JosuMonroyGarca
Nothing is going to happen. No consequences of any military sort for abducting Maduro. What he did with Venezuela is illegal in international law - but it’s an illegality that the US doesn’t see the same way and never has.
If someone is a high profile criminal in another country and they can’t arrest them by the normal process of extradiction - then on very rare occasions, years apart, the US will forcefully abduct them, minor figures or rarely as in this case the leader of a country.
When they do that then the Supreme Court doesn’t take any action, and Congress doesn’t either, legislators protest but they could take action to prevent this by passing a law with a ⅔ majority in both houses and they never do.
The US always claims they are acting legally.
This is not new under Trump, and the main thing new is just how fast and clean it was over in 90 minutes.
It won’t encourage other countries, the ones that do illegal things already do.
Nobody can emulate this anyway. Only the US could have pulled this off. Possibly the UK + France but they never would do such a thing.
But there may well have been an insider working with them, only possible with such an unpopular president.
There is no way that China or Russia could pull this off in Ukraine or Taiwan.
It’s just a one off.
And Trump is extraordinarily cautious when it comes to US lives. He has not yet lost a single US civilian or military life in any of his operations this term and didn’t in his first term except early on in his first year.
He is a real estate businessman and he cares about hotels, golf courses etc.
He isn’t someone to start wars.
You can guarantee that outlets like the Guardian will make a huge fuss of this.
But Congress can easily bind presidents to stop them doing things like this. It chooses not to.
This makes absolutely no difference to international law.
There have always been some countries that ignore certain aspects of international law.
- Israel ignores some parts of it.
- The US ignores other parts, different parts of it.
- Russia ignores other parts of international law.
Yet it still operates. The US will not change its policies about civilian casualties as a result of the Israeli bombings of Gaza Strip.
The UK, France etc won’t change their policies about not abducting foreign criminals as a result of the US action.
Russia is not going to change its maltreatment of prisoners, political prisoners, the bombing of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, forceful abduction of Ukrainian kids - none of that is going to change.
Putin is not going to become someone who is more likely to break his promises for a ceasefire as a result of this action.
And they will all continue to be bound by the parts of international law they do recognize.
For example we have had no carpet bombing since the Vietnam war anywhere in the world. The bombings in Donbas and in Gaza Strip don’t count because they happen slowly over many weeks and months and the civilians have time to move out. The closest we had was the bombing of Mariupol by the Russians but that was a slow process too.
No country has ever done anything like the fire bombing of Dresden or the carpet bombing in the Korean war or the fire bombing of Japanese cities that led up to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The US fire bombing of Tokyo actually led to more deaths than Hiroshima but few know about it.
Those times are past, we don’t see that any more. And countries for the most part respect medical personnel in war and don’t bomb them on the front line - with violations in Ukraine that sadly Russia bombs hospitals.
These countries are not likely to change their ways internally.
The only difference is that Russia will argue that what it does is okay because the US does it. But it already does that. It justifies the Ukraine war by the Iraq war for instance.
That won’t change. But it also doesn’t change the legal situation which is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegal.
So also is the Maduro abduction and so also is the strikes on the drug cartels off Venezuela when they could easily have been captured instead.
The law is NOT changed.
And the peace process for Ukraine continues. And when it ends, Ukraine will have robust security guarantees so it doesn’t depend on Russia keeping to Putin’s promises.
And there is accountability in the USA.
The American people aren’t accountable for what Trump does. It’s the other way around. Trump is accountable to the American people.
If they are not happy with what he does they first pressure their legislators who are their representatives in Congress and speak up for the concerns of their constituents.
And then they respond by voting. If they feel that their current legislator doesn’t represent their concerns they will vote in a different representative in the mid terms usually of the other party, sometimes an independent.
Then the legislators have many tools to limit what the president does, Either the Dems if they win the House in the mid terms - or bipartisan with Republican support before then.
And the courts can also act in the USA and often have to block Trump. Mostly on domestic policy but they can rule on foreign policy when it’s covered by the US Constitution or by law passed in Congress.
