The government will be able to leverage that to get the U.S. government to push for far more favorable terms for Venezuela than it ever would have otherwise.
But the back-to-back policy disasters are otherwise a good reminder that a broken clock is only right twice a day.
It's almost like people currently in the white house know what they're doing, right? Who would have thought! /s
This includes the war with Iran. Double dipping by fueling the military industrial complex blowing it up, then they'll be influencing who gets the contracts for the $300B secured. It makes no sense from a geopolitical standpoint. It makes perfect sense from the perspective of enriching influential persons.
Of course the US are the all-powerful juggernaut with many levers to pull to use their power. Winning battles is easy. Winning the metaphorical war is harder.
When we can't (Iran), well, it starts looking like they have zero clue what they are doing.
I kinda wonder if the White House has just forgotten about Venezuela - there's not any clear reason they are still under general sanctions.
[1] as I understand it, tar sands are literally what they sound like - the oil has seeped up to the surface, which is essentially a sandy, oily quagmire. https://www.alamy.com/a-hand-full-of-tar-sand-the-tar-sands-...
You mean the looting
An ICE officer has been dispatched to your location
There'd be no point in any kind of boots on the ground invasion when they just did the thing that the invasion would've tried to accomplish.
[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/cuba-passes-sweeping-free...
Or rather, any goal that is not media and PR management?
It will never work to be a bully without actually producing value long term.
Largest advancements I can see in US lately are LLMs and legalized gambling. They are also defunding science. AND they are making immigration harder which basically seals the deal since they are not capable of producing enough educated people to keep doing what they were doing before.
Also OFC Donald Trump who is a ignorant businessman that specializes in a mafioso industry and is a reality tv personality, is elected president twice.
Maduro himself is unlikely to escape his abduction, but the actual power structures and grassroots opposition to Washington's totalitarianism remains across LatAm.
* Colombia's new guy boasted of strapping fireworks to cats, and married his wife when she turned 18 and he was almost 30.
and what happens after is right-wing government in power of the country for the next N years
If the US normalize their relation¹, a totalitarian government will have a much harder time there.
1 - As in "relates to it like a normal country". Treating it like an extractivist colony won't do.
Bribes and oil were the goal. Consolidation of allied dictator was goal. That worked.
It did made germany democratic after wwii. That really happened. But then it has stream of helping dictators and killing democracies while being acting confused when locals did not appreciated it ... and when different violent movements joined the game.
America is even supporting fascists parties all around Europe right now. If they win, it is going to be mainly eu dysfunction. But it will also be true that America actively sponsored fascists and actively undermined democracy in Europe.
> spreading democracy and then finding out those voters want different shades of fascism
Where exactly this happened, really?
Iraq, Egypt, Gaza, Post-Soviet Russia comes to mind among others
Also, contrary to your theory, most of human history people were ruled by non-democratic governments that were deemed legitimate, so I think you are conflating the two
Nobody believes this to be the case. What is more often missed by policy makers is that overthrowing a government supported by the local population is unpopular and will cause blowback. The CIA-supported coup in Iran is a currently relevant example.
> Also, contrary to your theory, most of human history people were ruled by non-democratic governments that were deemed legitimate
That was when people believed in the divine right of kings, so those kings ruled with the consent of the governed. This is no longer the case. Nobody believes in the divine right of dictators.
China possibly expecting something to this effect has recently built up both it's coal and renewables capacity, as well as an extremely large SPR.
All his bullshit market screwing, tariffs, poor diplomacy has pushed everyone right into China's sphere of influence.
Instead of competing with the products China creates, we leave them out of our own market while the rest of the world continues to buy from China.
The stupid as hell war against Iran has eliminated our stocks of munitions, leaving the pacific basically undefended against China. We pulled weapons out of our Pacific allies to go waste them in the desert.
There is no cohesive strategy and China has been preparing for us to cut off their oil for over a decade now, and has made massive strides in the development of independent energy like Solar to protect them.
Competing in terms of production is realistically not an option (Triffin Dilemma, strong currency means exports other than tech/finance are inherently noncompetitive). Competitive exports would require giving up the dollar as a unilateral reserve currency, and China for the reverse reasons, at least for now, does not seem to want the Yuan to be a reserve currency. My personal read is both sides wish for something like the current system to persist but on more favorable terms.
I agree China has been actively taking steps for this scenario, but that they're continuing to make strides seems to indicate it is still an issue. I think we're still in the thick of it before a victor is conclusively decided either way.