Subject: Re: Venezuela - Who and How
They're literally the only ones on the planet bent out of shape by this.

Lots of people are bent out of shape by this. The U.S. seized by force the head of state of another country. That's rather damaging to the rules-based system that protects territorial sovereignty - usually it's verboten to have your military go into another country's space.

But that's not really what this thread is about. Not about whether seizing Maduro was right or wrong, but whether it's likely to result in the U.S. "running" Venezuela, as Trump alluded to the other day. With the Administration's multiple rounds of backpedaling, though, it's now pretty clear we won't be "running" anything to much greater extent than we were prior to the removal of Maduro. We'll simply be using our blockade to put pressure on the Venezuelan government to do what we tell them, which isn't likely to have markedly different results without Maduro than if he had remained. We've always had naval superiority over Venezuela, and if we want to impose a full blockade on their tanker trade there's never really been anything they could do about it.

Anyway.

Venezuela is a lynchpin: get them off the chess board and Cuba is screwed (who, by the way, was supplying a lot of muscle to Maduro. A lot of those guys are dead now.) China loses oil imports. The Russians lose their money laundering.

But getting Maduro out of the country doesn't take Venezuela off the chess board. That's the point being raised in this thread. The country is still there. The military is still there, run by exactly the same personnel. The rest of the government is still there, run by exactly the same personnel (just sans Maduro). "A lot of those guys" aren't dead now - estimates are that a few dozen soldiers and household staffers were killed, because this wasn't a major military assault but rather a special ops attack. Removing Maduro doesn't cause China to lose oil imports (and Venezuela was a tiny portion of their imports anyway), and it doesn't cause Russia to lose their money laundering (because the finance ministry hasn't been changed one bit). Etc.