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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.
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.
I am baffled by my ignorance, but
Why?
What has led to this?
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.
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:
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!
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)
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.
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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?
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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.
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.
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