9 ms·
Not taking sides here, just trying to steelman: some Venezuelans might be so done with Maduro, that they consider US getting the oil profits to be a fair price.
by throw-the-towel 10mo ago
Not taking sides here, just trying to steelman: some Venezuelans might be so done with Maduro, that they consider US getting the oil profits to be a fair price.
- achenet 10mo agoOn top of that, I don't think the common Venezuelan laborer was getting much benefit out of the Maduro regime capturing the oil wealth. From the point of view of the less fortunate, there isn't much difference between a Venezuelan elite enriching themselves off the local oil vs an American elite enriching themselves off the local oil.
- svnt 10mo agoRight, that’s not the issue. The issue is national sovereignty. The US just started taking over South America.
- solenoid0937 10mo agoClaims of sovereignty are meaningless, what happens is whether those claims hold up in real life, and in this case they clearly don't. A country is either powerful enough to enforce sovereignty, or it is not actually sovereign; so this hand-wringing about "Venezuela's sovereignty" is meaningless. It's already been proven false, to some extent. The US is free to do what it wants with Venezuela, or virtually any non-nuclear country in the world. Always has been, really. It simply doesn't exercise said power very often.
- WaxProlix 10mo agoIs this then a call to assassinate local politicians you don't agree with? Some might makes right thing? We're all at least momentarily able to overpower or mortally harm one another, but often don't choose to. Why do you think that is?
- solenoid0937 10mo agoYou seem to be mistaking my comment for a moral stance. I am not making a call to do anything, I am simply describing the nature of international relations throughout the vast majority of human history (including the current day), in a framework most commonly defined as realism. Superpowers act in their self interest, ignoring "international law" when the benefit meaningfully exceeds the cost. They can do this because there is no one to stop them. They will do this because it is in their self interest. Americans will probably benefit from this action, or at least that is the administration's thesis. Is it moral? No, but discussions of morality are irrelevant on the world stage, which is a zero-sum game defined only by leverage.
- WaxProlix 10mo agoI think I assumed you're commenting for a reason because it doesn't make sense to make these comments otherwise - they're more or less vacuously true, and there's no value to them outside of an assertion of some sort. > the world stage, which is a zero-sum game I'm not at all convinced this is true. You should think about the question posed in my first comment - why do you think we don't choose to overpower one another regularly to take what we want?
- solenoid0937 10mo agosvnt and HN's misunderstanding of international relations and the concept of "sovereignty" is what my comment is directed at: in discussions about superpowers on the world stage, (a) moralizing is simply irrelevant, discussions about whether this is "good" or "bad" are childishly naive and have no place - only whether it was advantageous or not; and (b) sovereignty is meaningless if a nation does not have the hard/soft power (and the will) to back it, just as if you declare your house a "sovereign nation" it will not be respected unless you are able to back it up. Perhaps this is an obvious/vacuous truth to you, but most HN'ers are clearly failing to grasp this. > why do you think we don't choose to overpower one another regularly to take what we want? Because it is not always advantageous to do so. When it is clearly advantageous, nations tend to do so (as evidenced by virtually all of human history, including the current era.)
- stackbutterflow 10mo agoIt's appalling to read that on HN, and there's plenty of comments like this one in this thread. To think that some like to pretend HN is better than reddit.
- solenoid0937 10mo agoPlease leave a substantive comment instead of just calling something a "redditism" and "appalling." You may not like the framework of realism but it is the reality of international relations today (and throughout most of history.) Rules-based international order has always been a thin veneer over the fact that nations will always act in their self-interest regardless of what they say. Finally, game theory tells us that as long as one superpower behaves according to the principles of realism, the rest must as well, or risk getting outmaneuvered.
- tejohnso 10mo agoPeople don't like to see difficult to accept facts stated plainly. And sometimes equate a statement of unfortunate fact with endorsement of status quo. More on topic, I hoped there would be some support from Colombia, Russia, and China in place to help with this situation. Instead it seems like Maduro took an exit deal and left the country at the hands of the GOP who openly promulgate the idea that the US should lord over all other countries in the western hemisphere.
- stackbutterflow 10mo agoThere's nothing substantive to the comment I'm replying to. It's explaining in too many words that might makes right. We all know that. On the other hand I believe, but I could be wrong, that the many comments of the sort in this thread are a way for some people to cheer these sort of actions without being too obvious about it because they know it's not a good look in some circles, hn being one. So rather than chanting usa usa usa like their gut tells them too, they resort to such emotionally distanced statements, obvious to everyone, pretending to simply constate the gap in military capabilities of the US versus other powers. And indeed, I find that appalling.
- AppleAtCha 10mo agoSo much of the past decade has been the internet infecting the population with 19th century thinking like this. Alliances are a thing, and might makes right is something we have told ourselves for generations that we oppose. I am so tired of this nihilism dressed as edge.
- solenoid0937 10mo agoThis isn't "nihilism dressed as edge," this is political realism, and it is the framework under which our rivals operate wrt international relations. Yes, alliances are a thing, and the framework fully accounts for these.
- analog31 10mo agoBut neither the Venezuelan elite nor the American elite will tolerate any hint of democracy. And neither elite will be satisfied with merely exploiting the oil.
- vladms 10mo agoDefinitely not, but the furthest away the ones profiting from something are, the worse it can get. It is definitely not a guarantee that a local enriching elite will at some point lead to something better, but most examples that come to mind about "colonies" (places very far from a center of power), resulted in said places to develop much harder.
- terminalshort 10mo agoThere's a massive difference, and that difference is that American oil companies, unlike the Venezuelan state run industry, are actually very competent at extracting oil. This means more good paying jobs, more state revenue, and massive economic growth. Contrary to the claims of most of the economically illiterate morons commenting here, having a functional local oil industry run by foreign companies will actually be great for Venezuela.
- gcbirzan 10mo agoI think you got it wrong. It might be better for Venezuela, but it will for sure be great for those companies.
- Huntsecker 10mo agoyour comment sounds alot like nationalist chest thumping, the reason they were unable to do much with their oil is much more related to the usa deciding they would sanction the country meaning basically worldwide they can't sell the oil
- Arainach 10mo agoThis is all irrelevant - it's completely unacceptable for the US President to send the military into another without Congressional approval, and to kidnap a leader at all (especially without a declaration or war or UN authorization).
- phyalow 10mo agoAs Jonathan Turley reports https://jonathanturley.org/2026/01/03/the-united-states-captures-nicolas-maduro-and-his-wife/ https://jonathanturley.org/2026/01/03/the-united-states-capt... this operation will be justified as executing the criminal warrant (issued by the Biden DOJ and outstanding since 2029) and responding to an international drug cartel, a very similar legal framework to the one used against Noriega in 1989 - which was tested in multiple US courts. So like it or not there is longstanding court affirmed precedent supporting that earlier operation, which will now be used to defend the actions in Venezuela.
- greenavocado 10mo ago"This paper we wrote shows the legal justification for the kidnapping, so the kidnapping we performed is completely legal."
- phyalow 10mo agoUnfortunately thats how the politics and economics of violence work when you are the most powerful country in the world (n.b. I am not American and think this situation is deplorable, but the legal facts and construction support Trump’s actions)
- blurbleblurble 10mo agoNo they do not
- BobbyJo 10mo agoWell, in this case, yes. This is the trouble with growing executive power, they can indeed give themselves permission.
- taveras 10mo agoCan you qualify “some Venezuelans” in any meaningful way? This framing implies that the US administration considered US or Venezuelan public opinion before taking this action. We have no evidence of that.
- throw-the-towel 10mo agoAdmittedly I cannot, I'm not Venezuelan and not familiar enough with the country.
- christkv 10mo agoWell at least the nearly 8 million who voted for the opposition in Venezuela and the nearly 8 million who have left.
- miltonlost 10mo agoSome of the Austrians Wanted Hitler to annex them!
- carlosjobim 10mo agoDidn't a lot of Austrians want that? Didn't the East Germans later want to be annexed by West Germany? Don't the people of both Koreas want unification?
- tootie 10mo agoTrump said Machado doesn't have support to be leader and endorsed Maduro's VP as willing to work with the US. It seems unlikely the Venezuelan people are going to see any benefits here. They will get more of the same.
- skoinks 10mo ago[flagged]
- chihuahua 10mo agoThere should be a sitcom where Assad, Yanukovich, Snowden, and the Venezuelan VP are sharing an apartment in Moscow. In the Christmas episode, Putin shows up and teaches them the true meaning of Christmas.
- Der_Einzige 10mo agoMake it in a similar style to the death of Stalin and it’ll be 10/10!
- Izkata 10mo agoNot impossible given exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heil_Honey_I%27m_Home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heil_Honey_I%27m_Home!
- svnt 10mo agoCompletely irrelevant what “some Venezuelans might” want and literally can be used to justify anything if you accept it as a premise. For example: Not taking sides here, just trying to steelman: some Americans might want to sell their relatives into sex trafficking.
- autoexec 10mo agoTrumps approval rating isn't great either but I doubt many people would see that as justification for another country kidnapping him in the middle of night to charge him with "has an army with machine guns" before taking American oil
- morshu9001 10mo agoIf Trump made himself king and dragged the US so far into corruption and poverty that another country could so easily capture us, yeah I'd be fine with them bagging him.
- autoexec 10mo agoI suspect you'd be in the minority, but hey if he lives long enough you might just get your wish. He's off to a great start.
- dullcrisp 10mo agoI say what goes around comes around.
- antonvs 10mo agoIt wouldn’t have been a justification before now, but he’s created the precedent. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
- ModernMech 10mo agoThis is exactly what Putin said about Ukrainians living in the Donbas.
- slices 10mo agowhich was true
- ModernMech 10mo agoAnd yet, it's not a justification for what was done there, and it's not a justification for what was done in this case either. Wasn't a justification in Iraq with Saddam for that matter. I remember the day the Iraqis pulled that statue down, they seemed very happy to be able to do that. And then...
- vanviegen 10mo agoMy understanding is that the US military is not so great at the "hearts and minds" game, to put it politely. It doesn't take much time for locals to be outraged by macho assholes acting like they own the place. Makes the recently dethroned dictator look somewhat decent in comparison.
- squidbeak 10mo agoNo this is a Russian canard and not true. In fact some of the fiercest resistance to Russian occupation came from the Donbas.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- toofy 10mo agoif we’re going to steelman we have to acknowledge that many venezualans liked him too. we can’t simultaneously say we don’t like corruption of socialist governments while literally bombing another nation and imprisoning political enemies just so we can have its oil for our cronies.
- 4MOAisgoodenuf 10mo ago“We will be greeted as liberators” Has not come to fruition for previous US regime change operations. This kidnapping operation doesn’t give insight one way or the other into the will of the Venezuelan people. It, in fact, completely disregards it.
- KaiserPro 10mo agoSome Taiwanese will welcome china, Some ukrainians welcomed russia, some polish will welcome russia, some estonians will welcome russia etc etc etc. Look, you don't just regime change, It didn't work in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan. It only really kinda worked in Kosovo, but even then it was touch and go, require lots of troop time and a load of money and ongoing international police.