publicly by Trump a few years ago, they want the oil back. They will happily support whoever ends up in power so long as they hand back the oil rights.
I think you're stretching a bit, I'm simply proposing they have a pretty good case here because much of the world openly agrees with the US claim that Maduro did not actually win the previous elections.
>In this case the actual motivations have been stated publicly by Trump a few years ago, they want the oil back. They will happily support whoever ends up in power so long as they hand back the oil rights.
That's obviously not credible, you can't profitably extract Venezuelan crude without US involvement. There's simply nobody else with the capabilities to do so. Venezuelan oil is particularly difficult to get out of the ground, it's tremendously difficult to extract profitably.
>"That's obviously not credible, you can't profitably extract Venezuelan crude without US involvement. There's simply nobody else with the capabilities to do so. Venezuelan oil is particularly difficult to get out of the ground, it's tremendously difficult to extract profitably"
I see that you do not manage your finances properly. Lemme take over.
Besides I do not believe this "nobody else" BS. If there is a need and money to be made they will find someone with the tech or deep enough pockets to develop it.
> If there is a need and money to be made they will find someone with the tech or deep enough pockets to develop it
There's no need and there's likely to be no money to be made. The extraction costs will probably be closer to $60 per barrel, which is more than you can sell it for.
You seem intent on not understanding my point. Absolutely none of the details matter, the broad strokes of arresting someone in a foreign jurisdiction and taking them by force to your country to face trial sets about the worst precedent imaginable.
Trump says a lot of things which aren't remotely credible. WTI price is under $60 and going down. The last thing they need is more crude supply into the market lowering the benchmark price even lower.
It doesn’t have to be a good idea for it to be their rationale. They have stated it publicly to the media a few hours ago and you refuse to believe, how utterly bizarre.
Their stated rationale also doesn't have to be their true rationale. For example, it's hard to believe that this is about oil rather than the headlines for Trump.
