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Venezuela is uninvestible.

SNIP As other oil executives lavished President Trump with praise at the White House, Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods bluntly said the Venezuelan oil industry is currently “uninvestable,” and that major reforms are required before even considering committing the many billions of dollars required to revitalize the country’s dilapidated crude business...

...“There was nobody to say anything, except Darren, and he’s eloquent as heck,” said Jim Wicklund, veteran oil analyst and managing director for PPHB energy investment firm, noting that Exxon stock most likely would have fallen if Woods had overcommitted to Venezuela.

“This is Trump’s problem. There’s no urgency by the industry at all to go back into Venezuela. And there’s almost no inducement other than guaranteeing profitability, which they can’t do,” Wicklund said. “You can sweeten the terms, but the political risk outweighs that variable by a factor of 10.

“We don’t need Venezuelan oil. It’s going to hurt everybody else (including U.S. producers) if we boost Venezuelan production because, right now, we’re awash in oil.” SNIP

https://fortune.com/2026/01/12/trump-threatens-kee...

We should just let China, Iran and Russia have a base there. They can run drugs, have terrorism base, Chinese listening posts and work to destabilize other countries in South America.

Sometime there are bigger things at stake. Maybe one day this board figures it out.

We should just let China, Iran and Russia have a base there. They can run drugs, have terrorism base, Chinese listening posts and work to destabilize other countries in South America.

Sometime there are bigger things at stake. Maybe one day this board figures it out.

No vague references to goals when we're screwing up our back yard with lousy not-thought-out actions. So far it looks like theater. We need to study China's weaknesses and use those to our benefit, but this is normal for a super power. Let's hope this isn't a bust, because if it looks like a bust Trump will feel pressure to bomb Iran.

with lousy not-thought-out actio

lol. Go read up on what they do. They thought it through.

We should just let China, Iran and Russia have a base there. They can run drugs, have terrorism base, Chinese listening posts and work to destabilize other countries in South America.

Again, this point is not about goals. It's not about whether it would be good to not have China or Russia have influence in Venezuela.

It's about whether that goal will be at all achieved simply by removing Maduro individually and browbeating oil companies, if we don't actually do the work of changing the regime - which otherwise remains completely intact.

It would be awesome if U.S. oil companies were to flood Venezuela with investment capital. But they're probably not going to. And if Trump's strategy for Venezuela relies heavily on the prospect of private oil companies lining up to invest many tens of billions of dollars in the country, then it's not going to work.

lol. Go read up on what they do. They thought it through.

I have. I don't think so. I think you'll just "LOL, hahah lib, they did, go read" no matter what ill conceived action they do. There's only one time you haven't done that, when they started the tariffs, but since Trump tacos, the effects are mild except for soybean farmers. So "LOL, hahah lib, they did, go read" means you don't have anything or otherwise you'd link to something you think explains it. No link = you got nada, capiche?
So there's no having an adult talk with you.

If Trump's strategy for Venezuela relies heavily on the prospect of private oil companies lining up to invest many tens of billions of dollars in the country, then it's not going to work.

And there's no amount of "Lols" that is going to cover that up. We look like idiots on the world stage Dope.

And yet, that point does not and cannot exist in a vacuum…hence my point.

Albaby,

Biden had a $25 million bounty on Maduro.

Presumably, Biden wanted to rid Venezuela of Maduro but couldn't get it done while he was in office.

Please remind us all of your criticism of Biden for wanting to rid Venezuela of Maduro.

Otherwise, STFU.

I have

Reading your echo chamber sources doesn’t count.

They very much thought the operation through; that’s why it went so well.

So there's no having an adult talk with

There are tiers of poster
Of here. Suffice to say that you and your doppel don’t occupy the highest level.

And yet, that point does not and cannot exist in a vacuum…hence my point.

But your point is wrong.

No, not that there are serious geopolitical implications to Russia and China having influence in South America. Nor that it's supremely important for the U.S. to try to limit their influence.

It's your suggestion that the people on this board don't realize that.

Of course we do. These critiques of the Administration's plans are not critiques of their objectives. We're just noting that the things they're doing are not likely to achieve those objectives. So when you write:

We should just let China, Iran and Russia have a base there. They can run drugs, have terrorism base, Chinese listening posts and work to destabilize other countries in South America.

Sometime there are bigger things at stake. Maybe one day this board figures it out.

...it's just totally off base. We know there are important things at stake in Venezuela. What we're saying is that what the Administration actually did isn't likely to have any material impact on those things. Venezuela has been allies with China and Russia, and not the U.S., because it is a socialist dictatorship that represses human rights and expropriated tens of billions of dollars in assets from American companies and which regime draws enormous domestic political value from being antagonistic to the U.S. After the removal of Maduro, Venezuela is now a socialist dictatorship that represses human rights and expropriated tens of billions of dollars in assets from American companies and which regime draws enormous domestic political value from being antagonistic to the U.S. While Maduro is gone, none of the things that kept Venezuela in the Sino-Russia sphere of influence have changed.

It would be interesting to hear why you think this operation will actually lead to a material change in Venezuela - to hear you address the point we're actually making - rather than keep asserting that we're missing the point on how important China is. We know how important China is. We just don't think that this action materially affects Venezuela's posture via China.

Albaby,

You didn't respond. Did you ask these similar questions when Biden was trying to get rid of Maduro by posting a $25 million bounty on him?

Of course not.

It would be interesting to hear why you think this operation will actually lead to a material change in Venezuela

But Al, you don’t understand. Trump just made himself acting President of Venezuela. By doing that, China and Russia now can’t do business in Venezuela. That’s the magical power of Trump in action!

—Peter

PS - Did the sarcasm font work this time?

But your point is wrong.

No.
You keep taking the contrarian stance on pretty much everything. That's fine. But if you're going to do that, then you have to consider the totality of the scenario before narrowly limiting the parameters under which it operates.

Let's take Venezuela. Sure, if we forgot that China, Russia and Iran were using it as a base to

-Train terrorists
-Ship drugs north
-Use as a money laundering station
-Use as a port of call for hostile navies
-Use as a launching point for disrupting other South and Central American countries
-Use as a listening station for communications

...if we forget all that stuff, then yes: there's zero reason to knock over Maduro much less invest a dime in Venezuela. Your point would be perfectly valid: none of those oil companies have any incentive to deal with Venezuela's heavy crude (which is harder to process IIRC).

But we don't live in that world. We live in the one where all those bullet point occur. Therefore, the scenario is a bit more complicated and there are many other factors at play here.

You're also doing to left wing two-step again: Trump does a thing, you guys say It's Just Turrible and then turn around and ask why it's not a spectacular success mere hours after The Turrible Thing happens. That's a neat way to have it both ways. Problem is the time scale is usually months to see it play out.

Back to the full-context point: Sure the oil companies have no ordinary incentives to do anything. Neither of us knows exactly what Trump is saying to them in the Oval Office nor what other incentives that Trump could be proposing. Or what their willingness to "take one for the team" in the name of national security is.

As an aside: One reason why the left stinks at foreign policy is because its first assumption is that We Can't Do Anything But Watch Stuff Get Bad and thus takes any kind of bold move off the table.

It would be interesting to hear why you think this operation will actually lead to a material change in Venezuela - to hear you address the point we're actually making - rather than keep asserting that we're missing the point on how important China is. We know how important China is. We just don't think that this action materially affects Venezuela's posture via China.

That's because I'm busy pointing out the gamesmanship and constant contrarianism absent alternative policies. It should be patently obvious that kicking China and Russia out of the Southern Hemisphere is something we should do but maybe that's not self-evident.

Love also how the clear language of earlier posts never means what it means, it only acquires the "the point we're actually making" 10 or 15 posts later after the flaws are highlighted and the "akkkshully..." starts.

You keep saying nothing's changed in Venezuela. That's wrong on stilts. Who's controlling their oil flows now? What's happening to all the ghost fleet ships that have been under international sanction for years - and acting as Russia's lifeline - but no one had done anything about?

You're no doubt going to reply with But we didn't need to do the raid... but you'll miss the fact that by removing the head of their government we sent a very clear and simple message: Don't F with us. During this operation we told their pilots in Spanish on their guard frequencies to land, pronto. They actually scrambled fighter jets, did you know that? The minute they went up they were told to turn around and land. Most did. A few enterprising pilots tried to follow the helicopters back...and learned right quick that continuing down that path meant BOOM for them. So they turned around also.

The Cuban guards? We whacked a lot of them. How many more do the Cubans want to send knowing they have no chance (and might be needed at home).

Rodriquez? She gets to sleep with one eye open wondering when Trump decides to bundle her a$$ on a helicopter and park her in a cell next to Maduro.

There's more than that, but that's enough for now. Rodriquez, after pounding the table about this and that has largely kept her trap shut. She hasn't done anything other than complain about Trump's "acting President" joke.

...if we forget all that stuff, then yes: there's zero reason to knock over Maduro much less invest a dime in Venezuela.

Again, you keep missing the point entirely.

We are not debating whether there is a reason to try to change Venezuela to get rid of all those terrible things. We are debating whether removing Maduro and nothing more will actually result in any material change in any of those terrible things.

If you take out Maduro and don't change anything else about the regime, there's no reason to expect that any of those bad things you list are going to change. Sure, they'll abate while we've got 150+ warships stationed off the coast (as they would if Maduro would still be in charge). But if the regime doesn't change, and none of the macro geopolitical factors that caused the regime to act as it did don't change, then the results won't change.

Nobody is asking why this isn't a success yet. We all know that the effects of this policy will take some time to play out. However, we do know that the general state of play is that the U.S. government is not going to try to change who is running Venezuela by replacing the existing regime with the opposition, but is instead going to try to work with the existing socialist military dictatorship to get some changes. Which means we know that the scope of change is fairly limited.

It should be patently obvious that kicking China and Russia out of the Southern Hemisphere is something we should do but maybe that's not self-evident.

Again, how does removing Maduro - and not anyone else in the regime - kick China and Russia out of the Southern Hemisphere? Venezuela is still part of the Belt and Road. They still have $100 billion of Chinese loans/investment in their country. The structural reasons why the Venezuelan government aligned with the Sino-Russian sphere, and not the U.S., are still entirely in place:

It is a socialist country;
Run as a military dictatorship;
That expropriated billions of dollars of American assets;
That doesn't follow the rule of law;
Where the regime derives support from opposing Yankee imperialism

None of that has changed. And unless/until it changes, Venezuela is exceptionally unlikely to be a friend to the U.S., instead of aligning with our enemies. Because it is to the benefit of the regime to align with China and Russia instead of the U.S. We can't change that unless we change some of those factors above, which can't be done without changing the regime.

Love also how the clear language of earlier posts never means what it means, it only acquires the "the point we're actually making" 10 or 15 posts later after the flaws are highlighted and the "akkkshully..." starts.

Don't blame us if you misread what we say because you'd rather attack a different point, and it takes you ten or fifteen points to actually pay attention to the claims that are being made. Nobody said that it wouldn't be to the U.S.' advantage to reduce Chinese and Russian influence in the Western Hemisphere. We've entirely been questioning whether removing Maduro would have any material effect on anything, and specifically whether removing Maduro is going to effectuate major U.S. investment in the country.

China's winning the "soft power" game because their government is willing to spend money to buy influence in countries where they won't get an economic return, but will get a geopolitical return. We are losing that game because we are unwilling to use our government to do the same. You can't replace that with private investment, because private investment goes to where the economics are right, not where the geopolitics are right. So even though Venezuela is geopolitically important, private oil companies aren't going to invest there. But "America First" means that unlike China, we can't have our government spending a lot of money to help other countries in order to gain a geopolitical advantage.

You keep saying nothing's changed in Venezuela. That's wrong on stilts.

Nothing has fundamentally changed in Venezuela. Things have changed in the very short term - we've got 150+ warships parked off their coast. That allows us to directly control their shipping flows in a way that we wouldn't be able to do. And that lasts for exactly as long as we keep the 150+ warships parked off their coast. Which we're not going to do indefinitely. And once we remove the warships, all of the macro geopolitical and economic factors that led Venezuela to align with Russia and China and out of the U.S. sphere are still there. Because the plan is to not change any of those things.

Again, you keep missing the point entirely.


No I understand your point. Everything Trump does is useless. That's your point.

We are debating whether removing Maduro and nothing more will actually result in any material change in any of those terrible things. (In other words, everything Trump does it useless. Yes. We overstand.)

Then you've already lost the debate, because the totality of actions includes whacking drug boats, denying Cuba and China oil, shutting down the ghost fleet and making it tough for China to make more inroads into South America.

If you take out Maduro and don't change anything else about the regime, there's no reason to expect that any of those bad things you list are going to change.

Hmm. The Venezuelan people have that particular ball. Or were you saying that absent a full scale invasion nothing changes? Trump doesn't like that approach and has said so numerous times.

In previous threads you completely discounted the psychological effect of what we did has as well as the quality of intelligence we developed (in a short time, I would add) and what that meant to the overall health of that regime.

Again, how does removing Maduro - and not anyone else in the regime - kick China and Russia out of the Southern Hemisphere?

There's the two step. Removing Maduro and emasculating Venezuela takes a chess piece off the board. Shutting off Venezuelan oil to Cuba gets that domino wobbling as well.

If China and Russia have to invest resources to play defense (i.e. shore up a thug regime) then those are fewer resources spent playing offense.

And unless/until it changes, Venezuela is exceptionally unlikely to be a friend to the U.S., instead of aligning with our enemies.

Who cares? The problem with your analysis on foreign policy is that it lacks any and all concept of Realpolitik. Nobody in DC could care less if the Socialist Revolutionary Bolivarian Military Dictatorship Unelected Election Denying People's Republic of Venezuela sends us a Christmas card. What serious people in DC care about is limiting China/Iran/Russia's ability to make mischief.

China's winning the "soft power" game because their government is willing to spend money to buy influence in countries where they won't get an economic return, but will get a geopolitical return. We are losing that game because we are unwilling to use our government to do the same. You can't replace that with private investment, because private investment goes to where the economics are right, not where the geopolitics are right. So even though Venezuela is geopolitically important, private oil companies aren't going to invest there. But "America First" means that unlike China, we can't have our government spending a lot of money to help other countries in order to gain a geopolitical advantage.

This is your misguided "But Trump shut down USAID" point, the one that assumes that USAID was doing the same exact things that Belt and Roads did/does. USAID handed out condoms to Africans, shipped the odd bag of rice, and some other things. That's it. If you think China's Belt and Road is super popular then I invite you to research the strings it comes with:

https://thediplomat.com/2025/09/the-complex-politi...

The Complex Politics of China’s Belt and Road Initiative
China’s limited success in managing the political risks of the BRI has resulted in reputational costs and played a role in China’s curtailed flow of BRI lending in recent years.

and
As Zha Daojiong, a professor of international relations at Peking University, remarked: “Good old-fashioned aid, with China doing everything by itself, meaning Chinese money, Chinese companies, Chinese construction materials and even Chinese workers – frankly speaking, that is an invitation to malpractice and outright corruption.” <--- Big LOL at that. Both "China" and "corruption" start with "c".

You might want to ask the Italians about what they think of BRI.

Nothing has fundamentally changed in Venezuela. Other than we control the economy and removed their head of state.

hings have changed in the very short term - we've got 150+ warships parked off their coast. T

I very much doubt we have anything near that off their coast.

No I understand your point. Everything Trump does is useless. That's your point.

No, it's not. That's a point you attribute to me, because it's easier for you to address that obviously false point than to address the substantive problems with asserting that Maduro's removal will have material changes to the geopolitics surrounding Venezuela. Or even just pave the way for U.S. oil companies to want to invest there.

Then you've already lost the debate, because the totality of actions includes whacking drug boats, denying Cuba and China oil, shutting down the ghost fleet and making it tough for China to make more inroads into South America.

I will certainly agree that the blockade of Venezuela will have a marked effect on Cuba (more below), but not one that was contingent on removing Maduro. Whacking drug boats will have a trivial effect - there's always more boats, a lesson we've learned from decades of trying to interdict drugs. China's imports of Venezuelan oil are modest and easily replaced, and the "ghost fleet" hasn't been shut down - just blockaded from Venezuela. I don't think this will have too much impact on China's ability to make inroads into South America. Especially since the two major economies that haven't already joined BRI - Mexico and Brazil - were none too pleased about it. I don't think it's going to do anything to get, say, Colombia to withdraw from the Belt and Road - or to change South American countries' perceptions that China, and not the U.S., is the safer and more stable partner to form economic and political ties with.

As for Cuba, they're in a real bad spot now. The blockade of Venezuelan oil to Cuba will have a significant impact on them. Honestly, I think that's the main consequence of all of this - because the fall of Cuba (if it happens) is perhaps the only lasting thing of consequence that will come from the period of temporary influence we'll have over Venezuela's oil industry.

If you think China's Belt and Road is super popular then I invite you to research the strings it comes with:

It is super popular. Among governments. There are 150 countries that have signed on. There's tons of strings that come with it - which is why it's super smart and effective for China to do this. The whole point is that they use their economic resources to create alliances with governments - not the local villagers - based on subsidizing and lending to projects that don't make a ton of economic sense.

I very much doubt we have anything near that off their coast.

You're right - I mixed up the number of aircraft and number of vessels. The point still remains. Without making changes to the regime, the changes that we're effecting last for about as long as the naval buildup is continued. And since the naval buildup will not continue indefinitely, those changes will recede.

No, it's not. That's a point you attribute to me, because it's easier for you to address that obviously false point than to address the substantive problems with asserting that Maduro's removal will have material changes to the geopolitics surrounding Venezuela. Or even just pave the way for U.S. oil companies to want to invest there.


Distinction without a difference.
You can repeat the "no geopolitical consequences" line all you want; I've listed several things that are different. Question for you: Who was in charge of Venezuela's oil on January 2, 2026 and who was in charge of it from January 4, 2026 onwards?

As far as attributing points to others, nice try on the "US oil companies" bit. I don't believe I've taken much of a stand one way or the other on that. Why? Because I don't care.

What I care about is tying a rope around the nuts of China and Cuba's oil supplies and giving it a good yank when we feel like it. Everything else is secondary.

I will certainly agree that the blockade of Venezuela will have a marked effect on Cuba (more below), but not one that was contingent on removing Maduro.

To this I'll repeat what I said upthread because I figured you'd go here:
You're no doubt going to reply with But we didn't need to do the raid... but you'll miss the fact that by removing the head of their government we sent a very clear and simple message: Don't F with us. During this operation we told their pilots in Spanish on their guard frequencies to land, pronto. They actually scrambled fighter jets, did you know that? The minute they went up they were told to turn around and land. Most did. A few enterprising pilots tried to follow the helicopters back...and learned right quick that continuing down that path meant BOOM for them. So they turned around also.

On this one:
Whacking drug boats will have a trivial effect

Heh. Turns out the real reason we did it was to create cover for the entire operation. Sending a number of drug dealers to Davy Jones' Locker for the cost of a few Hellfires is a small price to pay.

China's imports of Venezuelan oil are modest and easily replaced, and the "ghost fleet" hasn't been shut down - just blockaded from Venezuela.

Oh? Losing 4.5% of your entire oil supply is not "modest" nor is it "easily replaced". As for the ghost fleets...they're being taken for impound to the US. Their ghosting day are *ovah*.

I don't think this will have too much impact on China's ability to make inroads into South America. Especially since the two major economies that haven't already joined BRI - Mexico and Brazil - were none too pleased about it. I don't think it's going to do anything to get, say, Colombia to withdraw from the Belt and Road - or to change South American countries' perceptions that China, and not the U.S., is the safer and more stable partner to form economic and political ties with.

LOL. The US just proved who the Strong Horse in the Southern Hemisphere is. Unequivocably. For all China's bluster they still can't project power globally. We can.

I'd suggest you take a look at who's been winning elections in SA also. Javier Milei isn't going to take China's calls, for one. da Silva is upset because he's a socialist (with a sketchy electoral history) and Sheinbaum doesn't want Trump sending Delta Force to kill cartel heads in her country.

It's left wing propaganda to repeat the line that "China, and not the U.S., is the safer and more stable partner to form economic and political ties with. Literally no one serious about foreign policy believes that.

As for Cuba, they're in a real bad spot now. The blockade of Venezuelan oil to Cuba will have a significant impact on them. Honestly, I think that's the main consequence of all of this - because the fall of Cuba (if it happens) is perhaps the only lasting thing of consequence

Cuba is screwed. Their oil imports are about to go to zero and that's adios to their energy sector.

It is super popular. Among governments. Is it, now.
Governments don't like it because the Chinese deal with local chieftans and NOT the actual government. Then when they read the fine print they understand just whom they've sold their souls to.

Without making changes to the regime, the changes that we're effecting last for about as long as the naval buildup is continued. And since the naval buildup will not continue indefinitely, those changes will recede.

No. One P-8 Poseidon + NOSS satellite coverage can monitor thousands of square miles of ocean and look for tankers running away. I know another poster here was chortling about how these tankers were 'escaping' the Navy but that was just wishful thinking on his part.

What I care about is tying a rope around the nuts of China and Cuba's oil supplies and giving it a good yank when we feel like it. Everything else is secondary.

You haven't done anything to China. China still has all the deposits it bought to mine. That hasn't changed. China still has built ports, infrastructure, and operates businesses there. Venezuela hasn't been producing much. Cuba you do have, but you've shown yourself to be inept so far, so I don't think you'll manage that well either. I do hope we get lucky, something good might as well come of this.

Question for you: Who was in charge of Venezuela's oil on January 2, 2026 and who was in charge of it from January 4, 2026 onwards?

On January 2, 2006: the military dictatorship that rules Venezuela.
On January 4, 2006: the military dictatorship that rules Venezuela.

The fact that you asked this series of questions shows that you're overlooking the main point. Because we didn't actually change the regime, we didn't change who's running Venezuela. This is what keep tripping up the Administration's messaging during the immediate aftermath of the Maduro seizure. Trump kept saying that we're running the country, people would ask "how, exactly, are we running the country without a single member of U.S. personnel inside the country?," and then Rubio would have to walk that back and say that we're not running the country but influencing the direction it goes in.

As far as attributing points to others, nice try on the "US oil companies" bit. I don't believe I've taken much of a stand one way or the other on that. Why? Because I don't care.

What I care about is tying a rope around the nuts of China and Cuba's oil supplies and giving it a good yank when we feel like it. Everything else is secondary.

Then you need to care about the U.S. oil companies, because that's the key element to that. Once more, with feeling - we haven't changed who's running Venezuela. Therefore, all of the things that led them to be active allies with China are still present to the same degree as they were before. We don't have any rope today that we didn't have before the capture of Maduro. It's not removing Maduro - it's the fact that we relocated our flagship carrier group (from the Middle East, which fleet is probably missing that capability a bit now that Iran may be popping off) and a host of other naval assets into the region to impose a blockade of Venezuela tankers.

But we're not going to keep doing that indefinitely. When we do, Venezuela will start conducting itself the way it does when there isn't a massive naval buildup conducting an active blockade. And since nothing else has changed in the country, there's no particular reason to suspect that it will start to behave differently than it did before Maduro was removed. Especially since, again, they're in hock to the Chinese for $100 billion and are more naturally allied with them for a host of geopolitical reasons.

Oh? Losing 4.5% of your entire oil supply is not "modest" nor is it "easily replaced".

It is both modest and easily replaced. You know that oil is fungible. The U.S. plan is not to take Venezuelan oil off the market. It's to have the Venezuelans sell to us, instead of China and Cuba. Presumably Trump is going to start lifting sanctions against Venezuela (though there's going go be some domestic pushback to that, so maybe not), which would allow them to start exporting more to us.

But we only have so much refining capacity for heavy sour oil. So whatever the Venezuelans sell to us is simply going to displace heavy sour imports we bring in from Mexico and Canada. But Mexico and Canada are still going to need to sell that oil. So they'll sell it to China.

It will take some amount of time for those flows to reconfigure - but a nonmaterial amount, in terms of China's strategic position. And you know, Russia's right next to China that might be willing to shift some of their oil exports over to China to help a fellow ally out - especially since India's decided they want to temporarily reduce their oil imports from Russia a bit (but still near record highs) in order to get Trump over the finish line for a trade deal.

Oil is fungible, and the world is awash with oil right now. It's not that important a strategic asset for China in the short-term, since there's plenty of it around, and the flows will very quickly adjust.

Cuba is screwed. Their oil imports are about to go to zero and that's adios to their energy sector.

I agree. This might end up having a huge impact on Cuba. Even a temporary (weeks or months not years) cessation in oil imports from Venezuela might cause it to collapse. But Cuba wasn't the country that was generating all those terrible things that you listed in your post above - it was Venezuela. And by not changing the government of Venezuela, we're not going to be materially changing Venezuela's behavior going forward.

Again - exactly the same people (minus two) are running Venezuela today as were running Venezuela before the operation. Removing those two people is unlikely to materially change how Venezuela behaves going forward, because those behaviors were caused by a ton of geopolitical factors and the nature of the regime which haven't changed.

Reduced to its extraordinarily verbose essence, what albaby's argument is trying to say is that the elimination of Maduro as a "factor" makes no difference whatsoever. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

That's analagous to saying that it would make no difference who is President of the United States.

Now, we all know how much of a "whopper" that is!

Or to quote Dr. Evil: "Riggggghhhhhhhhttttt....."

But we only have so much refining capacity for heavy sour oil. So whatever the Venezuelans sell to us is simply going to displace heavy sour imports we bring in from Mexico and Canada. But Mexico and Canada are still going to need to sell that oil. So they'll sell it to China.

Mexico does not export a lot anymore. The previous Mexican administration decided to build up domestic refining capacity, rather than importing refined products from the US, so there is progressively less crude to export. When Trump the Great and Perfect imposed his tariffs last spring, Canadian crude was exempt, but Mexican was not. Mexico pivoted to exporting to other countries. Canada cannot pivot to exporting to other countries, because much of their oil is landlocked. If the US regime issued an edict that only Venezuelan heavy sour be imported, the pipelines from Canada be cut off, the Canadian oil, some 2Mbpd, would, effectively, be off the global market.

Bombing Kharg Island, or promoting chaos in Iran, to take Iranian production off line takes another 2Mbpd off the global market.

TYT, quoting Israeli media, was reporting how "Prince Reza" is a stooge of Israel and the US. The reports of vast crowds in Iran cheering for the return of the Pahlavi regime are either fake, or CIA/Mossad operatives. Yes, some Iranian ex-pats may pine for the Shah, just like Cuban ex-pats in Florida pine for Batista, but they are the minority, who are still fighting a war they lost decades ago.

Here is a TYT piece, that quotes reporting by Haaretz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raqhxJuNnKA

Steve

Mexico does not export a lot anymore. The previous Mexican administration decided to build up domestic refining capacity, rather than importing refined products from the US, so there is progressively less crude to export. When Trump the Great and Perfect imposed his tariffs last spring, Canadian crude was exempt, but Mexican was not. Mexico pivoted to exporting to other countries. Canada cannot pivot to exporting to other countries, because much of their oil is landlocked. If the US regime issued an edict that only Venezuelan heavy sour be imported, the pipelines from Canada be cut off, the Canadian oil, some 2Mbpd, would, effectively, be off the global market.

In the short run. In the longer run, if the U.S. displaces Canadian imports of oil, Canada will simply build up the capacity to move more of it to the West Coast for export. In during the interim, China can simply look to pick up any slack capacity from Russia, especially if India has to reduce some of their Russian imports in order to paper over a trade agreement with the U.S.

I know that your investing thesis is that the U.S. is going to shortly take action to drive up the price of oil so that Trump can repay his Big Oil donors for supporting his campaign. I think it's far more likely that Trump stiffs his Big Oil donors to keep oil prices low and is in no way going to go out and bomb Kharg Island.

[BTW, I know you're expecting something like this to happen any day - but even if we were thinking of bombing Kharg Island, he'd almost certainly wait until the USS Ford supercarrier group returned from their field trip to Venezuela. We removed our aircraft carrier from the Middle East, and for the time being the Fifth Fleet doesn't have an aircraft carrier group. So, while I don't think we would do that in any circumstances, it's certainly not happening in the near future.

You haven't done anything to China.

lolololololol. Try again.
And go learn something about national psychology.

That's analogous to saying that it would make no difference who is President of the United States.

At this stage in the fascist takeover of America, that would essentially be true. It might even accelerate the takeover. If Vance became president, that would consolidate the oligarchs’ rule.

On January 2, 2006: the military dictatorship that rules Venezuela.
On January 4, 2006: the military dictatorship that rules Venezuela.

Hmm. That's not the question I asked you. I asked who was in charge of their oil exports. I'll answer for you - Trump is.

The fact that you asked this series of questions shows that you're overlooking the main point.

You're obsessing over the optics. The optics don't matter when the facts on the ground (or in this case, the ocean) are running in the other direction.

And since nothing else has changed in the country,

You keep saying this...but I would bet that the opposition there is getting more organized and that pressure to hold another election will start to build.

Then you need to care about the U.S. oil companies, because that's the key element to that.

Do I? The key parameter is the oil. What happens if it stays in the ground? Have you considered that possibility?

It is both modest and easily replaced.

4.5% of their total? Okay. 1) that's not a small amount and 2) they're going to pay market price for it. (They weren't when they were buying Venezuelan oil). Nice 1-2 crotch shot for China's economy.

especially since India's decided they want to temporarily reduce their oil imports from Russia a bit (but still near record highs) in order to get Trump over the finish line for a trade deal.

Interesting, that. It's almost like we...had some leverage and used it on India! I seem to remember one of us dumping on that notion pretty hard.

And go learn something about national psychology.

This has nothing to do with national psychology, but everything to do with America’s president being psychotic.

In the short run. In the longer run, if the U.S. displaces Canadian imports of oil, Canada will simply build up the capacity to move more of it to the West Coast for export. In during the interim, China can simply look to pick up any slack capacity from Russia, especially if India has to reduce some of their Russian imports in order to paper over a trade agreement with the U.S.

There are a lot of Canadians puffing out their chests right now wanting to sell China everything. They seem to think that makes them feel better. They'll wise up when they think it through.

Besides - they've got a problem. The tribes don't want a pipeline running through BC to any of Canada's Western ports. And guess who owns most of British Columbia (or at least can tie anything up in knots with the "unceded land" claims in court).

Hmm. That's not the question I asked you. I asked who was in charge of their oil exports. I'll answer for you - Trump is.

No, he's not. The Venezuelan government is still in charge of their oil production and exports. He's in charge of the 50 million bpd that the Venezuelan government agreed to have the U.S. take (ie that he used the naval fleet to force from them) and which control has been turned over to him. And BTW, that oil is continuing to be sold to China:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vitol-traf...

...because it doesn't have anywhere else to go. Again, the oil flows and political alliances are shaped by real world constraints, geopolitics, and economic factors. Trump can't shut down Venezuelan oil sales or the country will descend into chaos. He can seize oil, or strong-arm the government into "giving" him oil as tribute, for as long as he has the fleet there - but it still needs to be sold, and the buyers that are in the market for Venezuelan heavy crude are China and India. And I think you should consider the possibility that while China is the most important thing in the world for your vision of foreign policy, it might not be so for Trump - else that 50 million barrels we control probably wouldn't be on offer to the Chinese majors.

You keep saying this...but I would bet that the opposition there is getting more organized and that pressure to hold another election will start to build.

Really? After Trump publicly hamstrung them by saying they were incapable of seizing or wielding power, and signaling that we were more than happy to make deals with the existing regime and not call for elections any time soon?

What happens if it stays in the ground? Have you considered that possibility?

It's not at all a realistic possibility. There is virtually no chance that any of the parties involved want that to happen. Venezuela collapses into a failed state if we cut off their oil revenues. The Administration has taken zero steps towards doing anything remotely like that - heck, as noted above, we're still continuing sales to China so that the money can keep flowing.

4.5% of their total? Okay. 1) that's not a small amount and 2) they're going to pay market price for it. (They weren't when they were buying Venezuelan oil). Nice 1-2 crotch shot for China's economy.

Yes, it's a small amount of oil. Chinese oil imports from Venezuela were only about 0.4-0.6 million barrels per day, varying throughout the year. Chinese total consumption is about 16 million bpd. So maybe a little more than 3% of total consumption. As much as 4.5% percentage points of their imports at peak times (which are about 11 million bpd, so less than that overall). But an amount easily replaced from: i) stockpiles, which they have been building up; ii) increased imports from India (buying from the US), Russia, Iran, and Canada; and iii) of course, continuing to buy Venezuelan oil.

The discount caused by sanctioned oil is about $20 per barrel. They'll be able to replace most of it with sanctioned oil from Russia, at least in the near term. So we're talking no more than a billion or two dollars in extra expense for them for an entire year. Not a crotch shot - pocket change for an economy the size of China's.

Interesting, that. It's almost like we...had some leverage and used it on India! I seem to remember one of us dumping on that notion pretty hard.

Yeah, because they didn't work. The tariffs on India because of Russian oil imports were imposed in August. India responded by increasing their imports from Russia - by November, Indian imports from Russia had hit an all-time high. Indian imports from Russia fell in December not because of Trump's tariffs on India, but because we imposed a new set of sanctions on Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil the month before, which heavily disrupted oil trade with those two specific companies. But India's still importing all they can from Russia and haven't reduced imports from the other channels. They are still at 1.2 mbpd even with the loss of Rosneft and Lukoil - insanely higher compared to 0.04 mbpd before the war. India's trying to take advantage of that reduction in imports to convince Trump (and perhaps his supporters who believe this stuff) that the time is right for a trade deal.

So, no - it didn't work. Trump told India they had to choose between us and Sino-Russia or else, and they chose Sino-Russia. Which is exactly what one of us thought would happen.

Trump told India they had to choose between us and Sino-Russia or else, and they chose Sino-Russia. Which is exactly what one of us thought would happen.

If you say so.
https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/o...

There are a lot of Canadians puffing out their chests right now wanting to sell China everything. They seem to think that makes them feel better. They'll wise up when they think it through.

Think what through? We want to sell more stuff to China - so there's obviously no problem doing business with them. We're imposing all kinds of new trade barriers on Canada to make it harder for them to trade with the U.S. and to disrupt all the mutually-beneficial cross-border production processes that have been set up over the years. If we start taking steps to push U.S. refiners to take Venezuelan crude instead of Canadian crude, they'll just sell more to China and be happy to do so.

Besides - they've got a problem. The tribes don't want a pipeline running through BC to any of Canada's Western ports. And guess who owns most of British Columbia (or at least can tie anything up in knots with the "unceded land" claims in court).

Yeah, I don't think that will end up being a problem. The Canadian Supreme Court already rejected claims of aboriginal title when they were raised to block the TMX pipeline expansion back in 2020 - it's unlikely that the Cowichan decision survives in its current form as it heads up the appeal process.

You haven't done anything to China.

lolololololol. Try again.
And go learn something about national psychology.

Confirmation. Ya got nothing as Albaby has explained to you.

Rev, you fell off the wagon again, didn't you.

If you say so.

Your own article says so. As I noted, and your article observes:

"The entirety of their (Reliance's) imports were supplied by (Russia's) Rosneft, albeit from cargoes purchased before the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions came into effect," it said. State-owned refineries also cut Russian imports by 15 per cent in December.

The US has imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, two of the largest oil producers in Russia, to cut off the Kremlin's resources for funding the Ukraine war.

The sanctions have resulted in companies like Reliance Industries, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), HPCL-Mittal Energy Ltd and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd halting or cutting imports for now. However, other refiners like Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) continue to buy from non-sanctioned Russian entities.


The tariffs that Trump imposed didn't do anything. India kept importing just as much oil from Russia as before. More, actually - imports in November were a near-term high. That's why India's imports from Russia were so much higher than Turkey's before the OFAC sanctions, and why they were able to fall. Because the tariffs didn't change India's behavior at all the way Trump wanted.

It was the OFAC sanctions on the Russian oil companies that reduced their imports - not the tariffs. Since India had a higher proportion of purchases from those two specific companies than Turkey, it hit them harder. It's going to take a few months at least for India and Russia to re-jigger the oil flows of the non-sanctioned companies to adjust to this. So in the meantime, since the OFAC sanctions have accomplished what Trump's tariffs utterly failed to do, India's trying to strike while the iron is hot and pretend that Trump got a win from them on the tariff side.

Reposted for formatting:

If you say so.

Your own article says so. As I noted, and your article observes:

"The entirety of their (Reliance's) imports were supplied by (Russia's) Rosneft, albeit from cargoes purchased before the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions came into effect," it said. State-owned refineries also cut Russian imports by 15 per cent in December.

The US has imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, two of the largest oil producers in Russia, to cut off the Kremlin's resources for funding the Ukraine war.

The sanctions have resulted in companies like Reliance Industries, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), HPCL-Mittal Energy Ltd and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd halting or cutting imports for now. However, other refiners like Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) continue to buy from non-sanctioned Russian entities.


The tariffs that Trump imposed didn't do anything. India kept importing just as much oil from Russia as before. More, actually - imports in November were a near-term high. That's why India's imports from Russia were so much higher than Turkey's before the OFAC sanctions, and why they were able to fall. Because the tariffs didn't change India's behavior at all the way Trump wanted.

It was the OFAC sanctions on the Russian oil companies that reduced their imports - not the tariffs. Since India had a higher proportion of purchases from those two specific companies than Turkey, it hit them harder. It's going to take a few months at least for India and Russia to re-jigger the oil flows of the non-sanctioned companies to adjust to this. So in the meantime, since the OFAC sanctions have accomplished what Trump's tariffs utterly failed to do, India's trying to strike while the iron is hot and pretend that Trump got a win from them on the tariff side.

Confirmation

I've said plenty. All you're doing is waving your hands and glazing other posters.

Wow, way to bury the lede. Their spending fell by a billion euros over a month.

And then you say
It was the OFAC sanctions on the Russian oil companies that reduced their imports - not the tariffs.

The point is we're squeezing from lots of directions.

Mission
The Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC") of the US Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries and regimes, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and other threats to the national security, foreign policy or economy of the United States.

Dope1,

Albaby is just a know-it-all. Things "are" because he says so. He knows what everyone in Venezuela is thinking. He knows their plans, intentions, contingencies, tactics. He knows all the complex interactions, personal, professional, political, amongst all the players because....he KNOWS.

He knows what everyone is calculating. He knows that getting rid of Maduro is meaningless because...he says so.

He KNOWS.

Albaby is omniscient and infallible.

He is God-like in his omnisicience.

Never will Albaby ever say anything like, "I'm not sure, we don't have enough information, maybe getting rid of Maduro might not have such a big effect as you are hoping."

No equivocation, no doubt.

A wise man knows what he does not know; an idiot thinks he knows everything, even when he does not; and Albaby never shuts up about it.

The point is we're squeezing from lots of directions.

That wasn't the point you made in your prior post. You were trying to claim you were right about the tariffs. But that's wrong, if you look at what happened:

Trump imposes punitive tariffs on India last summer because they import Russian oil.

Dope: We have leverage on India, so I think these tariffs will work to force India to reduce their Russian oil imports.

Albaby: I think that's wrong. I think punishing an ally like India with that ultimatum won't work, and might even drive them closer to the Sino-Russia sphere.

India then proceeds to spend the rest of the year not only maintaining their Russian oil imports, but actually increasing them to a near-term record high through November 30.

Towards the end of the year, OFAC imposes new sanctions on Russian oil companies, causing Indian imports to fall in December for reasons entirely other than the tariffs.

Dope: See! I told you tariffs would work!

[BTW, I know you're expecting something like this to happen any day - but even if we were thinking of bombing Kharg Island, he'd almost certainly wait until the USS Ford supercarrier group returned from their field trip to Venezuela. We removed our aircraft carrier from the Middle East, and for the time being the Fifth Fleet doesn't have an aircraft carrier group. So, while I don't think we would do that in any circumstances, it's certainly not happening in the near future.

He didn't need a carrier to bomb Iran last summer. B-2s flew non-stop from the US. B-2s need fuel. What has the USAF been up to?

from the net sifter:

Yes, U.S. Air Force tanker aircraft have recently moved significantly toward Europe and the Middle East in early January 2026, alongside other military assets like transports (C-5, C-17s) and fighters (F-22s, F-35s)
. This massive deployment, including dozens of KC-135 & KC-46 tankers, suggests a major buildup to support heightened tensions and potential operations involving Iran, following escalations and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites

Canada will simply build up the capacity to move more of it to the West Coast for export.

That will take years, the net sifter says 7-12. Most "JCs" are in their 60s. They don't care about 10 years out, because they will be retired by then. Their focus is what puts a lot of money in their pocket now.

Steve

Dope: See! I told you tariffs would work!

Great. We're going to be like this now? That's cool if you want to play like that.

Hmm. That's not the question I asked you. I asked who was in charge of their oil exports. I'll answer for you - Trump is.

You are correct. After the snatch operation, God in human form Trump stated the blockade remains in place. The only places oil from Venezuela can be shipped to are places Trump the God approves. Everything else is subject to hijacking by US forces.

Trump, the Picture of Virile Perfection, is all about control: control of Venezuelan oil, control of the Panama Canal, control of Greenland's minerals. Control itself has value to an extortionist.

Steve

Great. We're going to be like this now? That's cool if you want to play like that.

Just trying to use a little humor. Obviously it didn't land the way I intended - sorry about that.

But you take my point. The tariffs didn't push India to change their position on Russian oil imports. They imported more than ever, and they're still importing as much oil as they can from the non-OFAC barred Russian oil companies. They're just trying to use the reduction in imports from 1.8 mbpd to 1.2 mbpd (which is still 1.2 mbpd more than they were importing from Russia before the war) that they had to swallow because of the sanctions as an argument to get tariff relief - even though the former, and not the latter, was the cause of the reduction.

And to tie it back to Venezuela, this is an illustration of what I'm talking about. Even if China did lose access to about .4-.6 mbpd in Venezuelan sanctioned oil (again, not a certainty), that's a small enough amount that it can be backfilled by Russian oil. Because they now have a bunch of oil they used to be sending to India that now can't go there, but can go to China (who is a large enough economy with its own financial system that's been engineered to allow non-OFAC compliant transactions to work).

So, the oil just sloshes around in the system. Venezuelan oil still goes to China, and now more of it will go to India (as noted in the article I linked a few posts ago). The Russia oil that used to go to India will go to China. China will likely also increase some imports from Canada - if we do end up trying to replace Canadian heavy oil with Venezuelan oil at our Gulf refineries, that will pull forward the adoption time frame of the new TMX pipeline, which was not expected to operate at full capacity until 2028 but may reach that point in the near term, which would bring another 0.2 mbpd to the West Coast.

Combine that with the 70 million barrels already on the water to China, and China's build up of reserves over the last few months to protect themselves from this type of scenario, and this isn't going to have much of an impact on China. Especially since, apparently, we're going to continue to sell that oil to China.

We are not debating whether there is a reason to try to change Venezuela to get rid of all those terrible things. We are debating whether removing Maduro and nothing more will actually result in any material change in any of those terrible things.

If you're this patient with albaby-babies, those kids are lucky. :-)

If you're this patient with albaby-babies, those kids are lucky. :-)

I'm not. Because my kids are mostly giving me reasons why they shouldn't have to unload the dishwasher or why it's the other one's turn to walk the dog. Those reasons are sometimes entertaining or creative, but I don't really care much about discovering some new excuse to get out of a chore. Lol.

But I genuinely am interested in foreign policy and economics. So, I like hearing from folks like Dope who have a very different set of beliefs and expectations about how the world works.

For example, the Trump Administration seems to expect that there will be a very large amount of investment by U.S. oil firms in Venezuela in the near term now that Maduro is gone. This seems to me very unlikely. However, the Administration feels quite confident about this - so maybe I'm missing something? I'm curious what that might be. Maybe I'll learn something. But obviously, I don't have the chance to have a conversation with anyone in the Trump Administration about why they think this.

That's why I like having conversations with conservatives and supporters of the Administration. They will do their best to try to explain why the Administration's view of what's going to happen is correct. They'll have consumed conservative media in a way that I do not, so they might be exposed to a government explanation or discussion that I haven't seen. They might have seen an analyst or commentator I'm not familiar with. Or maybe they just happen to know the answer in a way that I've missed. Even if I don't think the answer's convincing, I'll still have learned a bit more about why the people who do support the policy (or think it's likely to have good outcomes) think that way.

That doesn't often happen when we're having the same argument between the kid who only wants Thai food and the one who wants any type of food except Thai.

But I genuinely am interested in foreign policy and economics. So, I like hearing from folks like Dope who have a very different set of beliefs and expectations about how the world works.

Sure. Me, too. I was referring to the patience you exhibit when someone isn't understanding your point and/or misrepresenting it, even after you correct them for the [insert number here] time. I will not speculate on whether it's deliberate, or genuine. If they are otherwise civil, I tend to give the benefit of the doubt. But your patience shines through.

I'm not. Because my kids are mostly giving me reasons why they shouldn't have to unload the dishwasher or why it's the other one's turn to walk the dog. Those reasons are sometimes entertaining or creative, but I don't really care much about discovering some new excuse to get out of a chore. Lol.

Heh. Welcome to parenthood. We only had the one. Bill Cosby, before he was put on everyone's excrement list (yeah, I'm really old), used to say that if you only have one kid, you don't have "children". A completely different dynamic. You have to have a lot more patience because you not only have to deal with their interactions with you, but also with each other ("tell him to stop touching me!"; waving hands very close to the sibling "I'm not touching her!"). :-)

You realize that making assertions is /= to stating facts, right? And that "debating" assertions is the cornerstone of a solid discussion, right?

Dope1,

No they seive the internet and social media for confirmation-bias confirming material and then say "Aha! Let us not question whatever this nonsense is, just as long as it supports what we already believe!"

That's why you have a number of these dum-dums using ChatGPT. ChatGPT is classic "garbage in, garbage out."

You realize that making assertions is /= to stating facts, right? And that "debating" assertions is the cornerstone of a solid discussion, right?

The assertion should be based on something, and preferably a fact. An assertion shown to be based on facts or history, beats an unsupported assertion. correct?

If one side presents evidence that their opponents assertions are very likely to be incorrect, and the other side does nothing to support their assertion other than to make innuendos or more assertions, the position is weak and unsupportable, correct?

If someone avoids supporting an assertion, however they avoid it, it indicates a weak unsupportable position, right?

If someone avoids supporting an assertion, however they avoid it, it indicates a weak unsupportable position, right

Indeed. You and your doppel should spend time backing up your assertions.

And that "debating" assertions is the cornerstone of a solid discussion, right?

Sure. But you need to correctly frame the assertion of your opponent to have a solid discussion. Otherwise, you're debating something the other person isn't asserting, which isn't really debating at all.

Sure. But you need to correctly frame the assertion of your opponent to have a solid discussion. Otherwise, you're debating something the other person isn't asserting, which isn't really debating at all.

Fascinating comment. Seriously.

Sure. Me, too. I was referring to the patience you exhibit when someone isn't understanding your point and/or misrepresenting it, even after you correct them for the [insert number here] time. I will not speculate on whether it's deliberate, or genuine. If they are otherwise civil, I tend to give the benefit of the doubt. But your patience shines through.

Thanks. I guess I just try to keep in mind that this is folks just spouting off on the internet, and so a lot of the time they're not going to pay a ton of attention to the nuances of the points being raised - so I take it in that spirit. Even if they're just reciting the X things they believe about, say, Venezuela I'm still learning something about what they believe about Venezuela, even if it's not directly responsive.

Plus, even the tangents are a spur to learn something new. For example, looking something up to respond to one of Dope's points led me to that article on how the U.S. is planning to sell the Venezuelan oil to China. Which I didn't know before, and seems a bit counter-intuitive. But it makes sense, when you think about it. Contracts and markets exist. While we might be perfectly happy to abrogate contracts with Chinese purchasers, all the prospective buyers outside of China probably have contracts and business relationships with other suppliers. All the heavy oil refiners in the U.S., for example, probably have made arrangements for where they're getting their crude supply for some time out into the future. So of course the most available buyers for the Venezuelan oil after we removed Maduro are going to be the ones who have been buying it all along and were planning to buy it during the spring and summer. And of course we're going to sell it to them - the oil has to be sold, else the Venezuelan government collapses, and most of the other refinery buyers are likely already committed to other sellers. I wouldn't have learned that but for the continuing discussion.

For example, looking something up to respond to one of Dope's points led me to that article on how the U.S. is planning to sell the Venezuelan oil to China. Which I didn't know before, and seems a bit counter-intuitive.

Not really.

China's nuts: meet US rope.

Not really.

China's nuts: meet US rope.

Yes, really. The oil is being marketed to Chinese refiners for March delivery. Heck, they're aiming to sell it to the state oil refiner, not even the independent ones:

Vitol and Trafigura have also approached PetroChina, exploring interest from the Chinese state refiner which was a major buyer of Venezuela's heavy sour Merey crude as well as fuel oil before U.S. sanctions started, three sources said.

"The traders may first tap the big state oil traders rather than teapots," one of them said, referring to independent refiners in China which typically buy cheap sanctioned oil.

PetroChina did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vitol-traf...

Which, again, makes sense. We have to sell the oil. It's heavy oil, so only a subset of refineries can handle it. The Chinese have heavy refineries that were planning on receiving this oil. All the other refineries that deal with heavy oil have already made arrangements about where to get their oil. If you want to sell the oil in the near-term, and possibly intermediate-term, your primary options are the countries that were planning on buying it anyway. Which means you're selling to China.

The realities of markets, contracts, and physical refinery capabilities can't simply be wished away with a "nuts, rope" metaphor. Venezuela's got a few hundred thousand barrels per day of heavy crude it has to sell. It has to land somewhere, and there don't seem to be enough "somewheres" outside of China that have enough spare refining capacity to take it on. So, we'll be selling to China.

Yes, really. The oil is being marketed to Chinese refiners for March delivery. Heck, they're aiming to sell it to the state oil refiner, not even the independent ones:

You misunderstood. I was reacting to the “counterintuitive” part.

China gets oil…at a higher price than the off-market rates they were paying to Maduro to buy his bootleg oil.

So yes. Their nuts, our rope.

You misunderstood. I was reacting to the “counterintuitive” part.

China gets oil…at a higher price than the off-market rates they were paying to Maduro to buy his bootleg oil.

So yes. Their nuts, our rope.

Show me some proof they're charging higher prices to them, as they're constrained by who can refine heavy sour. Right now CITGO could and are we shipping to them and how much are we charging? That doesn't do anything to China's nuts as far as I can see, that appears to be all guesswork on your sources part.

China gets oil…at a higher price than the off-market rates they were paying to Maduro to buy his bootleg oil.

So yes. Their nuts, our rope.

By enough to matter? Per the article, the oil is apparently still being offered at off-market rates:

The trader offered a cargo at a discount of $8-$8.50 a barrel to ICE Brent on a delivered basis to one [potential buyer], one of the sources said.

That is a bit of a haircut off what they were getting previously, which was about $13-15 per barrel:

Chinese buyers shunned offers for Venezuelan crude this week, as a US blockade on the South American producer constrains exports and pushes up prices.

Venezuela’s Merey crude was offered at a discount of $13 a barrel to ICE Brent, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is not public. That compares with a discount of as much as $15 a month ago, prior to the US campaign on sanctioned tankers.

https://archive.ph/el91S

...but not really enough to matter. $5-7 per barrel cost increase? That's well below a single billion dollars for the entire year for all of China's imports from Venezuela. A rounding error - chump change. Not exactly having their nuts in a rope.

By enough to matter? Per the article, the oil is apparently still being offered at off-market rates:

And the Pirate King continues to hijack ships.

US forces seize a sixth Venezuela-linked oil tanker in Caribbean Sea
52 minutes ago

The vessel, Veronica, was boarded in a predawn operation "without incident" as it was defying President Donald Trump's "quarantine of sanctioned vessels", said the US military.

"The only oil leaving Venezuela will be oil that is coordinated properly and lawfully," the Southern Command said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4qdnj5vl9o

Steve

Show me some proof they're charging higher prices to them, as they're constrained by who can refine heavy sour. Right now CITGO could and are we shipping to them and how much are we charging? That doesn't do anything to China's nuts as far as I can see, that appears to be all guesswork on your sources part.

Oil is sold on the open market for $x a barrel. Anyone can buy "non sanctioned" oil at this price.

But let's say I'm Nefarious Refining, Inc. and I don't want to pay that. I make contact with Sanctioned Country A and ask them to sell me some oil. But that transaction carries some risk: if I get caught buying oil from Sanctioned Oil A then it might get fined or jailed or make my company look bad. There are other risk items: Sanctioned Country A has to use these Ghost Fleet tankers to ship stuff and since they're illegal as well they might get intercepted by a NATO navy -or- these rust buckets might break down at sea. So my shipment might get seized or delayed. That's more risk of uncertainty around my shipment that I have to bear.

So I want a discount for the risk I'm taking - I'm not going to pay full price; to make it worth the risk I'm bearing Sanctioned Country A is going to have to cut their pricing by a lot.

China, India and the other unscrupulous outfits buying Blood Oil from Russia, Iran and Venezuela are benefiting from these discounts.

With Maduro gone the Venezuelan oil won't be sanctioned any longer...and China now gets to pay the market rate.

By enough to matter? Per the article, the oil is apparently still being offered at off-market rates:

The trader offered a cargo at a discount of $8-$8.50 a barrel to ICE Brent on a delivered basis to one [potential buyer], one of the sources said.

That is a bit of a haircut off what they were getting previously, which was about $13-15 per barrel:

It adds up.
Plus we're going to get all the Ghost Ships off the waves (another was seized today) and that's the eventual rope around Putin's nuts.

...but not really enough to matter. $5-7 per barrel cost increase? That's well below a single billion dollars for the entire year for all of China's imports from Venezuela. A rounding error - chump change. Not exactly having their nuts in a rope.

Most ropes begin life as a single thread, as will this.

Most ropes begin life as a single thread, as will this.

And all single threads that never turn into ropes also begin life as a single thread.

I think you're just seeing what you want to see here, Dope. There's not going to be any materially significant effect on China. It's tiny. Their imports of Venezuelan oil were just too small a percentage of their overall crude consumption (the 4.5% figure is their percentage of seaborne imports, not overall oil consumption). The discount they were getting for Venezuela from the sanctions (as opposed to the discount that heavy sour trades at to ICE Brent no matter the source) just wasn't all that high. Both are small enough that China can easily replace the oil with increased imports from Russia and Iran, if things don't pop off, both of whose product also trades at an even higher discount due to sanctions.

This isn't a rope around their nuts. It will have a trivial effect on their overall oil costs and availability. It's barely a paper cut.

Yup.

Also, in these markets, it's all about marginal costs and supply shocks. Bottlenecks.

Panics. Derivatives. Futures markets.

A 5 or 10% temporary fluctuation in supply, or even less, can have a much bigger impact on the spot price.

There are a lot of levers in these markets, and a lot of different players, all trying to make as much money as they can and screw everyone else if they have to.

The price I'm willing to pay for a gallon of gasoline when my tank is 3/4 full and I'm at an intersection with 3 different gas stations, might be not the same as the price I'd be willing to pay for a gallon of gas if I'm stranded by the side of the road because I forgot to fill my tank and it's a ten mile walk to the nearest station.

With Maduro gone the Venezuelan oil won't be sanctioned any longer...and China now gets to pay the market rate.

Not quite. The Pirate King has appointed himself sole seller of Venezuelan oil. All payments must be paid to the Pirate King, who then siphons some off, to an offshore account.

Steve

Most ropes begin life as a single thread, as will this.

And all single threads that never turn into ropes also begin life as a single thread.

:)

And all single threads that never turn into ropes also begin life as a single thread.

I think you're just seeing what you want to see here, Dope.

I think you're consistently missing the larger picture. We can agree to disagree.

This isn't a rope around their nuts. It will have a trivial effect on their overall oil costs and availability. It's barely a paper cut.

Getting rid of the ghost ships isn't nothing.
Adding 15-20% cost to 4.5% of China's oil imports isn't nothing.
Getting rid of a base of operations for terrorists and bad actors in the Southern Hemisphere isn't nothing.
Putting China's oil square in the normal sea lanes (i.e. also under our control) isn't nothing.

And so on and so forth. We seem to fundamentally disagree on China and the steps we need to take to get ready for what's coming. That's fine. Doing Nothing isn't an option, but it's certainly an opinion you can hold.

I think you're consistently missing the larger picture.

One can recognize that something is a relative insignificant part of a larger picture without missing the larger picture. China is of enormous geopolitical importance. And raising the price of a tiny fraction of their oil by a few dollars per barrel doesn't change the larger picture by any material amount.

Getting rid of the ghost ships isn't nothing.
Adding 15-20% cost to 4.5% of China's oil imports isn't nothing.
Getting rid of a base of operations for terrorists and bad actors in the Southern Hemisphere isn't nothing.
Putting China's oil square in the normal sea lanes (i.e. also under our control) isn't nothing.

Things can be not "nothing" and still be relatively immaterial. And even this "not nothing" is wildly overstated.

We didn't get rid of ghost ships, we have captured a small fraction of them - and that capture will have zero impact on China's ability to obtain oil, because we're going to continue to sell it to them, just on different ships. We didn't add 15-20% cost to 4.5% of China's oil imports - the 4.5% figure is seaborne imports, not total imports, and China will replace some (if not all) of that oil with similarly sanctioned (and therefore discounted) product from Russia and Iran.

We didn't get rid of a base of operations for terrorists and bad actors. As I've repeatedly noted, nothing has changed in the governance structure of Venezuela. It's still a socialist military dictatorship with the same geopolitical factors that drive their interests and constrain their action. They're going to be pretty much the same base of operations for pretty much the same folks going forward as they have in the past. Perhaps even moreso, since Trump has a higher tolerance for authoritarian regimes than prior Administrations and may cut them some slack as long as they give him the puffery he likes.

And China's oil square isn't materially any more in the normal sea lanes (which doesn't mean under our control) than it was before. Most of their seaborne oil imports are still going to come from Iran and Russia, in exactly the same way. A huge part of the rest was already in normal sea lanes - with the opening of the TMX pipeline, China has recently been importing as much or more oil from Canada as they were from Venezuela. Again, Venezuela was a small fraction even of China's seaborne oil imports, and some of that will simply be replaced by different 'not normal' sea lanes when the slack gets picked up by Russia and Iran.

We seem to fundamentally disagree on China and the steps we need to take to get ready for what's coming.

We don't. Or at least, nothing in this thread is about that. This isn't about whether China is an important threat, or whether we need to do something to respond to that threat, or even what steps we need to take to respond to that threat. This is a disagreement on what impact the specific action we have taken in Venezuela will have on China. It's not about objectives - it's about what stems from the removal of Maduro. From your posts, I garner that you think it will result in something material. I think it will have no material effect on our geopolitical position vis-a-vis China. That's where we disagree in this thread. Not on China in general or the need to take steps to respond to them.

Sure, it will give them at least two hangnail's and a paper cut's worth of discomfort. But I can't see any reason to think that a year from now, a Venezuela run by the military dictatorship with Delcy Rodriguez in the big chair will be any different from China's perspective than if it had remained Maduro in the big chair. And after the USS Ford carrier group goes back to the Middle East (where it needs to be), and after the rest of the naval build up gets dispersed back to where it was, Venezuela will still be where it is, ruled by the same people it was before.

One can recognize that something is a relative insignificant part of a larger picture without missing the larger picture. China is of enormous geopolitical importance. And raising the price of a tiny fraction of their oil by a few dollars per barrel doesn't change the larger picture by any material amount.

Which is the part you're missing. 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.

We didn't get rid of ghost ships, we have captured a small fraction of them - and that capture will have zero impact on China's ability to obtain oil, because we're going to continue to sell it to them, just on different ships. We

Sigh. After years and years of doing nothing about them, we're taking the damn things off the ocean. See above (on how you have to do things one step at a time).

We didn't add 15-20% cost to 4.5% of China's oil imports - the 4.5% figure is seaborne imports, not total imports, and China will replace some (if not all) of that oil with similarly sanctioned (and therefore discounted) product from Russia and Iran.

Sure. Which puts more pressure on two creaking economies with creaking oil infrastructure to keep up. And further erodes China's standing as a world broker with every drop they buy.

And what if Iran falls over? Maybe they start having general strikes and their oil output starts to drop.

I get your assertion that "nothing has changed in Venezuela". I just don't agree with it. Take Hezbollah. They now know that the countryside is crawling with CIA. They know the US has broken the seal in terms of openly operating inside of Venezuela and using force. They know the Chinese- and Russian- supplied air defense technology is of no use to stopping the US Air Force or Navy from doing whatever it wants. They also know that Trump has zero compunctions about blowing them all away if he felt like it.

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

This isn't about whether China is an important threat, or whether we need to do something to respond to that threat, or even what steps we need to take to respond to that threat. This is a disagreement on what impact the specific action we have taken in Venezuela will have on China. It's not about objectives - it's about what stems from the removal of Maduro. From your posts, I garner that you think it will result in something material. I think it will have no material effect on our geopolitical position vis-a-vis China. That's where we disagree in this thread. Not on China in general or the need to take steps to respond to them.

This is more or less right. I see these actions as a continuum, as things that flow from one theater to another in service of a larger objective. Others don't see it that way and that's totally cool. Spheres of influence - despite others' on this board dismissal of them - are a thing. Power projection is a thing.

The end goal here is to show the Chinese that It's not worth it. They've spent the better part of 20 years getting ready for 2027-2029. They don't steal data and hack infrastructure for the fun of it, they do it as their form of power projection. We're doing the same, only in different ways.

You're free to tell me I'm wrong again. Only I'm not, and I'm not going to say why I know that.

But I can't see any reason to think that a year from now, a Venezuela run by the military dictatorship with Delcy Rodriguez in the big chair will be any different from China's perspective than if it had remained Maduro in the big chair.

You're making an assumption here. That assumption is whose capital Delcy takes orders from - Beijing or Washington, D.C.? You assume Beijing. This is where our disagreement on "nothing's changed" in Venezuela. Tin pot dictators like being tin pot dictators. We've shown that the Chinese and the Cubans can't protect anyone in Caracas should we decide to squash them like bugs.

And after the USS Ford carrier group goes back to the Middle East (where it needs to be), and after the rest of the naval build up gets dispersed back to where it was, Venezuela will still be where it is, ruled by the same people it was before.

See above. Only now there's

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

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.

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.

Great. We can agree to disagree.

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.

Tee, hee:

https://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-radars-not-...
Venezuela's military had Chinese-made anti-aircraft radars available when the US launched a surprise air assault against the country to capture the country's now-former leader, Nicolás Maduro, earlier this month. They appear to have been of little help.

Not just the Russkies.

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.

LOL. *Hezbollah* is going to start questioning the viability of operating there.

And as for that last bit, what? Are they going to hate us even more? So what?

No, I do not. She's not taking orders from either Trump or Xi. She's taking orders from López.

Ahhh, yes. Lopez. The guy who has to run around saying this now:
https://www.heraldousa.com/latestnews/vladimir-pad...
Vladimir Padrino López insists Venezuela's military honor remains 'untouched'
The defense minister declared that the country will take action following the bombings and the arrest of Nicolás Maduro by the U.S. Army.

When you have to say your military's honor is "untouched" after having been rather loudly and so easily teabagged by the US Military...you're not nearly in as strong of a position as you think.

Think Lopez believes he can fully trust his Colonels now? And doesn't wonder if any of them are secretly texting their CIA handlers about him? Or how about his comms? You think we're not listening to pretty much everything that gets said down there? When I saw Maduro doing his webcast from the car with his aides on all kinds of cellular devices I thought, "These guys are abject morons".

And Lopez might say what he wants about Unstained Honor but his troops got the sh1t knocked out them on a mere raid. As in, this wasn't the main event. Think those guys want to face US firepower again? Think they're going to go down swinging if they see a Delta operator staring at them through his night vision again? These guys aren't AQI being told they're getting 72 virgins in Heaven if they VBED a number of US soldiers.

The junta in Venezuela is only in power because of the graft and corruption that allows it to spread money around. The thing with mercenaries is that they can be bought. And when they can't be bought by you anymore...they tend to not be enthusiastic about their jobs.

Again, I think you're seeing what you want to see.

And no offense here, al, but I think you've become accustomed to being glazed by all the liberal posters on this board to the extent that you're merely adopting a contrarian stance with respect to anything Trump does or how anyone chooses to explain it. That's why a lot of these threads come off as "nuh, uh!" with multiple assertions treated as fact when...they're not. Then we see the predictable pattern of complaints about "dope isn't addressing what's being said"...when it's mostly nuh uh.

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.

You get this right. Some headway, at last.
Trump is hardly original in this. Sometimes I think I'm the only real student of US history on this board: Trump's view of foreign policy is straight-up Eisenhower in terms of outlook and strategic positioning with heavy doses of Kissinger/Nixon and Realpolitik philosophy thrown in. Since I said it, and you're in Contrarian Mode where you disagree with everything I say, I'll just note that your quote 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 neatly expresses the notion we don't mind that Generalissimo X is a scumbag so long as Generalissimo X is OUR scumbag, a core component of Realpolitik.

That's how Trump perceives the world. And guess what? It's the right answer. One of the most fatal flaws that progressivism has is its need to project its own cultural interpretations and lenses onto others leading to expectations on how others will behave. The shining example of this was Barack Obama, who really did think that his ascension to power was going to fundamentally transform international relations. Oh, it did, all right - just not in the direction he thought it would go.

Trump's opponents read all the left wing headlines about (mostly non-existent) corruption and believe it all. That's fine. But they start imparting their narrow perceptions of the man into everything he does and THAT leads them to not consider any alternative other that the Orange Man. Bad! angle of things...and *that* leads to a considerable narrowing of overall viewpoints and perception.

Re-posted with correct formatting:

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.

Great. We can agree to disagree.

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.

Tee, hee:

https://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-radars-not-...
Venezuela's military had Chinese-made anti-aircraft radars available when the US launched a surprise air assault against the country to capture the country's now-former leader, Nicolás Maduro, earlier this month. They appear to have been of little help.

Not just the Russkies.

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.

LOL. *Hezbollah* is going to start questioning the viability of operating there.

And as for that last bit, what? Are they going to hate us even more? So what?

No, I do not. She's not taking orders from either Trump or Xi. She's taking orders from López.

Ahhh, yes. Lopez. The guy who has to run around saying this now:
https://www.heraldousa.com/latestnews/vladimir-pad...
Vladimir Padrino López insists Venezuela's military honor remains 'untouched'
The defense minister declared that the country will take action following the bombings and the arrest of Nicolás Maduro by the U.S. Army.

When you have to say your military's honor is "untouched" after having been rather loudly and so easily teabagged by the US Military...you're not nearly in as strong of a position as you think.

Think Lopez believes he can fully trust his Colonels now? And doesn't wonder if any of them are secretly texting their CIA handlers about him? Or how about his comms? You think we're not listening to pretty much everything that gets said down there? When I saw Maduro doing his webcast from the car with his aides on all kinds of cellular devices I thought, "These guys are abject morons".

And Lopez might say what he wants about Unstained Honor but his troops got the sh1t knocked out them on a mere raid. As in, this wasn't the main event. Think those guys want to face US firepower again? Think they're going to go down swinging if they see a Delta operator staring at them through his night vision again? These guys aren't AQI being told they're getting 72 virgins in Heaven if they VBED a number of US soldiers.

The junta in Venezuela is only in power because of the graft and corruption that allows it to spread money around. The thing with mercenaries is that they can be bought. And when they can't be bought by you anymore...they tend to not be enthusiastic about their jobs.

Again, I think you're seeing what you want to see.

And no offense here, al, but I think you've become accustomed to being glazed by all the liberal posters on this board to the extent that you're merely adopting a contrarian stance with respect to anything Trump does or how anyone chooses to explain it. That's why a lot of these threads come off as "nuh, uh!" with multiple assertions treated as fact when...they're not. Then we see the predictable pattern of complaints about "dope isn't addressing what's being said"...when it's mostly nuh uh.

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.

You get this right. Some headway, at last.
Trump is hardly original in this. Sometimes I think I'm the only real student of US history on this board: Trump's view of foreign policy is straight-up Eisenhower in terms of outlook and strategic positioning with heavy doses of Kissinger/Nixon and Realpolitik philosophy thrown in. Since I said it, and you're in Contrarian Mode where you disagree with everything I say, I'll just note that your quote 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 neatly expresses the notion we don't mind that Generalissimo X is a scumbag so long as Generalissimo X is OUR scumbag, a core component of Realpolitik.

That's how Trump perceives the world. And guess what? It's the right answer. One of the most fatal flaws that progressivism has is its need to project its own cultural interpretations and lenses onto others leading to expectations on how others will behave. The shining example of this was Barack Obama, who really did think that his ascension to power was going to fundamentally transform international relations. Oh, it did, all right - just not in the direction he thought it would go.

Trump's opponents read all the left wing headlines about (mostly non-existent) corruption and believe it all. That's fine. But they start imparting their narrow perceptions of the man into everything he does and THAT leads them to not consider any alternative other that the Orange Man. Bad! angle of things...and *that* leads to a considerable narrowing of overall viewpoints and perception.

And no offense here, al, but I think you've become accustomed to being glazed by all the liberal posters on this board to the extent that you're merely adopting a contrarian stance with respect to anything Trump does or how anyone chooses to explain it.

Not really. This isn't just a "Trump did it, so nuh uh" posture. I genuinely find it hard to see how removing Maduro and no one else is likely to have the types of impacts you seem to think will flow from this. Venezuela remains a socialist military dictatorship that represses its population, lacks any semblance of the rule of law or property rights or a true legal system, and is ruled by a government that uses antipathy towards the United States as a way of pretending to legitimacy. Those factors are what drive it to be allied with China and Russia instead of the United States - and none of them have changed.

It's simpler to just treat my response as if it were a "nuh, uh" answer - but it's not. That's just a way of avoiding a substantive response to the fact that none of the macro factors affecting how Venezuela is going to behave in the future have changed.

I'll just note that your quote 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 neatly expresses the notion we don't mind that Generalissimo X is a scumbag so long as Generalissimo X is OUR scumbag, a core component of Realpolitik.

That's how Trump perceives the world. And guess what? It's the right answer. One of the most fatal flaws that progressivism has is its need to project its own cultural interpretations and lenses onto others leading to expectations on how others will behave.

And that's certainly one way to view the world - but it's a worldview that's inconsistent with your above statements that the opposition has been energized and that the international community is now pressuring for elections actually mattering at all.

Plus, my point - again - is that there's no reason to think that the scumbags running Venezuela are now our scumbags. They're not. They don't depend on us for their control of the country, they're not ideologically or politically aligned with us, we didn't install them or elevate them into power....and now they have a pretty clear indication that while we're willing to do a "surgical precision" operation against their government, we are not willing to replace them. We're not going to deny them the money they need to spread their graft around. We're not going to bring in the opposition leader-in-exile to replace them. We're not going to send in troops - or even civilian leaders - to set foot in the country. We don't have a plan on how the country will function if the military dictatorship was replaced.

So, they will continue to respond to the incentives they face, pursue their own interests, and act in a manner that preserves their power, in much the same way they did before the abduction.


This is not "Orange Man, Bad." I have not been discussing anything about the legalities or even wisdom of what he's done. It's entirely about the consequences of what he's done. If you conduct a limited operation, you'll have limited impacts - and that's what we've done. The limited operation was still significant, and the impacts may still be significant - as I've mentioned several times, I think this is likely to hugely affect the stability of Cuba, and will shift our posture on deporting immigrants back to Venezuela. But it's not going to do much to China, or change very much about what happens in the day-to-day on the ground in Venezuela, to any great extent.

To sum up Dopes 120 post argument:
"Donald Trump is stealing billions of dollars in oil revenue from Venezuela and stashing it in his secret bank account in Qatar the right way!" ~Dopel

"First, they fascinate the fools. Then they muzzle the intelligent." ~Bertrand Russell

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/...

I genuinely find it hard to see how removing Maduro and no one else is likely to have the types of impacts you seem to think will flow from this.

Guess we'll have to wait and see!

That's just a way of avoiding a substantive response to the fact that none of the macro factors affecting how Venezuela is going to behave in the future have changed.

And that's not what's happening in any of these threads: I've given you chapter and verse on why I think that's wrong. Multiple examples. You don't agree with them, and that's cool...but no one can say the discussion hasn't been had.

And that's certainly one way to view the world - but it's a worldview that's inconsistent with your above statements that the opposition has been energized and that the international community is now pressuring for elections actually mattering at all.

No it isn't. Realpolitik is about being ruthlessly pragmatic at all times. Treating the world the way you wished it was is a sure fire way to screw things up. Bush43 learned that lesson the hard way in Iraq.

Plus, my point - again - is that there's no reason to think that the scumbags running Venezuela are now our scumbags. They're not.

And no one has said they are. What I have done is point out how the situation is not the same as it was before Jan 3rd. Which it isn't.

....and now they have a pretty clear indication that while we're willing to do a "surgical precision" operation against their government, we are not willing to replace them. We're not going to deny them the money they need to spread their graft around. We're not going to bring in the opposition leader-in-exile to replace them. We're not going to send in troops - or even civilian leaders - to set foot in the country. We don't have a plan on how the country will function if the military dictatorship was replaced.

Who says we need to replace? Kill or capture can do just fine.
What's also not been mentioned on this board is the CIA's assessment of Machado: they don't think she's ready to run the country, which may have affected Trump's calculus.

Funny thing about military dictatorships. They tend to have a follow-the-strongman leader mentality. Lopez can bray all he wants but he's alive because we don't care enough about him to off him. How strong of a StrongMan is that?

So, they will continue to respond to the incentives they face, pursue their own interests, and act in a manner that preserves their power, in much the same way they did before the abduction.

Indeed. What you're missing is that they have new incentives in place. Not pissing off the United States is one of them.

I don't think Trump gives a rat's ass about Venezuela. I think Trump views them as being a part of one the a) Problem b) Potential Problem or c) Not A Problem categories. As they were on the 2nd they were in the b) category trending to a). Now they're in the b) trending to c) direction. As long as that arrow points in the Not Problem direction then he's likely very happy.

But it's not going to do much to China, or change very much about what happens in the day-to-day on the ground in Venezuela, to any great extent.

We're in a Cold War with China. Have been for years. They don't smuggle biotoxins in here (no, I don't mean the odd grad student we pick up) they don't buy farmland next to military bases and Verizon's cell phones and various power infrastructure don't get hacked into or taken offline for no reason. They don't steal the personal info of hundreds of thousands of government employees (who all have security clearances) for no reason. They don't go after genomic and health records of Americans for no reason.

They make their moves. Some big, some small. We make our moves. Some big, some small. It all adds up.

Dope1,

Albaby's Hillary Clinton-esqe rap, "Nothing we do will make any difference, why bother!!!"

is pretty much the same thing Reagan's political opponents said back in the 1980's when he decided "No it's not hopeless, we need to crank the pressure up on the Reds and keep it up until their system crumbles."

Guess what?

Reagan was absolutely right. They crumbled from without and from within.

Fucking defeatist leftists, they seem to only want to fight against their own country and LEOs.

Assholes all of them.

Losers, all of them.

They don't accomplish anything, they complaint, they second-guess, they lose, they fail, and they want to drag the rest of us down with them.

Translation of albaby:

"If Trump is doing it, by definition, it can't possibly work, because DRUMPPPFFFFFF."

My eyes were starting to water reading all of albaby's sophistry and defeatism.


Not sure what his agenda is but he's not being upfront about it.

Maybe he's married to a raging leftist feminist and he can only write stuff that won't get him divorced.

Indeed. What you're missing is that they have new incentives in place. Not pissing off the United States is one of them.

I guess I am missing how that changes the incentives.

They still have all of the incentives they had before to piss off the United States. Their entire form of government is repugnant to the United States and the rest of the western rule-based order, so they have to remain at a remove from the West. They cannot form a durable alliance with the United States while remaining a military dictatorship, especially a socialist military dictatorship. Which means they have to form alliances with the Sino-Russian sphere of the world. They still also face all of the internal factors that cause them to act the way they do.

We were able to hit them militarily? That's not going to do what you seem to think it will. None of these guys were unaware that they lacked the ability to deny the United States from doing what it wanted there. And these are guys who are the military dictators brutally ruling a country who have killed and risked death in their ascent to power - they're not going to start wetting the bed (or bending the knee) just because we conducted a special forces raid there. These aren't pantywaists. There's lots of metaphors for that, but one of the most expressive is Jules' quote in Pulp Fiction where he notes "I hate to shatter your ego, but this ain't the first time I've had a gun pointed at me." Just because we can kill them whenever we want to doesn't mean they're going to start doing whatever we want.

I think Trump views them as being a part of one the a) Problem b) Potential Problem or c) Not A Problem categories. As they were on the 2nd they were in the b) category trending to a). Now they're in the b) trending to c) direction. As long as that arrow points in the Not Problem direction then he's likely very happy.

Well, if he were to think that, then he would be a fool. They haven't changed categories or trend at all. They're still in the b) trending to a). Everything about the country points to a continued shift towards the Sino-Russian camp of the world, in opposition to the United States. Us seizing their head of state and expropriating their oil isn't going to change that...which is what you would need to happen for the arrow to shift direction.

They make their moves. Some big, some small. We make our moves. Some big, some small. It all adds up.

No, it doesn't necessarily all add up. Sometimes the small moves don't add up to anything. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, but most single steps are just single steps - and don't lead to a long journey. If you increase China's cost of oil by 0.01%, that doesn't do anything - either alone or in combination with other stuff. It's too small to matter and will get dwarfed by other impacts. Just because we're in a Cold War with China doesn't mean that everything we do matters to that Cold War.

They don't accomplish anything, they complaint, they second-guess, they lose, they fail, and they want to drag the rest of us down with them.

I remember "slick willy" speaking at the DNC convention, during the Bush junta. He said words to the effect "since leaving office, I have become very wealthy, largely due to the policies of the current administration. I have never been so well cared for in my life".

Maybe that is why the Dems hardly ever mount a serious challenge? Their donors profit so much from GOP policies that they don't really want anything to change? So the Dems huff and puff about the policies of the GOP, to give the illusion the US still has two major parties, but they don't ever really do anything about it, because the reality is there is only one party, and it has sold out to the donors?

Steve

We were able to hit them militarily? That's not going to do what you seem to think it will. None of these guys were unaware that they lacked the ability to deny the United States from doing what it wanted there.

No one doubts the US military's capability. What was doubted/questioned was the willingness/resolve of the various occupants of the White House to use it to its full capabilities. Countless American enemies fall into this thinking trap: the North Vietnamese, the Libyans, the Cubans, the Iraqis (twice), etc.

Hugo Chavez set all this up and used to tweak Bush43 all the time. Kept going under Obama. Handed over everything to Maduro, who invited the Chinese and Russians and Iranians and Hezbollah in. No response from Obama, Trump45 or Joe Biden. Just random bounties and the odd press release from the DOJ.

Welp. They learned that Trump47's calculus is a bit different.

None of these guys were unaware that they lacked the ability to deny the United States from doing what it wanted there.

Then they're a bunch of dupes who ought to be mad at the Chinese for selling them a bill of goods:
Venezuela has a number of China's JY-27A mobile radars, which Beijing has touted as top-of-the-line systems. It has said the radar can detect stealth assets, like the American F-22 and F-35, from over 150 miles away.

And now we're back to it:
Well, if he were to think that, then he would be a fool. They haven't changed categories or trend at all. They're still in the b) trending to a). Everything about the country points to a continued shift towards the Sino-Russian camp of the world, in opposition to the United States. Us seizing their head of state and expropriating their oil isn't going to change that...which is what you would need to happen for the arrow to shift direction.

This is YOUR opinion. Your idea of the facts on the ground there. Your assessment of the psychology of Venezuela's leaders. You don't have any other source that I don't have. Neither one of us knows for sure.

I've provided my reasons why I believe this assessment to be at best in the "we'll see" category.

No, it doesn't necessarily all add up. Sometimes the small moves don't add up to anything. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, but most single steps are just single steps - and don't lead to a long journey. If you increase China's cost of oil by 0.01%, that doesn't do anything - either alone or in combination with other stuff. It's too small to matter and will get dwarfed by other impacts. Just because we're in a Cold War with China doesn't mean that everything we do matters to that Cold War.

China's oil from Venezuela is now traveling under regularly-flagged ships under nations that can be convinced if need be to alter course or delay deliveries in the event something happens. Those ships are also navigating ocean great circle routes on known schedules thus making them easier to find. The US can charge 'fees' to China if it wants. So on and so forth.

Not nothing. But again, the above is my opinion. What's in the text above that is *your* opinion.

Not nothing. But again, the above is my opinion. What's in the text above that is *your* opinion.

Fair enough. I wanted to see if you had any explanation for why these things would have any significant impact on China, rather than just labeling them "not nothing."

Personally, I don't see how China suffers anything more than a paper cut from, say, having to pay a few dollars more for a tiny slice of their oil, or from having that tiny fraction of oil now be on ships that somewhat easier to find, just like all the oil that they import from Canada (and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and the U.S. and Iraq and the UAE and a host of other countries) with no ill effect on their national security posture. It's not nothing, but it's close enough to nothing that I genuinely don't understand why you think it matters at all - other than your allusions to the notions that big things start with very tiny things. I was wondering if there was more than that.

Anyway, as you say, we'll see. Trump met with Machado today, but his Administration saw fit to reiterate his assessment that she lacks the ability to lead Venezuela - and that he didn't have anything that he intended to accomplish in the meeting, but it was a meeting he was willing to have. She did present her Nobel medal as a gift, though. But I don't think that will change anything, and the regime will stay in charge.

I wanted to see if you had any explanation for why these things would have any significant impact on China, rather than just labeling them "not nothing."


It depends on how long Rodriguez has a job in Venezuela. The second she doesn't, China loses a friendly port of call in the Southern Hemisphere. As for short term you quantified it: they're paying more per barrel of oil they're getting.

China's oil from Venezuela is now traveling under regularly-flagged ships under nations that can be convinced if need be to alter course or delay deliveries in the event something happens.

The flag on the ship doesn't matter. iirc it was the second ship the Pirate King hijacked that had legitimate, Panamanian, registry. It was seized anyway for carrying contraband cargo. Then the Pirate King seized a Russian flag ship, with the aid of the UK. While the ship's registration varied, when it was assaulted, it was legally registered as Russian, with Lloyd's.

The ship hijacked today was apparently flying a Guyanese flag. This article from the Beeb does not clearly state whether the registration is legit, or not.

Seems registration does not matter to the Pirate King. He thinks that is all "our oil", so any ship taking it anywhere, without first paying the Pirate King, is subject to being hijacked.

"The only oil leaving Venezuela will be oil that is coordinated properly and lawfully," the Southern Command said.

"The Veronica is the latest tanker operating in defiance of President Trump's established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean," US Southern Command said in a post on social media.

It suggests Washington's crackdown on the so-called dark fleet, comprising more than 1,000 vessels that transport sanctioned oil, will continue as the US works with Venezuela's interim government to control the country's oil sales.

The blockade has sharply curtailed Venezuelan oil exports, with only ships associated with Chevron and bound for the US operating as usual, according to Matt Smith, head of US analysis at Kpler.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4qdnj5vl9o

It's all about control. Control of Venezuela's oil. Control of access to the Panama Canal. Control of access to Greenland's resources. Pay the Pirate King, or you are denied access.

Steve

Dope1,

Good post, but I think you left out something. Another example that proves your point, actually, 2 examples, would be Obama's mocking Romney in 2021 debate about the threat Russia posed, then of course Russia invades Crimea in 2014, Obama does NADA.

A repeat in 2022 when Biden gave his spectacularly dumb public speech saying to the effect that Nato was in disarray and disagreement about what if anything they would do in response to "minor incursions" by Russia into Ukraine.

Next thing you know, invasion, especially after the diastrous Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

These leftist politicians don't understand psychology, they don't understand how to project power, they don't understand you need to use power.

"I'll just note that your quote 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 neatly expresses the notion we don't mind that Generalissimo X is a scumbag so long as Generalissimo X is OUR scumbag, a core component of Realpolitik.

That's how Trump perceives the world. And guess what? It's the right answer." - Dumbass Dope

Dope now says it is the right answer to leave authoritarian rulers in place.

Contrast that with his talking points on why the U.S. needed to invade Iraq. One of his points to invade Iraq was that it was to get rid of a scumbag authoritarian ruler and help bring democracy to the country.

It looks like his outlook is that he will justify whatever his Republican leaders do. He will do whatever they tell him to.

The flag on the ship doesn't matter. iirc it was the second ship the Pirate King hijacked that had legitimate, Panamanian, registry

Then this just illustrates my point: Ships are flagged under countries for a reason - legally, they fall under the protection of the nation's flag they bear. If a Panamanian ship is carrying illegal contraband it's a simple matter for the DOJ to call them up and ask permission to board and if necessary, detain.

Ships under bogus flags that have sketchy registration histories and who spoof their GPS locators? They're navigation hazards and as such are fair game to sweep up.

It's all about control. Control of Venezuela's oil. Control of access to the Panama Canal. Control of access to Greenland's resources. Pay the Pirate King, or you are denied access.

No, it's about not ceding control of vital chokepoints to a country that's a 21st century version of an Upton Sinclair robber baron. That happens to have nuclear weapons and believes in its own inflated view of history/destiny.

These leftist politicians don't understand psychology, they don't understand how to project power, they don't understand you need to use power.

Nor do they understand the degree of ruthlessness you have to have to be willing to really and truly project your power. We've not had a democrat politician in the White House since L. B. Freaking J. who understood that.

At their core, Clinton, Obama and Biden were content to beat on either weak or politically expedient foes. None of those men had the intestinal fortitude to do anything of substance during their tenures when there was the slightest risk of political blowback or unpopularity.

Clinton let Somali clans butcher US troops and Bin Laden run wild because he was listening to his lawyers and his incompetent (multiple SecDefs) who told him not to escalate.
Obama pulled us out of Iraq, allowed ISIS to flourish, hamstrung us in Afghanistan, told Medvedev to tell Putin he'd have "flexibility" after his election.
Biden did the stuff you mentioned and was generally brain dead.

LBJ, for his flaws, understood that enemies were things you dealt with.

No, it's about not ceding control of vital chokepoints to a country that's a 21st century version of an Upton Sinclair robber baron. That happens to have nuclear weapons and believes in its own inflated view of history/destiny.

Sounds like you are talking about "American exceptionalism"

Steve

It looks like his outlook is that he will justify whatever his Republican leaders do. He will do whatever they tell him to.

Whatever Dear Leader does. He's got a bad case of Trump Devotion Syndrome. It has blinded him to reality.

Sounds like you are talking about "American exceptionalism"

A world with the United States as the dominant power >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> a world with China as the dominant power.

That, I hope, is self-evident.

Put it this way: China is everything you guys say Trump is only 10x worse.

It depends on how long Rodriguez has a job in Venezuela. The second she doesn't, China loses a friendly port of call in the Southern Hemisphere. As for short term you quantified it: they're paying more per barrel of oil they're getting.

Again, we'll see. None of this is personal to Rodriguez, any more than it was personal to Maduro. As long as the military dictatorship is in charge, China keeps their friendly port of call.

BTW that's why, for the life of me, I can't understand why Trump keeps publicly dismissing Machado. Even if he believes she can't take over (and that very well might be correct), why let the regime know that's what you think? We have very little leverage over them if we don't have an alternative. If we don't have a Plan B, and they know we don't have a Plan B, then they know we can't take any action that would remove them from power. It's not about her.

As for the oil price, it's a rounding error. A trivial cost. A few dollars per barrel more, on a tiny slice of their oil? For an economy the size of China's?

BTW that's why, for the life of me, I can't understand why Trump keeps publicly dismissing Machado. Even if he believes she can't take over (and that very well might be correct), why let the regime know that's what you think? We have very little leverage over them if we don't have an alternative. If we don't have a Plan B, and they know we don't have a Plan B, then they know we can't take any action that would remove them from power. It's not about her.


Hahahahahahaha!

You already know why. :)

What's the reaction in Brussels and in other places if Trump and Machado are best friends? How does the press report it?

who then siphons some off, to an offshore account. - Steve

------------------

fantatsy.

Dope1,

You left out the peanut farmer in your discussion of useless Democrat presidents.

What's the reaction in Brussels and in other places if Trump and Machado are best friends? How does the press report it?

Why be best friends? Why not just be noncommittal? You can just say that we're evaluating our options or "I'm not telling the Fake News Media anything" or whatever.

Sabotaging Venezuela's opposition movement and "being best friends" are not the only two options.

Regardless, having publicly dismissed the opposition as being unviable - several times - the regime is now well aware that the Administration doesn't have an alternative to their continued control over the country.

I genuinely find it hard to see how removing Maduro and no one else is likely to have the types of impacts you seem to think will flow from this.

Let's suppose the positions were reversed. Suppose Venezuela nabbed the Felon and Melania. Would government change? Nope. Vance would take the reins, and similar policies would continue.

Al Qaeda had it right on that front in that they wanted to take out the Capitol and Pentagon. Taking out the twin towers was a waste as they probably should have targeted the White House to affect governmental change.

Seizing the president alone doesn't really change anything.

Regardless, having publicly dismissed the opposition as being unviable - several times - the regime is now well aware that the Administration doesn't have an alternative to their continued control over the country.

God's gift to the world Trump, openly said that he did not want free and fair elections in Venezuela, because he can't control the outcome. As long as Rodriguez "plays ball", he is content to use her as the public face in-country, but he is the new Generalissimo. If she starts thinking independently, she will become expendable, and Trump will probably anoint some General as the public face in-country.

Steve

"Translation of albaby....." - Marco the Russian Clown

The fact that you have to "translate" Al's words shows you are not capable of refuting them.

That Ukrainian ditch is getting closer.

Steve,

There haven't been free and fair elections in Ukraine since 2019 and that doesn't seem to bother the Left at all.

scUmmmm,

O.K. whatever.

There haven't been free and fair elections in Ukraine since 2019 and that doesn't seem to bother the Left at all.

Your fantasy rant neglects the fact that the Ukrainian constitution prohibits elections during wartime.

Trump should tell Russia to get its invading army out of Ukraine so Ukrainians can have elections.

scUmmmm, O.K. whatever. ~oldmarco000, pedophile advocate

marco, I have a little suggestion for you...
Your emotional, childish name calling is not a sign of strength,
it's a sign of weakness. You're like an insecure little child.
Please go back to pretending to be a Milton Friedman clone. Thanks.

There haven't been free and fair elections in Ukraine since 2019 and that doesn't seem to bother the Left at all.

Maybe because we're sane and understand that holding elections under wartime conditions is ill advised and also against their law? It's a trifecta:

1. Bad Idea during war time.
2. Ukrainian law doesn't allow for elections during wartime.
3. Polling shows Ukrainians don't want elections during wartime.

"Polling data consistently indicates that a majority of Ukrainians oppose holding elections while the war continues. A September-October 2024 survey conducted by the Rating sociological group for the Centre for Analysis and Sociological Research (CISR) of the International Republican Institute (IRI) found that 60 percent of Ukrainians did not support elections under current wartime conditions. By February 2025, this figure had risen slightly to 63 percent, according to a survey by the Sociological Center “Sotsis.” Conversely, only 15 percent of Ukrainians surveyed by Sotsis supported holding elections during the war, underscoring broad public concern over security risks and the logistical difficulties of organizing a fair and transparent vote."

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ukraines-pr...

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