No. of Recommendations: 7
...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.
