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