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Notes -
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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?
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