Ramesh Thakur
This has been a sobering start to the new year. ‘Out with the old, in with the new’ embraced not just the change in the year but also the government in Venezuela and a full-frontal challenge to the Westphalian world. On the night of 3 January, the United States acted audaciously, decisively and to stunning effect to seize President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores from the presidential palace in Caracas and spirit them away to New York. A great power used its armed forces with extreme speed and violence to kidnap the president of a sovereign state and put him on trial under its own criminal justice system. It does not appear that allies were given advance notice of the operation.
Public and official reactions around the world fall into three categories. Those who are reflexively anti-American or detest President Donald Trump have criticised the strikes and the kidnapping of a head of state. Their counterparts who habitually back the US or Trump have applauded and celebrated a corrupt dictator’s defenestration. Both groups are immune to evidence and reason. The critical third group of people, who are prepared to support or condemn actions depending on the nature of the act and not the identity of the actor, seem to be in a small and reducing minority. This does rather beg the question: what is the point of an analysis dissecting an event in light of the evidence, laws, principles and moral frameworks?
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