The outcome is less-crazy if one views it as assisting a palace-coup, partnering with a bunch of Venezuelan government and military insiders already seeking to depose Maduro, able to subtly clear the path and provide intel.

I personally think it is both. I think CBS article disclosed that CIA had someone in the inner circle. That, however, does not really take away from how well coordinated it actually was. That does not mean it was a good idea to do it. Just because I can run around naked does not mean I should..

If they did that then they did a bad job considering Maduros vp assumed power while also saying Maduro remains the actual president.

P.S.: In that scenario, it's quite possible for both groups of conspirators to benefit from denying it and saber-rattling:

* The (remaining) Venezuelan government gets to point to Big Evil America to unify (or crack-down-upon) an unhappy public, and they avoid being personally tarred as unpatriotic.

* Trump et al. get to "wag the dog" as distraction from crimes and mismanagement back home.

> him being able to summon his diplomatic relations into 50 countries declaring war to the USA.

As if. Dictators only do things that benefit themselves, and deciding to attack the US is suicide and/or world ending.

Took a long time to catch up with Bin Laden after he attacked the US.

Let’s be realistic.

Not easy to find one man in a haystack. Guerrilla warfare has always been insanely overpowered as a defense tactic anyways, as are terrorist attacks.

The US can realistically only be challenged militarily by Europe or Asia, assuming a unified continent, and the US is on the offensive. If it’s defensive, the US might put up a good fight against the rest of the planet.

So if you wanted to attack the US you wouldn’t do a conventional “red dawn” style attack. You’d attack like bin laden. And then keep quiet.

Normally I’d say the most effective way to attack a western country would be to target kids in school playgrounds, but the US seems that regularly anyway so it would be lost in noise. Perhaps target Amazon delivery centres with drones will strike fear into the true heart of America.

That probably wouldn't work. Even if you tried, there are more privately owned guns than there are citizens in the US; every inch would be a nightmare.

Your second paragraph doesn't even make sense, but I'm thinking you just wanted to hop on the "america bad" train for a moment, so maybe it doesn't matter.

That was moreso about taking down the ORG before cutting its head. Unfortunately their radical ideology spreads with or without Bin Laden.

we don't really have a way to tell if it was even real, it would actually be a rather trivial operation for the government during those times and the entire thing could have just been overplayed and/or involved collaboration from all sides.

none of those documents exist since it was probably never documented to begin with so we will never know I guess.

They almost had him early in afghanistan but let him go.

No one would lift a finger for him. Russia just watched. The Chinese too. They may be allies in words but in the end each dictator just care about themselves. Just like how Trump wouldn’t help any ally unless he got something out of it.

Power wins in anarchy. International relations are anarchy. There is no actual international law.

> There is no actual international law.

There is, of course, both private and public international law. You don't know what you're talking about.

There is something by that name, but it doesn't mean much. On the international level, it's all voluntary. States can choose to be part of the international courts. The US (and many other high profile countries) famously are not participating, which is why they can effectively just commit war crimes left and right.

In contrast, if you go rob a grocery store, you can't just opt out of punishment. "I'm not a member of this court system" does not work as a viable defense strategy, even if some souvreign citizen types sometimes try (and always fail).

International treaties are really just statements of intent and can be withdrawn at any point. Worst that happens is that next time you try to make a treaty, your counterpart may not trust that you uphold your side of the deal. There is no higher authority to effecticely appeal to, in contrast to the grocery store case.

Why stop at international law? It's no different than a lot of civil, financial, criminal law. You just get big enough and now there's nothing the system can do about you. It's become increasingly apparent that having the right friends and enough money is the only 'law' that matters at any level of society, and people will be too disengaged or selfish to do anything about it besides reap the rewards if they're in the right place. Laws only work on the disempowered, and in that sense international law is exactly as powerful as the law of the land in whatever country you live in.

>Why stop at international law? It's no different than a lot of civil, financial, criminal law. You just get big enough and now there's nothing the system can do about you.

It stops at international law because thats the only level without a governance system over it.

There is no governance system over the USA, UK, etc.

There is a governance system over Ohio, New Mexico, etc.

You are only right if you get big enough that you are a peer of the USA, UK, etc. AKA sovereign.

Some international law is "voluntary", some is not. You cannot for example commit a genocide by opting out of the law.

And yes, of course, it can sometimes be hard to enforce international law, just like it can be very hard to enforce national laws. It is illegal to murder people in most countries, yet people murder each other and some people get away with it.

Not in any real sense because states are sovereign.

There are things like the UN which some states, not all, agree to uphold the policies of. But they are also free not to agree to uphold the policies of the UN.

So ultimately it's a bunch of peers in an an anarchic system that do the best for themselves to persist. Cooperation, war, etc.

I think it was meant in a "international law is a farce" sort of rhetoric

Yes. More specifically I would say international law is law in name only. It's not really law at all. It's akin to a child asserting rules on a playground with their peers. There is no enforcement mechanism. In reality what we call international law is more like a mutually agreed upon policy, which can also just not be agreed upon at any moment. In fact many countries do not agree to them. There is no government agency or enforcement mechanism over states - that is what makes them states by definition.

I am always shocked by how controversial this take can be.

It’s complicated. While it’s true that there is no direct enforcement, systems of sanctions and embargos have been used to indirectly enforce these agreements. Whether this is ultimately effective is not obvious, but I think “international law does not exist” is a simplistic take, with all due respect for your opinion (which I understand and partially share)

I doubt we are about to see those mechanisms being used to penalise the US for this latest behaviour though.

I don’t think other UN or NATO states are strong enough to play this game with the US yet.

And Germany wasn't punished for their behavior until much later.

>While it’s true that there is no direct enforcement, systems of sanctions and embargos have been used to indirectly enforce these agreements.

Right. These are states organizing to assert their power in their interests. It's not mandated and enforced from some over-arching entity.

I would disagree, but I admit I am ignorant on the matter, so maybe you can explain to me how that's wrong.

My opinion, with all the caveats that come with an opinion, is that states do organise into over-arching organisations in the context of international laws, such as EU, UN, etc.

Such over-arching organisations do not have the same degree of power that a state has over its citizens, sure, but I think it still qualifies. You can theoretically also "disregard" state law, regional law, etc. The problem with that is that the power disparity is such that you can't hope to get away with it (in a perfect world and in a vacuum, that is, as many people do disregard national law and get away with it :D But thats beside the point, I think you'd agree?)

Of course they didn't. While I can't imagine Russia is exactly happy that it lost an ally in the Western Hemisphere, this kind of action is very much aligned with Putin's multi-polar worldview where the great powers leave each other to play empire in their respective spheres of influence. It helps justify things like invading Ukraine. I can imagine some in the Chinese military are over the moon right now, taking notes on how to force regime change in Taiwan.

More importantly, Putin didn't really have an option to help.

They sent over like, maybe a couple Anti Air systems? But they really couldn't spare that many in the first place!

It's not like Russia can sustain serious power off the coast of the US.

The most he can do is complain. What's Russia going to do, sanction the US?

Only when it's oil infrastructure.

They never ‘leave’ that.