alt Hacker NewsNot to justify what happened here, but your argument would mean that the US would likely have remained a British colony given that French intervention on behalf of the colonies was a contributing factor to the success of the revolutionary war. It also would heavily imply that once the allied forces had beaten the Nazi's back behind German borders, that they should have stopped there. An extreme non-interventionist policy might be the best default policy, but it is implicitly an endorsement of might makes right as well. There are almost certainly times when a country should feel justified in intervening in another country's "regime change", but those times should be very carefully considered and (IMO) never ever viewed as a first or easy step, only a last (or nearly last) resort.
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> imply that once the allied forces had beaten the Nazi's back behind German borders, that they should have stopped there.
How does “we should not interfere in other countrys’ internal affairs” imply “we should not destroy the aggressor in a war they started”?
Your argument is perfectly well suited to justify the imperialist Russian aggression against Ukraine.
My point is that there's no entity with the authority to declare a government illegal - besides the UN security council. Next thing you know China invades Taiwan and it will be hard to argue with "sovereignty of nations". Nobody - not even the US - cares about it anymore, right? We just declare a government as illegitimate and presto - no need to justify it anymore. Here we go for some more foreign wars.
This is not about "liberating Venezuela" from a dictatorship. It's just about placing a new dictator at the head of Venezuela, equally illegitimate and equally authoritarian. Venezuela has become an US protectorate for the foreseeable future. At least until the oil runs dry [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01/03/world/trump-united-s...