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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Most of Latin America is successful democracies now.
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