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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   24144 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025

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The United States of America is now at war with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Dozens of Venezuelan military targets have been bombed in the last few minutes, including a major army base just outside the capital. American Chinooks have been seen flying across the Caracas skyline.

This could be the most important geopolitical happening since the Ukraine War. We do it yet know if this will be a limited run of bombing like the Kosovo strikes, or a full on Iraq style invasion and regime change. If it is the latter, it will be an important test of America’s military might, and failure could very well be America’s Suez moment. I have speculated here several times that I thought the US would have difficulty conducting a thunder run of a non-peer or near-peer adversary in its current state, and it looks as though my theory may be put to the test. On a geopolitical and moral level though, I have little sympathy for Venezuela, for the same reason I have little sympathy for Ukraine. If you repeatedly antagonize your neighboring superpower, you get what you get.

This will also no doubt further fracture the Republican base in a major way, as interventionist neocons clash with America-First isolationists.

This is also adds to an intensifying pattern of conflict in multiple theaters that could lead to global war. It also increases the likelihood of a Chinese attack on Taiwan as American asserts are entangled in multiple theaters.

I will post more information as I hear it.

source?

A true gentleman scholar post “inb4 source” and is vindicated in the light of history.

Edit:

There are now multiple airstrikes occurring within Caracas. The United States FAA has issued a NOTAM warning that civilian aircraft should avoid overflying the entire territory of Venezuela.

Reuters is now reporting that there are US ground troops active within the capital of Venezuela.

So, from reading the mainstream press this morning (allegedly with sources) the plan now is that Maduro’s deputy (a loyal chavista figure obviously) is in charge, and nothing changes except that the government becomes friendlier to the US state and oil interests? I guess that counts as a win given this was a cheap and successful operation militarily, but for the long suffering Venezuelan people it doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of hope.

Yeah, this looks like a massive flop if literally the only thing that happens is Socialist No. 2 gets put in charge after Socialist No. 1 gets removed from power. The people of the country are going to suffer just as much (maybe a little less due to oil investments) as they were doing before.

Root and branch reform giving the government to the legitimate winners of the 2024 election was the thing to do, not this half assed shit where it's now looking more like Trump took out Maduro because Maduro insulted him personally one times too many rather than there being a proper well thought out plan for regime change.

Interesting news just in, if it's anything more than gossip - the VP stabbed Maduro in the back? She and her brother were having secret talks in Saudi Arabia Qatar with the Trump administration to hand Maduro over (presumably in exchange for her getting backing to take over):

In a meeting room in Doha, 12,000km away from Caracas, officials were busy discussing the future of Venezuela without its dictator Nicolas Maduro.

A senior member of the UAE royal family was acting as a “bridge” between the regime and Donald Trump, who was building an armada to pressure the Venezuelan leader to surrender.

Except Mr Maduro had no part in the secret meetings in Doha. Instead, it was his deputy, the then vice-president Delcy Rodriguez, and her brother Jorge, who were leading the talks.

According to reports in the Miami Herald, which has strong contacts in Latin America, Ms Rodriguez, who is now running Venezuela with the approval of Mr Trump, had reached out to Washington to present a “more acceptable” alternative to the Maduro regime.

Details of the meeting are now fuelling suspicions of an inside job to remove Mr Maduro from power and leave a president in power who can manage a transition without dismantling the state completely and causing turmoil and riots. As the October reports of the meeting say, Ms Rodriguez would be offering “Madurismo without Maduro,” a kind of “Regime Lite”.

What makes this more interesting is that 32 Cubans, including military personnel, were also reportedly killed. It's unclear what they were doing where when the bombs struck, but Chavez and Maduro were reportedly relying on Cubans for presidential security all the way back in the 2000s/2010s.

32 people is a platoon's worth, or four squads. That many don't normally get taken out in a single strike. I would be willing to consider that some may have been manning the sort of air defense assets that were ambiguously targeted in the explosions in the morning, but...

...well, with the VP-coup angle, that opens the possibility that there might have been some Venezuelan-on-Cuban action going on.

If Maduro's personal guard was made up of Cubans, that might indeed make the VP more willing to break some eggs to make the omelette. So long as the eggs were Cuban not Venezuelan, well, you have to make tough decisions when you're a leader, don't you?

The question is will the new govt enact a brutal stance on local drug dealers and cartels.

I get the impression that nothing is going to change since all of the concessions Trump wants apparently have to do with oil. And he's supposedly told the oil companies that if they want their assets back they will have to commit to billions of dollars in additional investment. That's going to be a tough sell, especially since the political situation hasn't changed much in terms of stability. Venezuelan oil is expensive to drill and doesn't sell for much, and with prices low, that kind of investment doesn't make sense. Even if the oil companies want to appease Trump, the banks and insurance companies also have to be on board, and I don't see it happening. Maduro was a bogeyman but he didn't really do much (and he was supposedly offering oil concessions anyway), so it's hard for me to see what taking him out accomplishes. As I said earlier, I don't think this is going to have much salience two months from now.

I live in Miami. I was thinking about putting together a longer posts where I take a small scale example but extrapolate to how geopolitics work. But the summary of it would have been white guy does shit and it fixes a group issue.

I live in Miami. My gut is America has status here. Trump can just say he’s in charge and the new administration has that backing. Which gives them legitimacy. All we really need to do is let Exxon do what they do. Boost oil production to 4m barrels a day. Let the current admin steal 100-500k barrels a day. And that’s a huge win for Venezuelans.

I guess I’ve lived in Miami. And there was like obvious situations that you could fix. And I did 30s conversation and fixed it. Then did some racists shit and said white guy fixed it. And no one cared. White guy fixed it and everyone was just happy the issue was solved. I think Venezuela is there.

So when people question whether VP will have respect I would counter that Trump says Venezuela is ours.

I’m going to be honest I don’t understand any of this. Like what does any of this mean, I’m having trouble even parsing it.

I guess I’ve lived in Miami. And there was like obvious situations that you could fix. And I did 30s conversation and fixed it. Then did some racists shit and said white guy fixed it. And no one cared. White guy fixed it and everyone was just happy the issue was solved. I think Venezuela is there.

Where did you say you lived again?

Miami's likely in my top 5 cities to which to fatFIRE (or at least chubbyFIRE if I get all-so-tiresome'd out before getting there). Warm weather, party city, airport with many one-stop destinations. One thing that gives me pause is the frequency by which rachet internet videos come from Miami, that perhaps my impression of Miami is rose-tinted and outdated.

Nah, fatFIREing in the US is a bad idea given the ultra high cost of living. And Miami especially has no pedigree, one might as well go to Dubai instead. Much better to go to the South of France or Italy or somewhere with real history and taste. "Retiring to Miami" doesn't have the same ring to it as "Retired to Florence", never mind the latter is probably cheaper to fatFIRE to.

I would rather live in a van down by the river than live in dubai.

Fair, but many many people (like myself) would say the same about Miami. And Dubai is better connected anyways if one is forced to choose between the two.

to which to fatFIRE (or at least chubbyFIRE if I get all-so-tiresome'd out before getting there).

To what?

Link

for the record, I dislike you as well.

</3

If I extrapolate. I play basketball behind the mall in Brickell. It’s a very mixed group. Probably about 30% English speaking, 40% bilingual, 30% Spanish only. 3 Venezualians. 1 Bilingual. 2 Spanish only. My Spanish is bad.

We have twice in the last year had city issues. The first was they were not turning the lights on until 7:15 which meant 6:50 to 7:15 it was dark. We have a group chat on WhatsApp so it was an issue for about 3-4 weeks on talking about how to mitigate. I had the brilliant idea of why don’t we just call the city to turn the lights on earlier instead of talking about how to mitigate the issue and play around it. Turns out a 30s phone call solved the issue.

A half year later I was traveling around Argentina. The WhatsApp group was blowing up every day about whether the court was open. The city repainted the court and had locked it. It was locked for like three weeks. People just bitching the court is locked everyday. I get back in town and I reply on WhatsApp has anyone tried calling the city. I call next day and it’s open in a day.

I guess what I am getting at is Maduro could have just called Exxon and a 30 second phone call they would have been like ya we can just start drilling. But for whatever reason Latam sometimes just doesn’t make that phone call.

So for geopolitics if the white guy just says he’s in charge now the Latin Americans kind of just accept it. And sometimes it’s literally really easy.

My gut says Trump is in that situation. Only has to make a short phone call to Exxon and everyone is happy.

I may be wrong. But my gut is that the no casualty coup means it was just accepted US is in charge.

Your examples aren't "white guy fixed it" - they are either "Local government is responsive to the kind of thing a basically functioning local government is responsive to if the requestor is a white English-speaker, but not if it is a brown Spanish-speaker" (unlikely in my view) or "Local government is basically functioning for everyone but recent immigrants from dysfunctional countries aren't aware that responsive local government is a thing" (seems like a racing certainty).

I don't see how expecting local government to be basically functional is a superpower that works in Venezuela. It wouldn't work in California either.

But given the demographics of blue-collar workers in metro Miami, I suspect the guy who actually fixed it on behalf of the relevant local government was Hispanic.

I guess what I am getting at is Maduro could have just called Exxon and a 30 second phone call they would have been like ya we can just start drilling.

Venezuela was being sanctioned by America six ways from Sunday, so Exxon would have to say "no can do".

Latino-tilted WhatsApp groups tend to have a high noise-to-signal ratio.

Perhaps we'll hoop together one day, or perhaps we may have mutual hoopers by acquaintance.

Hablo Espanol?

If you need to ask you probably don't.

I am skeptical this will work out. The VP will be in a much less stable position than Maduro.

For starters, she will not command the same loyalty of the various power holders -- this is just coup-proofing 101.

Becoming a puppet of the US (at least as far as oil is concerned) will not play well with the population, and in particular not play well with the people in the party.

Apparently, crude oil is 90% of Venezuela's exports. My guess is that Trump will take most of that revenue for the US. While parts of that revenue previously ended in slush funds, part of it also stabilized the regime, paying for stuff the population needs or likes.

Then you have an opposition that will almost certainly try to seize the day.

Given that Trump has already threatened other neighboring countries, some people have a vested interest in making sure that his gamble will not pay off. While the US can certainly occupy and defend the oil rigs, pipelines are much harder to defend without the cooperation of local security forces. Even if the VP gives out the order that the security of the oil infrastructure is priority one (because her life depends on it), I doubt that she will have the clot to actually enforce that priority. Local security forces might decide that taking a bribe to let a vehicle carrying a drone and some explosives through a checkpoint is a better deal for them than arresting the suspects.

Of course, putting Maduro into the tender cares of the US court system is a rookie mistake which GWB would not have made. (Albeit he needed that because officially, the DoD was just aiding the DoJ in apprehending a criminal, which would be even less plausible if the accused ended in gitmo outside of the DoJ's jurisdiction.) Perhaps he really has strong evidence tying Maduro to drug smuggling which will force the court system to lock him up until a president pardons him (as US presidents are wont to do, lately). Otherwise, the judiciary is certainly the part of the government Trump has the least control over, and they might not deliver the verdict he wants.

From all the Venezuela experts I know, it's incorrect to think of the previous regime as Maduro commanding the loyalty of various power-holders as if he was some Arab dictator. He was an increasingly ineffectual figurehead "in charge" while the real power-holders, mostly in the military, made decisions - the man was a bus driver, not a colonel. These military power-holders don't need to become a puppet of the US to get what they want, just to stop being an enemy of the US. There are many things that could go wrong still but, assuming nobody on either side chimps too hard, realistically the political stuff on the VZ side is a smaller issue than the bond restructuring on the US side.

These military power-holders don't need to become a puppet of the US to get what they want, just to stop being an enemy of the US.

What exactly has VZ done to be called an enemy of the US? The nationalization of their oil industry (in 1973)? Having a socialist dictator in the Americas? Or are you referring to Trump's claims that Maduro is using fentanyl as a 'weapon of mass destruction' in the US?

Also, it seems to me that Trump's understanding of agreements is that there is always one party which gets fucked over by them, and therefore he only agrees to deals which fuck over the other party. I seriously doubt that he is going back to the 50-50 sharing of profits from before the nationalization.

And while I have no doubt that the military leaders in charge are corrupt as fuck and will do whatever benefits them personally, in my experience militaries also generally foster thoughts of nationalism and independence. If VZ bends over backwards the moment Trump sends in a few helicopters, their citizens might start to ask questions about the purpose of having a military.

Well, as far as "enemy of the US" goes, much of it (e.g. subsidizing Cuba) is standard small-potatoes third-worldoid stuff, but what really grinds Washington's gears (under Biden as well as Trump) is VZ cozying up to China. Maybe they were worried about their military relationship with Russia too, except that we've now seen exactly how effective S-300s are in Bolivarian hands. The Southern Caribbean is seen as a critical security interest for the US and they want China out of there yesterday, see also the Panama stuff.

Also, it seems to me that Trump's understanding of agreements is that there is always one party which gets fucked over by them, and therefore he only agrees to deals which fuck over the other party. I seriously doubt that he is going back to the 50-50 sharing of profits from before the nationalization.

None of this kremlinology is all that relevant to the actual state of the VZ oil industry. As you say, it was nationalized back in the 70s, and basically chugged along until Maduro. Under Chavez, the locals decided that a) they should give a bunch of their oil away for free for political purposes and b) lol who cares about maintenance bro just steal the money for new parts, then Chavez got lucky in dying before the consequences really hit Maduro. It's more Eskom than Mohammad Mosaddegh. So what you have now to make a deal over is a basically defunct industry with $150bn in sovereign debt to deal with before Western experts can get the oil pumping again.

their citizens might start to ask questions about the purpose of having a military.

It's a military kleptocracy, bro, if their citizens were allowed to ask questions Maduro would already be in Nicaragua.

As it is the case for many weak monarchs, Maduro may have been the compromise between rivalrous factions who - although ambitious in their own right - don't have the will or the prowess to step into Chavez's shoes. The bumbling fool could play president on TV while the real power brokers run the country.

But what happens when your puppet ruler is kidnapped by a foreign hegemon?

Fictions are durable. If you've been pretending for years he's actually in charge, then people believe that. You can't go 'we're the actual rulers' overnight. And suppose you actually do that. Trump could send Maduro back! Then what happens?

So as long as America has Maduro in hand, Venezuela cannot appoint his replacement without great internal effort. There'd have to be an election. I have no doubt that his vice president is a Kamala and was picked because she would never even sniff power. Any deep state figure wanting to control the Chavista party will do so without a scrap of democratic legitimacy.

So as long as America has Maduro in hand, Venezuela cannot appoint his replacement without great internal effort. There'd have to be an election.

Even if Epstein's guard shows up and Maduro accidentally suicides, Venezuela by its own Constitution has to hold an election. Apparently the VP has gotten the nod from the Supreme Court to rule for 90 days, which is probably acceptable to all parties who matter (i.e. the US), but after that they're going to have to do something. Probably they're working hard on how to rig an election more subtly than Maduro.

Apparently, crude oil is 90% of Venezuela's exports. My guess is that Trump will take most of that revenue for the US. While parts of that revenue previously ended in slush funds, part of it also stabilized the regime, paying for stuff the population needs or likes.

Are they even making money on oil at all right now? Their cost of production is much higher than what it sells for, since all they have is heavy crude. In theory they could get some financing based on hypothetical future profits if the price of oil rises... but that's kind of hard when they're a tinpot dictatorship that nationalized a bunch of foreign oil property not that long ago. Nobody wants to loan them money.

I'm worried that this will lead to an even further destruction of their economy as their cocaine money goes away and anyone with any sort of means runs away to the US.

Are they even making money on oil at all right now? Their cost of production is much higher than what it sells for, since all they have is heavy crude.

Well, Trump was seizing a Venezuelan oil tanker recently. Presumably you are wrong and they can extract crude oil for less than what they can get for it on the international market

Also, there are plenty of nations which could provide the machinery to extract oil in exchange for crude. It would not have to be a big investment in refining capabilities (which could then be nationalized), but just enough support to keep their oil rigs running for another six month or so.

No, that's not how the oil business works. First, while they do have a small amount of easily drilled conventional oil, that's not what gets people excited. When you hear people talk about Venezuela's "world's largest oil reserves," it's almost all unconventional oil (extra-heavy or oil sands). For that, just the basic costs of drilling it are very high. It's not uncommon for oil companies in Alberta, Canada to operate at a loss because it's difficult to restart production after shutting it down. But that doesn't mean they want to expand production or can make money that way. Even if Trump wants to gift them a ton of free equipment and expert petroleum engineers, that doesn't magically make it profitable.

Tough predicament right. The way this works with a clean slate is the US oil industry could offer to take risks to modernize Venezuela's oil infrastructure in exchange for a mutually agreeable revenue share contract. If they have trouble coming up with financing we could perhaps find generous terms through some kind of global multi-lateral stabilization facility.

This is an obvious playbook towards success if they could credibly promise not to put socialist retards in power and steal and squander everything again.

Even if he is aquitted, by that time enough will have changed that he can't just walk back into power

The Venezuelan constitution requires new elections within 30 days of the removal of the President, if the National Assembly does indeed remove him (presumably for abandonment even if involuntary). I suppose they could leave Maduro as titular head of state and let Rodriguez run things until her term runs out (in 5 years).

My guess is Rodriguez and the assembly play ball and they get elections at some point in 2026.

If the US is fine with Rodriguez why would anyone expect new elections to be free or fair? If she’s amenable to Trump’s demands then he has no interest in making a big deal of another questionable election result.

If the US is fine with Rodriguez why would anyone expect new elections to be free or fair? If she’s amenable to Trump’s demands then he has no interest in making a big deal of another questionable election result.

Because obviously fraudulent elections would make Trump look bad. She may cheat (and probably will) but she'll have to be better at hiding it than Maduro.

Lol, Mr. and Mrs. Maduro additionally charged with possession of machine guns and destructive devices. Apparently even foreign heads of state need a US firearms permit.

Once again reminding everyone that nothing like this would ever happen to a nuclear-armed regime.

My previous comment:

The most salient lesson of the post-Cold War era: Get nukes or die trying.

A nation's relationship to other states, up to and especially including superpowers, is completely different once it's in the nuclear club. Pakistan can host bin Laden for years and still enjoy US military funding. North Korea can literally fire missiles over South Korea and Japan and get a strongly-worded letter of condemnation, along with a generous increase in foreign aid. We can know, for a fact, that the 2003 Iraq War coalition didn't actually believe their own WMD propaganda. If they thought that Saddam could vaporize the invasion force in a final act of defiance, he'd still be in power today. Putin knows perfectly well that NATO isn't going to invade Russia, so he can strip every last soldier from the Baltic borders and throw them into the Ukrainian meat grinder.

Aside from deterring attack, it also discourages powerful outside actors from fomenting revolutions. The worry becomes who gets the nukes if the central government falls.

Iran's assumption seems to have been that by permanently remaining n steps away from having nukes (n varying according to the current political and diplomatic climate), you get all the benefits of being a nuclear-armed state without the blowback of going straight for them. But no, you need to have the actual weapons in your arsenal, ready to use at a moment's notice.

My advice for rulers, especially ones on the outs with major geopolitical powers: Pour one out for Gaddafi, then hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.

Once again reminding everyone that nothing like this would ever happen to a nuclear-armed regime.

I don't really understand why nuclear weapons are a deterrent against the US. Why can't the US just reach out to generals and say "yo! when the time comes, rather than press the button and die, why don't you take this $10 million payment per warhead to turn them over?"

Humans are very unpredictable animals, especially in extreme situations. All it takes is one general saying "nah, fuck that." That's not a gamble anyone wants to take.

Or maybe that doesn't happen. US forces are tallying up the nukes they've recovered. "So intel said they had 48 nukes. We've got 43. Wait...uh oh..."

I have always thought that nuclear weapons program by itself should be casus belli for nuclear strike. If more nations start trying - I can assure you that the big five will come to my opinion too.

Lol, Mr. and Mrs. Maduro additionally charged with possession of machine guns and destructive devices. Apparently even foreign heads of state need a US firearms permit.

More interesting question - which is the jury of Maduro peers ...

which is the jury of Maduro peers

As best as I can tell, American law considers jurors selected by the Southern District of New York to be peers for darn near about anyone.

I have always thought that nuclear weapons program by itself should be casus belli for nuclear strike. If more nations start trying - I can assure you that the big five will come to my opinion too.

It seems to me what's happened with Iran is sufficient to provide quite a bit of deterrence. Seems to me that nuking countries for trying to get nukes would cause more problems than it would solve.

More interesting question - which is the jury of Maduro peers ...

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think you are confusing American law with the law of some other country (maybe the UK)? I'm pretty sure that American law requires an impartial jury, but not one which is necessarily made up of the Defendant's "peers."

The Sixth Amendment says you have the right to a trial "by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." But Maduro never committed any crimes in the United States, and it doesn't look like admiralty or military law applies. Near as I can tell, there is no American court with the jurisdiction to try him for the crimes he's been indicted for. Not sure how the admin intends to get around that issue.

The Sixth Amendment says you have the right to a trial "by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed."

If they're going to blame Venezuela for drug-running, none of the drugs ended up in New York? At all? Would be difficult to prove, I imagine, and if they can construct 39 FELONIES OUT OF NOT PAYING A HOOKER OUT OF CAMPAIGN FUNDS!, I'm sure they can construct "he presided over the regime where illegal drugs which might have originated from the country under said regime have been sold to our good citizens" for a case.

Wrong soveriegn. SDNY is a Federal court, the 39 felonies were in a New York State court.

Ah, okay. Well, just let Letitia take a run at it, I'm sure she could figure something out 😁

You're forgetting article 3.

The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

So that provision of the Sixth Amendment applies only to crimes that were committed in the US.

For offenses against federal laws not committed within any state, Congress has the sole power to prescribe the place of trial; such an offense is not local and may be tried at such place as Congress may designate.

And, if Congress chooses to criminalize activity that occurs outside the US (which it has done for the crimes alleged in this indictment), there is no requirement for the jury to be composed of locals.

Foreign terrorist organizations, terrorist persons and groups

(b) Jurisdiction

There is jurisdiction over an offense under this section if—

(1) the prohibited drug activity or the terrorist offense is in violation of the criminal laws of the United States;

(2) the offense, the prohibited drug activity, or the terrorist offense occurs in or affects interstate or foreign commerce;

(3) an offender provides anything of pecuniary value for a terrorist offense that causes or is designed to cause death or serious bodily injury to a national of the United States while that national is outside the United States, or substantial damage to the property of a legal entity organized under the laws of the United States (including any of its States, districts, commonwealths, territories, or possessions) while that property is outside of the United States;

(4) the offense or the prohibited drug activity occurs in whole or in part outside of the United States (including on the high seas), and a perpetrator of the offense or the prohibited drug activity is a national of the United States or a legal entity organized under the laws of the United States (including any of its States, districts, commonwealths, territories, or possessions); or

(5) after the conduct required for the offense occurs an offender is brought into or found in the United States, even if the conduct required for the offense occurs outside the United States.

This sort of detailed commentary is one of the reasons I come to this place. Thanks.

Copy-pasting large chunks of text should not be considered "detailed commentary".

Perhaps, but you still knew which "large chunks of text" to copy-paste, and where to find them. You still had the expertise to know how to track down these citations and share this information with us, and then put in the effort to do so. Which, "copy-pasting" or not, still puts it ahead of the average comment this far down a reply chain on the Motte — it's definitely better than most of what I post on here. So, even if "detailed commentary" is the wrong phrase to describe it, it's still appreciated.

I have always thought that nuclear weapons program by itself should be casus belli for nuclear strike. If more nations start trying - I can assure you that the big five will come to my opinion too.

Which members of the big five?

While I am willing to concede for the sake of argument that, say, China might appreciate your gracious offer of a nuclear first strike pass on Japan, or South Korea, who both have near-breakout capability, I am not clear why you think the the US- who has a mutual defense treaty with both of them- would want that. Or, in the European context, why Britain or France would want to empower Russia to nuke Poland or Germany, one of whom already is a breakout-capable state and the other who could well move that direction. Or, in the middle eastern context, who is supposed to want who to nuke Israel and Iran and Saudi Arabia alike.

Or, in the middle eastern context, who is supposed to want who to nuke Israel and Iran and Saudi Arabia alike.

Is this to suggest that you either don't believe that Israel already has nukes, wish to participate in the curious play where they and their allies pretend that they don't (are there levels of e.g. USG clearance where you are obligated to?), or think that them ending the policy of public denial would be analogous to a breakout event in some sense?

It is to suggest I don't know who in the big five Lizzardspawn believes would think it was a good idea to nuke those countries based on his proposed doctrine, hence the question of 'Which members of the big five?'

It is also to suggest I do not know who else in the big five Lizzardspawn believes would come to his view that it is a good idea for their geopolitical adversaries (or allies) to pre-emptively nuke states that are often their own partners of regional importance.

It's just that you listed it along with a set of countries that don't currently have nukes, discussing the hypothetical question whether someone now or in the proximate future would preemptively nuke them to prevent them from crossing the threshold if that were what it took.

At the time when Israel actually crossed the threshold, the world was still a very different place, and they probably were understood to have tacit American backing (potentially including a full "nuclear umbrella") in doing so. As America's ideologically most valued protégé, their situation also seems rather unique; perhaps the closest anywhere gets to it is "lips and teeth" China and North Korea, and notably the latter also managed to cross the threshold ultimately unbothered. I don't think either situation tells us much about what would happen if a more replaceable country (like, say, Saudi Arabia or Cuba) were to try.

(Do you work some US-government-adjacent job that comes with speech obligations, to the extent you would even be allowed to disclose that? That would make a lot of things about my reality model click into place, given the number of times I have been frustrated with you arguing for the "party line" in the past.)

Do you work some US-government-adjacent job that comes with speech obligations, to the extent you would even be allowed to disclose that? That would make a lot of things about my reality model click into place, given the number of times I have been frustrated with you arguing for the "party line" in the past.

This has been a working theory of mine for some years now. On domestic stuff @Dean is somewhat idiosyncratic, on foreign affairs he always sticks very very close to the party line.

It's just that you listed it along with a set of countries that don't currently have nukes, discussing the hypothetical question whether someone now or in the proximate future would preemptively nuke them to prevent them from crossing the threshold if that were what it took.

The scope of 'has a nuclear weapons program' does rather run the gauntlet of 'already has' and 'could have soon' and 'has a nuclear power program,' yes. That was rather the point. It was a very poorly bounded claim, and returns to the question of 'who is supposed to agree with about their geopolitical friends/rivals nuking their friends/partners.

(Do you work some US-government-adjacent job that comes with speech obligations, to the extent you would even be allowed to disclose that? That would make a lot of things about my reality model click into place, given the number of times I have been frustrated with you arguing for the "party line" in the past.)

Mate. Think about what you just asked and how you asked it.

If I say 'yes,' you can take it as an honest admission and it validates your belief.

If I deny it, you can believe I am lying or am compelled to claim so and that it validates your belief.

If I don't say anything at all, you can believe I refusing to lie in a denial and use it to validate your belief.

If I reply without giving any sort of definitive answer, you can interpret it as a dodge for the same reason and use it to validate your belief.

Whatever you think of me or what I might do, I don't need to be under a nondisclosure agreement to disagree with the sort of reality model that believes it's more reasonable for someone to be under a nondisclosure agreement than to disagree with their sort of reality model. I am quite willing to disagree for free.

I was thinking that among the possible responses, I'd take "yes" as a, well, strong signal for yes, marked silence as a weaker signal for "yes", and a straight no as a weak signal for no. I didn't think that my past disagreements with you were best explained by "Dean actually works for some Beltway contractor and may have any communications scrutinised"; the only thing that crossed that threshold was when I got the impression, earlier, that you were implying that Israel is not a nuclear state (which I would consider to require either profound ignorance, delusion, bad faith or compulsion, and I had not pegged you to fall under the first three).

As much as we have our differences, my goal really was not to get ammo to "win" future arguments against you, but just to make more sense of my observations (and perhaps to understand if it would be a waste of time to argue against you on certain topics in the future). I would even consider pulling the "well, you have to say that, don't you" card to be in bad taste in any future argument, in the event that you had told me that it is so.

To be fair, you are going to bizarre lengths to imply that Israel doesn't have nuclear weapons, as well as to refuse to state that directly, or to deny it. Just stating your beliefs plainly would probably dispell any suspicion about your luminosity levels.

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This might be the funniest interaction on this forum in years. I knew you're working for the state, but I didn't expect you to flat out participate in the Israeli nuclear kayfabe, and with such poise too. You can't spell out “yes, Israel physically has nuclear weapons already, which is not germane to the logic of my argument”.

Man, what a perverse empire you guys have built. Very shiny surface, but there are a few of these rivets holding everything together, that are impossible to stop thinking about once you notice them.

I retract the above in light of Dean confirming that like any sane person he is reasonably certain Israel has nukes and was just acting cluelessly for no valid reason.

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You think people didn’t know the rules based order was fake for decades?

The only difference is that knowledge has slowly trickled down from heads of states to the simply smart people over decades. It’s always been as Cersai said, “Power is Power”

And yes I like Ukraine. I think they are morally right. And I think in terms of power Russia is in the wrong. The US could intervene. We shouldn’t. Europe can. But acts weak.

Milei was going to lose elections. Then US implied they are backed by US and won. Being US backed both has beneficial policy goals and also electoral success.

Lol, Mr. and Mrs. Maduro additionally charged with possession of machine guns and destructive devices. Apparently even foreign heads of state need a US firearms permit.

In a surprise twist, the Maduros claim a 2nd Amendment right to own them. The courts decide that machine guns and destructive devices are indeed covered by the 2nd Amendment, but rule that the Maduros as foreigners in foreign lands cannot claim the protection of the Bill of Rights, and they're convicted. The dicta about machine guns is never considered again in any court except the Fifth Circuit, which SCOTUS overrules per curiam without argument or comment.

How absurd! By this standard every foreigner with guns is a criminal.

2nd amendment, contrapositive: no foreigner is allowed the right to bear arms.

How absurd! By this standard every foreigner with guns is a criminal.

I think that the actual charges were along the lines of "possession of a machine gun in connection with the importation of narcotics into the United States" So no, it doesn't seem like the law in question criminalizes foreigners with machine guns everywhere in the world.

Well, I guess that's kind of different. It still seems kind of extra, and I imagine it's not like Maduro himself was personally carrying a machine gun.

Saying they will run Venezuela is interesting because, much like the hysterical Somilia tweet, the rhetoric is correct but the action seems to be missing. They need to retire the existing government and appoint someone, but I don't think the appetite or seriousness will be there, nor would the seriousness to sustain it be there outside this presidency.

What’s interesting is this takes oxygen from the Somalian fraud story. I guess it does so in a way that currently makes Trump look strong and the fraud story can come back when more official sources prove it / other states are caught up in it.

I very much doubt this takes the oxygen out of the Somali fraud story, as that was one which was being sustained organically through a fed up citizenry than couldn’t find Venezuela on a map.

This story has absolutely no crossover interest with the general population who has no clue what just happened or why. Nor will they me made to care. If this was distributable the mainstream media would have done it.

Don’t get me wrong I think it will still eventually burn out with very little results. But not via Venezuela stories

Ironically, the president probably has more power to affect change in Venezuela than he does in Minneapolis. He has broad power to use the military without any formal declaration of war, especially to arrest a criminal like Maduro. But in Minneapolis... well, until someone can actuall prove fraud, those Somalis are all legal American citizens. It's going to be a huge ordeal to track down and prove the fraud, and I don't think Trump has the time or attention to detail for that.

He definitely has more power there. End of day US is viewed as competent. So new people in Ven can talk shit but imply they are US backed

I guess the key point is can the Trump administration do something about the fraud or is Venezuela going to distract them. Different groups of people so should be actionable but … we will see

I think it's probably done more for people on the Left to have a new cause celebre to complain about since trying to defend the Somalis is very difficult. Trying to blindly equivocate this to Iraq or like USA is just annexing the oil supply unilaterally seems to be the current push.

What will be interesting (obviously) is what comes next. If Trump successfully makes Venezuela a functioning state with with spilling little American blood or treasure AND America gets something out of it (ie access to oil, repatriation of immigrants), then it will be a huge boom for Trump. He can basically make the case the problem with Iraq wasn’t the concept but the execution (or perhaps more to the point it is about choosing the right target). Americans love a winner.

Still think Venezuela should not be something to focus on. Fraud is compelling. The message is simple (if perhaps somewhat thought not entirely untrue): you are struggling because these immigrants are scamming your tax dollars. I’m fixing it by getting rid of the immigrants and fixing the fraud. The other side wants both of those things to continue.

Oh I see. Well I don’t think the Trump admin will do anything about it but I don’t think it’s because Venezuela distracted them.

I'm guessing that this is one of the endless parade of things that seems like a big deal now that everyone will forget about two months from now. Maduro is out of power, sure. But he wasn't some kind of svengali whose personal leadership was necessary for the Bolivarian regime's survival. If that was anyone, it was Hugo Chavez, and when Chavez died it didn't exactly lead to a sea change in Venezuelan politics. So it will be with Maduro; as Mike Tomlin says, next man up. No different than if some foreign power succeeded in assassinating Trump. No different than how the Cuban regime has been operating for years without anyone named Castro in power.

But of course Trump will pretend otherwise, and in Trump World pretending is as good as being true, especially since the Bolivarian regime wasn't any more of a threat to the US in the past 6 months than it's been for the past 25 years. So sure, go in, remove the guy from power, declare victory, and forget the whole thing happened. We won't have to hear about drug boat strikes and oil tanker impoundments anymore, but we also won't see any sanctions relief, resumption of diplomatic relations, or new American investment. Trump will chalk up a W and his supporters will talk about how he had the balls to do what Biden didn't, but everyone will forget about this by spring. By November, nobody in the US is going to be talking about how much better their life is now that Maduro is out of power, and Republicans aren't even going to bother bringing it up in their campaigns, because they know as well as anyone that no one gives a fuck and that things aren't really that different than they were a year prior.

Let's not pretend like Maduro got old and resigned, and now there's a power vacuum for new leadership.

He was flown off by a foreign government in a midnight heist. Whoever wants to step up and take the reigns has to keep that in mind, lest they be on the next flight out.

This really doesn't seem like anything new for any South American ruler to contend with given the US's history in the region. They'd have to contend with internal rivals constantly anyway. No one that takes their rule as granted and gets complacent will ever last in any position like that.

Moreover, they have to wonder who might have facilitated to it. While the theory of the moment is that Maduro might have negotiated his own extradition as opposed to... consequences (dim lights, spooky sound)... there are other theories that someone else might have made that deal on his behalf. Like a sort of 'Mr. President, we're under attack this way!' that led to the courtyard with the nice men with guns ready to take him away.

Palace guard? Backroom deal with Putin and the Russians in country? Generals?

It's a coordination problem. Which works against many things, but with both the President and First Combatant (as she preferred to be called) out, the Chavistas aren't exactly known for their smooth factional politics.

Total aura shift for Trump. He was a lame duck, dead in the water. The Fuentes doomers were winning. Trump had failed. He hadn't met his campaign promises, and his approval rating was in the gutter. But then, in an decisive display of competence and leadership, he ousted a dictator and took over a country that had been a thorn in the US's side for decades. And he did it at almost no cost.

His speech was fascinating and a dramatic shift from anything we have heard in the past 80 years. No "muh democracy." He talked about Venezuela's crumbling infrastructure and the inability of their government (deliberate or not) to stop the drugs. Their mortal sin was not dictatorship, it was incompetence and the negative impact their incompetence was having on the United States. He openly acknowledges that the oil will benefit the US, and says this is a good thing. And it resonates.

Trump wanted a big legacy-defining move, like buying Greenland, and this time he got it. Under his leadership, the United States took over Venezuela in a matter or hours at minimal cost. The outcome is truly astonishing. And he might not be done. He alluded that "something needs to be done" about the Mexican cartels. Destroying them would be a true legacy-maker. We'll see how it all works out in the long-term, and whether it becomes of a legacy of greatness or failure.

I predict we'll see a boost in Trump's approval ratings. The average person knows nothing about Venezuela except that it was bad and a problem. And now they see that Trump appears to have fixed it overnight.

100% agree, no notes.

This is as close to a total regional fait accompli as you can get. More than that, the ecstasy from the Venezuelan and most of the South Americans is palpable. If it results in Venezuelans queueing up to self deport, even if its just a registration of intent, it secures Trumps decisiveness as the key unlocking US regional primacy. The US always COULD do it, it just never chose to, and it resulted in ill for itself as well as the region.

USA being a massive rich country that refused to crack down on its own people that partook of narcotics freely flowing across the border is what crippled South America (ok fine one of many things). If US could just LOOK decisive occasionally it changes the calculus for any actors that wish to exploit.

USA being a massive rich country that refused to crack down on its own people that partook of narcotics freely flowing across the border is what crippled South America (ok fine one of many things). If US could just LOOK decisive occasionally it changes the calculus for any actors that wish to exploit.

The US is no more responsible for South American drug activity than they are for North American drug users.

And he did it at almost no cost.

This strikes me as likely, but it's too early to know for sure. In the off change Venezuela goes even more to shit, there will be a "you break it you bought it" situation of bad publicity

Trump wanted a big legacy-defining move, like buying Greenland, and this time he got it.

Unless the country implodes, which is unlikely, or the country does a total 180° and becomes a functional western democracy+economy, which is even less likely, there will be no legacy here for Trump lmao

The regime of a shithole country will be more friendly to the USA, the cartels will still move drugs around, and maybe marginally more oil will be available on the world market if Venezuela manages to pump more?

the United States took over Venezuela in a matter or hours at minimal cost

No it didn't. It blew some shit up and then did a helicopter insertion to kidnap the head of state. This was very cool, and absolutely not "taking over a country" as that requires occupation.

He alluded that "something needs to be done" about the Mexican cartels. Destroying them would be a true legacy-maker.

Agreed, but good luck with this one

In the off change Venezuela goes even more to shit, there will be a "you break it you bought it" situation of bad publicity

Good news here is Venezuela doesn't have all that far to fall. It would be worse if fractured into civil war, but it doesn't look like the preconditions were there.

Yeah that's why I ranked it low likelihood lol

I could see some kind of Cartel coup leading to a situation proximate to Haiti, but 1) I think the country was already somewhat in the pocket of the cartels 2) the cartels seem to have more state capacity than Haitian gangs (bar is so low it's in the earth's core).

  1. the cartels seem to have more state capacity than Haitian gangs (bar is so low it's in the earth's core).

I think you've just explained Earth's magnetic field -- the bar for Haitian state capacity is a literal magnet.

aura shift for Trump

And/or a flex for US military capability or geopolitical power in general. Perhaps a much-needed face-saving after the adventures in the Middle East, even if the stock market has long suggested continued US-dominance. Massive aura boost when you're able to just go "feeling cute, might depose a foreign president later... idk" and follow through upon it.

There's also a China angle here. China is planning naval war games around Taiwan in advance of a planned meeting with Trump in April. Stealing Maduro while Chinese diplomats are meeting with him in Venezuela is kind of a tit to their tat.

its a good play. China can make a big show of its buildup and they are a serious threat, but a reminder that the USAs military stumbles in the 2010s was due to political constraints and not inbuilt capability is always good to hang over upstarts.

I predict we'll see a boost in Trump's approval ratings.

There will be a bump in Trump's approval ratings and then they will settle back to where they were before except lower. The bump will be from people who will not be voting for the GOP (more educated, coastal) in the 2026 midterms. Meanwhile, Trump continues to hollow out his coalition.

George HW Bush had a huge shocking victory over Iraq in 1991 with approval ratings among the best ever recorded, and then he lost his re-election in 1992. Presidents do not win elections through foreign interventions in the US (and haven't for at least 75 years), but they certainly can lose them.

And the same will be true for Trump. Unless there are some major changes in policy (Trump's neocon interventions worldwide included) and a redirection towards domestic issues his voters actually care about with real major accomplishments, the GOP will have a 2006 style wipeout in the midterms. I would bet (and I will be) that near zero people will be voting for the GOP because of this Venezuela intervention (and Trump's other neocon shenanigans). Many will be staying home because of them, though.

Selling out your supporters and throwing them under the bus in favor of people who were demanding you be put in prison on Jan 7th, 2020, is a bold move. I guess we'll see if it works out for Trump.

George HW Bush had a huge shocking victory over Iraq in 1991 with approval ratings among the best ever recorded, and then he lost his re-election in 1992.

Because of Ross Perot, mostly.

No, Perot was broadly popular across the spectrum for various different reasons. Perot voters were either drawn near equally from Clinton and Bush voters or were people who were motivated by Perot who otherwise wouldn't have bothered to show up.

Not to mention, Perot ran to a significant extent because he soured on the later Reagan's (read Bush's) derpy foreign policy decisions, opposed the Iraq War, and was supported by the antiwar populists.

If anything, this is another example of how foreign interventions, even ones which turn out to be victories, do not win elections, but certainly can lose them.

I've never voted for Trump but his handling of foreign policy in just his first year of his second term makes me wish he could run for a third term so I could vote for him.

I realize the bloc that feels this way is effectively zero.

It’s no where close to 0. And like a puppet like a Trump son exists instead of Vance.

Trump daughter. Ivanka is supposedly his favourite child, and this would be the bonus of "First Female President" 😁

His foreign policy with respect to Ukraine and Israel seemed very naive. Though a Harris administration would probably have been worse on Israel.

More fun than H.W., FDR's Democrats won WW2 and proceeded to get smashed by a then presumed extinct GOP in 1946 over a messy economy.

Famously, the Brits did the same thing with war hero Winston Churchill - out the door as soon as the war was clearly over, to make room for post-war economic concerns.

"Now that the war is over, let's get these guys out of here. They're bad for business!"

One thing I find interesting about these threads is how the speed itself became part of the legitimacy. Whether real or perceived, “matter of hours” is doing a ton of heavy work here. In modern geopolitics, swift action reads as competence, and slow process as decay. A very post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan inversion where success isn’t measured by institutions built, but by how little time the public has to think about such quagmires. By this logic, it's not even about Venezuela itself. You just need to believe that disorder is contagious and that someone finally hit the off switch. Really shows how much the bar for persuasion has shifted from ideals to outcomes, or at least the perception of outcomes.

One thing I find interesting about these threads is how the speed itself became part of the legitimacy.

"There's three ways to do things. The right way, the wrong way, and the Max Power way!"

"Isn't that the wrong way?"

"Yeah, but faster!"

Or, perhaps more charitable and tropically: "I took the canal zone and let Congress debate."

The cult of action is not a new thing. It is, I suspect, a deep rooted psychological type. Speed, brutality, decisiveness - action for the sake of action - are conflated with effectiveness by certain kinds of people, while caution, planning, and introspection are viewed with contempt. Of course, it's hardly a universal perspective. You have plenty of people with pretty much the opposite view.

The cult of action is not a new thing. It is, I suspect, a deep rooted psychological type. Speed, brutality, decisiveness - action for the sake of action - are conflated with effectiveness by certain kinds of people, while caution, planning, and introspection are viewed with contempt. Of course, it's hardly a universal perspective. You have plenty of people with pretty much the opposite view.

But this action was both. Yes, the incursion itself was accomplished very rapidly, but there were also breathless stories about the exhaustive preparation for the strike; how Delta Force built an exact replica of the building they snatched Maduro from to practice raid tactics and timing on (similar to how the SEALS practiced on a mock-up of Bin Laden's Abbottabad complex); how the administration was monitoring Maduro's comings and goings for months in order to build up a perfect picture of his habits and whereabouts, etc.

I don't think this can be pattern-matched to a fascist-futurist aesthetic "Cult of Speed" thing.

Speed, brutality, decisiveness - action for the sake of action - are conflated with effectiveness by certain kinds of people, while caution, planning, and introspection are viewed with contempt.

Not all of these are mutually exclusive. I'm pretty sure some careful planning went into the Maduro extraction at least from the professionals in the Armed Forces. That's why it was so quick and successful.

Quick and decisive execution doesn't have anything to do with rash decisionmaking. A well-prepared operation is more likely to go smoothly and achieve your goals with the minimum amount of action.

I'm specifically talking about perception and the role that plays in legitimizing the actions, per the comment I was replying to. I've little doubt that the raid itself was meticulously planned and rehearsed.

Quick and decisive execution doesn't have anything to do with rash decisionmaking. A well-prepared operation is more likely to go smoothly and achieve your goals with the minimum amount of action.

Yeah, FWIW I would guess that the US has been planning this for years. Or more accurately, we've had a plan in place for years to grab the leader of Venezuela.

The cult of action is not a new thing. It is, I suspect, a deep rooted psychological type. Speed, brutality, decisiveness - action for the sake of action - are conflated with effectiveness by certain kinds of people, while caution, planning, and introspection are viewed with contempt. Of course, it's hardly a universal perspective. You have plenty of people with pretty much the opposite view.

"I have told your names to the Entmoot and we have agreed: you are not orcs." - Treebeard

The example of the Roman dictator Fabius also springs to mind. Sometimes slow and steady wins the race.

The comparison crossed my mind.

Speed, brutality, decisiveness - action for the sake of action - are conflated with effectiveness by certain kinds of people, while caution, planning, and introspection are viewed with contempt. Of course, it's hardly a universal perspective. You have plenty of people with pretty much the opposite view.

Hence the term "analysis paralysis".

I think that the perception is that extremely long occupations (or similar) tend to be corrupted by the bureaucracy, and end up spending hundreds of millions of dollars on doing nothing. It's a very common pattern (at least in Canadian politics, but I imagine that it occurs in American politics too) that something like the following occurs:

  1. There is some outrageous news story (let's say the Minnesota fraud case mentioned below); people are not happy.
  2. The government proclaims loudly that this is unacceptable, and it is opening a committee/beginning investigation of how this could've happened.
  3. 6-24 months pass, and the committee basically says "no one could've possibly predicted or stopped this, no one is to blame, and we're going to do some superficial reforming (so for example, in the Minnesota fraud case, they could mandate that all government employees take a course in recognizing fraud). They also have a bunch of recommendations that are completely stupid (like, adding land acknowledgements to all daycare subsidies) that are supposed to help by decolonizing the space or some such stupid nonsense.
  4. Meanwhile, the fraud or whatever else has continued, and now we're also paying for the cost of the committee, which did less than a 5 year old could've worked out.

There's a major problem with government accountability where any solution to the problem seems to be "sink more money into it forever." Something that meets the criteria of:

  1. Fast;
  2. Intuitive; and most importantly
  3. Done

Earns a lot of goodwill towards the policy.

It needs to be Fast because the problem is happening now, not later - I've mentioned before that fixing housing prices in 5 years is better than not fixing it in 5 years, but from my perspective, it may as well not matter; I only have one life in which I can start a family, and if I can't buy housing for 5 years, that's 5 more years in which I can't have the family I want to.

It needs to be Intuitive (or at least, more intuitive than the other solutions) for the same reason that we don't introduce more complicated voting methods; because there is a lot of space for people who are good at lying to grift off of it. It is easy to understand "each person gets 1 vote, most votes wins" - it's trickier to understand a situation where one candidate gets 45% of the "I want this guy" votes, a second candidate gets 35%, and the third gets 20% - but the second candidate ends up winning after "shenanigans." (I'm using Instant-runoff voting as an example here).

And it needs to be done because anything that is a process ends up costing way too much money and perpetuating itself for all eternity. After 2 decades in Iraq, the establishment that the US had set up had collapsed within a month of the US pulling out - that extra effort and process was worth literally jack and shit, and all it did was cost more money.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think there is separate issue, which is that when bad faith actors want to pretend to be addressing an issue without actually addressing it, they are naturally going to go for slow, deliberate options. This principle applies all the way from high level policy makers all the way down to the scummy local gym which is supposed to process your cancellation and give you a refund.

The upshot of this is that slowness is a red flag.

That is a very good point as well.

Time is a pretty good proxy for competence. Time is also money. Maduro was a thorn in the US' side, and for a minimal investment of time and money the US is at the very least going to get someone marginally preferable to Maduro running Venezuela. That's a good deal.

Why do you assume the next man up will be marginally preferable to Maduro?

The next man up will probably not be married to Maduro's wife, who was a central power player in the Chavista movement on the policy/coalition side and a queennpin in her own right who had held significant government power.

Flores was a non-trivial part of the political competence of the Chavista movement at the policy maker level, in the 'knows how to systemically setup an apparatus to coordinate harassment and violence against the outgroup' sense. In so much that the Maduro regime was on its way towards becoming an Nicaragua-Ortega-style dynasty, Flores was both the cause and a key parallel.

The US getting Maduro and Flores is probably one of the more significant things about today's raid, and honestly does more to imply a deal with someone- whether Maduro or someone else in the Venezuelan government- such that Flores couldn't step in as acting-president on her husband's behalf.

Well, No.

Trump has a natural, intuitive understanding of the American electorate, but he's always been rather incompetent at foreign policy personally. He clearly realized this after his first term and it has been plain to see that he's outsourced different problems to different people;

  • Ukraine - Witkoff
  • Gaza/Israel - Kushner
  • Central / South America - Marco Rubio

This operation, and Venezuelan "policy" in general, has Rubio's pawprints all over it. Remember, Rubio is a Cuban-American from South Florida. Venezuela, being Western Hemisphere public enemy number one after Cuba, has always been in his crosshairs. Here's an article about Rubio, in 2020, meeting with the Venezuela opposition leader for instance. Also, here's a 2020 Politico article calling this out specifically.

Trump is still a lame duck. The midterms, which are ten months away, are not going to be full of campaigning on "Caracas Hawk Down!" For a bizarrely chronologically similar parallel, reference the Soleimani raid over New Years in 2020. How did that go for Trump's re-election? The economy is probably already down bad but some creative accounting and a flaccid rate cut are plugging the dam for now. The Special elections this november in VA and elsewhere ... didn't go well. And, to find whatever the opposite of the silver lining is, this strike on Venezuela has some pretty not fun open questions regarding AUMFs and War Powers.

For a bizarrely chronologically similar parallel, reference the Soleimani raid over New Years in 2020. How did that go for Trump's re-election?

It’s a difficult comparison to make, given that the combination of the ‘Ronavirus and the George Floyd riots was such an unexpected and overwhelming black swan that quickly swallowed up everything else. It’s easy to look back at it and declare it a big nothingburger, but it was basically an order of magnitude bigger than 9/11 and the LA riots combined.

but it was basically an order of magnitude bigger than 9/11 and the LA riots combined.

The Soleimani raid or COVID?

COVID

Then I don't understand your original comment at all.

I’m saying the Solemani thing ended up getting overshadowed by COVID happening shortly after. That’s part of why it had no effect on the election.

his approval rating was in the gutter

A great sage predicted this moment 13 years ago…

Good God he was on fire back then

Obama lost those interventions. Europe got a migrant crisis as a result. Today doesn’t matter. It’s what’s created next that matters.

Also I think it’s fair to say Trump has been putting this in play for months. Rubio for a decade.

In the start-up world they laugh about NDAs because the idea doesn’t matter. It’s the execution. Day 0 was executed successfully.

Day 0 was executed successfully in Iraq and Afghanistan as well.

The US is very good at applying ordinance to targets. It is a lot worse at running countries.

Obama and Bush were at least wise enough to create migrant tsunamis and narco states on the opposite side of the planet, not close to home. Obama learned from Bush and didn't say he was going to rebuild Libya and turn it into a nation building project that is likely to fail.

The migrant crisis already happened in Venezuela. That’s in the past and occurred under Biden.

The migrant crisis already happened in Venezuela. That’s in the past and occurred under Biden.

Much longer than that, but substantially correct.

One of the weaknesses of the 'but this could destabilize the region like Iraq or Syria' is that Venezuela's collapse under Chavez/Maduro already has been at the level of the Iraq or Syria civil wars. Venezuela has a bit less than 40 million people now, but 2 million left during the Chavez years, and another nearly 8 million under Maduro. This compares to the 6 million Syrian refugees during the Syrian civil war. Caracas 'at peace' notably had a murder and kidnapping rate rivaling, and eventually surpassing, Baghdad. Rolling blackouts, gang paramilitaries, endemic corruption, refugee displacement, and all that.

It's also why the 'but the Americans will just steal the oil!' narrative has, so far, largely fallen flat on the Venezuelans, and gets more or less Yes-Chad response. Venezuelan oil was already being stolen for the interest of other countries- particularly Cuba- and the money was already being stolen by a corrupt elite. The (never particularly accurate) 'Americans stealing the oil' doesn't actually make things worse, because things are already that bad... or worse.

A lot of the online / social media response of 'Trump bad' is running into the Venezuelan/local regional perspectives of 'but Maduro worse.' Taking the hyperbolic claims literally, Trump is still better, because Trump's avarice/greed/etc. doesn't come with the police state repression of the Chavistas.

None of which means today's intervention a good idea / will work as planned / etc. But it's very hard to overstate just how bad the Venezuelan situation has been for quite some time. Appeals to 'but it could be a bad war!' lose some resonance when the status quo is already equivalent to some of the bad wars being raised.

America destablized Venezuela, put sanctions on Venezuela and the result was chaos in Venezuela. If the goal was to bring down Venezuela by making the people hate their government that goal will cause mass migration. The situation being bad in Venezuela is a reason to help Venezuela if anything. Chaotic failed state neighbours end up doing to America what Syria did to Europe.

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I mean, Cuba hasn't been in a state of near-continuous famine despite its own poverty. Its capital city isn't controlled by gangs creating a murder rate worse than most of the world's active war zones. And they've been under sanctions longer and harder than Venezuela.

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functor, functor, functor. Why do you have to deny the achievements of the global south? The Chavistas worked so hard and succeeded at sparking an even greater mass migration exodus than Syria all on their own.

The PSUV spent so much time wrecking the capitalist economy, cracking down on dissent, stealing everything they could, employing gangs and narcos to attack their opponents, and drove more people to flee Venezuela than fled Syria. They did so for decades over the protests of the Americans, and their neighbors, and their own people, in proud acts of defiance and national sovereignty. There's a reason even those who try to blame the American sanctions studiously try to avoid having to establish any relative share of responsibility for the economic consequences of Chavez's, ahem, distinctive economic model. Why, I bet even you will studiously try to avoid answering that prompt, and will try to bypass that uncomfortable, overshadowing context once more.

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I'm listening to Trump's press briefing right now. He seems... pretty blatant that this is about oil. Saying something like "Over the years, their oil business has been a failure. They're pumping far less than they could have. But it will now be under control of America's oil companies, the greatest oil companies in the world, and they'll get it pumping like never before." That's not an exact quote of course, but it's not far off.

So uh... congrats to the oil company shareholders, I guess.

Press conference link

Oil is mentioned a lot, but if I had to piece together a take it doesn't appear likely the US is currently "running" Venezuela and is not planning to run Venezuela. Not much mentioned is about politics at all, and if you're interested in building out industry you'd be interested in politics. "Democracy" didn't get a mention which might be a record for POTUS press conferences on foreign policy.

Trump directly answered one reporter who asked if he was working with opposition leader Machado. He called Machado a nice lady, but said he had not spoken to her and that she doesn't have the respect of the country to run it. That could be a calculated distance for coming political battles, but we don't do 4D chess, do we? Apparently he has spoken with now President Rodriguez.

Right now it looks the extent of running the country is getting the former and also current ruling party to say they'll be nicer. I wouldn't be surprised if in a couple years whatever US Oil project -- if there is actual follow through -- falls by the wayside. Based on what was said here I expect Venezuela to continue to be Chavistas-without-Maduro who maybe are more friendly to the US and probably still have a dilapidated oil industry. Opposition in Venezuela may take advantage of or otherwise earn more US interest and public support in coming weeks. Good luck to them.

it doesn't appear likely the US is currently "running" Venezuela and is not planning to run Venezuela

Trump:

We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.

I expect "run the country" will mean we let the interim government run it under US military supervision. Although apparently the VP is now demanding Maduro's return, so maybe she'll get the "#2 man in Al Queda" treatment and someone else will run the interim government.

Yeah, I watched the conference. Arrest head of state, speak with his immediate successor, and stage a press conference to talk about the possibility of revitalizing its oil industry. This may be the extent of Trump running Venezuela. We'll see.

"we're going to run the country" implies plans of running it in the future. They may not materialize (this is trump we're talking about) but saying there's no plan to run the country is obviously wrong.

"Plans" is too generous. More like concepts of a plan.

I'd give it as much confidence as the Trump healthcare plan.

This speech is beyond incompetent. How is he going to get support in Venezuela when his speech is about the US taking over Venezuela's oil? It soulds like a parody of what an American imperialist president would say.

Venezuelans are not going to vote for Exxon Mobile. They do not wanting American companies owning their natural resources.

At least Dick Cheney made an attempt to sell regime change in Iraq as an exciting new opportunity.

Was anyone expecting any different? Trump has always preferred gangster foreign policy and now we've got a direct statement that we won't be supporting Machado (and that we are, somehow, going to be running Venezuela). Right now it looks like pure racketeering.

Trump has always preferred gangster foreign policy and now we've got a direct statement that we won't be supporting Machado

I can at least imagine a hypothetical (but won't put huge confidence on it) that this sort of situation might call for two leaders to install: one for the immediate governance problem (a skilled administrator, I'd guess from armed services) on a limited term, and a second that you plan to win the first election. From what I know of Machado (admittedly not too much), she seems maybe a better fit for the latter role. Whether or not that's the case here seems questionable, but maybe plausible.

It's the Monroe Doctrine 2.0 described in the recent National Security Strategy. Denying China any foothold in the hemisphere is a more sensible foreign policy than the notion of fighting China across the globe. Maduro met with a special envoy sent by Xi Jinping the same day US kidnaps him, hah.

The Monroe Doctrine had the tradeoff of staying out of Europe and non-american continents. We aren't pulling out of Taiwan and won't the ME as long as congress is owned by Israel. This is just a convenient framing for this one specific issue, globalism being sold as the Monroe doctrine.

now at war

Somehow I doubt that Trump bothered consulting Congress. Have his lackeys provided any excuse for the Constitutionality here?

As usual, I predict little to no backlash from any Republican who criticized Biden’s foreign policy.

He justifies it under the 2001 AUMF, no?

Maybe? I was hoping for a press release or at least a tweet stating it, though. I’ve only seen claims about the boat strikes, which I believe are justifiable on different grounds.

The 2001 AUMF is wildly abused. Venezuela didn’t have a damn thing to do with 9/11. If Republicans want to topple regimes, Congress ought to be involved.

You and I both know Rep. Massie is furiously typing speeches as we speak.

Massie will continue to shine and I’m sure I’ll agree with whatever he ends up saying. May God bless him.

You’re not wrong in the slightest.

The name of the charge makes for a nice tweet, but the indictment makes clear that he was charged under 18 USC 924(c) for possessing guns while committing a different US federal crime (specifically, trafficking drugs into the United States, which he's also being charged for).

A big difference. Trump wins, Biden loses. Israel and Iran was played well. Ukraine neither solved. Though Ukraine War started under Biden watch. Biden fumbled Afghanistan withdrawal. People care far less about process than they do winning. Trump wins.

It's less that Trump wins and more that Trump is very good at persuading his supporters to forget when he loses.

A simple question here would be to asks you to define terms of “winning” before this plays out. Taking Maduro out is impressive logistically but creating chaos alone isn’t winning. It’s what you build after.

What’s the end game for Venezuela that you would agree is “winning”?

Super long-term is too long to wait for. But we can define going on the right path. Within in the next month we should have inklings of the new power structure and more apparent in 6m-1 year. And obvious win would be Machado being the leader but that seems to have been ruled out by Trump.

What’s the end game for Venezuela that you would agree is “winning”?

A stable, reasonably* democratic Venezuela, reasonably traceable to Trump's actions/policies. That is to say, if Trump negotiates free and fair democratic elections, that's a win. If Trump negotiates for another authoritarian figure to take over who is subsequently toppled by a popular uprising, that's not a win. Likewise if the country devolves into a dysfunctional narco-state where the government doesn't actually control a large share of its territory.

Half a year to a year is probably too short to tell if it is successful, though it may be long enough to say if it failed.

*it doesn't need to be topping democracy index charts, but it does need to have real elections. I'll give partial credit for a pragmatic, competent authoritarian who unfucks things, but incompetence is the default state of authoritarian so I don't see much reason to expect that.

Likewise if the country devolves into a dysfunctional narco-state where the government doesn't actually control a large share of its territory.

That isn't 'devolving' it's the current state of Venezuela.

Beat me to it

I considered putting in a disclaimer because I knew some smartass would make a comment like this. Venezuela has severe problems, but it still has a long way to go before it hits rock bottom.

Is it other people being a smartass, or you underestimating how bad the status quo already is?

Venezuela is already in a state comparable to, and in some ways worse, than many of the major geopolitical wars of the last quarter century. The previous leader was headed by a literal Catro fanboy who saw Cuba, and went 'I want my country to be like that,' and then saw that Iraq War insurgency and went 'I want my capital to be like that too, except in peacetime.' And then the next leader doubled down, and added another decade to that.

Don't get me wrong- I am always up for a 'it could get worse' musing. But rock bottom isn't even the bottom there, because you can blow up the rocks and go even deeper. It's an expression that means precious little if you don't peg it to some level of what 'rock bottom' even is. Genocide? Natural as well as man-made famine?

The reason that actual civil wars are considered 'rock bottom' in most cases is because they do think like break basic infrastructure like clean drinking water or medical services (already happened years ago), or see increased civilian casualties (has been the case for approaching decades), or see government forces or proxies extort and target local residents (ayup), or that the government resorts to prison camps or blacksites and disappears dissidents (ayup again), or it ruins the local economy (errr....), or it causes mass migration refugee crisis as people flee (ha...ha...sob), and many other things, several of which have also come to pass.

But these are additive qualities in most contexts, things that wouldn't exist except for the but-for the test. But for a war, Venezuelans would still have clean drinking water. But for an uprising, the government wouldn't back gangs to prey on people. But for the opposition, the economy would be fine.

When these are not additive qualities- when these are the status quo- 'rock bottom' appeals have to put in the work for some distinction that's worth a difference.

While it's literally true that Venezuela is not a narco-state, it's hard to imagine it getting any worse than it already is. The reason it's not a narco-state now has probably more to do with the surrounding economics (oil is more valuable than drugs) than the current government's competence.

We won’t agree on win conditions. I don’t care about Democracy especially in that region. The administration doesn’t care about Democracy. An American aligned regime is better for us and better for the region. The ideal would be a Pinochet or MBS. A get shit done guy who locks Venezuela as a friend for a generation. I am not opposed to Democracy but it’s not a key.

Exxon etc returning to Venezuela because they trust the regime. A significant portion of the Venezuela diaspora returning would be a win. Let’s say 5 years out 4-5 million barrels of oil production.

I probably would have said Machado in charge with elections in 3-4 years would be ideal. But honestly that’s not important to our interests or the Venezuelan people. To be honest when most of your population is sub 90 IQ Democracy just doesn’t work that well.

Our current regime isn’t a bunch of neolibs trying to spread Democracy. Which is a big reason why they can win versus the Bushes and Clintons trying to put geopolitical packages wrapped in Democracy. Saudi Arabia worked - the roads are greats in large part because we never fucked with Democracy there.

The ideal would be a Pinochet or MBS. A get shit done guy

I'm confused. Do you want a 'get shit done' guy or not?

Of course, the odds of getting something like that are vanishingly rare anyway. The central lie of authoritarianism is that it's effective. It's not. KSA is a shithole that's able to paper over the flaws due to sheer natural resource wealth enabling them to hire foreign experts to manage everything important despite incredible waste and corruption. The likely outcome of Trump cutting a deal with a replacement authoritarian is that the new leader pays off Trump and dials up the repression.

Exxon etc returning to Venezuela because they trust the regime. A significant portion of the Venezuela diaspora returning would be a win. Let’s say 5 years out 4-5 million barrels of oil production.

Why should I or any other American who isn't an Exxon shareholder care about this? My interests and the interests of a handful of nominally American multinational oil and gas companies are not closely aligned (they are, in fact, negatively aligned).

“Get shit done guy” I advocated for a MBS or Pinochet is that in question?

“A guy like that is vanishingly rare” Outside of white societies and some East Asians how many successful Democracies are there?

“Paper over flaws due to sheer natural wealth?”

Have you heard about the natural resource curse? How many non-white civs have monetized natural resources? Besides MBS. Two biggest oil reserves Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

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What foreign policy losses has Trump incurred?

Red Sea/Houthis, North Korea, getting repeatedly rug-pulled by Putin, fumbling trade wars and getting played by China, surrendering to the Taliban...

Even the things his supporters tout as 'successes' (e.g. strikes on Iranian nuclear program) are very much in the too soon to tell category, but he can reliably count on his supporters having a short attention span and forget about them by the time any consequences come due. After all, we're more respected than ever before.

A lot of people think that moves like bombing Fordow were unpopular because the "evil jews" liked it. But the truth is most people vaguely know Iran=Bad and that destroying their nuclear facilities at minimal cost is badass. Same here. Their worldview is we took out a communist dictator and made it look easy, like the Avengers or taking out an evil supervillain or something.

You are correct: the foreign policy moves of Bush, Obama, and Biden were unpopular because they were failed, drawn out, and extremely costly. Trump's moves have been dramatic, successful, and low cost.

If he detects an threat to the US (which is a term left almost entirely to the executive's discretion) he has 60 days to do whatever he wants before Congressional approval is required.

Getting Maduro personally is the easy part. All of the interests that he represented and championed are still there. How is an American puppet government supposed to have popular legitimacy given that we executed a smash-and-grab over the skies of Caracas in plain sight?

Many of those interests know they would be much happier and richer if they could align with the US and get the oil flowing. That's what the deal Maduro was trying to make was about. Hopefully we get the right general taking charge.

The third world isn't naive enough to think the USA brings prosperity to 3rd world countries these days with the last 40 years worth of examples. This is a western conceit.

The difference is that if you're an Arab, outside of perhaps Syria and Libya, you believe things can get worse. Venezuelans absolutely do not; they believe that for very low baseline reasons, it's impossible for the situation in Venezuela to degenerate further.

It has been darkly amusing people trying to model Iraq or Syria onto Venezuela, however.

Iraq and Syria were as bad as they were because they were sectarian civil wars on ethnic and religious lines, against minority ruler sects that had been suppressing the demographic majority for decades. In turn, those regimes were backed by demographic minorities who knew/feared that, if they lost, they might be genocide/ethnically cleansed. It's not exactly clear who the corresponding ethnic groups are in Venezuela. They were also as bad in part because Syria in particular spent nearly a decade supporting the neighboring insurgency in Iraq... but the Venezulan-supported narcos and gangs are already present in the capital city, by design.

In turn, the Iraq War accusation that the US would steal the oil runs into past and contextual history. In the past, that accusation never actually occurred- the Iraqi oil wells were back under Iraqi control, and largely used to fund the reconstruction and social welfare programs. Which is not what they are currently doing in Venezuela, because in the Venezuela contextual history the Chavistas already stole the oil for foreigners by giving so much away for basically free, especially Cuba, and in the corruption/mismanagement of the state oil companies. An American takeover, Iraq-style, would be unironically an improvement of the oil benefits to the country.

While there are certainly ways for this to get worse, and I am never inclined to rule it out entirely, it warrants a bit more insight than merely 'it's gonna be a quaqmire like Iraq!' or 'but Syria!'

You are an american or american-adjacent whose post history is largely getting mad at Trump for cucking to da jooz. The reality is that, yes, capitalism, and specifically Western capital investment into otherwise dysfunctional countries, plus western trade opportunities, does make them richer. Very quickly and effectively. It also has a tendency to make them more functional, at least within the limits of the people you're working with. Now, the US is also very happy to bring aimless neocon foreverwar or lefty post-colonial massacres to third-world countries, and this could certainly degenerate into the former. But there's no particular reason it has to, and if there's one thing that Trump loves, it's making deals.

Saudis disagree with you. El Salvador. Argentinians. Smart Chileans. Polish. Ukrainians dying for that opportunity. Often the issue has been weak local partners.

Could a synthesis of this be that those who now grab the reigns of the criminal, crony-patronage machine built by Chavez and inherited by Maduro could still make more money playing ball with American oil companies?

Yes, I think this is the obvious play if you are a high-ranking Venezuelan crony right now, particularly in the military rather than the civilian patronage structure.

Preliminary prediction: no substantive change in Venezuela. Maduro is a bad guy, but he's not any sort of political keystone and the authoritarian machinery is still in place. Long-term impact is that US further cements its reputation as being erratic and untrustworthy for the sake of Big Dick maneuvers. Increases the odds of nuclear proliferation as well.

Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic, but unless the US is about to actually invade Venezuela to install Machado I don't see why the Venezuelan regime wouldn't just put one of their own in the big chair.

Aside: unclear what the legal basis for this is beyond "my own party is too cowardly to hold me accountable". I've seen people draw comparisons to Just Cause or Urgent Fury for obvious reasons, but in the former case Panama declared war and in the latter case it was always kind of dodgy and at least had the figleaf of urgency regarding protection of US citizens. I guess they're going to try and spin this as law enforcement?

edit: wow, Trump does not sound okay in this presser. Also, apparently we're going to run Venezuela.

I wake up and this is really starting the new year with a bang! I have to say I am very surprised, first by the strikes on land targets and second the claim that Maduro and his wife are in custody of the USA.

What does anybody think is going on here? How did it go from "stop drug smuggling" to "regime overthrow"?

Looking at the thread @CertainlyWorse pointed to, I think if there's anything aside from Marco Rubio's personal interest and Trump's desire for a Nobel Peace Prize, @UberZarathustra has it -- reduce China's influence in the Western hemisphere.

Oil. Venezuela has lots of oil, so they got a big dose of freedom. With a US-friendly government in charge, excraction costs will fall, enabling the high-tech petroleum refineries on the US Gulf Coast (which are helpfully in red states) to reap the producer surplus from the increased supply. AI demand for energy will keep the price up. GPT-7 will be powered by Venezuelan oil, brought to you by Exxon, I'm Lovin' It.

AI demand for energy will keep the price up.

The US generates approxmately 1% of its electricity from petroleum. Oil is useful for cars, but electric car sales are going exponential. I guess oil is useful as a manufacturing input, not that the US does much manufacturing any more.

That said, Trump is a mercantilist who hasn't updated his economic views since the 90s, so he may well believe something like that.

Oil is useful for cars, but electric car sales are going exponential.

In the US, not anymore. Without subsidies (and it seems clear that China is also subsidizing) and without bans (hello Europe), electric cars just aren't so much better than gas cars (if at all) to take over the category.

In spite of Trump's pigheadedness, electric cars and renewables are still going to win. Humanity is undergoing an energy transition from turning heat into electricity or movement (fossil fuel electricity generation and petrol cars) to one where we generate and use the energy directly. Solar power is already the cheapest form of energy globally, followed by wind, and electric cars are cheaper to fuel, cheaper to maintain, faster to accelerate, quieter, easier to fill up (you do it at home overnight) and will soon be cheaper to buy, due to plummeting battery costs. The US can try and turn back the clock, but ICE cars are a mature technology facing off against an already superior, rapidly improving one which is still picking the low-hanging fruit.

The idea that in 50 years, Americans will still be driving petrol cars because the ageing boomer currently in charge thinks that EVs are for hippies is so beyond far-fetched it's hard to describe. It's like someone in the 1960s claiming that we'll never switch to colour TV because black and white TVs have clearer images.

easier to fill up (you do it at home overnight)

What about when you have to make a six hour (or longer) drive out into a rural area, where almost all of the roadway there are "off the grid" and have no electricity at all — then drive back the same way a day or two later? You know, like we'd do every summer weekend growing up, heading to our cabin in rural Alaska?

Outside of Anchorage, and maybe Juneau or Fairbanks, electric cars simply don't make sense here in Alaska.

I remember pointing this out to a bunch of electric-car enthusiasts at Caltech, back in the early 2000s, several times. I'd explain in detail the geographic and infrastructural realities of life in rural Alaska — the lack of electrical grid, hundreds of miles of wilderness between bits of civilization, Arctic conditions…

The ones who were engineering students working on developing electric cars were the more reasonable ones, mostly responding that, okay, sure, you guys will have to keep using gas cars a lot longer than everyone else, until the technology is someday good enough. Those who were "for the environment"-type boosters? They're the ones who would sneeringly reply about how nobody should be living in Alaska in the first place, and all those hicks will obviously be forced to move south to some big city, as they should be. (Bringing up the Natives got some interesting responses.)

Outside of Anchorage, and maybe Juneau or Fairbanks, electric cars simply don't make sense here in Alaska.

I'm happy to concede that, at least for now, ICE cars make sense for the small niche of people who live in Alaska (about 0.2% of the US' population, by my estimate).

What I don't get from the second group is the pig-headedness refusal to accept workable compromises. Plug in hybrids are (cost and technical complexity aside, and the first's less a concern on the second hand market) mitigating almost all the issues of electric cars, but no one hates them as much as electric car fans. Daily commutes use no gas or a thimbleful of gas, and longer trips are not limited by infrastructure outside of already implemented gas stations.

In spite of Trump's pigheadedness, electric cars and renewables are still going to win.

Maybe. But if they were the clear win you're making them out to be, there'd be no need for the subsidies and bans.

Humanity is undergoing an energy transition from turning heat into electricity or movement (fossil fuel electricity generation and petrol cars) to one where we generate and use the energy directly.

That doesn't even make sense. Using energy directly would be something like sailing; we're certainly not doing that with cars. With electric cars and renewables we're capturing solar energy, turning it to electricity, turning it into chemical energy, then back to electricity, and then to movement. Or we're doing the same thing only turning wind to movement, then movement to electricity, then the rest.

Solar power is already the cheapest form of energy globally, followed by wind

As long as you ignore the costs of intermittency.

easier to fill up (you do it at home overnight)

So I have to upgrade my electric service (and the power company upgrade their grid) to provide myself with sufficient charging capacity for 2 cars... and even then it takes hours? I can fill up a gasoline car in minutes. Gas still wins this one. Charging at home is convenient, but the slowness of fill will cause scaling problems. Further, if most people charge at home, charging stations away from home will have less reason to exist, making them far less available than gas stations are today, thus making long-distance travel less practical.

I don't know about exponential but sales in 2024 were much bigger than sales in 2023.

https://www.bts.gov/content/gasoline-hybrid-and-electric-vehicle-sales.com

Venezuela's oil is ultra-heavy crude that currently (because Communism) requires them to import naphtha just to ship to somewhere it can be refined. The US has no pressing need for it. Assuming there's a stable government out of this rather than a civil war, US oil companies will improve their infrastructure enough (including their own refining capacity, at least enough that they can produce enough naphtha to ship the rest without imports) that they'll be making a lot more money from the oil, which will help the US companies some but the Venezuelans more. The oil is just a cherry on top, not a reason.

because Communism

Is Venezuela even remotely communist? Do the workers own the means of production/their firms?

It looks a lot more like an autocratic narco state

They nationlized the oil and gas industry which was run by a firm wholly owned by the state. That's the model most communists go for so I'm not really sure why it wouldn't count. It even worked pretty well for a couple decades until Chavez came along and decided to gut the state company and fill it with cronies for short term social spending.

Maybe I don't understand communism, but state owned enterprises don't seem like something that was important to the core ethos/concept of communism.

I thought the whole point was workers would all essentially be "shareholders" of the firm.

Maybe you need the state to be the ultimate owner to ensure ownership transfers between workers, but "communism is when the government takes over the firms" seems kind of inaccurate.

It is something a lot of communist countries did/do, but it also strikes me that many communist countries were just dictatorships dressing themselves up as communists to make the local people think they'd get a cut of the prosperity.

I suppose I'm doing a "no true scottman" thing, although I can reconcile it by saying that I don't think communism works very well when exposed to human nature. True communism has never been tried, because groups of humans greater than Dunbar's number basically can't do it. If ants were smart they'd make Marx proud though.

There's endless amounts of ink spilled on what is or isn't communism. The discussion on what does or doesn't count can be interesting. But when the people doing it call it communism and it fits the mold of what a lot of people trying to practice communism are also doing I think it is at the very least a variant of communism even if it isn't the stateless moneyless utopia some theorists imagine. We call the US capitalist despite not being anything like a theoretical perfectly free market and most people who are pro-capitalist don't even want perfectly free markets either.

There are even some arguments for how having a strong state that owns all the productive assets is communism, everyone is a stakeholder in the state and the state owns all the businesses so it's basically like everyone owning their own workplace if you squint. It solves a lot of design problems to do it this way. There are of course problems with this design and Venezuela is a pretty central example of one of the common failure modes, but it's probably fair to call it communism.

Great points

Is Venezuela even remotely communist?

Sure. Socialism is generally recognized as 'remotely close' to communist, and the Venezuelan government under the PSUV was for about a decade across the 2000s was widely praised as socialist success by other self-identified socialist and communist individuals, parties, and in some cases governments around the world, even as Venezuela's own leaders proudly claimed their own socialist credentials, albeit through the Chavismo mixture of socialism.

Now, the classic motte and bailey is that true communism has never been tried and all the self-identified communists who were recognized as communists at the time really just tried to implement variations of socialism. Or the no true communist fallacy that, in hindsight, they were just right-wing autocrats who betrayed true communist/socialist principles.

It looks a lot more like an autocratic narco state

Most communist and ideologically socialist states look like autocratic states because they are. Their specific funding source may differ- Venezuela's was and still is oil- but the devolution into criminal states because corruption becomes a requirement to handle the economic disfunction is pretty par for course.

I will happily admit I know very little of Venezuela. Everything I've read about it's governance in this thread sounds more like "dictatorship loots country for its seed corn, country spirals into poverty" moreso than "they legitimately tried to ensure the workers owned the means of production/captured more of the surplus of their labour and then it fells apart for X reason"

I also imagine I probably have a somewhat simplified model of communism in my head, I don't have a deep dialectic understanding of Marx et al, that's for sure.

Or the no true communist fallacy that, in hindsight, they were just right-wing autocrats who betrayed true communist/socialist principles.

This rings pretty true to me? Most communist nations may have called themselves communist, but again kind of just did the whole "dictatorship loots country for its seed corn" thing.

I'm not entirely sure how that's a fallacy. I think I'd pre-emptively reconcile it by saying I'm pretty confident communism is an optimistic idea that simply doesn't work when paired with human nature, as we keep seeing when communist countries end up being autocratic shitholes where the workers are just as fucked as they were previously.

Do the workers own the means of production/their firms?

Has that been the case in any communist regime?

If not, then it's not a particularly meaningful yardstick with which to judge how communist a country is.

Are lawyers, doctors, dentists, accountants, and architects in the developed world communist because the workers sometimes own the firms?

I think it is a good yardstick. That sounds like almost every communist country has been a dysfunctional mess that couldn't achieve its stated aims.

Perhaps (very likely), their stated aims simply aren't possible.

Are lawyers, doctors, dentists, accountants, and architects in the developed world communist because the workers sometimes own the firms?

This is kind of a snappy point that I don't really understand, the answer is obviously no.

I'm happy to admit that this is something I don't know a ton about (hence commenting, to learn more). But just because a doctor, etc captures most of the value of their labour doesn't make them a communist, as that is a political/economic system. As I understand it, the goal of communism is so that every worker is able to capture their surplus value as well as a doctor does.

There was some speculation about the real driver behind this in the Transnational Thursday thread a few weeks ago.

How did it go from "stop drug smuggling" to "regime overthrow"?

Marco Rubio really wanted to do it, and sold it to Trump as a big dick move.

As a dry run for Cuba or?

At this point, Venezuela is a lot more strategically significant than Cuba. More people, more resources, more cartels, and of course way more oil. Cuba is just a leftover dump from the 60s.

America will never truly be free until one can drive from Barrow to San Juan. We need Cuba in order to build the Caribbean Super Bridge.

We cut aid to Ukraine in exchange for a Russian blessing of an invasion of Cuba. Who says no?

Only about... 129 years late by my reckoning.

Maybe it's a redemption arc for murdering a bunch of Korean fishermen?

Probably was an inside job given there are no reported US losses. Either that or the Venezuelan military is even more incompetent than normally believed. The level of air cover required to get helicopters down and abduct Maduro means that Venezuelans air defenses should most definitely have managed to inflict some losses in return if they were trying.

One of the few things where I agree with the Trump admin's actions, hopefully this leads to a new regime in Venezuela.

100% inside job. We had helicopters. A handful. They had fortified official positions. There is no way you break into an official residence and have zero casualties. The question is whether everyone surrounded him took a deal or if Maduro made the deal.

People asking what’s next….most of the old power structure is in place and nothing will change… That is silly. Bribes have been paid. Deals struck. We just don’t know what else is in the deal yet.

Funny thing is if Israel did this everyone would expect Israel to know what they are doing. But because of Biden, Hillary, Bush incompetence we all assume incompetence.

I mean, this was the country which managed to sink its own ship while attempting to detain a cruise ship for no particular reason.

Unbelievable. Just, why? I can’t perceive any way this is more justified than Russia invading Ukraine. As much as I hate the left for being anti-White this may have crossed the line where I would attend an anti-Trump protest it’s so unjustified.

I truly deserve the Fell for it Again Award

Venezuela was repeatedly threatening to invade its neighbors over the objections of the local regional powers(they'd been given knock-it-off notices by both left and right controlled governments in the USA and Brazil). Invading Venezuela and getting rid of Maduro is broadly popular among the rest of Latin America on 'this is what we have a hegemon for' grounds.

Do you have a source on this being the justification the US is using?

Regime change is bad therefore we do regime change.

American meddling, invasions and regime change is extremely unpopular in latin America.

This time, according to polls, it is solidly supported by majority in LatAm countries, even more so than support for it in USA.

The US obviously does not now and never has believed regime change is per se bad.

I have little sympathy for Ukraine. If you repeatedly antagonize your neighboring superpower, you get what you get.

For context, Ukraine's 'antagonisation' consisted of existing as a sovereign state that wasn't under the Russian boot.

Personally I have a lot of sympathy for the Venezuelan people. Sure, they elected Chavez, but it's not as if they are the only country in the western hemisphere to elect an erratic, authoritarian populist. I'm glad that Maduro has been deposed, and hopefully the lack of clannishness like in Iraq and Afghanistan means that regime change will be a little more effective this time, although I'm not holding my breath for good governance or anything.

For context, Ukraine's 'antagonisation' consisted of existing as a sovereign state that wasn't under the Russian boot.

What do you think would have happened to Mexico in 1983 if they had decided that they just had to be a member of the Warsaw Pact, and host Soviet military bases and SCUD missile installations? What do you think is happening to Venezuela now?

No one ever answers this one

You don't even have to use a Cold War example. What do we think would happen to Mexico today if it tried to let China set up naval bases on its coasts?

No one answers it because it's a loaded question. Ukraine was not attempting to join NATO or have US or NATO military bases and missile installations when Russia invaded.

As UNIAN reported earlier, the Verkhovna Rada on September 20, 2018 sent to the Constitutional Court a presidential bill amending Ukraine's Constitution regarding the strategic course of the state for obtaining full membership of Ukraine in the EU and NATO (No. 9037).

The law proposes that Ukraine's irreversible course toward European and Euro-Atlantic integration be stipulated in the preamble of the Fundamental Law along with the confirmation of European identity of the Ukrainian people.

Article 102 is supplemented with the provision that "the president of Ukraine is the guarantor of the implementation of the state's strategic course for obtaining Ukraine's full membership in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization."

https://www.unian.info/politics/10437570-ukraine-s-parliament-backs-changes-to-constitution-confirming-ukraine-s-path-toward-eu-nato.html

No one ever answers this one

Because communist Cuba is right over there, has been since most of the Cold War, and once the poser of the hypothetical Mexican question is reminded of that they tend to quietly drop the topic to avoid acknowledging that their gotcha-hypothetical already came to pass, but with a different conclusion than they wanted to imply.

You don't even have to use a Cold War example. What do we think would happen to Mexico today if it tried to let China set up naval bases on its coasts?

Sanctions and spycraft, obviously.

We already know what came to be of a country neighboring the post-WW2 Americans that wanted foreign security guarantees, hosted military assets, and more. It was not invaded, let alone annexed on revanchist grounds. Spied on, attempted assassinations galore, a half-baked dissident landing, and sanctioned for decades, but not invaded by the regional great power.

Cuba was pointedly never made a member state of the Warsaw Pact.

The US did invade Cuba, it was just half-assed and the invaders lost.

Cuba didn't get fucked up because the USSR backed off from their threatening plans, and Cuba is a small poor country that doesn't have any ability to threaten the USA, most notably, no land border. The USA was willing to go full kinetic to stop the USSR building out nukes in Cuba.

Ukraine or hypothetical Mexico are large, share land borders that make some flavor of invasion much more plausible, and the West or hypothetical China didn't back off from their (less threatening than nukes) plans.

I am fairly confident that the USA would go kinetic to prevent a Chinese naval base in Baja California, if the spycraft and diplomacy failed.

Also to be clear, the Russians are trigger happy retards and going into Ukraine was dumb and disproportionate to the threat they faced.

Also to be clear, the Russians are trigger happy retards

They are, and I think they/Putin reacted from a place of wanting Russia to be a superpower or empire again rather than just a nation. Putin is a Soviet Union KGB creature.

BUT - they've gained quite alot of valuable agricultural land (which might be very important in the coming century), industrial areas and natural resources like oil, gas, and rare earths, haven't they? Ukraine was always poor but quite a big portion of the valuable real estate worth trillions of $ have fallen to the russkies, unless I was badly misinformed on this.

The fundamentals are actually against agricultural land becoming more valuable over time, populations are declining while productivity per acre continually improves.

What of the worldwide soil erosion?

In this context, has the dictator of the US been writing essays for decades about how Mexicans don't really exist, how they're really confused Americans who have been mislead by a regime of HitlerNazis, how Mexican land is rightfully part of the USA because of some confused historical nonsense about the Aztecs, has already invaded Canada and also the USSR has publicly refused to allow Mexico to join the Warsaw Pact, host Soviet military bases and SCUD missile installations?

If you repeatedly antagonize your neighboring superpower, you get what you get.

What the hell are you talking about? It's the USA that has been constantly antagonizing Venezuela and interfering with it. They've fairly successfully attacked the quality life of all Venezuelans by economic war via aggressive sanctions.

This will also no doubt further fracture the Republican base in a major way, as interventionist neocons clash with America-First isolationists.

This implies American "conservatives" and Republicans have ideology. They do not. There is no indication of this, and plenty to the opposite. The Republican base runs on "vibes" and hatred of the other to give a sense of unity and "doing something." And has a massive proclivity towards political personality cults and authoritarianism. They'll be fine - for now. Our glorious tribe leader did something, it was even a success that feels tough, and enemy tribe doesn't like it = it was good libtards. Hell yeah!

  • -22

The Republican base runs on "vibes" and hatred of the other to give a sense of unity and "doing something."

Please,

Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.

Also:

Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat.

Also:

Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible.

Also:

Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument.

Remember that this is a discussion site, not (yet another) place on the Internet for performative outrage/consensus building denigration/low effort signalling.

Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.

How would I provide evidence? It's a personal belief based on a lifetime of experience and thought about the subject, from my own perspective. Is there supposed to be some peer reviewed paper on "Republicans are all doody heads"? There isn't one and never will be, regardless of any truth or falsity. Cut it out with these isolated demands for rigour that you know can't be met.

Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible.

Uh huh. And I'm sure you would moderate and demand SOURCE?! for statements about how "Cultural Marxists" have infiltrated institutions and are destroying western civilization. That's sarcasmistic, I know you haven't. Or Liberals/leftists believe X. Or, to hit on the subject I replied to you elsewhere with, "Hamas are blood thirst terrorists."

You're full of disingenuousness and nonsense. Of course posting about general groups is tolerated and even celebrated. Just outgroups, not things you identify with and get pissed off are being criticized. E.g. if you were an Islamist mod things might be flipped but the behavior would be the same. Everyone that criticizes Hamas gets modded. Everyone that says "American Republicans are all warmongers and puppets of Israel" flies by because everyone that thinks differently gets banned and "we all know" that's obviously true.

There's nothing I can say to you. I repeat myself, it's my personal beliefs, endorsed by no one, meaning nothing. There's no way to say them other than the way I did. Honestly, if you people hate it so much, just don't engage or block me.

consensus building

This is a particularly hilarious accusation to bring up. Are you saying I, the constantly mod warned and downvoted, is the one interested in consensus building here? Seriously? By preaching against the choir? Who am I building a consensus with? No, if anyone is doing that it's.....

On a geopolitical and moral level though, I have little sympathy for Venezuela, for the same reason I have little sympathy for Ukraine. If you repeatedly antagonize your neighboring superpower, you get what you get.

Somehow I don't think you'd be consistent in your views if China bombed your house because the US antagonized China.

(and Ukraine doesn't neighbour any superpowers)

I don’t know if you’ve read many of my other posts, but I’ve criticized US policies of needlessly antagonizing Russia and China a lot specifically because it increases the likelihood of that happening for no particular gain.

Well username checks out anyway. Your most recent to this post stated:

Trump is a traitor to the USA, and we need to start seriously discussing imprisonment or a bullet to the brain.

But that was almost a year ago, so I suppose "soon" is relative.

The only thing that saves me is my infrequent posting.

And it's also a reference to how I am constantly banned for speaking my mind on Reddit, and how I don't think this place will be any different. It hasn't been. That post was immediately read in bad faith by some mod with an attitude and used as an excuse to freak out, self preen, and ban the scary wrong think. Surprise surprise. And you know, my very first post here was censored. You can't read it to this day, as far as I can tell. So I was banned before I even started, in a way. I wasn't pessimistic enough.

I stand by the name.

  • -24

In my own time here I've seen far more offensive posts than yours, but typically framed as arguments with (what at least passed for) support. You're "boo outgroup"ing here hard. While you can't do that in one direction on Reddit, you're discouraged from doing it in either direction here.

I see your username, and I immediately read your posts in the tone of that peasant in the Holy Grail who is complaining about being oppressed.

Using my elite noticing powers, I notice that flouncers with dramatic names begging the mods to ban them rarely, if ever, have anything interesting to say. Maybe the contents of your mind are simply uninteresting, or worse: boring. Why don't you know, make a good post, instead of preemptively winding up your victim complex?

If every bar you go to is full of assholes, maybe you're the common denominator.

You ever looked into attribution bias? If you consistently perceive the world around you as being against you, the common factor is you, not the world.

Yes. But the thing is I get banned for contradictory things. I'm permabanned on /r/law for defending Donald Trump (I think it was either the Stormy Daniels sham trial debacle or saying he has a legal right to control the border), here I was banned and threatened with a future permaban for speaking ill Donald Trump. I was recently permabanned from /r/fantasy for pushing back against someone that was making things political and responded, keeping things political admittedly, with a post that implied the word fascism is used too liberally and irrationally (it was one of those "somehow punching Nazis is bad now?? posts). Here I'm already getting pushback and "fight me" posts for saying the word fascism at all - and implying fascists might be bad.

So what's the common line? Yes, I am the baddie. But it's not the content of ideas or character. It's having a very angry and abrasive tone of voice in writing, being a contrarian that speaks against the tribe in whatever tribe I'm in. Not liking circlejerks. The other common line is that the modern post-smartphone Internet is incredibly siloed and stuffed to the gills with ninnies that want to destroy people that vaguely disagree with them. And people like me that want to think in confrontational dialectic can't last.

It didn't use to be this way, and I don't think I've changed that much from the days of forums. So yes, I say it's the world, and you, and the children that are the ones that are in the wrong.

  • -10

here I was banned and threatened with a future permaban for speaking ill Donald Trump

False. You were banned for breaking the rules, more than once. We don't moderate content. You are welcome to speak ill of Donald Trump (or whomever) all you like--certainly others do. You just have to follow the rules when you do it.

It's having a very angry and abrasive tone of voice in writing, being a contrarian that speaks against the tribe in whatever tribe I'm in.

Just about everyone here has a contrarian streak. Nobody cares. You can even be angry. (You can even get away with being a little abrasive, if you can do it artfully and don't target other users!) What you cannot do is make sweeping generalizations, uncharitable assertions, evidence-free rants, etc. You also can't Fedpost (violates the "recruiting for a cause" rule) or submit strictly illegal content for what are hopefully obvious reasons. The rules are what they are, and they will be enforced against you. But they will not be enforced against you for wrongthink, so please don't kid yourself on that score.

Late pointless reply. I intended to respond to more people but lost all will to post and deal with this.

We don't moderate content.

You obviously do. You just label content i.e. things to the left of you as "breaking rules." It's very easy to imagine things you want to see. Show me the man, I'll show you the crime. But I don't think you'll ever own up to it.

You also can't Fedpost (violates the "recruiting for a cause" rule)

And here is the example of intentional bad faith reading. I'm not sure what the definition of "fedposting" is exactly, but I was just stating my opinions in the moment. What else is there to do? I'm not planning or promoting anything. I am saying words, my own internal thoughts, largely for myself.

I, at the time, considered Donald Trump a high level traitor. That's dangerous and very bad. That was my honest belief. The traditional legal, when fully prosecuted, punishment for treason is death. That's U.S. law, it was law all the way back to ancient Rome. Ironically Donald Trump himself agrees with me. We just have different ideas of who is the traitor. And I do think the death penalty is appropriate for serious damaging traitors, but this is not a fucking threat ok?! It's a personal statement, and more legal oriented than anything.

"recruiting for a cause" This in particular is absurd. What cause? I'm a poster on an Internet forum. Apparently I need to say this, though I think it should be obvious, I was not planning to assassinate Trump or any other politician. I was not threatening anybody. Again, I was saying words - online. I do not think ranting to a known hostile audience (on an Internet discussion forum!), in public, with no follow up, is a good way to recruit for an evil plan to assassinate. Not that I want to anyway. Also, to be clear no one on theMotte or its administrators would or do would endorse such a thing, nor do I. Good lord.

But this is the rub of badfaith reading and undesired speech/content interpreted as beyond the pale and therefore illegal speech/thought. Because I, or someone else, could say that the head of Hamas is a threat to the prosperity of the Palestinian people and peace in the mideast, and we need to start thinking about political solutions that end with the death of Khalil al-Hayya. Which is not something I actually totally disagree with. I'll say it out loud, I denounce Hamas and don't think the death or their leaders is a tragedy. Or I could say this about Ceausescu, how his end was a good for Romania and the people that executed him did the right thing. Or maybe Kim Jong-un. Note, this is not an endorsement for killing anybody, it is words on a forum by a nobody with no aspirations. Apparently I have to say this painfully - every time. Anyway, that could be said, because you agree with it, as does the mob here. But Trump? Suddenly triggered. And triggered is an excuse to willfully read in a way that you can torture yourselves into thinking some "rule" has been violated. Seriously, a fucking cause? Again, what fucking cause?

By the way, did you or anyone else on theMotte denounce "fedposting" or political violence when Hamas leaders Ismail Haniye or Yahya Sinwar were assassinated, not legally in a human rights tribunal or for treason, by Israel? I don't think so. And discussion in the form of approval probably washed over like nothing. Funny how that works. But don't mistake me for thinking Hamas leaders dying is some tragedy. I'm saying, I see you. Even if you don't see yourselves.

It's having a very angry and abrasive tone of voice in writing

Yes.

ninnies that want to destroy people that vaguely disagree with them.

... case in point.

I removed your first post according to mod history. I don't remember why or even if I definitely meant to. I'll undo that now. Sorry it upset you, we do have lots of alts of banned users that persistently join and cause the same problems. Sometimes we are trigger happy.

What mod history? It was a first post.

Nevermind, I'm dumb and can't read.

Edit: Thanks for changing it.

What mod history? It was a first post.

There's a log of all mod actions. He checked it to see what happened with your first post.

Everyone's first posts are censored, it's something due to the code the website is based off of and the mods can't turn it off. They have to manually approve all comments until the user gets over a certain amount of karma. If they could turn it off, they would. They generally approve most posts but sometimes don't notice one is in the queue.

It wasn't a one time thing. Because I'm so used to being snarled at, downvoted, or just banned for posting my honest thoughts I eventually noticed my posts, not just the first one, were being shadowbanned. I think they eventually got manually reviewed and approved but I'd say about 1/3 never made it. Mind you I got started around Oct. 7 blow up, so that changes some things but still. No doubt the mods that were reviewing my anti-Israel posts and allowing the ones that went through through were patting themselves on the back as modern day Voltaires, but, again, not all Israel criticism was deemed a good enough fit.

And everyone has a ghost first post that has never seen the light of day? I don't believe it. And a moderator later said that it was personally nixed, so that further clarifies it wasn't normal.

  • -10

Maduro captured and in US custody. Absolutely unhinged but also, one has to say, immensely impressive move.

Yep, I disagree with doing this (because it shouldn't be the USs business, not because Maduro didn't have it coming), but it seems like we at least did it right. Hard to believe we basically Grenada'd Venezuela. Even better than Panama, no siege.

That’s, uh, how we roll.

It’s the careful, rational, von Bismarck-approved objectives which most embarrass us.

the twitter account @s2_underground (which had some good stuff on UKR war) is claiming that Maduro cut a deal with the US and the "raid" was mostly him waiting for a sweet 160th SOAR Uber Ride. I hate to "big if true" this, but @s2_underground is usually better-than-not on bre-confirmed breaks like this.

If you’re Maduro and think you’re going to be deposed, that’s when you resign, leave the crown for the next guy, and sail off into comfortable exile in Russia / China / Cuba / Brazil etc. Agreeing to some elaborate scheme where you spend the rest of your life in jail seems like a bad idea.

What if it was an "invitation to resign" when the Americans were right outside his door, so to speak.

"Hey, surrender now and get extradited to New York, or we're going to yeet you into the hereafter" type deal

We can send him to Midway like Napoleon on Saint Helena.

El Salvador seems more likely. I'm sure Bukele would love to have him in CECOT.

This is the most Elba possible option. He speaks the language, has more in common with his captors than his exilers, and would be subject to local political volitility. He would become a hero.

Maybe? The recent drama with tankers (one seized, one running away and claiming a sudden Russian flag) seems relevant. Either a nominal oil producing state needs more oil, or they were carrying something else the US didn't want getting through. Trying to import a bunch of air defenses (whether MANPADS or S-400s) seems like a good way to deter this operation if successful, or to trigger it while it's still a viable option.

It's possible they were importing weapons or something (which would explain the timing), but Venezuela needs naphtha to process their heavy oil, and that's what Skipper was supposedly carrying.

Also black bagging his wife would point towards a deal.

I'm not sure if people normally grab family members in operations like this. They certainly didn't swipe the wives in the Bin Laden raid.

Maduro’s wife is (was) an actually-significant political figure in the regime, getting both of them would be necessary for any kind of clean regime change plan. If nothing else she would make a great figurehead for a continuation government, there’s a fair chance she would’ve been the successor had only Maduro been grabbed.

Bin Laden's youngest wife was turned over to the Pakistanis during or after the raid; she was the only one there.

TIL. Looks like they do grab family members as standard practice on these things.

In any case she's been indicted too.

Maduro cut a deal with the US

Yeah, that makes sense of what we know so far, but it could all change as more information comes out. It does seem remarkably fast and easy from "American helicopters seen over Caracas" to "We've got the guy in our keeping" so some kind of "oh crap the Yanks are literally on my doorstep where's Donald's number again?" deal-making seems plausible, at least.

Praying on this one.

?

Is this a reference I'm not picking up? Genuinely confused here.

No, I just woke up in the morning hoping we weren't going to spend $3,000,000,000,000.00 killing ten thousand brown people again.

I'm going to assume CAG/DEVGRU made this happen. That he was a) a current head of state and b) taken alive ranks this as the new GOAT raid ahead of Bin Laden - at least as far as my money goes.

It's schizo boomerism. But gotta admit, it was quick and effective. Bet this is what Putin wanted to do in Ukraine. Started before lunch and done in time for dinner. Impressive.

mission accomplished

Taking out a leader means nothing. Leaders come and go.

Respectfully disagree.

Sometimes it seems to me like Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine have gotten people convinced that the way to do military action is to occupy a foreign country and turn it into a vassal and that's the standard by which all military operations must be measured. Iraq and Afghanistan failed because the vassalization process broke down, not because of the invasion.

This isn't true! Limited military operations, including punitive expeditions and decapitation strikes, can be successful if the goals are modest.

I don't think Putin could have achieved all of his goals merely by removing Zelensky, but arguably if we had tried this in the Middle East (no invasion, just grabbing bin Laden) we would all be much, much better off.

What's happening in Venezuela looks like a repeat of our removal of Manuel Noriega, which was viewed as a successful operation for the States. Obviously it's too soon to tell if there's a Part 2: the US could still decide to go back for more and get bogged down. But overall I think taking out leaders is actually a pretty viable strategy in the right circumstances.

arguably if we had tried this in the Middle East (no invasion, just grabbing bin Laden) we would all be much, much better off.

The hard part is that Bin Laden was hiding, and could hide because he wasn't the formal sovereign leader of an actual government, which would have required him to physically locate himself at the seat of power. AFAIK we offed him pretty much the instant we actually figured out where he was, it just took that long to figure out where he was.

Yes, I agree - the US (or at least the Bush administration) needed a quick win. But there were lower-level guys we could have snatched, and even a punitive Just Cause-style expedition against, say, Pakistan Afghanistan would have been a politically acceptable show of US wrath, I think.

Manuel Noriega

So we will soon have regular flights to the US to bring cocaine.

https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/13/world/cocaine-is-again-surging-out-of-panama.html

Neocon wars always end up with drugs and refugees.

Just removing one person won't do much, the regime can easily continue even if one person disappears.

So we will soon have regular flights to the US to bring cocaine.

I think that's bad but that's not a failure of the military operation if the military operation's goals are more modest than "end all cocaine flights for all time." By which sorts of standards no policies, wars, or other human endeavors are successful.

Neocon wars always end up with drugs and refugees.

Are we defining "neocon war" here as a war that ends up with drugs and refugees or what.

Just removing one person won't do much, the regime can easily continue even if one person disappears.

Correct. But also, the regime can easily not continue if even one person disappears. It depends a lot on the regime and the person!

Imperialist war projects end up causing chaos. Chaos opens up for refugees and migrants. The war to bring feminism to Afghanistan 10x the world's heroin production. US meddling in LATAM has caused millions of refugees to pour into the US and has helped drug smuggling.

Imperialist war projects end up causing chaos.

All war projects end up causing chaos; war is chaos. Look, your original argument was that removing a leader was meaningless. I don't think that's correct. If the US had committed to merely removing AQ leadership during the GWOT there would have been less chaos. But by your telling that would have been meaningless. Which justifies the massive war project that was the Global War on Terror, since merely removing UBL and other AQ leaders wouldn't have accomplished anything. But now (in your telling) we're Kafka-trapped, since a massive war project to hunt down and eliminate terrorists would have created more chaos instead of stability. So the proper response to hostile, violent, or illegal acts against your nation-state or populace, apparently, is to do nothing.

The war to bring feminism to Afghanistan 10x the world's heroin production.

Forgive me for wondering if you didn't get it exactly backwards. You'll notice that Afghanistan was moved on about 3 seconds after the Taliban banned heroin; heroin production massively soared under Coalition occupation, and then after the US finally left Afghanistan heroin suddenly dried up in North America and subsequently was banned (again) by the Taliban, cratering production. Very mysterious - it's almost as if between 2001 and 2021 whoever was interested in keeping the heroin supply going developed a superior alternative.

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In part, because it creates fear in the future leaders.

Of course, it also incentivizes deterrence (eg nukes)

Yet it takes a kid youtuber to catch billions in Somali fraud at home. At this point I'm pretty sure the US has been run by the CIA since at least Kennedy and all the rest of democracy, the federal government and congress is the equivalent of handing your little brother a controller that isn't plugged in when he wants to "play nintendo" with you.

or, on the other hand, it might be that the Mormons in the CIA are just vastly more competent than the rest of the government.

The Somali fraud YouTuber is also a Mormon, so it checks out.

Manuel Noriega was, what, two weeks? New record set? Impressive indeed.

Grenada was even more successful than Panama. Wikipedia has it lasting 8 days, and the day of the invasion is now Thanksgiving for the Grenadians, so a cultural win as well. I'm not clear on whether the Venezuelan operation is completely over yet, so it may be too soon to put it in the record books.

This will also no doubt further fracture the Republican base in a major way, as interventionist neocons clash with America-First isolationists.

Only if it is prolonged and messy. Red blooded americans do love short victorious wars that just showcase the military might of the USA war machine.

Boomers did. I don't think the younger generations will given the current debt level.

No, as long as the USA wins very fast and we don't have to fight a counterinsurgency/civil war, we're pretty happy with it. We don't want anything that will lead to a draft(yes I know objectively the US would lose WWIII rather than imposing one, but the core red tribe still expects to be conscripted if America can't raise enough troops voluntarily). Maduro needed to go.

I am baffled by my ignorance, but

Why?

What has led to this?

Marco Rubio is hawk against Venezuela and Cuba. I think he convinced Trump to do it. He is Trump's Secretary of State and National Security Advisor. He finally got what he desires.

There's a decade plus of Rubio saying we need something like this. Article from last month: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/us/politics/rubio-cuba-venezuela.html

Edit: Looking at Trump's photos during the raid: it is Trump and Rubio sitting together at Mar a Lago watching a screen.

It's the monroe doctrine. Basically the US is the hegemon in the western hemisphere, and Cuba is the sole allowed exception. Venezuela had this coming a long time.

How is Cuba an allowed exception? Cuba is still embargoed, despite being no worse than Vietnam.

Because the US has explicitly committed to not invading it despite hosting Russian military bases.

I could find only that since Cuban Crisis USSR/Russia had only sigint base on Cuba, not military.

Yet it is still subject to an incredibly harsh embargo. Long after similar "communist" regimes and direct Russian allies that killed relatives of mine have become major trading partners. That doesn't really fit with "allowed."

That’s because of Cuban exiles in Miami-Dade County. Florida was a critical swing state in American electoral politics and Miami-Dade county was critical for winning Florida. Any party that normalized relations with Cuba would have lost the White House for the next 25 years.

That doesn't really point to Cuba being "allowed" to exist peacefully in opposition to the United States.

The reason Cuba has been "allowed" to exist for so long is not out of some reasoned exception to the Monroe Doctrine, it is simply because the Castro regime has historically been competent and popular enough that overthrowing it has not been practical.

In Venezuela, Chavez poked the United States more than Maduro ever did, but he was a competent strongman and so he lived to die of cancer in power.

I think it’s a few things.

•The first likely window for an invasion was the Cold War. Kennedy’s handshake deal not to invade Cuba meant that Cuba wasn’t going to be invaded for the last 30 years of the Cold War. Even if Washington doesn’t value honor, nobody wanted to pick at that scab after the nuclear near miss in ‘62, and several other fronts of the Cold War were more important anyway.

•The next likely window for an invasion would have been in the 90s, after the USSR fell. But no one had any appetite for major military action in the 90s, and Cuba wasn’t engaging in any particularly theatrical genocides that would have moved the US to action.

•The third likely window for an invasion would have been during the post-9/11 paranoia spiral. But Cheney’s priority list was Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and North Korea, and the Iraq boondoggle meant that he never even managed to finish the top five, much less cleaning up the D-listers.

•After that there was a pretty big phobia of wading into regime change, and Cuba just kind of kept lumbering on due to inertia.

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Because since at least 1991 the US has been technically and geopolitically capable of invading Cuba and overthrowing the communists there without provoking a global crisis and hasn’t done so.

Anyone who tells you they understand what's going on is probably an idiot. It seems likely to me that it all makes the most sense if you have classified intelligence at your fingertips. But what I have noticed is that over the past decade or so China has been influencing a lot of current events in a plausibly deniable way.

China pushes on Iran and Russia to stir up regional trouble. Iran pushes on Hamas and Hezbollah to create Oct 7th. Venezuelan oil goes to Cuba and China to be refined (because they mismanaged their oil industry enough that they no longer have the ability to refine it locally.) Russia and Cuba have soldiers stationed in Venezuela. Russia supplied Venezuela with the Buk-M2E air defense system that the US completely stomped on last night.

These countries are all tangled with each other. You can't really have a foreign policy for one without taking the others into account. And a good proportion of the US political class is terrified of China. China has been building up a fleet and industrial capacity that can utterly dominate the US Navy. And no country goes through the enormous expense of building up a fleet without intending to use it.

It's not a coincidence that China sent an envoy to Venezuela yesterday, where they reportedly spoke with Maduro for 3 hours.

It's also not a coincidence that China has fleets of ships around South America, ostensibly to deplete the fish around the coast (which is bad enough.) But consider how many drones can fit in a shipping container. Consider how the Ukraine pulled off one of their more successful attacks against Russia. It doesn't take a lot for China to turn their annoying and environmentally damaging fishing fleet into a drone kill fleet, right at America's south.

If you want to understand what is going on, you need to start seeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Iranian water riots, China firing missiles and practicing live fire drills while surrounding Taiwan, and the US capture of Maduro as all different angles of the same problem.

One reason why I think the US pulled on this thread of the knot is because we have a True Democratically Elected leader of Venezuela safely tucked away, who can potentially take the reigns. That's the harder part to pull off and what will probably determine if this was actually a successful operation.

It's also not a coincidence that China has fleets of ships around South America, ostensibly to deplete the fish around the coast (which is bad enough.) But consider how many drones can fit in a shipping container.

They're fishing boats off the coast of Peru. Ukraine's drone containers were smuggled onto russian territory, a few hundred meters from the planes.

And no country goes through the enormous expense of building up a fleet without intending to use it.

Except the US, who, I assume, does it out of benevolence?

Well, no. The US obviously uses our fleet to maintain its hegemony. Most of the time our fleet keeps shipping safe and reliable. But more than that, we maintain our military dominance to prevent another World War. A tactic which has been successful for 80 years, we shall see if that can continue.

China building a rival fleet is obviously threatening to the US. I do not comment on the relative morality of it. They have as much of a right to it as the US. Though there is something to be said about China not showing as much of an interest in keeping shipping lanes safe.

You said building a fleet is proof of intention to use it. That's like saying anyone carrying a gun is premeditating murder. You interpret everything china does as aggressive against you, when it's far easier to see it as defensive in nature. The US is scary.

I agree with you that the US is scary. Building a fleet is an intention to use it. The US built a fleet and intends to use it, as shown by them using it all the time. I don't see the contradiction here.

No, I don't think they use it all the time. The size of the US fleet is massive overkill for what it's used for. It's like Britain's old policy of having a bigger fleet than the next two powers combined. It wasn't because they needed the ships for some coups in zanzibar or wherever.

There is, I note, a consistent history of Britain very much using that fleet for several hundred years.

In the comment above this you said, "The US is scary." Now you are saying the US doesn't use it's Navy. This seems like a contradiction.

The US doesn't have to shoot things in order for the Navy to be used. The Navy is used by projecting power. Every time a country wants to do something that may have geopolitical implications, they have to think, "But what about the Americans?"

The Americans don't want to have to deal with China the same way the rest of the wold has to deal with us. On some level it's sheer pragmatic selfishness, on another we believe our Christian/Liberal morals are superior to all others and so if there must be a Hegemon, it is best if it's us. But either way there's no contradiction here.

If you want to understand what is going on, you need to start seeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Iranian water riots, China firing missiles and practicing live fire drills while surrounding Taiwan, and the US capture of Maduro as all different angles of the same problem.

One of the other things this entire adventure has demonstrated is that the US can suddenly and rapidly flow forces to a previously abandoned airstrip and rapidly project power to that location.

In every "Eagle v. Dragon" wargame, China pummels the heck out of US airbases in Guam and Japan with ballistic missiles, destroying large portions of US air power on the ground. If the US can, at short notice, transform any of the dozens or hundreds of little airports in the AO into operating bases and start reconstituting old World War-vintage airstrips to platforms for tactical aircraft, the target set for Chinese ballistic missiles expands dramatically.

And of course this is not a surprising US capability. But it's one thing to know we can do it in theory and another thing to see the US actually execute on it so briskly. A successful snap air assault against a prepared enemy is icing on the cake.

It's a little confusing. There are a bunch of plausible influencing motivations.

Trump is well known to have an ego problem. It seems like war hawks have been able to sucker him into various actions by promising him easy wins that will cement his legacy.

DC people operate on presidents with an isolate and control access strategy. The more anti-intervention elements in the administration don't have the pull or reputation to counter the hawks.

Rubio also wants a big win to base a 2028* run on.

More specifically, China has been aggressively building it's influence in Latin America for the past 20 years. They've been key figures in keeping Maduro's government running with loans.

Trump came in with the goal of rolling that back, with things like reasserting control over the Panama canal as key parts of it.

Ousting Maduro and having the new government renege on the China loans as illegitimate would be a big loss for China.

Closer to home, Maduro had a lot of help from NGOs when he was flooding the US with his undesirables. They presumably guaranteed that there would be no consequences for Maduro. Now they will be seen as radioactive by other Latin American governments.

Domestically it solves a bunch of the court cases about Venezuelan TPS and deportations.

Rubio also wants a big win to base a 2024 run on.

Either he's two years too late or maybe you mean 2028? Aside from that, do you think Rubio can come back from his failed 2016 run to be a contender in 2028?

More specifically, China has been aggressively building it's influence in Latin America for the past 20 years. They've been key figures in keeping Maduro's government running with loans.

Ah, that explains the reference in this video!

Really? You're that surprised? Or is this some sort of Socratic starting the dialog by just asking questions thing.

The USA has been hostile, demonizing (in a propaganda sense), and desperate for hostile state action against Venezuela for like nearly 2 decades now. The USA still has an imperial mindset where they consider South and Central America to be "theirs" in a sphere of influence. And they hate that Chavez was too socialist (by their perception), and failed to either jump or fall over dead when the USA commanded otherwise. The fact the rabbit keeps getting away with it alone seems to have created and Elmer Fudd like target obsession. One might also speculate the Venezuelan success might be a contagion that furthers socialist (really "social democracy") popularity in the Americas and a successful model of defiance of the USA imperial authority. One of the first things Chavez did was create a very close alliance and collaboration with Cuba, a persona non grata by the CIA/USA's standards, for example.

Again, sphere of influence matters. I've seen no indication Venezuela is more socialist than Scandinavia (which is in fact socialist - or at least used to be. But so embarrassingly successful that there has been a fairly successful history rewrite and brainwashing campaign, post 2005 or so, by neoliberal "experts" to convince people it is akshually like super capitalist) but Sweden is not in America's sphere of influence, so it doesn't get as mad and obsessed about regime change. China is definitely out of America's sphere of influence, so the USA's opinion about the fact Xi calls himself a literal Communist, or the fact he is a flagrant dictator that subverted the oligarchy that was going means jack shit. The latter aspect of Xi isn't actually important but Venezuela propaganda always pretends the USA actually cares about democracy so it should be noted to just get a measuring check on what Big Brother says versus what The Party actually does in revealed preferences. Anyway, with Venezuela, it's different, because the USA thinks it has an entitlement to tell them what government they're allowed to have.

Ultimately though: Trump is erratic, and probably mentally feeble from age if not insane. And he's surrounded by weirdo fascists. He just does things. He is flagging in the approval rates disastrously. He has not improved economic standards of living and he's not going to. There is a lot of indication that the party will be severely chastened in the midterms. He might even end up in jail by the end of his presidency, instead of subverting democracy by pulling a Maduro, like he clearly seems to want. At the same time, we still don't know about Trump's full involvement with a hostile foreign state spy (Mossad) that was involved in controlling/blackmailing American elites and politicians, by "raping kids" and general sexual coercive prostitution. He's admirably tried to flood the zone to get the goldfish public to forget his troublesome involvement with that, not think about the implications of it, but it's still not over. He needs a distraction.

So we get a Falklands War situation.

Finally, for the fascists surrounding Trump, the response might be a win win, based on calculated risk and win. A total successful foreign interventionist coup might distract the public with more zone shit. It might impress his base that are otherwise realizing they're miserable with vicarious jingoism "we are strong" vibes. And if "the left" responds with protests, then that just further validates his base which runs on "do whatever the enemy doesn't like" and general hatred/loathing as a political ideology.

Haven't you noticed how badly Trump and his fascist admin wants to provoke domestic chaos/violence, if not ideally "terrorism?" Remember when he was clearly trying to provoke an internal American shooting war by sending armed military to "blue states" with deliberate antagonism and a "go on and try something" mentality? How he would lie about Portland being in total chaos that needed strong statist militarized goons, responding to him, instead of local authorities? Unfortunately neither the locals of the likes of California protesting his brutal ICE policies nor the, let's face it likely low IQ, armed goons themselves took the bait. But this time... maybe? Provoking internal chaos and tribal factionalism could be Trump's ace in the hole to subvert democracy and cancel elections he's going to lose, if not run for a third term. Gotta "save the Republic." He and those around him are increasingly looking cooked otherwise.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot, it really is about oil. It's always at least partly about oil. People hate that it's so black and white. It really is a major factor.

  • -16

Again, sphere of influence matters. I've seen no indication Venezuela is more socialist than Scandinavia (which is in fact socialist - or at least used to be. But so embarrassingly successful that there has been a fairly successful history rewrite and brainwashing campaign, post 2005 or so, by neoliberal "experts" to convince people it is akshually like super capitalist) but Sweden is not in America's sphere of influence, so it doesn't get as mad and obsessed about regime change.

Having actually lived and worked in Sweden, if it's "socialist", I'm not sure how for example Germany would not count. Sure, there are some elements that are fairly socialist - the medical system is nationalised, similar and similarly dysfunctional to the British (that den of pinkos!) NHS; most blatantly perhaps the housing rental market is subject to price controls and a national queueing system for "first-hand" (direct from owner) rentals with exceptions I didn't understand well. On the other hand, my total income tax at something like 30% of raw income was closer to the US than to Germany with its >40%, and unlike DE and most other European countries unemployment insurance is devolved and strictly optional (you have to proactively choose to join an "A-kassa" and pay monthly dues). Petty entrepreneurship, like setting up an LLC, in Sweden is much easier and cheaper, and even as far as medicine is concerned I am not sure Germany's system with pluralistic but mandatory medical insurance with legally mandated almost-indistinguishable services beyond what brand of Javascript rubble you have to navigate on their websites is actually that much more "free-market" than the NHS-like system.

Okay, I'll bite. Give me your definition of "Fascist".

There is no set definition of Fascist. It's never been rigorously defined (that I know of) by its self described proponents. And yes, it's overused as a snarl/witch accusation. But I think Umberto Eco's Ur Fascism is a good start. Nevertheless I think it's occasionally worth saying, and sometimes points at a real thing. It's a word for a very real phenomenon that happened in the 1920-1950s among certain world leaders. Mussolini just might have been a fascist.

So one definition I'm using here is a fascist is not a standard conservative. Literally Hitler is not von Hindenburg or Helmut Kohl. George Bush II, as much as I hate him, is (probably) not a fascist. Same for most basic bitch Republicans. Trump? I'm not so sure now. Stephen Miller or Steve Bannon? Probably. Peter Thiel, I don't know but I heard yes. Curtis Yarvin? Yes.

Outside of the somewhat vague checklist from Eco, I'd say some of features of fascism are an intense proclivity and desire for fratricide as well as mass massacre of the outgroup. This which fantasizing about mass industrial killing tons of Americans is cosigned by JD Vance. I'm def one of the ones that will end up in neo-Auschwitz for being one of the ill defined "cultural Marxists" by the way, excuse me if I don't have tons of patience for this cute routine (wHaT is FAsCism huh?!) like I should be too stupid to know who my enemies are. Jack Posobiec is one of those actual fascists not just conservatives. Love of plainclothes, secret, and or facially covered police and sham judiciaries are a seeming best hits for the fascist. Andor was a good art depiction of fictional fascism, as a real and distinct thing and if you can't see any parallels by certain real people and their yearnings, well that's on you. You know, the types that are at best nonplussed about sending people to black site torture prisons on spurious charges because they are identified as outgroup, who cares about their suffering, and surely the fact they've been targeted at all means they deserve something, and more.

Fascists are also weird. I don't know how else to say it, they really are and you know it when you see it. Does this look normal to you?. Absorbing scifi and mystics into your supposedly serious political ideology is weird. Himmler, Evola, Mussolini, these are weird or unique dudes, who share a psych profile in one way or another. Thiel, Trump, Moldbug, weird people. Speaking of that last one that wants to mass mulch people that are not him into biodiesel from the all powerful comfort of his blogging and coding chair, doesn't he also want a all powerful corporate neo-"feudalism?"

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini

Maybe that's a little fascist.

But per my original post, fascism is also notably bold, and innovative, in a way. Annexing the sudetenland, the March on Rome, wanting all slavs to be a future slave race for your 1,000 empire, neo-paganism in a very Christian society, industrial death camps for you international race war. They're doing things - out there things. Normal high functioning sociopaths of basic conservatism leaders don't do these kind of things, because they're not normal, even if they wouldn't feel bad about it. Fascists change their society and tradition. So on the question of "why would Trump do this?" "Why would anyone just kidnap a head of state like a common robber, and seemingly not care about the consequence or even comprehend it's not normal?" Well.....

Okay, you did give your definition. Thank you, that's useful.

It's still a little broad: "one definition I'm using here is a fascist is not a standard conservative". What's a standard conservative, by this measure? There's a lot of disagreement on here about 'is that just a liberal, what is a conservative' and so on. But you do at least have a starting point there, so again, you did well there.

This which fantasizing about mass industrial killing tons of Americans is cosigned by JD Vance

The link says he did a cover blurb, but unlike the rest of the article doesn't provide any link to it. Dude, do you not know how the publishing industry generates cover blurbs? They can take a generally negative, critical review of anything and extract two words from it, then slap those (with a copious garnishing of ellipses) on the back as a positive recommendation. Let me see if I can find said blurb and see what it says.

By the bye, I see that book is also described as "NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and PUBLISHERS WEEKLY NATIONAL BESTSELLER". Wow, the NYT is a fascist publication now? 😁

Okay, here's the Vance blurb:

"In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR, college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back." --J. D. Vance, Senator (R-OH)

I'm def one of the ones that will end up in neo-Auschwitz for being one of the ill defined "cultural Marxists" by the way, excuse me if I don't have tons of patience for this cute routine (wHaT is FAsCism huh?!) like I should be too stupid to know who my enemies are.

Honey sweetie boy, I am one of the ones who take badly to that cutesy-poo inconsistent capitalisation trick. If I didn't write it that way, don't attribute it to me. I like your belief in your incipient martyrdom, who says you are going to be important enough to even be noticed by the big bad wolves?

"Oh no they're weird". Well I am shocked to hear a nice, normal, wholesome, down-home family values Mom and Apple Pie cultural Marxist tell me that! Weird, you say? Guess that means I am indeed a fascist, because I am weird too.

Funny you should instance vril, I suppose that makes the entire nation of Britain fascists, seeing as how they drink Bo-Vril 🤣

Yeah Sweden with their…check notes…20.6% corporate tax rate.

Granted individual income taxes are higher (ie they basically are similar to highest rate in the U.S. if you live in a high tax state)

What do corporate taxes have to do with the definition of communism/socialism?

Can it only be considered communism or socialism if corporate tax rates are above x%?

Collective ownership of property is incompatible with allowing people to retain most of their capital. Granted, if you have restrictions that make it near impossible to choose what to do with their capital, then it could still be commie.

If you let private corporations accumulate capital without forced redistribution it's not communism or socialism, yes, obviously.

Really? You're that surprised? Or is this some sort of Socratic starting the dialog by just asking questions thing.

Count me as one of the surprised wanting an ELI5 answer, because this seemed to go from "sinking alleged drug boats" to "we're overthrowing the president" pretty damn fast.

I should run a bingo card on the number of times "fascist" was used here, I'd win bigly!

He might even end up in jail by the end of his presidency

Ah, the old sweet song! I should add that to the bingo card as well, it's been prognosticated by lefty posters on here going back years by now.

Sweden is most assuredly not like Venezuela and has been undergoing a steady economic liberalization for decades. That it has single-payer healthcare and a high tax rate is not a refutation of the former. They are in no way “as socialist as Venezuela”.

England: 69 million people, 55 billionaires

France: 66 million people, 52 billionaires

Sweden: 10 million people, 45 billionaires

For the latter, those aren’t oligarchs and cronies. They mostly come from retail (H&M) and tech (Spotify), etc. Please show me the Venezuelan equivalents.

Under Chavez/Maduro, Venezuela nationalized the steel industry (SIDOR), agriculture, banking (including Banco de Venezuela), gold mining, telecommunications, electricity, fertilizer production (e.g., Fertinitro), cement, and transportation. There were agricultural land reforms and redistribution of that land. And more recently food and agribusiness supply chains, supermarkets, construction, and petrochemicals were moved under state control.

Please show me an equivalent wave of nationalizations that occurred in Sweden.

An obvious but clumsy parallel would be perhaps Norway’s Oljefondet and its oil and gas industry. But not being run by a pair of tinpot socialists, they’ve never done anything as retarded as pegging their currency to the price of crude or firing all the petrochemical engineers not sufficiently loyal to the governing party.

Please show me an equivalent wave of nationalizations that occurred in Sweden.

The nationalizations happened long ago, and as noted started to privatize in the 90s. These are not the same timelines, so you won't see the same. Sweden used to be more socialized, Venezuela used to be more marketized and started changing more dramatically under Chavez (and the USA freaked out). But the point is they are both mixed economies at this point and not profoundly different. Do you have objective evidence to the contrary? Randomly listing cherry picked set a state owned enterprises (oooh scary) is not a substantive comparison.

Under Chavez/Maduro, Venezuela nationalized

I'm just going to list Chinese SOEs because that's easier for me, and I don't think you're willing to call modern China a socialist success story. Though I'll say right now you're right that there would appear to be more state owned enterprises in Venezuela than Sweden.

  • (SIDOR)/Baowu
  • banking (including Banco de Venezuela) / Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC)
  • gold mining / China Minmetals Corporation
  • telecommunications / China Mobile
  • electricity / State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC)
  • fertilizer / China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina)
  • cement / China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC)
  • transportation / China Railway And so on.

Here is a gish gallop wiki link of Swedish state enterprises.

I tried asking an AI (Grok) to compare the private versus state aspects of comparative nations on the whole. Because I neither have the skillset nor the will to dig through hard stats myself, especially just for this post. Here's what it spit out, if you're curious:

Image summation if bottom text is annoying

Sweden
Indicator State/Public Share Private Share Notes
Government expenditure as % of GDP 49% N/A This represents total government outlays (including transfers, welfare, pensions, etc.), showing the state's role in redistribution. It does not reflect direct production.
Government final consumption as % of GDP 26% 74% This measures the public sector's direct contribution to GDP production (e.g., public services like education and healthcare). The private sector (including households and businesses) accounts for the rest.
Public sector employment as % of total workforce 29% 71% Includes employment in general government and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Sweden has one of the highest public employment rates in the OECD.
SOE turnover as % of GDP 8% N/A SOEs (e.g., Vattenfall in energy, LKAB in mining) have a combined turnover of SEK 531 billion, representing a small but strategic state ownership in key sectors. Their direct value added to GDP is estimated at 2-3%. SOEs employ 137,000 people (2.6% of total workforce).

Overall estimate: The state (including public services and SOEs) accounts for roughly 25-30% of the economy in terms of production and employment, while the private sector dominates the remaining 70-75%.

Venezuela
Indicator State/Public Share Private Share Notes
Government expenditure as % of GDP 18% N/A Total government outlays (including transfers and subsidies); lower than many economies due to fiscal constraints and underreporting.
Government final consumption as % of GDP 12% (estimated) 88% Direct public sector contribution to GDP (e.g., services like education and defense); adjusted estimates amid economic volatility. Private sector dominates the remainder.
Public sector employment as % of total workforce 24% 76% Includes general government and SOEs; informal employment is high (44%), blurring lines.
SOE turnover/contribution as % of GDP 15-20% N/A Dominated by PDVSA (state oil company), which accounts for 95% of exports and an estimated 15-20% of GDP. Other SOEs in mining and energy add 5%.

Overall estimate: The state (including public services and SOEs) directly accounts for roughly 25-35% of the economy in terms of production and employment, with the private sector handling 65-75%—though much private activity operates under heavy state regulation and informal conditions. Key sectors like oil are almost entirely state-owned.

China
Indicator State/Public Share Private Share Notes
Government expenditure as % of GDP 33% N/A Total government outlays (including transfers, subsidies, and investments); moderate compared to welfare-heavy economies.
Government final consumption as % of GDP 17% 83% Direct public sector contribution to GDP (e.g., services like education and defense). Total final consumption is 56% of GDP, with households at 40%.
Public sector employment as % of total workforce 25-28% 72-75% Includes general government and SOEs; private sector supports 80-87% of urban employment.
SOE turnover/contribution as % of GDP 25-40% N/A SOEs generate significant value in strategic sectors; more recent analyses suggest 23-30% value added, though revenue figures can overstate due to costs.

Overall estimate: The state (including public services and SOEs) accounts for roughly 30-40% of the economy in terms of production and value added, while the private sector dominates 60-70%—though private firms often face state influence via regulations, subsidies, and partnerships.

State control =/= socialism either though

That just sounds like autocracy

Do Venezuelan workers own the means of production? No, they do not

I guess it is true that real socialism has never been tried. (At least by any nation state.)

No country with a Bentley dealership can be socialist.

One might also speculate the Venezuelan success might be a contagion that furthers socialist (really "social democracy") popularity in the Americas and a successful model of defiance of the USA imperial authority.

I don't particularly disagree with you on the foreign policy angle, but if you consider Venezuela a success, how does a failure look like in your mind?

Finally, for the fascists surrounding Trump, the response might be a win win, based on calculated risk and win. A total successful foreign interventionist coup might distract the public with more zone shit. It might impress his base that are otherwise realizing they're miserable with vicarious jingoism "we are strong" vibes.

Weird, as a Trump-adjacent """fascist""", I'm pretty sure I want them to leave Venezuala and Iran alone.

I don't particularly disagree with you on the foreign policy angle, but if you consider Venezuela a success, how does a failure look like in your mind?

I don't consider it a success. I think it's been pretty successfully contained, so shout out to USA foreign policy in competence, be it good or evil. But I think it could have been successful as a contagion in the earlier days of Chavez, which lead to a target obsession.

Weird, as a Trump-adjacent """fascist""", I'm pretty sure I want them to leave Venezuala and Iran alone.

Well maybe you're unique then. Good for you, at the risk of being cringe, independent thinking is too rare. But really I mean the leaders of the Trump admin, like Stephen Miller, are fascists. I don't think the common fan base of Trump is all "fascist" (which isn't a word that has a strong definition, so what would that mean for the common man?), though some could probably be called that. I do think they are jingoistic even if they pretend to be anti-war, and they will be impressed military muscle flexing.

  • -10

"fascist" (which isn't a word that has a strong definition)

Gotcha, so all it means is "I/we don't like this guy/these guys" for the modern audience, right?

For a word that doesn't have a strong definition, you were throwing it around pretty freely as though we should all know what a fascist is and does and why that's bad. Almost like you were assuming "the common man" had an idea that fascist is a bad thing to be?

Really? You're that surprised? Or is this some sort of Socratic starting the dialog by just asking questions thing.

No, I'm just genuinely in the dark and asking for explanations by people who know the relevant history. Not even surprised, it's just a big happening and I realize I don't know half a thing about it.

With the caveats that explanation is not endorsement...

Maduro is the successor to Hugo Chavez, who deliberately turned Venezuela into an ideologically anti-American state as a matter of principle. The Chavista Venezuela under the PSUV is the caricature of the instinctual anti-American: if Americans dislike it, it must be good, and if its in conflict with the Americans, all the better. This applies to all geopolitical frictions or conflicts.

Maduro, who was a busdriver before then and who has no prospects or powerbase outside of it, is basically committed to the cause. Whether he is a true believer is irrelevant- without the PSUV he has nothing.

The PSUV, under both Chavez and Maduro, basically transitioned Venezuela from a democracy to a one-party state before democratic backsliding was cool. This included thing like taking over opposition media, banning opposition politicians, and so on. This is bad for democracy, yes, but also pre-cluded a democratic transition of power towards anyone less anti-American.

The PSUV is also hilariously incompetent and corrupt. Corrupt in the sense of 'seize businesses and redistribute to party members', and incompetent in the sense of 'mandate that stores sell products at a loss, and then accuse them of conspiring to have empty shelves.' This has resulted in the general economic collapse of Venezuela, first by destroying most of the non-oil economy, but also by ruining the oil-producing capabilities.

The PSUV also has a more than slight connection with paramilitaries and drug cartels, which is more proximal. Venezuela is a major drug shipment center for the Columbia FARC, but also has long embraced the used of gang-proxies to attack domestic political opponents during protests, and the PSUV views a gang-insurgency strategy as its deterrent to American intervention. This, uh, has consequences, which is why the capital of caracas had murder and kidnapping rates surpassing Iraq War Baghdad.

The economic incompetence and political repression have made Venezuela into something between a failed state and a narco-state spurred a massivive migration exodus. While the vast majority of Venezuelans went to regional countries, they did become one of the largest groups crossing the US southwest border, making the sustained PSUV rule a consistent driver of regional migration. Relatedly, Venezuela through the regional anti-Americanism is one of the closer partners to Nicaragua, whose similarly authoritarian Ortega regime absolutely facilitates northward migration as a way to pressure/annoy the US.

The general quasi-failed-state status has led to three more recent geopolitical tensions with the US.

One, Maduro has basically tried to align with every American geopolitical adversary possible not just diplomatically, or economically in sanctions evasion, but in seeking military aid including stand-off weapons. Fair enough, if you want, but...

Two, about two years ago Maduro attempted a rally-the-flag movement to annex the (oil-rich, American-invested) western third of Guyana. It fizzled, but the American government framing parallel is/was Iraq seeking Kuwait's oil fields to solve monetary issues. Weapon investments thus become an expansionist enabler.

Three, in 2024 Madura rather ineptly stole the Venezuela presidential election, despite all the government efforts to rig it. And by ineptly, I mean the opposition parties got the voter tallies from enough stations to not only persuasively show that Maduro lied about the results, but lost. This is why the Venezuelan opposition has been supporting/calling for US intervention.

Finally, Venezuela has been a pet issue of Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, who is also Trump's national security advisor, the first man to hold both roles since Kissinger. Rubio had influence on the recent National US Security Strategy, which was generally discussed in Europe terms but had greater implications towards the Western hemisphere, where Venezuela could be inferred in the priority list.

The PSUV, under both Chavez and Maduro, basically transitioned Venezuela from a democracy to a one-party state before democratic backsliding was cool. This included thing like taking over opposition media, banning opposition politicians, and so on. This is bad for democracy, yes, but also pre-cluded a democratic transition of power towards anyone less anti-American.

Remember the days when Chavez was deemed cool and much-admired for what he was doing in Venezuela? I guess anti-democracy is okay as long as it's our guy (or someone we would like to adopt as our guy) doing it!

An anti-American communist being admired by NPR is a day ending in a Y. It doesn't really mean anything.

True, that is a "rain is wet" story. But there were a lot of online admirers, I seem to recall, who were praising him for things like shipping oil to other countries at steep discounts and even as a publicity stunt to the USA. The usual suspects, of course, felt that the oil was behind US opposition from the start:

Maria Corina Machado, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025, started a group called Sumaté (“Join Up”), which placed a recall referendum on the ballot. About 70% of the registered voters came to the polls in 2004, and a large majority (59%) voted to retain Chávez as the president.

But neither Machado nor her US backers (including the oil companies) rested easy. From 2001 till today, they have tried to overthrow the Bolivarian process – to effectively return the US-owned oil companies to power. The question of Venezuela, then, is not so much about “democracy” (an overused word, which is being stripped of meaning) but about the international class struggle between the right of the Venezuelan people to freely control their oil and gas and that of the US-owned oil companies to dominate Venezuelan natural resources.

I think oil as a resource is important to all kinds of interests, but it's not the only reason for the problems with Venezuela, and the government there seems to have managed the trick of taking an abundant resource, running it into the ground, making the economy and all the social programmes dependent on revenue from it, and blowing up that revenue by making the oil too difficult to extract and process.

It really might be better for Venezuela for the greedy US corporations to come back and run the oil business, even if they do cream off most of the profits. An idea I never thought I would voice!

and the government there seems to have managed the trick of taking an abundant resource, running it into the ground, making the economy and all the social programmes dependent on revenue from it, and blowing up that revenue by making the oil too difficult to extract and process.

Yeah, that's Communism for you. The joke used to be that if the Communists took over Saudi Arabia, nothing would happen at first but there'd be an oil shortage in 5 years. Venezuela managed to make that not a joke.

(The original version is that if the Federal Government took over the Sahara, there'd be a sand shortage in 5 years. Fortunately the Feds aren't that ambitious)

It really might be better for Venezuela for the greedy US corporations to come back and run the oil business, even if they do cream off most of the profits. An idea I never thought I would voice!

I expect this is the plan. The US companies may take more than is "fair" in some ideal sense, and certainly more than various international watchdog groups will say is fair, but what remains to the Venezuelans will be more than it is now. Assuming things follow the good path... there's still plenty of room for total screwups.

Not OP but has someone who had the same questions I appreciate the explanation. I've seen some people say that Maduro has links to Hezbollah's drug-smuggling enterprise - do you know if this is also true?

Maduro is the successor to Hugo Chavez, who deliberately turned Venezuela into an ideologically anti-American state as a matter of principle.

I wonder why their ideology is anti American. It must be something in the water....

This reasoning is circular. The US warmongers causing countries to dislike them. Then they can justify even more war by saying the countries dislike the US. Being in constant conflikt will cause the other side to dislike you.

The economic incompetence and political repression have made Venezuela into something between a failed state and a narco-state spurred a massivive migration exodus.

Sanctions have had the explicit goal of wrecking Venezuela. Once again neo-con policies lead to mass migration and drug trafficking. The endless warmonger is the root cause of mass immigration. The country with the most Algerians in Europe is the one that colonized Algeria. The country with the most Pakistanis in Europe is the one that colonized Pakistan. The US invadaded central American states and now is turning into Guatamala and Venezuela.

There is no instance of these wars reducing migration and drug smuggling.

To be fair to Americans, has been a long time in the making. Maduro is illegitimate under any reasonable standard, has expressed clear intention to annex sovereign territory, and is incapable of governing. It's a justified war, in casual terms. Doesn't mean it's worth it, except likely for Venezuelans.

I guess worth it depends. If it was literally 12 hours of hostility with limited entanglements thereafter…hard to kvetch too much

If this does actually end up being a ground war then how long it takes us to capture Caracas will be a strong indicator of how much pur military has (or hasn't) been weakened over the last few decades. Took us 3 weeks to capture Baghdad and month to take Kabul, if we don't see a comparable timetable here then it means our military competence really has declined. I do consider South American militaries to be slightly more competent than Middle Eastern/South Asian ones, so if it takes more than 2 months I'll consider that our military competence probably really has declined. If we do it in 2 months or less I'll need to readjust my priors and mot think so poorly of our military's competence (the opposite of how I adjusted my priors about Russia after their failed push on Kiev).

Why would you think of Venezuela as tougher for the US military than Iraq? It seems to me that there are a lot of factors that make it easier - it's right in America's backyard, its capital city and basically everything major are on the shore (and so there is nothing resembling strategic depth at all), it's less consolidated than Iraq (current government hasn't been in power for that long, and there is a sprawling opposition apparatus the US has long nurtured), and the lower cultural distance means that US soft power is much more effective to encourage defection (for starters, no Venezuelan army member has to fear, rationally or not, that surrendering to the US means that his wife will get defiled in some unspeakable haram ways).

There are a few big differences. Venezuela's geography is much denser than the open deserts of Iraq.

Yemen showed that a few desert tribes with some drones from Iran can tie down a third of the US Navy for over a year and win. The Gulf of Mexico is within striking range of weapons that can be built with parts ordered of wish.

The US wasted two trillion trying to occupy Iraq and largely failed. The US military was larger in 2003 than today, the recruitment standards were higher and they weren't trying to compete with China over who can have the biggest navy off the coast of China.

Also drones are going to make occupying a country complete hell.

There's another big one: Our military speaks spanish and doesn't speak the six thousand dialects of the middle east. Having reliable communication with the locals is a pretty big deal.

Yemen showed that a few desert tribes with some drones from Iran can tie down a third of the US Navy for over a year and win

Yemen showed that if you're not willing to commit boots on the ground, it's very hard to permanently take out 100% of mobile/distributed launch sites with just air strikes.

Large operations are hard to hide logistically. Given the complete lack of rumors about troop deployments (Iraq had announced call-ups of tens of thousands of reserves in advance), I have trouble believing this is more than a few already-deployed special forces and airstrikes. How many (active duty, even) folks could go missing from their normal places without being missed? Any "military exercises" going on, like Russia was doing in Belarus in 2022? IMO the number of pieces on the board can't be that large.

ETA: Nonzero chance it's already over, and the rest of us don't know it yet: the US-Iran conflict this year lasted a few hours.

Yea its already over; either the HVT objective has been met or a new narrative spin will be executed to justify why the shock and awe is a sufficient first demonstration. Either way, bringing in rotary assets unmolested into Caracas is fucking ballsy and signals total degradation of any Venezuelan air control, especially given the lack of even preliminary SEAD/DEAD.

It might be a fait accompli if Maduro stayed put because he believed his own copium regarding air defense or bigbrains asserting that USA doing this was retarded. For all the degradation of the US military as a strategically independent thinker they do at least maintain kinetic capability and wont put boots on the ground without a decisive vetted go signal. At least for their sake I hope so.

the lack of even preliminary SEAD/DEAD

This is not really true, there were substantial airstrikes on air defense assets for a few hours before the helicopters arrived, continuing through their arrival. Details are still limited as of now but the pre-positioned US assets included over 100 fixed-wing aircraft including fighters, bombers, and EW/jammers. All on an extremely short timetable, absolutely, but the image of the helicopters just popping up in the capital (in the largest military base, in fact) without support is not correct, this was a really enormous and tightly-timed air operation.

While pretty much all of the large-scale and medium to long range anti-air equipment in the area seems to have been destroyed by US airstrikes, it is definitely notable that there seemed to be no serious presence of Venezuelan MANPADS. One US helicopter was hit but not shot down, which could have been from an Igla, but that’s pretty minimal. The Venezuelans were supposed to have something like 5000 Iglas available, even if many existed only on-paper you’d think the ones they did have would be clustered around Maduro and, again, the largest and best-defended military base in the country.

The US had a fleet of RQ-170 stealth drones overhead during the operation, is it possible they were able to observe all of the anti-air troops setting up and blow them away with air support? This certainly could have contributed but is somewhere between extremely unlikely and impossible at scale. Were the Venezuelans simply in such disarray from the shock-and-awe raid that they couldn’t muster their defenses in time? This seems to be the case. The Venezuelan army is large, but not exactly known for high standards of training or strong morale. We’ll find out more in time but by all appearances they didn’t really believe this raid was going to happen and were taken totally by surprise. The speed and coordination with which the first airstrikes took place seems to have both ruined their defensive plans and scared the absolute pants off the defenders. It seems likely to me that large swaths of troops probably ran away or hid rather than die for Maduro, once the bombs started falling. And by the time they would’ve started reorganizing, the whole thing was already over!

There are rumors that at least some of the Venezuelan army knew about the raid ahead of time but this seems unlikely imo, at least at scale, the chance for a leak would be too great. We do know the CIA had at least one asset reporting on Maduro’s whereabouts at essentially all times, so clearly they were infiltrated, but that’s very different from whole army units defecting at once (and not telling anyone). Fear and disorganization seem like plenty of motivation, without any conspiracy needed.

Edit: I forgot to include, in my mention of Venezuelan disarray, that (according to Trump) the US also used some sort of nebulous cyberwarfare capability to selectively shut down power to parts of Caracas, and presumably forcing the military bases to run on back up power. This is a very effective way to instill fear and disorder in its own right. It also allows the possibility of even greater penetration into Venezuelan military and/or civil infrastructure systems, this is not necessarily true but could have been another contributing factor to the seemingly spectacular disorganization of the Venezuelan army.

You're right, but by preliminary I am referring to the months long campaigns in Iraq that suppressed and destroyed pretty much everything large enough to fit a box and the boxes themselves. A tactical DEAD on short window still lets a rapid evacuation occur so the combination of cyber warfare to paralyze all comms and cnc definitely expanded the window of opportunity from minutes to maybe half an hour. Still a lightning raid by any account, though I do take back the strength of the word "preliminary".

Regarding air defense, I mainly attribute the lack of response to the fact that low alert troops on midnight duty are always going to be sleepy shits and likely not on post. If they were on post they weren't hauling the MANPADs everywhere and if they had the MANPADs available they might have preferred to wait for command authority: what if the flying helo was Maduro making his escape? Mass defections are not likely but lazy troops as tripwires rarely succeed in defending an asset, a QRF tasking typically gets the actual job done if the tripwire does its job of slowing the advance.

Whatever the case is, the military comes off looking horrible. Now the Generals have to figure out who is to blame, and the ghost soldier paradox will bite them in their ass: is Pfc Gonzales a real guy on duty or is he someone I invented to fund the downpayment for my yacht?

To tag-team off of this a bit, if we knocked out Venezuelan communications it seems quite possible that many Venezuelan troops did not fire or attempt to fire simply because they received no orders to. A lot of us here are military nerds so we know if we were in the Venezuelan armed forces and we looked out the window and saw an MH-47 we would be like "oh crap the Americans!" but I wonder if your average Venezuelan air defense troops, even if they were under standing orders to shoot US assets, could confidently PID the target.

is it possible they were able to observe all of the anti-air troops setting up and blow them away with air support?

I agree that it's "unlikely and impossible" if you properly distribute them but (along the lines of above) I wonder if the Venezuelans just set up static AD posts that could be mapped and then targeted pretty easily.

Whatever the case, I think your typical US plan involves assuming the enemy is competent, so either we were confident in our ability to map and strike their AD troops, we were confident in our countermeasures, or just relatively risk-tolerant. Probably a combination of all three.

Either way, bringing in rotary assets unmolested into Caracas is fucking ballsy and signals total degradation of any Venezuelan air control, especially given the lack of even preliminary SEAD/DEAD.

I wonder if we trust our countermeasures against their MANPADS or we have guys on the ground passively or actively making that a non-issue for us or both. Really seems like it should not be hard to have a few squads of dudes with Iglas or something wherever you go.

On the other hand, for all I know at this point the helicopters we saw were the extraction forces and the ingress was by covert assets on foot. Will be interesting to see how much we can learn about what exactly happened.

At this point I'm convinced whoever was on air defense duty was told to go for a midnight taco raid and the presidential guards rushed maduro out made a wrong turn straight into a delta team and oh no the clumsy americans dropped a usb with 10 bitcoin on it what clumsy fumblefingers they are.

Quite possibly.

I actually think the longer-ranged air defense elements (like the S-300s) just wouldn't be able to target low-flying helicopters (doubly so if jammed) so the real question to me is where the short-ranged stuff was at.

Seeing as how Trump was toying with Venezuela like a cat with a mouse I think someone deciding to Maduro offer up as a sacrifice makes total sense, particularly if there are bitcoins in it for you.

From what I know of it I dislike the Venezuelan government but I doubt this attack will lead to anything good.

I am curious: Trump campaigned on being anti-war, and has attempted to brand himself as a peacemaker this past year. Will starting a war be what drives his supporters away from him? Or will this be considered largely justified?

I could see a world where it is spun as being the best way to spend American resources in the interest of the people, in some roundabout way furthering "America First". But would the voters really buy that?

I am curious: Trump campaigned on being anti-war, and has attempted to brand himself as a peacemaker this past year. Will starting a war be what drives his supporters away from him? Or will this be considered largely justified?

As the Dreaded Jim said in response to a commenter snarking about how "your neocon “peace president” commited yet another act of aggression":

You seem to have confused “Peace President” with falafel eating surrender monkey.

If this operation is successful Trump is a peace president. If unsuccessful, he will retreat. Either way, a peace president.

Si vis pacem, para bellum. There's a difference between being pro-peace, in that you're against large-scale wars — and the kind of "foreign entanglements" that result in your country getting dragged into one — such that you're willing to use smaller, more precise applications of force to help ensure the prevention of bigger conflicts; and being the sort of "principled pacifist" who's against any use of force, no matter the consequences. A difference between preferring not to fight, but being willing to do so just as much as needed; and being unwilling to fight.

America has bombed another sovereign nation. This is literally starting a war with a country that was not a military threat to the US, and (at least to my knowledge) were not at all at risk of going to war themselves. Even if it turns out to be short-lived, this starts a war that would have not otherwise occurred. The literal opposite of peace. I would suggest that people who support this are not anti-war at all. They are anti-losing, anti-spending-lots-of-money-on-prolonged-conflicts, pro-US-can-do-whatever-it-wants, and they clearly do not care about the sovereignty of other countries.

You argue that this intervention was needed but do not explain why. Until I gain a satisfying explanation of why this attack was necessary and worthwhile, I will be forced to believe in the above.

I would suggest that people who support this are not anti-war at all. They are anti-losing, anti-spending-lots-of-money-on-prolonged-conflicts, pro-US-can-do-whatever-it-wants, and they clearly do not care about the sovereignty of other countries.

OK, but why would you have thought differently about them? The objection to Afghanistan from those quarters was never that the Taliban had the sovereign right to rule.

I grew up being taught the ideals of a rules-based world where the US stood for international law based on western values. Besides, conservatives tend to use the sovereignty of nations as an argument against globalism. I assumed the argument against foreign aid programs was one of sovereignty. Each country is responsible for their own people. Perhaps most importantly, I was under the impression that being anti-war was a really important part of Trump's campaign. I genuinely believed that was a big reason for people to vote for him.

It seems my desire to be charitable may have led me to wrong conclusions, which have now been corrected. At least until further evidence presents itself.

I grew up being taught the ideals of a rules-based world.

Yeah, but what were the rules? The inviolacy of embassies, as practiced by the Iranian Revolutionaries or the US in Belgrade? Respecting of sovereignty, as the USSR practiced in the Baltics, Hungary, Czechoslovokia, and indeed Afghanistan, and the US in Panama (more than once) and Grenada? The right to free and fair elections, as practiced by Maduro or the Chicago Democratic machine?

No, the objections were not about sovereignty, and I find it unlikely anyone had that much "charity".

Did the bombing of teh Iranian nuclear facilities start a general war? Trump has ordered a fair few military actions, but none of them so far have lead to a wider conflict. Every time he does this, or engages in some sabre-rattling diplomacy, everyone shrieks that he's starting WW3 and wasn't he supposed to be anti-war?

Well, can't know what's in Trump's head. What we can know is the track record. I oppose a general invasion of Venezuela and hope that isn't Trump's plan. As far as a night of bombing and snatching a foreign head of state? It's cool if you get away with it.

Did the bombing of teh Iranian nuclear facilities start a general war? Trump has ordered a fair few military actions, but none of them so far have lead to a wider conflict.

Yeah, this is the thing, I don't like everything Trump has ever done, but particularly in foreign affairs I judge him compared to the other option, and he's been remarkable at only doing limited military stuff. (And pretty much every US President ever has done at least dabbled in military action). I actually think that he dodged (at least so far) the scheduled all-out war with Iran, which I think is good.

(And I do mean scheduled, the Littoral Combat Ship seems, at least to me, to have been basically purpose-built for derping around in the Gulf shooting up Iranian speedboats and what have you.)

As far as a night of bombing and snatching a foreign head of state? It's cool if you get away with it.

Yep. It's risky as hell because you can get dragged into a general invasion and contested occupation that way, but Trump is no stranger to risk.

Will starting a war be what drives his supporters away from him?

Not an American so can't speak for his actual supporters, but yup, that's the last stop on the Trump train for me.

I suspect his supporters are more anti-losing than anti-war.

Seems like that ship sailed ages ago. Even before this you had MTG leaving and Tucker criticizing him, while Pence and Bush praise him. I think at this point the question is more how much this will end up tanking Vance? He's done almost nothing to separate himself from the Epstein coverup, the foreign wars, etc. Just kinda sat in the background and done cheerleading when asked. Seems like his chances are going up in smoke.

You've got the model wrong. Even if this literally went against things Trump promised (and I don't think it does), as @sun_the_second says, it's losing that's the real problem for most of his supporters, not war. It'll tick off the pro-Russia contingent, but most of his supporters will be in favor so long as it looks like winning, and he'll probably increase support from the remnants of the neocons.

, but most of his supporters will be in favor so long as it looks like winning, and he'll probably increase support from the remnants of the neocons.

Trump doesn't win elections with only "his supporters." Trump needs to win with his actual voters and his actual voters want him to focus on America at home. This move will make that even worse than it already was.

Losing would indeed be even worse than that. Doing literally none of it and instead focusing his political capital on what he ran on and what his voters want would be far better.

The current path of focusing on dumb neocon interventions all over the world is a path to a 2006-style GOP wipeout in the midterms and everything which will stem from that.

Trump doesn't win elections with only "his supporters." Trump needs to win with his actual voters and his actual voters want him to focus on America at home. This move will make that even worse than it already was.

Those who are 100% concerned with domestic issues aren't going to be upset by this either; it just won't make them happy.

The midterms may indeed be a wipeout. This isn't going to make it one iota worse and might make it slightly better.

Even with this hypothetical person who is 100% concerned with domestic issues, itself a strawman of my comment, foreign interventions spend political capital and energy which take away from the domestic issues and effect domestic issues. It will (and has) here just like it has throughout US history which is chalk full of presidents with derailed and failed domestic agendas because they got sucked into foreign interventions.

it just won't make them happy.

you have to motivate people to vote and engaging in yet another neocon war project does the opposite of that for the Trump coalition

The midterms may indeed be a wipeout. This isn't going to make it one iota worse and might make it slightly better.

No. Pleasing more educated coastals who didn't vote for Trump, don't support Trump, won't vote for Trump, and actually wanted Trump to be thrown in jail on Jan 7th, 2020, at the cost of, at best, demotivating your own voters, will make the midterms worse.

foreign interventions spend political capital and energy which take away from the domestic issues and effect domestic issues.

No they don't. "Political capital" is only expended if there was some sort of deal made here, which there was not; Trump did not make domestic concessions in order to gain support to attack Venezuela, because he didn't need to. The US is a large country and is able to do more than one thing at a time, and indeed pretty much always will do so.

trump doesn't need to make domestic concessions in order to gain support to attack venezuela for it to take political capital, admin energy, and appear to his voters he cares more about foreign intervention than domestic issues

no deals need to be made to spend political capital; political capital is a well of energy which allows political maneuver and action and everything an admin does spends some of it

to be frank, I really struggle to believe you think any Trump voter who wants Trump to focus on domestic issues (a large and growing block across all polls) doesn't care at all about his foreign interventions overseas so much so it doesn't affect their behavior

The US is a large country and is able to do more than one thing at a time, and indeed pretty much always will do so.

the neocon war projects themselves are domestic concessions to get stuff Trump wanted earlier in the admin as he was being held hostage on ICE spending and other issues

The US is a large country and is able to do more than one thing at a time, and indeed pretty much always will do so.

and yet history is still chock full of other presidential admins who had big promises and big domestic agendas which were completely derailed because their admins focused on foreign interventions

the trump voter will look at the domestic agenda which has been stymied and almost completely stalled with the economy being bad, jobs being bad, affordability being bad, look at what the Trump admin is doing and what they're talking about which is nearly entirely foreign crap and this has been true for many months, and conclude the foreign stuff is being focused on at the expense of the domestic agenda

Trump's attention and follow through which represents nearly the entire engine which gets anything done in his admins is fickle and easily distracted which is why both terms are full of examples of big bluster and threats and then a wholesale failure of follow through as Trump sees something else on Fox News and the moron he appointed to follow through fails to do so for various reasons.

Maybe you have special insight into all these domestic deliverables which will come any day now because the Trump admin can totally do more than one thing at a time, but currently and since May/June it just looks like most of their time, effort, and energy is spent on foreign crap which his voters, at best, do not care about and which they'll think about whether or not they're going to bother showing up to the polls.

Nope, it'll eat up airwaves until the midterms. Americans want to focus on America, that's why he's been dropping so hard in the polls for the first year. Immediately started to bomb and lost basically everyone under 40 after the Iran stuff and Epstein. They'll lose the midterms by a landslide and it'll be nothing but downhill from there. You older voters just don't understand the newer generations. I'd expect a short term bump as the brohaha low T people feel bigger for a bit. Then steady decline to the midterm losses.

The base and the elite are already splitting in the groyper war. The base wants America first, the elite want Indian H1B visas, more foreign war and more military industrial complex.

Just making fun of SJW while continuing George Bush policies is going to lead to Trump losing the election.

Who is supposed to support this war? The left wing voter base is not pro war. The America first crowd isn't excited about wasting billions on a foreign war that is going to end up swamping the US with migrants.

Who is supposed to support this war

TBH I'm an anti-trump neoliberal and I kind of do. I've been pretty vocally against intervention so far because I thought it was stupid, tyrannical, and anyways wouldn't work-- but given that it so far has been short, sweet and (apparently?) successful, I'll be happy to eat crow if it doesn't backfire spectacularly in the next few months. The monroe doctrine is a good thing and so is american imperialism.

It’s more complex than that, Fuentes actually defended the Monroe doctrine and was ambivalent to sympathetic to attacking Venezuela a few months ago.

Will starting a war be what drives his supporters away from him? Or will this be considered largely justified?

The Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires are pretty well known, but Reagan was re-elected after (successfully) invading Grenada, and I doubt most Americans think of it at all these days. HW lost re-election after (successfully) invading Panama, but I think it's generally considered to be for other reasons. JFK and the failure at Bay of Pigs is a harder comparison, but probably relevant.

Grenada was a tiny war against an insignificant country. Just wait until Venezuela lacks a government when it turns into another Libya, Syria or Iraq. It will be an absolute haven for narco cartels just like Afghanistan was and it will cause a mass exodus of refugees.

Venezuela has been holding elections since 1831. There have definitely been hiccups, but it has a long history of elections being the default. That's not the case for Libya, Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan.

I'm cautiously optimistic. The most likely outcome is an interim government followed by elections. Sure, it's possible that a Maduro successor might win. But I don't think that's likely given how aggressively Maduro was banning opposition politicians.

There is no way the Venezuelans are going to vote to give their oil to American companies.

Also bombing their country isn't going to make them more pro American. All it will do is destabilize the country causing more migrants.

There is no way the Venezuelans are going to vote to give their oil to American companies.

Of course not. They're going to vote to SELL their oil to American companies. Because the choice will be between doing so and not selling much oil at all; they no longer have the domestic expertise and the US isn't going to let anyone else in.

Maybe. It depends (1) how much damage was done and (2) if they view it as liberating

It's not at all clear why Big Oil would want venezuelan oil on the market at a time when prices are too low for shale. If anything a war for oil conspiracy would rely on taking oil production offline to raise prices.

And it's not like Venezuela needed American help to destroy their own oil production capabilities. How much crude are they even exporting by this point?

American oil companies want energy subsidies, domesric pipeline investments, looser fracking regulations, and assistance in expanding their portfolios to include more renewables. In terms of where their lobbying dollars are best spent, invading Venezuela doesn't hold a candle to these boring domestic policies. This is an immigration/drugs/dick waving war, not an oil war.

Except those things already happened.

It also increases the likelihood of a Chinese attack on Taiwan as American asserts are entangled in multiple theaters.

It increases the likelihood of Chinese Century. They do not need to attack Taiwan. If this is what the Taiwanese security guarantor is doing, do you think Taiwan has much confidence in its security, especially as China is quickly moving towards total dominance in the South China Sea?

On the other hand, it is a massive loss of face for Xi because just hours ago Chinese special envoy had met Maduro in Miraflores, which is currently being bombed. Maybe it's 4D chess and Xinnie the Pooh will die of stroke from the sheer indignation? I think it won't be so convenient though.

If this is what the Taiwanese security guarantor is doing, do you think Taiwan has much confidence in its security

Generally speaking, having your security patron secure a W makes people feel more confident in the prowess of their security patron.

especially as China is quickly moving towards total dominance in the South China Sea?

If you look closely, this may have demonstrated the insecurity of Chinese SCS holdings in a broader war scenario to air assault. (I've been thinking about this for years, interesting to see something like a proof of concept). Pretty interesting stuff!

If you look closely, this may have demonstrated the insecurity of Chinese SCS holdings in a broader war scenario to air assault

Not really because Venezuela did not have air defenses deployed. This is a very typical US/Israeli war, fireworks are basically extraneous to the mission.

Venezuela did not have air defenses deployed.

What term besides "deployed" would you prefer for the BukM2 the US destroyed in Caracas and the air defense systems that appeared in the area after probing by US bombers?

From your own article:

Venezuela’s air defense systems and combat aircraft were largely non-operational before recent U.S. strikes, according to multiple sources familiar with the condition of the country’s military equipment, citing long-standing maintenance failures and a shortage of spare parts linked to Russia’s unmet support obligations.

The situation was described as more severe for Venezuela’s long-range air defense assets. The S-300V systems deployed by the country were said to have been in a non-combat-ready state for more than a year, with no meaningful restoration work completed. The systems reportedly lacked functional components and could not be returned to service without external technical support.

As regards Buks, they were just parked in the same spot for months, were likely unmanned, and thus destroying them was a trivial matter.

Venezuela had no combat-ready military. It's all a LARP.

If you keep reading,

According to the sources, Venezuela had formally fielded 12 Russian-supplied Buk-M2E surface-to-air missile systems, but only five were in operational condition.

Venezuela had no combat-ready military.

On the timeline of the Twitter source you cite, Venezuelan short-ranged air defenses (which are really the relevant threat; long range air defenses are greatly reduced in effectiveness against low-flying aircraft) were reportedly active.

I agree that the Venezuelan military isn't in great shape, and they certainly weren't ready (despite having everything but an RVSP in terms of indications), but a lot of conflict is in the prep work, which the US demonstrated. Anyway, between this and Hostomel I think we can say that kino heliborne assaults are probably with us to stay, and simply forcing enemy planners to have to consider the possibility of an airborne assault at any given point throughout a massive area is its own W.

Honestly, pretty based if USA immediately smacks Maduro immediately after Maduro gets assurances of Chinese support. Really fucking funny anime style twist you could have seen coming a mile away yet still lands because the execution is chefs kiss.

If this fails its just a comedy, so win win for me either way.

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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