There’s always a way to get a country’s most-wanted out of hostile territory

“Argo” was a Ben Affleck film based on the true story of how a little CIA ingenuity and stealth freed a group of hiding humans. 

A CIA team planned a low-tech, high-risk fake Hollywood movie production to sneak Americans out of Tehran. If caught, the Americans would have faced assured injustice and quickly turned from fugitives to hostages of the new Iranian regime. From Iran to China, Afghanistan to Bolivia, the story is a familiar one: Desperate individuals sometimes need to escape a foreign country’s authorities and get beyond a nation’s jurisdiction.

All countries — whether revolutionary regimes or democratic governments — pursue sovereign justice. National judicial systems reign supreme in the international system. Nations get to decide what to do inside their borders and who is guilty or innocent within their countries. President Trump’s foreign-policy doctrine defending the primacy of national sovereignty further cements this custom into practice.

In 1980s Iran, the newly formed interim government sought flimsy justice for what Iranian student revolutionaries believed were historic U.S. human-rights transgressions. The new and freshly violent Iran wanted retribution, remuneration and just plain revenge against America. READ MORE

Venezuelans will have to fight for their democracy. Trump can’t, and won’t, do it for them

American presidents — and all political leaders — inevitably face trade-offs between conflicting priorities. In Venezuela, President Trump is stuck between a policy rock and a preference hard place, caught between a democratic and humanitarian demand to side with the Venezuelan people and the tough reality that there is very little he can — or really wants — to do.

Trump’s declared “sovereignty doctrine” is now in direct conflict with his desired petro-policy and the reinvigoration of the Monroe Doctrine — and it is all playing out in the streets of Caracas.

The losers? Invariably the good people of Venezuela. They are victims of “President” Nicholás Maduro and his regime’s continual and cynically systemic use of food and energy resources to keep political friends and allies happy while shunting and starving his opponents. Millions have chosen to leave and live in exile as refugees, while others head to the Venezuelan streets to topple Maduro. They bear the brunt of simmering tensions and escalating violence. READ MORE

Under Trump’s “sovereignty doctrine,” foreign tyrants have nothing to worry about

Jamal Khashoggi’s horrific murder was a message to journalists, dissidents and regime critics everywhere. You are never safe. Anywhere, anytime.

Khashoggi was guilty of practicing journalism. He mistakenly bet he would be safe traveling to a NATO member nation to take care of personal business. Why? Because nations generally follow both international law and formal diplomatic practices that respect foreign laws and sovereignty.

Increasingly, however, more nations are exporting fear and practicing lethal intimidation with a new form of global vigilantism. They go abroad to get outlaw revenge.

The Khashoggi case is the latest example of exceptional and perverse murderous state-related behavior that targets and takes out perceived opponents living in exile. It’s not just journalists abroad practicing their profession that are singled-out for murder. Turncoats living in other countries are targets, and killing them, too, is a clear warning to future defectors and detractors. READ MORE