101
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US strikes Venezuela and says its leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been captured and flown out of the country
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- Title
- At least 7 explosions and low-flying aircraft are heard in Venezuela's Caracas
- Published
- Jan 3 2026
- Word count
- 781 words
The only reasonable response to this is the impeachment of Trump, and his conviction in the senate.
There is simply nothing else that is acceptable.
Watch the country and rest of the world accept the exact opposite.
The US just kidnapped a head of state for reasons it can barely articulate. Wow.
A friend of mine just asked what the casus belli was and I have no real response. Why did this even happen?
I'm not much looking forward to another age of imperialism.
I have not been following this entire thing closely but from what I have seen its basically the usual thing. USA wants oil and they have used the cover of drug cartels operating out of Venezuela as a means of waging war against the country. Something along those lines. Im sure there is more nuance but at this point does it really matter when it comes to the US government.
I think it is both more and less nuanced than that, if you would permit the possibility. The NYT had a pretty good summary of the different schools of thought within the administration:
Larger excerpt
Some want to topple Venezeula for its oil reserves, others (like Marco Rubio) are philosophically opposed to the Maduro regime, while Stephen Miller is doing it for the most reprehensible reasons possible (as an excuse for mass deportations).
Of course, none of those people have the final say. That would be Trump. But I honestly doubt Trump could articulate any of these justifications. My guess is that Trump has rotted his brain on conservative ragebait, which has for years demonized Venezuela as a socialist hellhole. And now Trump is being driven entirely from his id, reflexively drawn to the conclusion that Venezuela is bad and its government is bad and its people are bad but unable to explain why or to formulate any sort of long term strategy, instead choosing to offload the cognitive effort to others in his administration. The result is that there is no real justification, just a vibe and an all-you-can-eat buffet of pretexts.
There's some classic "wag the dog" activity here as well. Epstein files showing more involvement than you've admitted? Supreme Court says you can't use the National Guard to militarize cities? Republican lawmakers defecting? Approval ratings and economic indicators in the dumpster? Perfect time to start an easily winnable (?) military action and pump those poll numbers.
You'll hear in today's commentary from Sec. of State Marco Rubio a reference to Venezuela's "stolen oil". This Wikipedia entry is instructive.
Tl;dr:
Venezuela has nationalized foreign-owned oil assets twice, first in 1976, and again under Hugo Chavez in 2007. ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips lost billions from the expropriation.
In 2019, U.S. sanctions against Venezuela's oil industry intended to pressure its government froze the assets of the national oil company's U.S.-based operations, again costing Chevron, Halliburton, and other U.S. oil majors billions. There's been a back and forth of U.S./Venezuela agreements to reduce sanctions in exchange for fair elections and release of political prisoners, which the Maduro government failed to honor satisfactorily.
Of course there's going to be a gold rush to grab back that revenue stream, but there's a very thin veneer of truth in the "stolen oil" claim.
Thanks for all of the context, it helps a great deal.
No thanks for coining the new phrase "vibe governing" that's now going to live in my head forever as an explanation if MAGA and Trump 2: Electric Boogaloo in particular. Yuck. (but it's nice to have a name for it)
I think everyone would be better off if there were no future recurrences of vibe bombing.
The enemy aliens act (wiki) used to steal Japanese American property and incarcerated them for no reason? That same one? How are these even still on the books? And Americans are ...... organizing mass protests and national strike I hope?
There have been two record-setting national protests so far (No Kings Day) with a third coming up soon. General strikes are typically unlikely in the US, because participants just get fired with no safety net or legal recourse.
Also, NSPM-7 happened in September, quietly with barely any coverage in news media. It's blatantly unconstitutional, but it's still pointed directly at organizers of protests. Basically, any PAC that orchestrates a protest is risking being summarily raided by law enforcement and having to fight it out in courts.
In my experience, it's an uphill battle to convince typical Americans that Japanese internment 1) actually happened 2) was unjust 3) yes, is the same behavior as the Nazis. 4) resulted in mass theft of some of the most valued farmland in the US.
It's worth being a bit careful about (3). The Nazis built concentration camps and interned people there based on perceived race, similarly to the Japanese internments in the US. But they also went far beyond that - their concentration camps were murder houses with industrial efficiency. They deliberately attempted to eradicate the Jews (and others) that they had interned, and would not have willingly left any alive. This did not happen in the US - people died due to poor treatment, but the industrial scale of murder was never there.
So yes, the Japanese internment was an act that echoed some of the actions of the Nazis, but with such different goals, processes, and outcomes that it is difficult to compare them beyond just the use of concentration camps.
Speaking as someone with Polish heritage, I will absolutely call it out, and I'm deeply familiar with that history. They did, after all, want to exterminate 80% of the country my grandfather came from under Generalplan Ost.
They did not go from zero to industrialized murder overnight: first it was small prisons, then the prisoners were worked until they died of exhaustion, starvation and disease. This went on for multiple years before the larger, centralized camps were built. Said camps also started as labor camps in some of the cases ("Arbeit Macht Frei").
The UN recognizes merely moving an ethnic group by force as genocide, and so do I. And that is how it starts. There's no commendation for not getting quite as far along that path. America had, and still has, a deep and nasty tendency toward genocide and eugenics. Hitler himself was heavily inspired by eugenicist and anti-Semitic publications from the US, which were popular with industrialists such as Henry Ford, and the treatment of the Native American peoples. I could also go on about the multi-century genocide on the Native Americans...
There is no difference at the start, when you decide you want to remove an ethnic group. It's the exact same thing, no matter what rhetoric it gets dressed up with. From there, it's just measuring how far the atrocities are taken. And I'm awfully tempted to include the atomic murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians in their homes under that heading, though more hairs can be split on that.
There were clear differences at the start, though. The Nazis wanted to eradicate the Jews entirely from day one. They did not start with the same processes they ended with, but they started with the same goal, and were explicit about that goal. The Jews were the primary enemy and scapegoat of Nazi propaganda, and they devoted a lot of resources to attempting to demonstrate this and embed it in people's minds.
In contrast, the American approach was primarily about controlling the population. You are completely right to call this out as a form of genocide, but there is almost no scenario where the Americans would have started up the same industrialised murder machinery. The goals from the outset were completely different. As a result, so were the methods. There is plenty of racist anti-Japanese propaganda from this time, but you'll notice that is largely about denigrating the Japanese and promoting American ways — the Japanese are weak and stupid, and we're the strong, manly heroes. This is in stark contrast to German propaganda about Jews, which included these elements, but also consistently portrayed Jews as the greatest enemy of the Germans — the great, all-powerful bankers and merchants who controlled everything and had fingers in all the pies. The closest American propaganda gets to this is stuff like Dr Seuss's "fifth column" cartoon, but primarily the Americans saw the Japanese as a foreign power, rather than the same kind of insidious menace that the Germans presented the Jews as.
To be clear, I'm not trying to defend the US here. Americans at the time did have real issues with racism and antisemitism, and you're right to call out the eugenics movement as something that popular amongst the American elite and intellectual classes around that time. The Japanese internment camps were absolutely a form of genocide, were driven by racism and ignorance, and were an atrocity that is dangerously close to being repeated in the US right now.
But there are still huge differences between that and the Nazi goal of eradicating the Jews entirely, and there is a danger when we compare these sorts of things too lightly of underplaying the Holocaust and the atrocities surrounding it.
I'm not trying to meddle too much in your discussion, but it seems prudent to note that the initial plan was to move all Jews to Madagascar. Only when that proved infeasible did they start thinking of other methods. They notably did not start with eradication.
This is not a defense of Nazis, but your argument hinges on the point they had extermination on their mind from the word get. And they didn't.
It's worth distinguishing between the implicit and explicit policies of the Nazi regime. Implicitly, Hitler seems to have been talking about eradication from very early on — it is a logical conclusion from the rhetoric in Mein Kampf and similar early writings on Judaism from the '20s, and there are quotes from Hitler's followers that seem to suggest that they were privately hopeful of something like a full genocide of the Jewish people. Later, in 1939, he threatens the eradication of Jews entirely if a new world war breaks out.
That said, these were all more implicit threats of (and hopes for) extermination, rather than any actual policy, which did only really start coming into force in 1941. And it doesn't look like the later policies were built on any concrete plans beforehand, but rather were a new strategy at that time. In terms of explicit policy, it seems the goal was more to make Jewish life in Germany so hostile that the Jews would voluntarily leave. It was only later that forced deportation (such as the Madagascar plan), and then mass murder were considered as viable options.
So perhaps a better statement would be: eradication was a Nazi belief and talking point from very early on, albeit not an official goal until the war started in earnest. Still this is very different from the Japanese internment camps in the US which were not connected to an existing policy of racial hatred, and where there was no real impetus towards eradication at all.
Since the October No Kings rallies, the Women's March organization has been calling for walkouts on January 20. It's dismal how poorly known this is...
Needless to say, any publicity that can be provided would be welcome.
I'm not physically in America, but if I were, this would be the time I go postering at night and sandwich board standing downtown on weekends. I understand things are hard and the financial insecurities make it hard to protest, but it's only going to get harder here on out.
Well, spouse and I just spent a couple of hours downtown in sub-freezing temperatures waving signs at cars. Turnout about 200 people, which isn't terrible for January and < 12 hours notice.
Somebody has to do the work of showing up against this ghastly regime.
Awww good job you guys ;_; 200 is a crowd, thankful for people like you
We have local rapid response protests tomorrow afternoon here. Folks are probably going to need time. A general strike where there are no/minimal worker protections is a rough sell.
God speed, everyone :'( I don't want to live in interesting times anymore
Yeah I've seen that talking point. From Maduro himself no less, but the US doesn't need oil right now. The price of oil is good, the storage is vast, and the US still has massive deposits.
I'm not convinced, though I wouldn't be surprised either if that did end up being the case.
Relevant: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/special-interests-venezuela/
Thanks, that's a good source. It reads as if oil companies have an interest and their lobbying is what drives some decision making.
I'm partial to the argument this can be spun as a "border defense" talking point because approval ratings are in the gutter, but oil is a tale as old as time.
they dont need it, they WANT it. As the regions hegemony they have to consolidate resources and power so this is all part of the plan. Its probably in project 2025 somewhere.
The BBC reports that. Cuba admitted that 32 Cuban military and intelligence officers died in the attack, many of whom were part of Maduro's close security detail. Which is curious: the dictator cannot trust his own people to protect him?
Considering that Venezuela hs been sending oil to Cuba virtually for free, I suspect that Maduro was already partially captured before the Americans got to him.
The only thing surprising about this was how well it was executed. Coup in thirty minutes flat with a bare minimum of collateral damage. It's been coming for months and I was watching it live listening to the radio chatter.
Maduro is a bad guy with multiple priors, good riddance. If he wanted to stay in power he should have avoided giving US intelligence the impression that he would be bringing in weapons and troops and resources from Russia and China. That's the only reason this happened - the USA will never allow hostile foreign powers any toeholds in the Americas, and no amount of laws, conventions, treaties, congressional actions, or hand wringing will ever make even the slightest difference to that cold hard geopolitical reality. Welcome to the real world kids.
I would've expected them to bug out, not take over though. I didn't think Trump had the brains to stick around and guarantee that we didn't just get another tinpot dictator or military group taking over Venezuela. The smart play is just this - to make the transition work. This is not Afghanistan, Venezuela was fully westernized not so long ago and doing very well until their government became corrupt and Maduro ran it into the ground. We don't have to 'teach' anyone democracy there, just restore it to them. We broke it, we bought it as the saying goes. Money is no issue as Venezuela is very, very rich once the oil is flowing again. Let's get them democratic elections immediately and then get the hell out of there. Judging by what I've seen of people celebrating in the streets, nobody over there is shedding tears for Maduro or his generals, and their reaction is the only reaction I assign any weight or value to in this analysis - it's their country.
I'd worry a lot more about Iran though, because they are next (within two weeks tops I'd guess). Trump tweeted we're ready to go at a moment's notice to do the exact same thing as soon as they start shooting at peaceful protestors. In case you missed it, the country is in full blown riot mode since new years and the government it had is already toast. Short version is they couldn't keep the water on and the people of Iran have had enough of theocracy. They too were once democratic, so just like in Venezuela I think the odds of democracy sticking are better than we're used to seeing. Would you like to start the new year with two new democratic governments on the board, or complain about justifications?
Of course, the pessimist in me expects to see our government and corporations go into full on loot mode, plunder these countries, and lock them into fifty year deals that bleed them dry for their resources. That's usually how this ends up despite any good intentions. I'm going to keep a happy thought that maybe, just maybe, one day we'll get the kinds of wins we once did with Japan and Germany more often. I'd love nothing more than to see Iran and Venezuela get it together and join the democratic government club.
Putin and the BRICS bloc have lost two key allies since the year started. 2026 is certainly getting off the ground with a bang. In other news, there's chatter about a major Russian false flag coming up in the near future (according to Ukrainian intelligence and our own) that involves killing large numbers of Europeans somewhere. Are we ready for the fallout from that when NATO takes the gloves off with Russia?
This is nothing to cheer about. It is clearly about one thing. Looting and profiting for the new American Oligarchs. At the expense of global stability.
That is exactly what they said about Saddam Hussein.
They said that about Iraq also.
Most common reason for invading Iraq? Freedom.
Iran was already a democracy, before America stepped in to protect Oil interest.
Oh come on man, there are a lot of countries doing the same thing without threats of invasion. And you think other countries are less likely to rely on Russia and China?
There is a very clear historical pattern here:
When the USA destabalizes another country, and there is potential to profit and loot, things go very badly. Libya. Guatemala. Iraq. Iran.
When USA destabilizes another country and there is no potential to profit or loot, things go very well. Panama. ex-Yugoslavia.
I protested the Iraq war early on because it was obviously going to destabilize the region. This risks destabilizing the world. What is to stop China invading Taiwan? What is to stop Russia expanding into Europe? What the hell happens if Trump decides to bring freedom to Greenland?
Man, I am so sick of protesting this stupid shit.
Robert Reich has been the one to most accurately articulate the problem:
This is precisely it. If the world allows this, they have defacto allowed for exactly what Russia, China, and Israel are doing.
Let me preface that I’m no advocate for this takeover. I’m strongly opposed to U.S. interventionism.
These comparisons are still unbelievable to me. Ukrainians strongly elected Zelensky and overwhemingly want independence from Russia. Taiwan’s citizens overwhemingly do not want to be part of China. Palestinians overwhemingly do not want to be part of Israel.
And Venezuelans overwhemingly voted against Maduro last year.
Despite all the things I agree with Robert Reich on, arguing that Maduro has any sort of legitimate claim to Venezulean leadership is partisan-stoking, two-faced bullshit. In the worst-case scenario for Venezuelans, they’ve gone from one military dictatorship to another.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think this will end well. I agree with many other commenters here that American oligarchs will take the liquid gold and run. But the capture of Maduro is nothing even close to the behavior of Russia, China, and Israel.
The difference is self-determination.
Did Venezuelans want to become a rights-free subsidiary of the USA? Would the Venezuelans be just as happy with the outcome if Putin opted to do this instead?
Because that's the precedent it sets: Might makes right, if you have the military power to overthrow a country, you can.
The world must condemn the USA, as this is a war of aggression no different than what Putin is doing. It's not even a congressionally approved war: It's a dictator move that hasn't been properly shutdown.
I'm sure it'll be A-OK though because the puppet government will now be owned by Exxon.
Yup, I understand what you are saying. The USA must be condemned. It was not internationally sanctioned and it wasn’t congressionally approved, and we’re learning (unsuprisingly) that oil companies are being brought in by Trump. I am firmly against this action, but I think equating all aggressive military action is folly.
I think that was the precedent before as well? Maduro supplied loyal civilians (read: the cartel) with arms and placed loyalists in the military to violently suppress any protests to secure his power. His claim to power over Venezuela is also based in might makes right.
The current U.S. goverment should not be the world police. But France waged war in the American revolution. South Korea would not exist today without U.S. foreign aggression. Dictators never get removed without foreign intervention; that’s my larger point.
Well yes. Its much worse, because the US has zero heritage with South America, let alone Venezuela. There's not even a pretense of some glory day where the US wants to unite land that divided itself.
We're dealing with the exact same claims in the US right now. I don't think we have much energy nor time to intervene in another country's sociopolitical rupture.
The Economist just published an article that I think rings most true...
In Donald Trump’s world, the strong take what they can. (That will be bad for America—and everyone else.)
I don't think this action strengthens or weakens those, as those countries are doing what they want anything but are simply constrained by firepower, not by global adherence to international law.
Russia tried to pull off a decapitation strike but failed, and it's still continuing its invasion in defiance of international outrage.
China doesn't have the capability to invade Taiwan (yet) due to various factors:
Israel has already been doing what it wants and it's clear that it doesn't care what the international community thinks.
Welcome to the USA! Where the intentions are always good and the bad things only happen by accident.
If, by chance, they don't buy your excuse the first time, we recommend trying something from the following list of options:
Say he was a dictator/bad guy and that the people there need our help
make something up about how American lives were in jeopardy
remind people of how cool your military is. Big gun go boom, commando kill bad guy. They eat that shit up every time.
Or, you can try a new technique and just say it's for the natural resources. We've found that after decades of conflict with questionable motivations, Americans don't care enough/can't do anything to punish the people responsible, no matter how bad the blunder! Nothing matters!
The only thing that stops China and Russia from doing those things is being assured that it's not worth it or that they will not succeed. They may claim that this event had relevance, but that's just post hoc reasoning, they care about justification much less than US does. Both Russia and China will attack if they perceive the west as weak or preoccupied with something else, so this attack likely changes absolutely nothing.
Tbh, Russia is evidently enough of a dying empire to just try stupid things but people toss around Taiwan a lot in these conversations kind of haphazardly. China is adequately aware what happens if they try to take Taiwan militarily, because all the support they get diplomatically at the UN for their territorial integrity means nothing when war in the Taiwan Strait would at a minimum close all shipping lanes and deal a death blow to their economy (which is in, I want to say America 2011 shape at the moment.)
I agree with the rest of this person's post though.
I can see a quid-pro-quo forming between the US, Russia, and China were the US is given suzerainty over latin america, China gets Taiwan, Russia gets Ukraine. If the US doesn't back sanctions on China, then that already takes all the teeth out. The EU alone isn't going to accomplish anything sanctioning anyone.
I'd like to point out that Taiwan has been armed with Ukraine's best submersible drone technology - and that was about 18 months ago, I'm sure they are producing their own by now with all sorts of high tech upgrades and help from American defense contractors who want their own drone fleets.
China's navy is a joke from an engineering standpoint like everything they build - frankly it's amazing it floats at all, most of it will sink on its own soon enough - and they will all end up on the bottom of the sea if they ever try a real invasion. They fly in, they get shot down by superior air defense tech, they boat over they get sunk by hundreds of underwater torpedoes that loiter silently for weeks using onboard AI. Taiwan will (with US/NATO help) bleed China into collapse exactly like Ukraine is doing to Russia. That's the play, everyone is just waiting to see if Xi is stupid enough to try it.
I'll wager he is, since he kills anyone who tells him anything he doesn't like to hear. Dude hasn't lived in reality for at least a decade. If you explained the economic shipping risks to him he'd have you decapitated for bringing down his vibe. How is he going to react when his entire invasion fleet goes down in the open water in one day with a one hundred percent casualty rate? No saving face from that disaster, it'll end him.
That's a bold claim. You don't become the manufacturer of the world if you can't manufacture. China only making crappy products is a sentiment of decades past.
Their new fighters are no longer Sukhoi derivatives but self designed and looking formidable enough.
Their electric vehicles are taking the world by storm.
Solar panels worldwide are mainly Chinese.
Most things computers that aren't chips are manufactured in China.
I can go on, point is, China's manufacturing is plenty capable. In a lot of cases they're the only ones making certain items because the rest of the world divested or never invested in the infrastructure. The reason we're all so dependent on their rare earth metal exports isn't because other countries don't have the resources, they don't have the expertise to refine and ship it like China does.
I'm not trying to be a China apologist, but underestimate them at your own peril.
I'll give them credit when anything they build lasts for more than a decade without falling down, rotting from the inside, shorting out to make fires (like those electric vehicles are famous for) or sinking to the bottom of the harbor on first launch like their subs and boats have done. Granted, that's happened to US ships before too but we don't make a habit out of it like they do. :p They have a real problem with durability and longevity in a lot of the things they build.
They have no regulations on quality or enforced engineering standards like we do on public works, everyone cuts every corner even in their military production. Every scrap of concrete poured in that country will be dust within fifty years. Sure, they can make a two bit transistor that does the job for a while, but comparing their engineering to US defense standards and they aren't even in the same galaxy.
That's ok, they spend billions on bot farms and celebrity youtube tourism to convince everyone that people in China live in the future, but covering everything in LEDs so it looks good at night and painting the leaves of dead trees green doesn't magically fix your infrastructure problems. It just sweeps it under the rug until the rot collapses your roads on your daily commute. If you think I'm even remotely kidding about any of this, I can supply you with an archive of video evidence of the problems.
There's plenty of cheap crap made in China, but there is high-quality manufacturing too. For example, Apple products are manufactured there.
Since I don't know much about the Chinese navy, I would want to read more it before drawing any conclusions. Have you read anything good?
I really think you're completely misrepresenting both what was said about Iraq at the time, and the vast differences between the countries and their histories.
I don't think this is a good thing, but I also think diluting it with bad comparisons doesn't really help.
Ah, yes. The age old, "Your defensive response to my aggression will be treated as aggression so I can justify my aggressive behavior as defensive." Works every time.
Perhaps I'd be more trusting if we hadn't spent months murdering people in fishing boats.
I wouldn't be trusting people in halls of power even if they hadn't done that. :p
I'd wager Trump was trying to use that circus as a signal of what our military is capable of doing. Play up the fear because that fear leads to mistakes on the other side and if it is enough fear it can even prevent conflicts from starting. Same reason they chose such a fast, effective strategy for wave one - well, that and apparently we had a CIA mole in Maduro's inner circle. Makes it pretty easy to hang the other party out to dry.
It's a very old play, I'm sure if I looked it up in The Art of War I'd find it written down from two thousand years ago. It wasn't for Venezuela either, that show was for Russia, Iran, and China. Trump's media showmanship has developed a dark side, not so surprising that he's opting to choose these strategies though given what we know about him.
Sorry, should have appended a "/s" to my remark. If this administration had any deep strategic thinkers at the top, the boat bombing might have been a "kill the chicken to scare the monkey" play. My barely informed opinion is that Trump's team just adores hurting people who don't have the power to strike back.
If good intentions were relevant, this would not happen exclusively to profitable countries. The only intention is looting.
I'm certain it's on the menu of intentions, but the talk about deals with Russia were the spark that guaranteed this would happen. That was the 'justification' that broke any opposition to it within the government, far as I can see anyway. This new piece of history rhymes with Cuban Missile Crisis, but they decided to get ahead of it this time instead of waiting until the missiles were on the move.
Yeah, Iran was indeed once democratic. It democratically nationalized it's oil and suddenly the US and Britain decided that democracy is negotiable but oil isn't.
Just because the leader of an oil-rich country whom the US deposed was a dictator, does not at all mean that the country will now see democracy.
The US joined the UK in deposing Mossadegh because it was afraid of the spread of communism, not oil. Oil was the UK's reason. The US acted as mediator for a couple years as they viewed Mossadegh as a bulwark against the spread of communism, before paranoia over the Tudeh party and a change of administration to Eisenhower caused the US to finally agree to British plans.
Alright, let me then rephrase
To
"It democratically nationalized its oil and suddenly the US and Britain decided that democracy is negotiable but 'communism' /oil (respectively) aren't.
Would you consider that a more fair summarization?
Not really, because the "communism" reference shows up once and is not expanded upon, but the inclusion of the US directly after the oil nationalization implies that oil was the primary motivator for the US. Overall, the inclusion of the US here is just incorrect if you want to talk about the oil angle.
True, however the fact that they've had a taste of it makes it more likely that it'll work out than in countries like Afghanistan or Iraq. That gives me some hope. If the CIA hadn't overthrown the Shah we might have avoided a lot of trouble. I think we owe Venezuela for letting our cartel problem become this serious, it was a key factor in their collapse. I'd say we owe Iran too since we sabotaged the best thing to ever happen to that country. If Trump wants to start blowing up weapon stockpiles and terrorist camps in Iran to give the protesters some backup, I'm sort of ok with that as long as this degree of precision is maintained.
Some good news, I see reports the remnants of Maduro's government have decided to settle this with talks rather than try to take over. Apparently they've had enough.
Morality aside, this is a profound miscalculation from the US. Though most of Latin America sees itself as more culturally and geopolitically aligned with the US than China or Russia, the brazen disregard for truth, international law, and due process that America has demonstrated with Venezuela (combined with their already problematic history in Latin America and, more recently, in the Middle East) will scare virtually all of these countries into considering armament or diversification of security relations. To me, the beginning of the end of Monroe doctrine is all but a forgone conclusion.
Edit: to add, I think if the US followed due process and was honest about their intentions, it may have been able to get away with this. But with the way they did it, and especially if instability breaks out in Venezuela, it'll hurt them strategically much more than it'll help.
Yeah, I imagine this will put the standing of the US in Latin America back to where it was sometime around 1970.
That's pretty scary looking from Brazil. Our government is center-left and strongly democratic. But who knows what can happen if Trump wakes up in a bad mood?
Brazilian president posting a pretty critical response, yeah. Hopefully MAGA are too busy celebrating their banditry to be upset. Brazil's not the only one thankfully, but others have publicly cheered
At this point, I don't even know what a good response is. Perhaps it is better to capitulate right away? IDK. Game theorists, give me an answer!
Game theory is at the heart of geopolitics. The ultimate never-ending all consuming prisoner's dilemma.
For my money, the only good response here is to place María Corina Machado into power immediately, since she won the last election. That's good, it saves us a ton of time where things usually go sideways running up to elections that are unnecessary in this particular case as they've already happened. All we need to do is reconstitute her government and put the security forces back together, tag in a big fat IMF reconstruction loan, then get the hell out. People will be a lot more forgiving of this 'intervention' if the USA walks away rather than meddling for years on end.
Trouble is apparently Trump's strike missed the minister of defense and some other problematic members of the older regime, who are now trying to take power. We can't let that fester, it'll end badly. We're not done decapitating yet. Couple more snakes to scratch off the list - there will be another strike to deal with the leftovers.
Even if a few more important targets were taken out yesterday, it's not likely the rest of the government/military would have just stepped aside and let Machado assume the reins. And the US is not putting any boots on the ground in significant number to enforce it, so the Venezuelan military is still in charge at the end of the day. Trump's only move would be winning over a faction in the existing government/military, but it's not clear that they did so before executing their operation. We'll have to see if there was a plan for the days after.
Yeah, it's not looking very good to me right now. T says we're 'taking over' but we... already left. Not quite sure how that works. There's no enforcing this without people there to do it. Perhaps the CIA has assets and resources in play to back whichever faction comes together for Machado. Or perhaps Trump's just hoping a miracle happens. He does have a habit of pantsing his way through things until some kind of win pops up that he can glom onto. Call me crazy but I don't think flying blind is a viable regime change strategy. I'm curious to watch how this plays out over the next week.
Trump has already said Machado doesn't have "the respect" to run the country. "She's a very nice woman" though.
I think he's making a big mistake there. At a minimum I'd put her in power as the interim leader and then get elections going again. If Trump tries to appoint someone by fiat that's going to vaporize any goodwill we've earned. It's got to be a popular vote to mean anything at all, otherwise we're just playing dictator-swap and I'm truly sick of that behavior. The CIA should know better by now, they've fucked up enough regime changes over the years. I think the total might even be into the triple digits by now, and the good outcomes are probably in the single digits. This is not a track record to be proud of. :p
Yeah there's a reason my expectations are in hell. There's no world in which this comes out positively for Venezuela other than by sheer wild chance.
But we live in a world where the administration considers the US courts to have jurisdiction over the president of Venezuela (and his wife who seems like collateral damage/hostage here but I don't know anything about her) but those same courts do not have jurisdiction over the President of the United States.
All I can say to that is one small point - Maduro lost the election. He was not a president of anything, legally, under international and Venezuelan laws. He was a wanted fugitive with a twenty five million dollar bounty on his head placed there by Obama I think, then increased by Biden. That's probably going to be the legal loophole that saves Trump's ass, this time. If he'd done this to anyone else this would be a very different conversation.
You're right about the courts. The USA doesn't recognize any authority above its own... well, other than 'God' according to the money and (briefly) the pledge of allegiance. Lip service is usually where God stops in this government. Sometimes I wonder if America is God's greatest regret. Seems like a love / hate relationship to me. :p
And if we're going to be the world's policeman over invalid elections it sure is interesting that we did that in the country where it's all about the oil, again.
I'm not saying it was a legitimate election. I'm sure it wasn't. But functionally, that's the government that exists there. But maybe I missed us asking the UN to intervene. Or for this to be an international initiative rather than checks notes
That tells you who was really pushing the oil agenda. I doubt Trump cared about it that much, since the USA produces our own surplus. We don't need a drop of anyone else's ever again, by the time fracking runs out we'll be on some form of electric transport. Haven't even fracked the northeast yet which has richer deposits than Texas. We don't even need a 'backup' oil plan since Alaska is loaded, we can have it whenever we decide to go get it. We already have more oil than we'll ever use, and ours is a lot easier to refine too.
Chevron on the other hand would be oil corporation in-chief for life if they can resurrect the Venezuelan fields, which are the second largest out there - just a bit smaller than Saudi Arabia's fields. This is a jackpot reserve, though the crude is a nightmare to refine, ultra-thick and sulfur-contaminated stuff. Most of Venezuela's production is offline too due to ancient equipment and no maintenance for decades. It's all gotta be rebuilt, a twenty year project to get them back to 1950s level production. Small wonder that Chevron offered to pay for the reconstruction, they'll get lifetime management of the fields they build.
I'd bet that Trump's fetish for American big business, not oil per se, is why he went in for this. He's always idolizing our corporations - US Steel, Ford, Tesla, etc. He doesn't care about securing us more oil that we don't need. He's interested in preventing that oil from going to our adversaries (50% of Cuba's oil
iswas from VZ) and he's interested in propping up what's left of Standard Oil (aka Chevron) because he wants us to have our own pet 900lb gorilla of an oil company. That puts the USA in a position that's immune to price-fixing actions from OPEC. In fact Chevron could do the price fixing itself. :pThis is about forcefully creating big businesses that are aligned with the US, oil just happens to be the product involved. Trump was trying to do the same thing for US Steel when he was hammering tariffs on Canada. Now that I've noticed this I think I like Trump even less. Large corporations are corrosive to democracies in my view, especially multinational ones.
Edit: I can see one silver lining in this mess, though - fracking is expensive and it damages the environment. If Venezuela reaches new peaks of production, it'll be cheaper to buy ours from them than it is to keep fracking. That means no new fracking wells, and when old ones shut down, no more new ones replace them. Don't even need legislation for this, it's just market pricing.
We'd phase out fracking and rely on Venezuelan oil (direct pipelines), and that'd be a huge environmental win for us. Probably drive up natural gas prices in the long run too, since they are a fracking byproduct that we would lose over time. This is a lotta runway for the green revolution to get their tech sorted and take over.
This is essentially describing having a colony. And yeah, exploiting the resources of another country is usually cheaper.
Drilling wells are a lot cheaper and cleaner than fracking wells, those are the facts. I doubt Trump polled other US energy companies that do the fracking to see if they liked this plan. The losers here are Baker Hughes, Halliburton, and Schlumberger who will yield business to Chevron.
Yeah, I don't think the corporations are the "losers" in this situation.
The Venezuelans are the biggest winners.
They are about to drown in reconstruction money and oil revenues shortly afterwards. They are the ones that own and will work the wells and refineries. Their government will collect enough tax money to splurge on public works on a level we rarely see, like the Saudis trying to out-spend each other with crazy projects in the middle east (they'd do better terraforming the desert with it, but that's another discussion). They'll get penciled in as a top tourist destination rather than travel bans.
Venezuela was the fourth richest country in the world once, and will probably surpass that benchmark again in the future. The refugee crisis they went through fleeing the Chavez / Maduro tyranny was the second largest in human history behind Syria, displacing almost eight million people. All of those people are now free to return home if they choose.
We have a rare moment here where politics, business, and ethics have lined up for a shot at a very good outcome for everyone involved, except for the drug cartels, BRICS, and fracking companies. Seems like a hell of a win to me. Makes me wonder who the shrewd as fuck genius is that spotted this opportunity and pitched it to Trump, no way in hell he figured this out on his own.
I'm sorry, but this entire post is reliant upon a rosy view of colonialism and oil that belies a lacking understanding of the history of both. Mark my words, if the United States actually starts "controlling" any meaningful part of Venezuela, none of the citizens there will benefit save the occasional political puppet.
They would not be employed, respected, or rebuilt. They would be looted.
We fundamentally disagree about the positive outcomes of external coups.
Venezuela should be at the HDI level of Norway or UAE right now, but their own decisions have led them where they are now.
And before anyone gets started on US sanctions: those kicked in after Venezuela was already declining and targeted individuals. General sanctions didn't hit until Trump's first term.
Trying to mentally prepare myself for the tidal wave of justifications and critiques about the process instead of the act itself.
In times like these, I like to imagine what the response would be if you took the exact same scenario and replaced the US with China. Turns out that a lot of liberals had a tankie buried deep in their heart this whole time.
This Canadian (small l) liberal recognises tyranny whichever hat it tries to wear. Even if the US surprised did this to Putin somehow which also somehow immediately ends the war on Ukraine; even if he US surprised did this to Xi Jinping and promised to free Hong Kong. That's not how these things should go, you can't kidnap and bomb another country into democracy, dignity and self determination. I am under no illusion that a MAGA run country's citizens would thrive.
Some of the OSINT folks are reporting CH-47 Chinook helicopters flying over Caracas. There’s a good chance this isn’t just a bomb and leave.
Happy New Year, I guess. Certainly one way to kick off 2026. Smh...
NYT Live Updates
WaPo Live Updates
Both should be gift links.
They're annexing the country now?
As someone sitting in another nearby country (Canada) Trump has recently threatened to annex, this was crazy news to wake up to.
As of right now, the Canadian PM has yet to make an official statement.
They can barely run this country. Let's see how well the administration can run another one at the same time.
Though I have this fear that somehow Venezuela becomes like the Belgian Congo...
Without wanting to defend Trump or anyone around him, I think the possibility of outcomes that are not entirely terrible exists. I don't dare guess what the probability is.
Maduro is a dictator who's pretty clearly morally bad and there's a lot of dissent against him, so regime decapitation is not entirely unrealistic. We have historical examples of this process both failing and working - it worked in Panama for example, where the international community also protested against the US invasion, but the results were positive. Venezuela is a country that has been functional in the past, they have something to return to.
I understand how negatively US meddling in other countries' business in any way is generally viewed, but being from a country that was under a totalitarian regime as well, my view is much less strict.
Of course, Trump et al don't care about the freedom of Venezuelans, but some of the goals probably match even if the motivation is different.
Geopolitically this could mean removing an ally of China and Russia with influence in the area and, of course, a fuckton of oil, which would be a good thing and is surely part of the reason why this was done - not just the oil itself.
Of all the indefensible things Trump has done this doesn't seem nearly like the worst one and this first stage was seemingly done really well with as little collateral damage as possible, we'll see how bad the consequences will be.
Sure they always exist. But even with competent leaders it seems like the USMC only destabilizes and razes any foreign policy it jumps into. With Trump, this is only going to escalate quickly unless he dies or Congress finally get a fire up their arse and convicts him over this, South Korea style. That's really the only way at this point to de-escsalate such matters.
Being from America, my view is more strict because I've seen 80 years of post WW2 history where much better intentioned battles still ended poorly on all parties. Heck, 2024 was voted on in a mentality of "it can't get worse". And then it did. Never underestimate the maws of humanity.
Nothing to see here folks. /s
Edit: I went looking for some more info on what's going on and ya... its almost certainly military strikes and helicopters. Some people were speculating that its likely some sort of special forces operation and not a full scale invasion. Yet.
I wonder where I've heard "it's a special military operation, not an invasion" before
A crucial difference is that the Ukrainian government is legitimate and was widely elected by ~75% of Ukrainian voters, whereas the Venezuelan government is illegitimate and deeply unpopular but maintains its grip through election manipulation, killing or jailing or exiling opposition figures, and violently represses its people.
From the Venezuelans I know, the sentiment is that of cautious optimism.
Do they honestly think the US government has the best interests of Venezuelans at heart!? Or more like "can't get worse" type thing?
It really can’t get worse. 25% of the population has fled the country. There is almost nothing left: little food, no medicine, no safety, little electricity or safe drinking water, no education (brain drain; the country’s academia has been hollowed out completely), no economic opportunity, no hope.
For comparison, the Irish Potato Famine caused Ireland’s population to also drop 25% through death and migration.
Stephen Miller wants to do a mass deportation into the country. So it will get worse because their "nothing left" is about to get even more scarce. And even more grifted.
The scarcity is not caused by the population size. It's caused by complete market failure, and poor economic policies and planning. A return to a free market economy would probably solve 50% of their problems. Their current price and currency controls have choked their private sector.
In a perverse way, deporting able-bodied, hard-working immigrants might actually benefit Venezuela's situation (at America's loss for losing such valuable people), as the most valuable members of Venezuelan society have fled a country where the minimum wage is $2 — a month. Most people there earn about $100~200 a month. A Venezuelan engineer can earn 20x+ in Mexico, or 80x+ in the United States.
I'm not sure.... These are going to be recently traumatized, displaced citizen or landed resident) Americans, trying to get back to their regular American lives and American families, not people who want to put down new roots to give it all they got in a chosen new home.
Yeah, like they were hard working able bodied immigrants, but now they're refugees with no community, no support, and no resources. They probably won't make it far. A lot of them will probably die.
I would be slightly more optimistic, that most of them will do whatever it takes to come back home and make it work. Human beings are strong and resilient.
That is, I was assuming they're being dumped in a new land, not locked behind Gitmo slave cotton fields / forced labour / education camps. Damn, now that I've thought about the profit angle with USA trying to continually run an entire country as a factory colony....it sounds more grim.
Yeah that was my first thought lol like theres no way we’re not going to somehow use them to extract profit, we do that with everything.
It’s both “can’t get worse” and “the interests of the enemy of my enemy are sometimes aligned with mine”.
Of all the things trump has done this is probably the only one that has a net positive outcome. International law is fucked anyway as long as he’s in charge.
I’m just gonna be happy putin lost an ally today.
I don't know... On the one hand, yeah, Maduro is terrible. On the other hand, I've seen enough of US military history to not be any more hopeful about what comes next and what happens now...
I wonder if in the next however many decades, we're going to see more countries drop nuclear nonproliferation. It's been pretty clear for awhile that if a country has nukes, no one is going to stop said country from doing basically whatever they want. Ukraine was probably (up until today) the most recent victim of that. Which was even more unfortunate because they did have nukes at one point.
It was bad enough when we had Russia throwing around its weight with impunity. China has certainly been flexing its muscles in the region. Not saying the US hasn't done it, but the US has generally tried to appear restrained to some extent. Idk if that's actually better or not.
I get that it's quite difficult to develop and maintain nuclear capabilities. But we've also seen that's once started, it's not easy to end it by outside actors (see Iran and North Korea). And hey, maybe there are nuclear-capable countries who are less scrupulous about NNPF, especially if cash and other concessions are sent their way.
I know for many countries, the "liberal rules-based order" lauded and imposed by the West, often driven by the US, has always appeared or been outright farcical. But it's actually dead now. Like full mask off. Wretched indeed.
It's certainly making the case that nuclear weapons program is a smaller country's only defense against these powers
If it's any consolation, the US is just as likely to instill another incompetant dictator with more US-friendly interests.
The rate we're going, probably Tucker Carlson.
Not justifying anything, but a special forces operation is limited in size/scope and lots of times is an in and out job like we saw here. This really was a special operation, maybe a full scale invasion follows... IDK.
I can’t think of a more direct act of war than capturing the leader of another country.
I'm not saying it wasn't an act of war.
I'm not using the words to minimize what's going on or deflect like Putin was, it's just that what we saw last night/this morning was a special operation. A regular military operation would be... different.
Special operations exist within wars. When russia invaded Ukraine they lauched a special operation to capture Zelenski for example. They also had a regular military invasion happening at the same time.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-venezuela-nicolas-maduro-strikes-run-country-transition-military-rcna252044
I just watched the press conference. Sounds like trump 'n' friends plan to run the country themselves for some undeterminable amount of time and are very blatant about plans to take oil for themselves. I guess I appreciate the honesty? 😅 Hopefully this move back fires with all his xenophobic America First base but we'll have to wait and see.
If they bring back war spoils, MAGAists would love this move. But I doubt they would even pretend to share with their home base with all the grift that's yet to come. Hopefully life for MAGAists continue to deteriorate and they finally abandon this cult
Any thoughts on the 2025 peace prize winner?
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado releases letter after Maduro's capture. Read the full text. (CBS)
Some say there's nothing to cheer about, but apparently there are a lot of Venezuelans who disagree?
In exile, Venezuelans greet Maduro’s fall with joy — and fear of what comes next
...
It seems far too soon to say how it works out for Venezuela. There are other cases where things got worse after getting rid of a dictator.
I have a fair number of Venezuelan friends, and “mixed emotions” is how I would describe the sentiment.
Imagine how we'd feel if someone did it to "us" (the USA for me). Yes, great, the awful president has been removed.... But now what? His supporters vs his detractors, Vance being sworn in and being in control of the military. Will there be a civil war? And external war? Who is this "running our government" on our behalf as external companies come and plunder us. Even though we hate the guy do we really want anyone doing this sort of regime change?
Yeah it's not hard to imagine why mixed feelings are in place - especially because I think some folks can see Miller's statements about deportation and the statements about oil, and so on. I have one student I know I'm checking on when I get back to campus after break. I'm not sure her status - I don't need to know - but I know she's had multiple friends and family disappeared by Maduro's government. She could probably use some support either way.
State governments take over until they reconstitute the fed, it's already on the books - we can operate just fine without a federal government for some time. No attack can get all the 'government' in the USA, it's redundant by design - and maybe the only good thing to come out of paying for so much government.
We'd hold elections, possibly even put in a new constitution (real progress at last), then glass whoever made the attack, and build some really tacky monuments about it that our kids would tear down because they don't like learning about history. :p
Your response didn't address how we'd "feel" at all.
And idk why you think there's no federal government, there's literally a VP who'd get sworn in, just like in Venezuela. The questions then turn to what happens next - does this other country try to "run" us? Are they able to be successful? Do the Trump supporters follow Vance, or attack perceived internal enemies. We don't know what we'd actually do because it hasn't happened and it seems so unbelievable because we feel untouchable, until something happens and shows us we aren't.
Even if it somehow goes the way you wrote, idk how we lose the whole federal government, Venezuela didn't, but regardless of it being on the books there would 100% be chaos during any transition of that level. How many people starve without the federal government providing aid? If no one is paying the military, do they stick around? How many?
I'm not pretending to know the answers, I was speaking to imagining how we'd feel, even if a president we hated, who we think is an illegitimate war criminal, was the target. And I was empathizing with the people with mixed feelings.
(Also I think the "tearing down monuments because people don't like learning about history" is in bad taste. The only controversy I'm aware of is Confederate monuments, which were never about learning about history but perpetuating the Lost Cause ideology and were of literal traitors to the country. )
I'm surprised they're bringing Maduro to the US for a domestic trial, as opposed to rendering him to some overseas prison (or turning him over to Russia or some Gulf state). Obama's desire to try Al Qaeda detainees was a favorite complaint of the right. Thing is, the "drug kingpin" claims against Maduro were flimsy at best, and now they'll have to argue that case in court, under oath, with evidence to back it up. What are the odds this DOJ bungles it as badly as their political prosecutions against Comey, James, etc?
I think part of it is because they're going to try to use the flimsy SDNY indictment which means we're entering the show trial phase of authoritarianism. I don't think the DOJ bungles this because their whole case against Maduro is complete bullshit but once you violently remove a head of State, even one as shitty as Maduro, you can't really unshit that turd and the outcome is predetermined.
I can't remember who said it or if it was even said at all but this whole administration is obsessed with the aesthetics of strong governance. Dressing up in the airport for the appearance of civility. Not fat troops because Murica strong. Renaming cultural institutions because Trump is classy. The "situation room" they created to watch "Operation Absolute Resolve" (which is just incredibly dumb sounding) because they want that iconic killed Osama vibe. I mean it's even down to the personal aesthetic from their stupid hats to Mar-a-Lago face to the general 80s vibe that Trump and MAGA love.
To me, having Maduro stand trial to answer for his "crimes" in the US is another way for Trump to show his base and those easily convinced by podcast grifters and failed comedians that Trump is a big tough guy who doesn't like drug dealers.
Bingo. Time for bread and circuses, until everyone forgets the name 'Epstein.'
Garry Kasparov on X:
I agree with this.
In regard to the “celebrations” of Venezuelan people being broadcast at the moment:
I think a different framing is relevant here.
If someone were to assassinate Trump, there would also likely be people celebrating that in the street.
We would still find the assassin. We would still convict them. They would likely never be free for the rest of their lives. This is the correct response because we, as a society, have agreed that assassinations are very bad.
We, as a society, have also agreed that only congress can declare War.
Instead, Trump and his “Secretary of War” invaded a country and kidnapped the leader of that country, without telling any part of congress about it
The blatant illegality of Trump’s actions yesterday (oh time has slowed to a crawl) means that he should be punished.
I agree with this as well, I wish the US returned to respecting checks and balances and due process, but (as a non-american) I don't think it's the only thing that matters here.
Though as for your analogy, Trump's USA is not equivalent to Maduro's Venezuela and assassination is not equivalent to kidnapping and having him face trial.
Obama bagged Bin Laden and Reagan bagged Noriega the same way. They walked. Trump hasn't done anything (yet) worse than they did in this situation. At least Bush had congress authorize his invasion, though now we know they were lying through their teeth about all of the justifications for that war so I'm left questioning what value that authorization has in the first place. Congress happily approved a mountain of bullshit with a smile, there's no trust to be found there either.
Trump's not going to get impeached (for this, anyway - Epstein is another matter) and I doubt the US government is going to stop doing this stuff. In this particular case it seems like the people who would be angry are instead quite happy with the outcome, that's less of a mess than Noriega. I don't think anyone was making a stink about Bin Laden, everyone hated him.
We'll see how everyone feels in a couple weeks after Trump does this again in Iran. That man loves to push his luck. If he helps oust the Ayatollah and the Iranians are celebrating like the Venezuelans are now, I think I'm going to go resign from society and live in a hut in the Caribbean or something. This world line is giving me too many headaches. :p
In the case of Bin Laden, it’s worth noting that congress approved the use of military force
(Now, Trump is saying it also applies to everything now, but that’s obviously bullshit)
Thank you for pointing out Noriega! That’s an interesting one. The only (maybe) meaningful difference that I can see there is that Panama had declared war on the US, which seems like weak justification at best.
Good point about Bin laden, I'd missed that. In this situation the claim was that involving congress would have tipped of Maduro, which is why they weren't told until it was happening. I'm not sure if I believe that or not, if our legislators are that leaky with information we're got other problems too. :/
I don't. This is blood-boiling.
Doing stupid shit and not having to worry about the consequences of doing said stupid shit is the epitome of a free world resident's luxury. Mr "nuke Saddam Hussein" gets to just write absolutist nonsense with the moral relativism of Halo (2001) and make a ton of money doing so as he and his ilk condemn the third world to the whims of neo-conservative think-tanks funded by Lockheed Martin and ExxonMobil, while saying "see, there's an opposition, they're happy and waving flags or whatever," in complete (or feigned) ignorance of what happens every fucking time.
But don't worry though, he can just go "well I was wrong but we should keep bombing shit just in case" 20 years later.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/russias-putin-reassures-venezuelas-maduro-moscows-support-call-kremlin-says-2025-12-11/
Because of the Ukraine war, I'm actually for removing Putin's supporters from power in any way necessary, so in that way this is a good thing. But I'm afraid that's not quite the reason why Trump did this, so in that way, not so good.
I wish they would pull off the same in Moscow but for many reasons that's not gonna happen.
Nothing can go wrong with resource-grab wars involving nuclear-armed powers, amirite?
The Trump administration's "updated Monroe Doctrine" declaration of hegemony over the entire Western hemisphere is a horrible precedent and far more trouble in store than I think most people realize.
This is just another example of Trump saying the quiet part out loud and operating with far less subtlety than his predecessors. To think they jumped through all those hoops in the 80s when they could've just said "we're doing it because we say so." Oliver North crawled so Pete Hegseth could drunkenly stumble.
The most troubling thing is going to be the lack of pushback and/or consequences.
I think the most interesting thing about this not being talked about (because yeah there’s a lot) is that the US military has now done two very well executed strikes.
I’m pretty sure I and many others would expect Trump to fuck that up by meddling or overstaying, but given the number of people who swore we’d have US troops in Iran I think there’s a very different mindset from the Trump admin, or the military under him that seems to be handling these things.
Anything could still happen but this was an extremely well executed operation and, the US has NEVER wanted an enemy world power foothold across the oceans.
Interesting times indeed
I have updated Associated Press' headline.
Moving up in the world eh?
Another update was required after a significant change in details.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/01/04/us-venezuela-plan-trump-rubio-miller/
Yeah, sounds about right
Thirty-two Cubans killed during US attack on Venezuela (BBC)
Rubio seems to be preparing for his post-politics career as a writer for The Onion.
Trump wants Venezuela's oil. Will his plan work? (BBC)
Denmark reacts after wife of Trump aide Stephen Miller posts image of U.S. flag covering Greenland
Seems to me there is no strategic reason to go into the capital right away like this. It must be a kind of shock and awe tactic, putting pressure on Maduro to get what they want. Nothing could go wrong..edit: wtf
Well as it turns out, there is a strategic reason: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/loud-noises-heard-venezuela-capital-southern-area-without-electricity-2026-01-03/
“Trump says Venezuela's Maduro captured after strikes”
Absolutely bonkers.