Subject: Re: As Albaby says...
You seem to be operating under the assumption that only big bold moves done all at once move the needle. That's not how geopolitics works.

I know. But not every small move will move the needle. You seem to be operating under the assumption that because this operation has some geopolitical importance, it must have geopolitical importance vis-a-vis China. I don't think that's the case. I think it has a lot of impact on Cuba, a modest amount of impact on our immigration policy for Venezuelans (which is why I think this actually happened), will make DJT feel better (he had a lot of personal animus towards Maduro)....but a negligible effect on China and most of the other things you mentioned. Because as much as you might believe everything should be about China, that doesn't mean everything is about China.

You believe that doesn't alter their calculus, even a little?

Not really. Oh, sure, we've tipped them off about the extent of our intelligence resources there - which will make them be less complacent and perhaps harder to monitor. But I don't think they were ever under any illusions about our ability to do whatever we want in a small Latin American country with a degraded military. After all, the problem with the Russian air defenses wasn't that they were inherently flawed - it's that Russia's been too consumed with Ukraine to continue to supply Venezuela with the parts and expertise to maintain them, and many of them weren't even turned on. The barriers to the U.S. doing stuff down there were never that the government could stop us - it's that interfering generally wasn't regarded as worth the cost. Because you can't make any material changes to the government without risking the country falling into chaos, and what's the point of a military operation if you're not going to make any material changes to the government?

The military isn't going to stop letting Hezbollah operate there, because the military and Iran continue to share a joint antipathy towards Washington. Which will only be heightened (if such a thing is possible) now that we've seized their head of state.

You're making an assumption here. That assumption is whose capital Delcy takes orders from - Beijing or Washington, D.C.? You assume Beijing.

No, I do not. She's not taking orders from either Trump or Xi. She's taking orders from López. The country is run by the military. Sure, she's got some amount of power - but that power is limited to the constraints of the military. And she's going to do what the military tells her to do - regardless of what either Xi or Trump tells her. It's a colossal mistake to minimize that these regimes have their own interests and respond to their own domestic pressures, need to secure power, etc. They will make alliances with and are influenced by other major powers, but they are not taking orders from those powers. So, the range of outcomes of what the existing military regime will choose to do in the future will be shaped largely by a host of geopolitical factors that have not changed, and their actions are not going to be significantly more shaped by what DC wants than they were in the past.

-international pressure to hold elections
-The US removing the Ghost Fleet and dictating how oil is sold
-A newly invigorated opposition in Venezuela

Again, I think you're seeing what you want to see. The opposition is now in a worse place than it was before the abduction. Trump basically trashed them in public, determined that they lacked both the credibility and the power to take control in Venezuela, and cut a deal with the existing regime. He's completely sidelined them. Trump has always had a much higher tolerance for authoritarian rulers than most other Western democratic leaders, as well as an inclination to prefer to cut deals for material things than to worry overmuch about generic precepts of the international rules-based order. Every indication is that Washington is planning to deal with the existing regime rather than push for elections any time soon.