How is it possible that a president of a country can close the airspace of another country?
How can the extrajudicial killings of (over 80 by now!) alleged drug traffickers
without any charges or trials be justified or accepted? These are, in fact, crimes against humanity.
I'm convinced at some point in the future U.S. citizens will have to learn what war means.
> How can the extrajudicial killings of (over 80 by now!) alleged drug traffickers without any charges or trials be justified or accepted? These are, in fact, crimes against humanity.
It's _been_ accepted for years, if not decades now. Ever since the US started drone striking people without trial, or via trial in absentia, this has been the new normal. It being against international law is meaningless if no one care what the international law is, and especially if other countries are also breaking the law in the exact same way.
> How is it possible that a president of a country can close the airspace of another country?
It is a de facto declaration of war, focussed (on its face, it has other propaganda and diplomatic purposes) on informing civilians of the imminent actions and associated risks so that they can conduct themselves accordingly.
> How is it possible that a president of a country can close the airspace of another country?
To be fair, closing airspace before engaging in air operations is an international courtesy. It reduces the chances of downing civilian airliners. (In a similar vein, announcing closures and then not following through is incredibly damaging.)
> alleged drug traffickers without any charges or trials be justified or accepted? These are, in fact, crimes against humanity
They are war crimes.
If you're concerned about it, call your representative and tell them you care about the American military committing war crimes. There is currently momentum on the issue [1].
It cannot be a war crime if there is no war. There is no declaration of war and no approval of Congress. The ICC classified these strikes as crimes against humanity.
Any time a state uses armed force against another state (and sometimes against other entities), there is a war in which there can be war crimes.
> There is no declaration of war
War is war whether or not it is formally declared. (And the Trump Administration has described that it is fighting a war against Venezuela for months, though it has characterized Venezuela as the aggressor.) This was, among other things, the explicit premise of the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act months ago.
> and no approval of Congress.
That might arguably make any war also a violation of domestic law, but from the standpoint of international law it isn’t particularly a meaningful argument against their being a war.
> The ICC classified these strikes as crimes against humanity.
No, an individual who used to be a prosecutor with the ICC, acting as a private individual, described them that way.
(Under U.S. law, I do believe they are war crimes given they're an abuse of war powers, whether exercised legally or not.)
> ICC classified these strikes as crimes against humanity
No, it did not. A "former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC)" told the BBC "US air strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats would be treated under international law as crimes against humanity" [1].
I haven't seen the ICC take an official position on any of this, which is expected, since it's a judicial body that grinds deliberately.
"War crimes can only be committed during times of armed conflict, either international or non-international, as understood under international humanitarian law. While it is necessary that the crime in question was committed during an armed conflict, this is in itself not sufficient: the crime must be sufficiently linked to the armed conflict. This so-called nexus requirement is satisfied if the armed conflict played a substantial role in the perpetrator’s decision to commit the crime, his or her ability to commit it, or the manner in which the crime was committed.
In order to define an act as a war crime, this act must, besides having nexus to an armed conflict, be a serious violation of international humanitarian law and entail individual criminal responsibility."
I'm certainly not defending what is happening. I don't believe that criminal organizations meet the standard for an armed group that international law stipulates as required for an armed conflict. International law doesn’t work on intuition; it works on context and definitions.
People seem to think there’s some clever little gap between war crime law, US domestic law, and human rights law that mean a government can just kill people who pose no immediate threat and without any establishment of guilt.
There is not.
The Trump admin wants to say they’re invaders therefore we don’t need Congressional authorization, but they’re actually irregulars therefore we don’t need to follow Geneva, but they’re actually terrorists therefore…
> People seem to think there’s some clever little gap between war crime law, US domestic law, and human rights law that mean a government can just kill people who pose no immediate threat and without any establishment of guilt
International human rights law is back to being an aspirational ideal. Every one of the world's great powers have explicitly rejected it. (So have most of regional powers.)
I'd love it if Trump, Xi and Putin could be hauled in front of an international tribunal for the atrocities they've committed. But it isn't happening. Not to them. Nor to Netanyahu, Kim, Khamenei, Modi, Lukashenko or MBS.
At the end of the day, the only thing that can hold Trump and the U.S. military accountable is U.S. law. Bickering over what crime is committed under that law might be teidous. But it is a legitimate activity that could bring real consequences in a way bringing up what a former ICC prosecutor thinks does not.
> All of it is nonsense
This is lazy. Top of the thread. Real debate happening around whether war crimes were committed. Dismissing that as "nonsense" enables and implicitly supports the illegal behaviour.
No argument about the enforceability of it. US law actually isn't even sufficient. The US body politic has to do it.
> Real debate happening around whether war crimes were committed
But the debate isn't about whether war crimes were committed. The debate is whether war crime law is relevant. And that debate is endless for the reason I just explained: the Trump admin will play the shell game of defining the relevant legal framework as X when it suits them, then Y when it suits them, then Z when it suits them, despite the fact that X Y and Z are mutually exclusive of each other.
Are they a stateless vessel? Are they narco-terrorists? Are they drug smugglers? Are they foreign invaders? Are they agents of the Venezuelan government?
Well, all and none of the above, depending on who is asking for what reason.
This is legal nihilism and Schmittian Decisionism. The administration has declared itself unbound by law altogether. All that matters is calling it a violation, collecting evidence, and when political powers shift, holding the relevant parties to account. Under a non-nihilistic/decisionist legal framework, there will be no shortage of chargeable offenses.
That body politic remains, for now, grounded in voters. The number of calls Congressmen receive in the coming days about this issue will determine whether it's taken seriously.
> the debate isn't about whether war crimes were committed. The debate is whether war crime law is relevant
First step in any court opinion is the establishment of juridiction. That's important here.
Even in this thread, we have folks arguing war crime statute doesn't apply. That appears to be false. It's an example of why debating and establishing that this law is relevant in the popular discourse is important.
> Are they a stateless vessel? Are they narco-terrorists? Are they drug smugglers? Are they foreign invaders? Are they agents of the Venezuelan government?
Another reason to focus on U.S. law. I don't believe these distinctions matter under it.
Part of the mechanism to make this possible is dropping the full weight of the DOJ and other three letter agencies down hard on anybody who dares to point out the illegality of many of the actions here.
eg: Pentagon Is Investigating a Member Of Congress Who Criticized Trump
is essentially direct retribution against elected members, former military members who merely state that serving troops are required to follow the law and the constitution first as a priority.
This wastes the time, money, and resources of those prepared to state the emperor has no clothes and serves as a dire warning to any other that might think to stand up.
> How is it possible that a president of a country can close the airspace of another country?
Threat of violence. Nobody is dumb enough to test the patience of the country with Eagles and Raptors.
> How can the extrajudicial killings of (over 80 by now!) alleged drug traffickers without any charges or trials be justified or accepted?
It's really simple.
Drug traffickers are so rich and organized they are in fact parallel governments. They are parasite governments inside the "official" ones. They have territory. They have armies. They have laws. They have tribunals. They even have goddamn taxes. It's middle ages tier barbarity. It's like a secession but without actually seceding.
Trump's administration is simply engaging a belligerent government that refuses to respect its laws and treaties and insists on engaging in covert infiltration and drug sale operations on US soil.
Nuking drug boats out of existence is the correct course of action.
> I'm convinced at some point in the future U.S. citizens will have to learn what war means.
It's because of Trump that they don't have to learn what war means. They should be thanking Trump and his troops for their service.
In my country police can't engage in a single operation against the continent spanning organized drug gangs without judges busting their balls every single step of the way while at the same time releasing drug traffickers from prison and even giving back their seized drug money.
How do you think it feels to wake up one day and read a newspaper saying the drug gangs dominate a quarter of your country's territory? There's speculation that the drug gangs control judges, politicians. Can you fathom what it must be like to take in this information when you're married and planning to have children?
Americans should be worshipping Trump right now. They have no idea how privileged they are. Some of us are not so lucky. Some of us live in countries where at any point in time organized crime gangs can come to your house and spray paint a message saying you have 24 hours to leave or be killed. They've emptied entire towns this way. Americans will never experience that and they should thank god for it. They have professional soldiers waging literal war against these barbarians so they don't have to.
So mad king will cause rally around the flag in Venezuela. And then what? Another Vietnam? China and Russia will be more than happy to supply drones and weapons to grind US military in an endless insurgency. Russia especially, to just give USA a taste of a shitsandwich they are forced to eat for 4 years straight.
Russia is in no position to help Maduro, they're currently being bailed out by Tehran and Pyongyang. China could, and it's genuinely interesting to see them sitting it out so far [1].
"Surely a quick, violent, successful war of aggression is just what the ruler needs to shore up his legitimacy," said just about every failed monarch in history shortly before invading Serbia.
When you are developing an autocratic regime within an elected system, criminal extralegal military action reveals who the leaders are who will act criminally (are "loyal") segregating them from the constitutional adherents who oppose you.
It's a final step to overthrowing the US's elected officials or rendering them powerless.
Just more illegal and criminal regime change and foreign interference by USA. Can't they just leave the world alone and stop forcing their wants to the rest of the world for once. Really doing nothing but make them be even more hated.
The cartels are already entrenched. Organized drug gangs already dominate over a quarter of the south american continent. People openly speculate about how they control judges and politicians, and I don't doubt it for a second.
If the US manages to deal a crippling blow to these drug gangs, he will have done south america a huge favor and I will be forever indebted to him.
If this regime were capable of seeing past its own shoelaces, one could imagine a conspiracy to prompt a migrant crisis so the GOP has an issue its trusted by voters on.
Somebody should convince the guy that it doesn't count ending a war that you started a little while before... Also, there has to be a general trend of peacefulness in one's behaviour.
The only advantages I can see to America pushing for Maduro’s removal are unlocking mismanaged oil supplies and removing a hive of Russian, Iranian and Chinese activity from the Western Hemisphere.
Those are the upsides. The downsides are prompting anti-American balancing moves across South America, Bay of Pigsing and increasing Maduro’s legitimacy, giving Russian air defences a paintbrush to our kit and fucking it up completely and sparking a refugee crisis.
In practice, I’m increasingly convinced we’re about to go to war because of what a dead pedophile knows about the President.
It seems like an easy move to make to me. If you say it's WMDs, you have to eventually turn out the WMDs. If you say it's cocaine, well there's plenty of coke in Venezuela. It's dead simple to tie it to Maduro and label him a drug lord as justification.
This feels even more manufactured than the Iraq invasion. I don't understand why Trump would do something like this which is gonna peel off yet another group of his supporters. Maybe he just thinks he's invincible now? He must feel like this helps him politically somehow, but I can't figure out how.
And how much of that is felt by real-world people?
The insane stock price of Nvidia & friends due to them passing around billions between each other doesn't matter even the slightest bit when your family business is going bankrupt.
> what stats back up “tariff-ravaged economy”? S&P is essentially at an all-time high
Production is good, you're right. Where Trump is feeling electoral pain is in cost of living. It's why the U.S. has started lifting "tariffs on bananas, coffee and dozens of other food-related items" [1].
Unemployment and inflation numbers are probably more important indicators of economic health for most people than the stock market. The stock market might be good for the capital-owning class though.
I don’t see much upside either other than a regime change that brings some semblance of mediocrity back to the country. Currently millions of Venezuelans languish somewhat unwanted in other LatAm counties. They’d jump at going back home to be part of the rebuild — which can happen. Before Chavistas it was the richest country in LatAm and they can absolutely regain that title with even a mildly competent government.
Over a third of each of 2024 Trump voters and self-identified conservatives consider Venezuela America's "enemy" [1]. (Over two fifths of each of the male, Hispanic, 65+ and $100k+ income demos view Maduro unfavourably.)
Also, "weapons and AI platforms that were designed for a future conflict with China or struggled to prove themselves on the Ukrainian battlefield have found a niche in the administration’s tech-enabled crackdown on drug trafficking" [2]. ("In an interview, Palantir Technologies Chief Executive Alex Karp declined to say whether his company’s technology was involved in counternarcotics operations, but voiced support for the strikes. 'If we are involved, I am very proud,' Karp said.")
One third is really not a solid base of support for major military action, especially among the administration's staunchest supporters. My purely subjective impression is that there is plenty of doubt in the ranks of MAGA about this, Fox News consent manufacturing notwithstanding. Of course, the imperatives of imperialism being what they are, I don't think it makes much difference.
Those upsides could have also been accomplished by pointing the CIA at Venezuela to do the same thing they've been doing across South America for the past fifty years.
> Those upsides could have also been accomplished by pointing the CIA at Venezuela to do the same thing they've been doing across South America for the past fifty years
Has the CIA actually advanced American interests in South America? Legitimate question. My layman's understanding is they serially fucked the theatres they were assigned to alongside America's reputation in exchange for, at best, short-term U.S. wins.
"Has the CIA advanced American interests" is the wrong question. The CIA does not work for "The United States" proper, it works for a tiny section of it that comprises the ruling elites. Those people certainly enjoyed significant material benefits from CIA actions in Guatemala, Panama, El Salvador, etc.
> 4 decades of James Bond, Tom Clancy, Homeland, Zero Dark Thirty
Not really. See [1]. A competent clandestine service lets one achieve foreign policy goals without going to war.
But more to the point, pretending everything one doesn't like is an elite conspiracy is self defeating. If you want to gut the CIA, convince voters to hate it.
>Not superbly. But more than the IRS, DoJ or Department of Education.
Three letter agency that mostly harasses people outside US borders polls higher among US voters than three letter agencies that do most of their harassing within US borders. Water is wet.
Does anyone down there even like Maduro? As far as I can tell even “sympathetic” regimes down there are not fond of how he’s running the place. Given that, any public sentiment supporting him would be counterfeit.
Maduro has created an ongoing migrant crisis for a decade. Colombia, Chile, etc., are up to their gills in Venezuelan migrants already. Pretty sure lots of them would love to go back home if even a barely mediocre government replaced him.
They said, it’s their mess. They should fix it by themselves —we don’t need to go in there. Let them figure it out.
The US has seen six governments since Woodstock ‘99, alternating the ruling party almost perfectly every four years: Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden and Trump again.
Venezuela has seen only two presidents in 26 years, Chavez and Maduro, and both belong to the same ruling party.
So have Russia, Israel, Egypt and several other nations. I don't see the US cutting military aid to the latter two because of a lack of diverse electoral outcomes.
This has to be related to Russia and the war in Ukraine. I'm not a military buff, so my analysis might be way off, but here we go.
1. The US has sent a shitload of weapons to Ukraine over the last years.
2. Given the US military superiority and how weak Russia is supposed to be, Russia should be on its knees right now.
3. The US is promoting a peace plan that seems to heavily favor Russia.
So, at that point, I see two possibilities:
1. Trump is a russian asset
2. The US military is privately shitting its pants about how weak they are in this proxy war.
Theoretically, if Trump was a russian asset, he wouldn't go after Venezuela. Why would Russia want to destroy its puppet state?
So I'm going with 2, and it's the cold war again. This is an attempt by the US military to spread Russia thin for further conflicts coming all over the place.
> US military is privately shitting its pants about how weak they are in this proxy war
What? Our 90s air defences are shooting down Russia's bleeding-edge missiles. We're withholding Tomahawks because Putin throws a hissy fit every time it comes up because Russia's newest, shiniest air defence systems--the ones it has been selling for hundreds of millions of dollars to Iran and Venezuela--have been getting potted by homemade Ukranian SEAD tactics.
Ukraine has exposed weaknesses in our drone arsenal. I bet China (or Venezuela) would have preferred to have encountered those weaknesses directly, but that's what you get for fucking around.
Trump probably isn't a Russian asset. And the U.S. military isn't shitting itself over a spent conventional power.
I understand that this is the conventionally accepted version of the military situation in Ukraine. But if that's the case, why is US' peace proposal favorable to Russia? The US should be laughing at Russia's puny attempts to breach their invincible defenses.
> if that's the case, why is US' peace proposal favorable to Russia?
Because Trump wants to end the war to get a Nobel peace prize and Russia can plausibly unilaterally deliver that. What that means for Ukraine or Europe or frankly American strategic interests is not being considered because MAGA voters aren't exactly your internationally literate types. (Which is fine.)
> US should be laughing at Russia's puny attempts to breach their invincible defenses
Nobody is ever laughing in war. But to the extent we've had martial hilarity in the last few years, it's been in Russia mangling their elite forces in the failed sacking of Kyiv; Moscow almost getting bulldozed by Prighozin, a disaster stopped only because Belarus bailed Putin out; and potentially Indian warplanes' confused radio calls while Pakistan's integrated air defences potted them.
Ok, so it's the peace prize. I don't have deep knowledge about this issue, so I guess you're right.
This makes me have funny thoughts. You know, we're all heavily influenced by propaganda. We have american propaganda, they have russian propaganda, they have chinese propaganda, etc.
So here it's the peace prize, and over there it's their super mega unstoppable missiles. There might be a day when foreign propaganda explains the reality that americans can observe in a manner that is more straightforward than their own nation's propaganda. That would be a fun day.
> here it's the peace prize, and over there it's their super mega unstoppable missiles
You're confusing motives and tactical reality. We're unsure about motives on both sides. We can, however, confidently speak to how weapons and tactics are facing off against each other, in large part due to the overwhelming amount of OSINT coming out of Ukraine.
Those data let us reject the hypothesis that the U.S. has any rational basis for being worried about Russian weapons or defences. (Which doesn't mean, of course, that they can't flip out. But again, motives versus tactical truth.)
I don't think I am. I'm talking about propaganda. Let's ask our propaganda machines "Why is the US peace plan so favorable to Russia".
Russia propaganda: because our super weapons do much better on the field than the US anticipated and they're shitting their pants now.
US propaganda: Because our weapons are invincible. Our superiority has always been overwhelming. America, fuck yeah! etc. etc. Oh wait, you meant those terms favorable to Russia? Yeah, huh, the peace prize.
I don't have the means to figure out who's right, but I know which one sounds funnier than the other.
It could be the Nobel Prize. It could be embarrassment that he is failing to deliver on a very smug campaign promise. It could be that Putin proxies bought a load of Trump crypto. It could be that MBS made it a condition of some investment. It could be that a man famous for having no attention span just decided to run with the advice of his most pro-Russia advisor.
We can't know for sure, but it certainly doesn't imply anything about Russia's status as a paper tiger.
Seems more likely that Trump is only loyal to himself. It would explain favoring Russia when it suits him and invading Venezuela due to the Epstein thing and/or fixation on oil.
> Given the US military superiority and how weak Russia is supposed to be, Russia should be on its knees right now.
The problem with this supposed quandary is that the US military isn't fighting Russia.
How can the extrajudicial killings of (over 80 by now!) alleged drug traffickers without any charges or trials be justified or accepted? These are, in fact, crimes against humanity.
I'm convinced at some point in the future U.S. citizens will have to learn what war means.
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