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:

thediplomat.com - The complex politics of chinas belt and road initiative

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.