/pol/ - International /Pol/itics & /Bant/er

The United States operation in Venezuela was not imperialism.
So, what exactly justified the British and French declaration of war on Germany? The invasion of Poland posed absolutely zero threat to the two countries, and Jozef Beck's mind-boggling incompetency was in no small part a reason for the attack. The allies were only ever capable of presenting a preventative war argument, despite the fact that France and Britain were on neutral, if not peaceful terms with Germany prior to the war. "No immediate threat" has absolutely never been a precondition for war. That is why. In the same vein, Maduro was a dictator spearheading an unequivocally militant propaganda campaign against the United States, was directly behind extrajudicial mass executions (FAES), and at several points his administration bordered war with Guyana over Esequibo. Frankly, both were wholly justified. Just because Maduro happened to be a socialist, (a very poor one might I add, SO21C is incredibly revisionist) doesn't mean he was the "heckin good guy!! cry for venezuela!"
Elaborating on this, international law as we know it today played absolutely zero role in WW2; WW2 is the reason international law exists. Britain and France went to war because they had decided further German expansion was intolerable to their strategic position. There was no legally airtight concepts of "guarantee" prior to 1945. Calling anything from the era legal or illegal imports a sense of international law that simply did not exist. All pre-war understandings are now meaningless.
Law is a downstream of power. The US coup in Venezuela is no exception. Venezuela was about strategic tolerance/intolerance. WW2 was as well. This does not make either Britain or the US imperialist with regards to these particular circumstances. Neither case needs legal neutralism, both are inherently justifiable in that both happened because a line was drawn against a dictatorial power.
It was an act of power politics, sure. The United States deemed Maduro intolerable. But this is exactly how Britain and France judged Germany; strategic calculation, not legalism. History proved the ladder justified and frankly, it will probably do so for the former.