Subject: Re: Venezuela - Who and How
The US has shown that no amount of Russkie technology or Chinese advisors can keep it from doing whatever it wants inside Venezuela. We've also shown that we know more about Venezuela than Maduro's government does. I told this board - and was proven 100% correct - that we had fantastic intel on the ground inside the country. That hasn't changed and won't.

Right. Which is what I said. Nothing's changed. We don't have any different capabilities inside of Venezuela than we did two days ago. It's highly unlikely that anyone in the military thought any different about our capabilities in-country. They probably have upgraded their assessment of our intelligence capabilities, but that's unlikely to materially affect their policy choices - which are driven by much larger macro forces than whether we have really advanced ability to spy on them.

You think some security puke or General someplace is going to obey orders to shoot some protestors without thinking through what might come next for him? You think the population is going to sit still and let the regime round up more political prisoners?

Absolutely. Why would that change? They're still in charge of the country. If they lose power, they end up against the wall - so they're going to do what they need to do in order to maintain power over the country. If that means not listening to what Marco Rubio tells them to do (and it certainly does), then they're not going to listen to what Marco Rubio tells them to do. Venezuela has always been weaker than the U.S. - but countries that are weaker than the U.S. still don't obey the U.S., even though we have the power to hurt them vastly more than they could hurt us.

How do you know the CIA isn't talking to opposition leaders and giving them advice?

Because Trump has neutered the opposition. He stated that the opposition was neither consulted nor informed of the operation. He very publicly threw Machado under the bus. Rubio has confirmed that elections are something for much later down the road. Those things are completely inconsistent with this being part of an effort to overthrow the current government and replace it with the opposition party. They weaken both the legitimacy and strength of the opposition party, making it harder for them to either claim that they are today rightfully in charge of Venezuela or to call for processes that would put them in charge of Venezuela.

It's very clear from Trump's statements yesterday that the Administration was instead counting on Rodriguez to be a willing ally of Washington after she took over. But she rebuked the Administration later in the day with a fiery assertion that Venezuela wouldn't heed direction from DC. After that, Trump came back today with a not-at-all-veiled threat against her:

https://www.theatlantic.com/na...

...which is also unlikely to generate the hoped-for compliance with Administration orders. Right now, there are no signs that there's some 4D chess game running hidden in the background. Instead, it looks more like the Administration vastly over-estimated Rodriguez' willingness to switch teams (or that the hawks within the Administration over-sold it to Trump so he'd sign off). Candy and flowers, part deux.

I mean, it's really a stretch for the Administration to threaten a foreign leader individually with consequences "worse than Maduro's" if they don't obey Washington - even beyond what they just did. We've been out of the open assassination business for a long time. Going after Rodriguez would be well outside the Noriega-Maduro "we're just arresting him for crimes" bucket which puts a law enforcement spin on those operations.