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Transnational Thursday for October 23, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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I see there's a lot of ramp up against Venezuela. What I am not so sure about is what is the actual demand from US/Trump to Venezuela? I mean, do they just want to get rid of Maduro and are building up for that, no matter what, or do they want Venezuela to do something specific, and if they do it, everything goes away? If so, is there a good list of which thing(s) I could read?

If it's about Maduro, what's the endgame there? I mean, getting rid of him personally and his close circle is probably very doable, but then what? I thought MAGA wasn't very eager for nation-building and spreading democracy and all that stuff - that's more neocon vibe on the right and globalist-reptilian New World Order fraction of the Left? And Trump is supposed to be a mortal enemy of both - so what's the thing that he's about to do in Venezuela then?

What are chances of a sudden, catastrophic deterioration in the situation in Northern Ireland? I don’t have any actual reported facts to back me up, but I just get a bad insidious feeling about it.

Honestly, at this point I think a reescalation of Troubles-era hostilities is profoundly unlikely. I think it's more likely that the Catholics and Protestants set aside their differences in order to more effectively fight their common enemy: Romanian immigrants.