I think the U.S. Navy could do a joint "training"exercise with Guyana.
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Interesting… I’m just a keyboard “consultant “ but it seems like messing with Brazil would be stupid right off the bat, but add in SOUTHCOM it becomes double-plus-stupid. The US defend an oil rich area, maybe become a US protectorate?
BTW, I’m hoping -none- of this happens, especially annexation of Guyana by Venezuela.
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The US is conducting a joint exercise with Guyana today.
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“Stupid” is a massive understatement when it comes to describing Maduro and the rest of Chavista thugs running Venezuela into the ground.
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Impoverishing a major oil producer requires incredible corruption or incredible stupidity. In the case of Nigeria it’s corruption, and in Venezuela it’s probably both.
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It’s perhaps the one thing that can exceed the American benchmark for stupidity in business (which is of course “running a casino resort into bankruptcy”). If Maduro can’t do what a short-sighted and thuggish family of royals who were desert nomads a century ago can with a surefire business then he should really re-consider his stewardship over it.
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I’m reminded of when I expressed a desire for US isolationism, on the grounds that we’ve been bad faith actors in so many international conflicts. I got pulled up short by a gentleman who told me that his family was Serbian (ed: Bosnian? My memory is less clear) and he was thankful every day that we hadn’t stayed out of things, because otherwise his family would be dead.
International peace requires a level of commitment from stronger countries to preserve the borders of weaker ones.
The moment we start expecting Guyana to reimburse us in any way, you’ll have me right with you, but providing counter-pressure to prevent an army from invading a place without one? I’m sure we can’t tell the difference between that and our imperialist adventures.
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Syria, Israel, Yemen, Ukraine plus others I forget on top of my head are all linked in one way or another to Putin. Venezuela is also a part of the fraternity, including Iran, with a vested interest in multiplying regional conflicts in order to fragment western democracies.
It is a WWIII of proxies that’s been going on for quite a while. Vlad may be mediocre, but he applies the divide to better rule doctrine to a T!
Take care all and all, we’re in it for the long run, special love to those who still believe in democracy and the rule of law in the USA.
Kiss from your European Cousins
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Putin certainly has interests here (as does the US), but I doubt he’s a singular puppet master, much like the US isn’t a singular puppet master. These countries have their own goals and aims, and plenty of autonomy outside of whatever Putin might wish they do or don’t do… These mode of historical analysis has always been wanting, because it just assumes that both the US and Russia are just able to dictate everything on the planet (I guess now we should add China to that list), but at the end of the day, that just reinforces the narrative that the Global north countries are the only ones that matter or have agency. It was a problem with cold war narratives and it’s a problem in our analysis now.
See:
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Yes I saw that post. A naval blockade of Venezuela might end this without combat.
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Agreed, I wrote it so for the quick read in an internet comment. The reality being more of a patient destruction of post WWII values which emanated from the trauma of what the world had just went through. The parenthesis we lived for 30 to 40 years in the West (economic development and relative peace) came to an end.
We are coming back to the state of the world most of humanity has known since immemorial times, chaos!
Thank you for the book recommendations, I shall look them up.
Be safe
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Do I have to bring up the war of 1812 again?
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Nicely put. And we have Hungary and Slovenia to worry about in Europe who appear to be all to willing to work in Putin’s interests.
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I think that’s true as far as it goes – Russia and China want to burn through western stocks of ammunition, and between Ukraine and now Israel, we’re in a deep deficit – but if Venezuela wants to get kinetic with the Brazilians to get to Guyana, the US Navy could make very, very quick work of the Venezuelan Air Force. Yeah, they’ve got 20 or so of each of Su-30s and F-16s, we’ve got more (and far better) than that on any given aircraft carrier.
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isn’t that all down to the timing of the thing?
i’d guess middle eastern countries were able to take control of their oil because the international oil companies didn’t exist in the way they do today.
( and look at all the conflicts in the middle east where oil access has been a key factor. nearly all of them. some of the oil producing countries do well because we have declared them as friends, while others do poorly because we have declared them as enemies. there are historical reasons, but it’s all fairly arbitrary who’s who. )
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American companies established the oil industry in Saudi Arabia, then the Saudi government bought them out.
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The F-16 of the Bolivarian Air Force are quite old, the very first version of the fighter. The Russian airplanes are unknown, as their real operational status is not certain. The rumor is that not all fighters can fly at the same time.
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Exactly that. If Aramco could continue this long even under the management of the myopic and greedy Bonesaw family, it’s more confirmation that oil is an idiot-proof business. Or, as Maduro demonstrates, almost idiot-proof.
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