[legitster]

It's really absurd how well the Maduros kidnapping plan worked. Without even changing the party in power, Trump can pretend Venezuela is reformed and do all of the economic normalization a liberal president never would have gotten away with.

But the back-to-back policy disasters are otherwise a good reminder that a broken clock is only right twice a day.

[ozgrakkurt]

> economic normalization

You mean the looting

[ErneX]

Man we were getting looted all these years, how else do you think we are now 240 billion in the hole and with 9 million Venezuelans spread all around the world?

[fennecbutt]

Well what would you do if someone owed you 240b? Debt collectors don't exist where you come from?

[seanhunter]

Sovereign debt defaults happen from time to time, and don't usually involve direct regime change.

[victorbjorklund]

Are you saying that Trump will give the money to the creditors? Including non-Americans?

[swarnie]

Listen Citizen, how else do you expect to soften Cuba up for democratic liberation?

An ICE officer has been dispatched to your location

[mullingitover]

Cuba just...gave up last week[1]. Wasn't even above-the-fold news.

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...

[plorg]

That assumes the point of invading Cuba is to do liberal market reforms. If the goal is either to expropriate resources or just throw chum to the Florida voters in an election year then it's still on the table.

[marcosdumay]

Does the current US government have goals?

Or rather, any goal that is not media and PR management?

[tharmas]

In the case of Cuba I imagine it's simply just political control, vassalage, control of the hemisphere. In the case of Venezuela it is Energy Dominance. The USA wants to control Global Energy supplies: oil and [natural] gas. It's all about China. By controlling the world's energy supplies the USA hopes to curtail the rise of China as a peer competitor and prevent other nations from achieving that status as well. Oil is price in $US. Iran was selling their oil in Yuan. That's a big no no from the point of view of maintaining US Hegemony.

[pphysch]

It's way too early to declare total victory. US also swiftly deposed Chavez, but Chavismo came roaring back.

Maduro himself is unlikely to escape his abduction, but the actual power structures and grassroots opposition to Washington's totalitarianism remains across LatAm.

[marcosdumay]

The entire situation in Venezuela was only sustainable because of their relation to the US. It's the same for Cuba, by the way.

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.

[NooneAtAll3]

you can talk about "opposition still remains" as much as you want, but it's the right wing leaders who are winning elections

[pphysch]

I'm not talking about elections that far right lunatics* allegedly win by 1%. I'm talking about what happens after.

* Colombia's new guy boasted of strapping fireworks to cats, and married his wife when she turned 18 and he was almost 30.

[NooneAtAll3]

> I'm talking about what happens after.

and what happens after is right-wing government in power of the country for the next N years

[pphysch]

Kinda like how the USA respected the previous elections in Venezuela?

[mrguyorama]

With credentials like that, shouldn't he be working as head of the US DoJ or DHS?

[refulgentis]

Are they doing any normalization? I've fallen behind and assumed it just became dictator apparatus protection as long as there was flattery, i.e. tell us we're in charge and we'll let you ship oil wherever.

[legitster]

Kinda, if you're the oil industry you are allowed to invest in Venezuela. But in a deep irony it seems like the oil industry is mostly uninterested.

I kinda wonder if the White House has just forgotten about Venezuela - there's not any clear reason they are still under general sanctions.

[seanhunter]

The reason for the reticence by the oil industry may well relate to the nature of the deposits. Although Venezuela has huge reserves they are tar sands[1] which are extremely expensive, industrially intensive and environmentally destructive to extract. Most oil companies don't have that much experience in extracting tar sands also. And that's not to mention the optics and political backdrop. Oil companies are used to having their pipelines and equipment sabotaged (eg in Nigeria oil theft from pipelines is endemic) and having to fluff up despots etc to get access to natural resourses but I could see why they might be much more keen on working on projects in conventional oil fields that are more in their wheelhouse, are easier and have better marginal returns.

[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-...

[znpy]

> It's really absurd how well the Maduros kidnapping plan worked.

It's almost like people currently in the white house know what they're doing, right? Who would have thought! /s

[dralley]

The same people attacked Iran without a plan for what to do if they closed the Strait of Hormuz

[arrrg]

The current admin has been embarrassingly bad at wielding the awesome powers of the US in a meaningful way.

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.

[outside1234]

They know what they are doing in the sense that it is all about the looting

[refulgentis]

I'm happy to give charity as a general principle, but here, we're a bit off (the comment is pointing out ~nothing changed, which is accurate)

[mothballed]

They know what they're doing, it just looks like they don't because they're not doing the thing people think they're doing.

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.