Seems like a good call. This was a quick in and out raid, not an invasion. To be an invasion there needs to be a sustained on the ground presence of the invading force. If this is an invasion, then the Bin Laden raid was also an invasion of Pakistan.
Dictionary definition of "invasion" and "invasive" with regards to military incursions tend to emphasize the size of the force. Same for "invasive species" and invasion biology.
But you can also have an invasion of privacy or invasive surgery. In that sense it is about unwelcome intrusion into one's body / sovereignty.
And people are entertained by news articles with titles like, "10 times countries accidentally invaded their neighbors." Clearly the intent to violate sovereignty matters.
I think you can argue that the Bin Laden raid was and invasion into Pakistan. Anytime a military forces enters uninvited, that's an invasion.
No that is not the definition of a military invasion.
> An invasion is a military action consisting of a large armed force of one geopolitical entity entering the territory of another with the goal of militarily occupying part or all of the invaded polity's territory, usually to conquer territory or alter the established government.
What happened on Saturday was not an invasion. It was an extraction/capture operation. It was a large scale one, but they left after they captured Maduro and his Wife.
> I think you can argue that the Bin Laden raid was and invasion into Pakistan. Anytime a military forces enters uninvited, that's an invasion.
No it wasn't. When they killed Bin Laden they didn't "invade" Pakistan. They infiltrated, then assassinated him and left.
Still doesn't make it an invasion. If they drone striked and thus killed Majuro it would not be an invasion. It would be an assassination.
Invasion in this context has a specific meaning. The bet on the market would have been done with this specific meaning in mind.
No invasion, means no payout.
It would be like making a bet where someone scores in Football/Soccer from a penalty, but in the game they score from a free kick outside the penalty box. You wouldn't pay out on the bet, because a penalty is not a free kick even though they are similar and had the same result.
If somebody breaks into my house, fucks my shit up and leaves, are they not guilty of home invasion anymore because they didn't stick around for long enough?
Is Stuxnet not a virus because it isn't genetic material inside a protein capsule? It's almost as if words have different definitions depending on the context.
When you are referring to a military action, invasion has a particular meaning.
The definition on Wikipedia seems reasonable:
> An invasion is a military action consisting of a large armed force of one geopolitical entity entering the territory of another with the goal of militarily occupying part or all of the invaded polity's territory, usually to conquer territory or alter the established government
What the US did wasn't a military invasion by that definition as they left after they grabbed Maduro.
I agree that most people would use the term invasion to describe it. But this story is related to how a betting market decided to pay out.
The US forces left immediately after the target (Maduro and his wife) were extracted. So according to the definition I gave (which is more precise) then it isn't an invasion.
Whenever I envision an military invasion, I think of troops storming Normandy Beaches to invade Europe, When the Falklands invaded Argentina or When Hitler invaded France. All of these actions were with the intent to hold seize and hold territory.
An operation where people fly in, knocking out critical defences, capture someone and then leave clearly isn't the same thing.
Arguing over whether a different situation qualifies as a different sort of invasion doesn't move the conversation forward as much as you might intuit.
They amassed critical pieces of military hardware off the coast (carriers, warships, helicopters, planes). They took out military infrastructure. They placed radar systems throughout the region. Just because it was fast and met its goal doesn't mean it wasn't an invasion. You don't need an on-the-ground force when you control everything that can go in and out.
Yes, that's an invasion! And the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands during WWII. Taking even a barely inhabited frozen rock by force is an invasion. Has nothing to do with the scale of destruction.
“Invasion” implies the intent of sustained military occupation/control over some portion a country’s territory. There’s no suggestion that was ever the objective here.
> To be an invasion there needs to be a sustained on the ground presence of the invading force.
What exactly do you think is going to happen to the oil in Venezuela? Are you under the impression that they will simply leave them be and hope for the best?
United States will be placing military assets to secure it, just like they did with IRAQ. The entire point of this was to secure the oil and now they have to to guard it.
Establishing military bases on sovereign nations that you captured by force illegally is an invasion.
Ultimately, "invasion" is one of those terms that gets used for rhetorical effect more than a concrete claim about the world. If you think the US "invaded" Venezuela, and I think it's better to say they "attacked" Venezuela and "kidnapped" the president, we're not normally going to get into an argument about it - we'll just each use the terms that make sense to us, since we clearly agree about the facts of the terrible thing that happened. But Polymarket has to force the dumb semantic argument because they have to resolve the prediction one way or another. (One of the reasons to be skeptical of prediction markets as applied to geopolitics.)
