These kind of rogue, blatantly illegal actions only further damage the US’ international standing and ultimately help global anti-imperialist forces. If they had killed him they would have made him a martyr. But abducting a head of state from his own country is even worse. It is an incomprehensibly bad look. It tramples all norms of international relations going back hundreds of years. There is a reason why coups are usually done through proxies.

Even the US’ most loyal vassals are struggling to find a way to unequivocally justify this. So now if they do a show trial they will further expose the farcical nature of the “rules based order” and the absurdity of the charges leveled at him. And if they let him go under international pressure it will be a public admission of defeat. No matter what this is a lose-lose for the empire. Just like Gaza was a lose-lose proposition for the Zionist entity no matter how many people they slaughtered.

Everyone already knows this. The "rules based order" has always been a facade for allowing Multinational Corporations to do whatever they want. You are huffing copium. No one is on the fence. Every Western Nation knows the game, and leaders of those countries are selected because they support it. Venezuela was never in the club, neither is Colombia or Cuba, but they literally do not matter. If Trump had spent 3 months carpet bombing Caracas to nothingness the response of the world would look exactly the same. Morality is not a part of the calculus, neither is most of latin america.