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International Law Erosion

Concerns about precedent set by extrajudicial capture of a head of state, sovereignty questions, comparisons to potential operations against other nations, and implications for international norms.

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The extrajudicial removal of a foreign leader is viewed by some as a righteous strike against tyranny, yet many warn it signals a dangerous shift toward "might makes right" and the collapse of international legal norms. Critics argue such operations incentivize nuclear proliferation as a survival tactic for smaller regimes while providing a convenient blueprint for rivals like China and Russia to justify their own territorial interventions. While some realists contend that national sovereignty has always been an illusion secondary to superpower spheres of influence, others emphasize that bypassing legal protocols risks catastrophic retaliation and long-term global instability. Ultimately, the discourse reflects a profound concern that this precedent replaces predictable diplomacy with a volatile era defined by decapitation strikes and imperial aggression.

16 comments tagged with this topic

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The nukes have many roles perhaps but I think the fully developed weapons are for retaliatory strike. They are the North Korean leadership saying that if the US (or China or anyone really) tries to surgically decapitate them (like the US just did in Venezuela) then the nukes are used to take the attackers with them
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Nah, Kim will now wet his bed for weeks. If any dictator willing to deliberately kill thousands for nothing knew he could wake up in a chopper the world would have been a better place.
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Well, really any leader who dissatisfies the president of the US, really
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Saying "The West is no threat to anyone" at the same time you're advocating for an invasion and abduction of a country's leader is certainly a position to hold. Not a very internally consistent or convincing one, though. And I suppose Vietnam never happened in your constructed reality.
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That is a bold assertion to make considering China literally did retaliate against the US in North Korea once already, to the tune of war. Kidnapping heads of states is an act of war. Venezuela can't defend itself, but China certainly will do whatever is necessary to secure its vassal if the alternative is NK collapsing and having US military bases on its border. You also rule out the possibility of an invasion of Seoul, as though it would be "unfair" -- when you're advocating for and actively in the process of tearing whatever remains of the concept of international law to shreds, what makes you think PRC would be inclined to play nice?
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Well yes, the US could certainly easily kidnap leaders of friendly countries. It'd also presumably be very unlikely to result in a nuclear response from either.
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I think by "this kind of operation" he means extrajudicially removing a sitting president (legitimate or not) of another country for trial elsewhere. Not cyber attack or espionage.
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That's like arguing against the police arresting criminals because it will incentivize them to acquire weapons. The only consistent action for the US to take, given they - and much of the world - do not consider Maduro the legitimate President of Venezuela, was to remove him from power.
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Terrible take in the 2nd premise of your argument. Is Venezuela a sovereign nation or a colony? Can similar logic be applied against Russia or even the US?
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> Is Venezuela a sovereign nation or a colony? Reality is not that black and white. We may no longer have formal colonies, buy the world is still carved up by spheres of influence by the superpowers. Displease them and you'll find out how limited your sovereignty really is.
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Of course it can, and it is. Such logic is behind the argument in favor of arresting Putin. Many have argued that should happen if he were to step on their nations' soil. The reason no one thinks seriously about going into Russia and enforcing open arrest warrants is that they fear the consequences, though maybe in light of Russia's revealed impotence that fear is unjustified.
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The sovereignty of Venezuela is not the right argument here, because practical sovereignty is not absolute and there are just war grounds for Maduro's capture. The man was an awful tyrant. However , just because there are just war grounds for Maduro's capture per se doesn't mean the operation was justified by just war principles. It wasn't. It takes more than just the fact that the ruler is tyrannical to justify an operation like this. Operations like this can risk civil war and all sorts of horrible fallout that also need to be considered. There must be a realistic plan following the removal of the tyrannical leader. As always, justice must be upheld always. And of course there are the procedural and legal aspects that Trump totally ignored.
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Power wins in anarchy. International relations are anarchy. There is no actual international law.
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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.
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Why set aside expense? You do it anyway by whatever means necessary, like the DRPK. And if you’re a “western democracy” (also known as capitalist dictatorship) and you’re part of the ruling class, you still have the incentive to protect your assets, things you exploit in your country, land, natural resources, etc, that the US won’t be sharing or that they want to decrease supply when they take over through puppets or multinationals, and you can always force the public to pay for such a project, like all the times western peoples had to bail out or spend their taxes to benefit private corporations, but now it would look like it’s to protect sovereignty, which is a bonus of course, it would be to protect the local ruling class’s interests, but anyway. It’s clear the Americans will stop at nothing to acquire whatever it is they want, including indirectly violent means like ordering their financial institutions and tech giants to destroy whoever is on the way. The monster was always there since the Cold War and just now it dropped any pretenses.
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understandably, it's more about the acceleration in aggressiveness from Trump clan and the precedent of crossing the usual international red lines