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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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