While getting Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido in power has been
slow going for the Trump Administration, the determination to try to
get the rest of the world to accept the change as already made seems to
be continuing.
This has meant Venezuela’s opposition seizing diplomatic buildings in the United States from the de facto government, and replacing the personnel with pro-Guaido diplomats. At the UN, it has meant accepting a Guaido-appointed envoy to serve as Venezuela’s rotating president of the Conference on Disarmament.
There is also a push for Guaido to replace the boards of directors for state-owned companies
that are based abroad. The US initially pushed this for US-based Citgo,
a major money-maker, and now is helping with the takeover of
Colombia-based Pequiven.
Actually forcing Maduro out of office is another matter, and President
Trump is taking up further sanctions being imposed toward that goal,
saying that the “toughest of sanctions” haven’t been used yet.
Trump is a ranting, spastic lunatic.
so are the 42% of American voters who actually approve of this tragedy.
Do not fall for partisanship. The “other” party did not exactly rush to condemn the insanity. Remember what we did in Ukraine, same old.
Look at Trump as a giant wrecking ball our bi-partisan consensus on Empire, exceptionalism, breaking every international law on books. He ran in the platform of a wrecking ball — and so far, fullfilling my every expectation. It is possible he will be reelected, if nothing then for entertainment value. Does anyone think that we actually have sane politicians and their corporate minders out there? Democrats are fielding few oddballs to demonstrate “diversity”, but are still run by the same fossils. I will not waste words on Bible totemism of Republicans. He is making Germans mad at us, now just about all of Latin American population — their silly governments notwithstanding. He is making enemies on all continents, displaying US foreign policy in its true, unvarnished form, making any frjends of US in every country look either deluded or paid by us. If that will not make them mire independent, and their elites weaned off US troth, do not know what will. And if they insist on being our friend in spite of being abused and humiliated, then it must be worth to them. Thus, they should pay US. And we should then listen carefully what our new and old jilted allies say about us. It may be enlightening. Keep Christian mantra in mind: “God bless my enemies, for they will confess my sins for me.”.
Understatement.
No one has the slightest idea what a permanent takeover in Venezuela will do to the world’s oil prices. Most likely actions: Trump will remove all restrictions on Venezuelan oil exports and the new government which will need dollars badly will try to export as much as possible.
We still have not taken over Libya’s oil supply. It looks like former American darling, turning rougue, managed to slowly extend his rule from the tiny corner of eastern Libya, with capital Tobruk being practically on Egypt’s border — to 2/3 of the country, including just about all of oil. Now, he controls the South as well. Now, US sponsored UN “unity” government is limited to Tripoli. General Hefter asking for elections, he will end up winning. Thus — US may not be keen. But he us now exporting oil and making money. He will toss us some crums.
The history of Libyan oil is fascinating. When Rommel’s German tanks roamed across Libya its large oil reserves had not yet been found. These tanks needed water for the cooling of their engines hence German water engineers drilled in Libya for subterranean water, not for oil! They reported back to Berlin that most of the water was useless because it was too salty. No one in Berlin put one and one together and yelled: oil!!! Imagine what might have happened had the Germans discovered Libya’s liquid gold! The heft of the war might have shifted to the Mediterranean Sea.
Under Qaddafi foreign oil companies produced in Libya but always in consort with the national Libyan oil industry. The major producers were Italian and Norwegian. We were represented by Occidental, a favorite of Qaddafi.
U.S wants to capture Venezuela oil to make them de facto mass exporters and thus lowering oil prices to such lenght to put crushing pressure on Iran and Russia. Neither U.S or the Saudis are willing to do that.
The U.S. isn’t able and the Saudis aren’t willing, yup. However, even capturing Venezuelan oil wouldn’t do very much, probably not even with an extreme currency arbitrage regime.
Apart from the hard currency crunch, Venezuelan oil kept in the ground is sound economics. Venezuelan oil is of the thick sour variety that’s only economical to produce at high prices. Even when Maduro was pumping, he was getting below cost-of-production, desperate for hard currency.
Capturing Venezuelan oil would still mean pouring in hard money and hoping the spread at least covers some costs. Venezuela had little impact on the earlier oil crash and recovery, but made things tougher for those U.S. refiners reliant on Venezuelan grades.
No problem. They’ll put that country under massive IMF or U.S debt for the modernization of the oil industry and siphoning that oil for few decades.
Agreed, model-wise.
Calling in the Saudis/GCC might be the plan. The level of funny money in the global economic system is getting hard to paper over.
However, the Saudi-GCC fortunes are old money, they’ve got primed sovereign wealth funds with nowhere to go really, and they are familiar with sour oil.
The House desire to end the Yemen war can’t just be morally motivated; maybe someones got better plans for the Saudi cash card than just sopping the MIC.
Well, the Saudi’s did mention switching from oil energy to alternative energy. But I fail to see what use they’ll be to U.S. after they accomplish that.
The purpose of the Saudi regime’s explorations of alternative energy (solar and nuclear) is to make more of its oil available for export. Right now, electricity is “free” in Saudi Arabia, which means that a bunch of oil gets burned producing it but nobody gets a light bill. Cutting off that subsidy would cause political unrest at the very least. So they want to generate the “free” electricity in some other way and pump the oil onto tankers instead.
This is a very timely strategy for
Saudis. Oil, while not reaching oeak oil stage as predicted earlier, is in many other areas on earth very difficult (translate, expensive) to extract. And transition to alternative energies will take much longer. For many industries just switching to gas ftom dirty oil derivatives or coal, is a progress. For airline and ocean transport fleets, the solurion is still very far away.
But here is the problem. US is not in the global market for nuclear power plants. Trump merely suggested an integrator, to facilitate and manage Saudi thermonuclear power plant acquisition process. It was a shock meritting Congressional investigation!
Problem is, Russia is building power plants. Besides Iran, currently building in Turkey, and starting in Egypt. Currently still maintaining quite a few in Eastern Europe. Already built several additional reactors in China, and currently building one jointly with China. Recently signed a large deal with Japan on Fukushima clean up, as well as assistance in shutting down several plants, as well as contract for the evaluation of all plants that will remain in operation.
No US company has broken ground for a new power plant since seventies, and only ONE additional reactor was added since (Tennessee). Several new reactor plans were recently approved but either cancelled or not started.
Nuclear technology has moved on, but not us with it. Corporations do not like risk, and tend to cut corners in maintenance, disposal or even training. For them, this is not a profitable model.
Saudis are already talking to Russia. Technically, they can contract with French company, but US owns part of it, and sanctions are always on everyone’s mind.
Nuclear power plants always seemed more like poison pills then economical power sources.
Also sources of potentially weapons grade uranium once the fuel cycle is mastered.
That’s why Iran’s enemies can never accept a nuclear Iran; everyone ‘knows’ nudge wink, nuclear power is about acquiring nukes and a space rocket program is about ICBMs.
The KSA has real estate, lots of it, strategically placed.
https://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Western_Asia
Saudi Arabia as a compliant and complicit Western Asia geopolitical ally offers dominance of Western Asia, the Red Sea and [East] Africa. Tack on Yemen and its ancient ports, and KSA can directly access the Arabian Sea.
https://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Arabian_Sea
Hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent on global ambitions reaching far into the future.
But, but Trump hasn’t started any new wars.
… Well, he hasn’t. There’s the rub.
A President Hilary Clinton would have already gone Gadaffi.
Right. He’s just continued the ones that were hot when he took office and even upped the bombing in Afghanistan. He continued to enable the Saudis in Yemen and his promises of withdrawal from Syria change as often as he insults someone. Not to mention our expanding presence in Africa. He also upped the military spending, as well as the spook money, and will sell weapons to anyone with cash to buy them including weapons to Ukraine whom even Obama questioned selling them. His dropping out of the JCPOA and the subsequent sanctions on Iran are just as lethal as the bombs we drop. The blatant regime change attempt in Venezuela might just outdo anything the witch had planned. I could go on but what’s the point? So yeah, he hasn’t started any new wars
Imperial reset from expansion to contraction is a radical policy change. Show me the 2016 antiwar candidate that came close to winning. Or 2020 for that matter.
Trump simply benefits from being one of the few electable elite politicians to recognize, there’s no place left to viably invade militarily. That doesn’t, unfortunately, preclude every other dirty trick in the book and inventing a few more below the kinetic threshold.
The Venezuela dirty war is noticeably non-kinetic. Favours for Israel have so far only been diplomatic and economic. The thwarted pullout from Syria really offended Nuttyahoo and the Israel lobby.
The candidate of antiwar dreams, ironically would have to be a total dictator able to ignore powerful opposing factions with grassroots support to the point of rooting out and expunging them.
This madness must be stopped. Trump is NOT king of the world, and the UN should not allow such brazen behavior. The takeover of properties,many will remember, is how Obama reacted to Trump’s win in 2016, stealing Russian properties in the USA as well as expelling the diplomats.
Maduro needs to give Putin a call. If old Vlad can pull Assad’s cojones out of the fire then anything is possible. Trump needs a refresher course on the death of the American Century and Putin needs to make America fail again.
America is failing all on its own… Putin is more in ‘duck and cover’ mode insofar as statesmanship allows duck and cover.
A total garbage article posted on antiwar today from the Cato institute with no opportunity for comment. The same right wing talking points used by Trump and Bolton in the headline and the first paragraph. Mostly lies that tell the opposite of what has actually happened in Venezuela with the dramatic lowering of extreme poverty throughout the country. No mention of the subsidized food available for much of the nation and a low income housing program that puts to shame many of the largest cities in the U.S.
A. Trevor Thrall of the Cato Institute your b.s. article on Venezuela sucks.
Caitlin Johnson has an apt description; ‘regime change by narrative control’.
https:// medium. com/@caityjohnstone/americas-venezuela-strategy-coup-by-sheer-narrative-control-fc8ee1f01e23