[lenerdenator]

Depends on what you mean by "achieved control".

Is it having heavy influence over through proxies? You can't just snatch a guy like Maduro out of a country without some local help. Help that would presumably be aligned with you on goals.

Or is it setting up a complete government like in Iraq, postwar Germany/Japan, etc.?

[WheatMillington]

Where are you getting "achieved" from? The wager only requires that the USA INTENDED to seize control.

[watwut]

Yes, it is clear there was local help. Someone who had a lot to gain, it could even be someone from government looking for promotion or seeing maduro as a threat, including the new president herself. That does not imply control over Venezuela. Nor alignment with American goals.

I mean, official American goals are "taking oil and getting money from it, putting it to offshore account". There is no "alignment on goals" possible, but there is a space for corruption and pressure. Venezuela is highly corrupt country after all.

> Or is it setting up a complete government like in Iraq, postwar Germany/Japan, etc.?

That would require actual invasion and actual control over land - military on the ground. Soldiers in high numbers, patrolling streets and shooting it out with militias. There is nothing of the sort going on. Besides, Iraq was failure.

Germany was literally defeated and destroyed after the war. Fight capable men were already killed in large numbers and Germans themselves seen themselves as losers of that war. And comfortably, their ideology of "might is right" meant that once they were destroyed they accepted to loss.

Trump and Vance may be able to peer it with militias, as another gang competing with local gangs, but they cant build equivalent of post WWII Germany. Because both sides are different - Venezuela is not defeated, there is no American military in there and American ideology is closer to that of past Germany then that of post WWII America.