What’s striking here isn’t the Venezuela case itself, but how openly this argument treats sovereignty as conditional on alignment and infrastructural control rather than law or territory.
That’s already a post-Westphalian position, one where legitimacy follows system integration and threat management, not borders. In that world, “regime change” is less about who governs than about which networks a territory is allowed to host.
The real shift isn’t restraint vs intervention, but that power now acts on systems first and governments second.
I agree realism has always treated sovereignty as conditional in practice.
The distinction I’m trying to isolate is the control surface. Historically, pressure was applied to states to change behavior. Increasingly, pressure is applied to upstream systems, financial rails, platforms, security architectures and state authority follows from successful integration into those systems.
That’s less a change in rhetoric than in mechanism: compliance emerges structurally, not through decision or defeat.
What’s striking here isn’t the Venezuela case itself, but how openly this argument treats sovereignty as conditional on alignment and infrastructural control rather than law or territory.
That’s already a post-Westphalian position, one where legitimacy follows system integration and threat management, not borders. In that world, “regime change” is less about who governs than about which networks a territory is allowed to host.
The real shift isn’t restraint vs intervention, but that power now acts on systems first and governments second.
Yes, this is a pretty standard realist position because it's how international politics has always worked.
I agree realism has always treated sovereignty as conditional in practice.
The distinction I’m trying to isolate is the control surface. Historically, pressure was applied to states to change behavior. Increasingly, pressure is applied to upstream systems, financial rails, platforms, security architectures and state authority follows from successful integration into those systems.
That’s less a change in rhetoric than in mechanism: compliance emerges structurally, not through decision or defeat.
It is not worth responding to this sanctimoniousness. In short, interests 🧃🧃🧃 are behind all this.
This article is not an analysis of political realism in the geopolitical arena, just a crude justification.