As this thorough essay explains, Venezuelan military capability with regard to resisting US-led regime change involves far more than classic military hardware (inadequate, aging and poorly maintained). The Nicolás Maduro regime's reinforcement of previous Hugo Chávez-led militarization of society initiatives -- for example, beefing up paramilitary groups and national guard-type units that also conveniently function to oppress civil liberties and prop up the regime -- provide potential capability for resistance to regime change during the "what next" phase after US bombing runs of command centers, etc. have concluded.
Interestingly for Global Military Justice Reform readers, this essay glancingly includes the Venezuelan extension of military court jurisdiction over civilians as (per this author's understanding) a tool to currently prop up the Maduro regime and help it resist US-led toppling in the future.
As the Yale Draft of the Decaux Principles of Military Justice states in Principle No. 6, military jurisdiction over civilians should be exceedingly rare, limited to situations such as that allowed by the law of armed conflict (for example, during occupation per GC IV).
It's no surprise that authoritarian, illegitimate regime's such as Maduro's in Venezuela would want to solidify internal control (in the process trampling civil and judicial rights) by exercising military court jurisdiction over civilians.
What should be far more surprising is that supposedly democratic constitutional republics such as the United States also extends military criminal court-martial jurisdiction over civilians, despite the gross unfairness in doing so.
Hence is the Trump Admin really that different from Maduro's regime in some regards -- given that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently threatened to court-martial a civilian -- Senator Mark Kelly -- for non-criminal conduct committed as a civilian?
The authoritarian toolkit has long included military court jurisdiction over civilians, and has no place (at least in the guise of US court-martial jurisdiction over military retirees) in the American system of justice, and the latest threats against Sen. Kelly provide impetus for Congress to finally relegate it to the dustbin of history, lest the US continue to mimic practices of authoritarian criminals such as Venezuala's Maduro.
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