The Drums of War Are Growing Louder in South America | Hacker News Reader

The Drums of War Are Growing Louder in South America

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37 pointshackandthink71 comments

Venezuela’s (relatively sudden) refusal to honor its treaty obligations that admit the land is owned by Guyana is obviously due to oil greed.

Guyana has almost no military, but the Venezuelan military doesn’t really have any offensive capabilities that the US cant easily deter. The US actually appears to be a stabilizing force in this case; if the US committed to non-intervention, it would make sense for Venezuela to invade immediately.

As is, the strategic balance is not in favor of Venezuela attempting to annex the land by force.

Guyana being part of the Commonwealth of Nations also seems like it may mean that the British could get involved on their side, which could also be a significant factor.

This is what the much maligned "world's police" role the US military actually plays. It's a shame the NeoCons didn't understand the point of the threat is to never have to use it. the first gulf war didn't need a round two.

Round two was based on manufacturing a better ally in the region than the Saudis. After all, this was not too long after 9/11 and despite the lack of public attention, nobody was foolish enough to ignore the role of Saudi nationals in private.

If, as a democracy, Iraq became what Iran could have been (until the revolution), our influence would have played a much stronger moderating force in the middle east.

Instead, we discovered that democracies don't work when people don't want them to. It was a pipe dream that was doomed to fail from its inception.

One unforced error lead to another, and that's a lesson that nobody ever seems to learn.

> One unforced error lead to another, and that's a lesson that nobody ever seems to learn.

As HR McMaster likes to say, "all wars are the result of a miscalculation"

"""Principled anti-imperialists""" love nothing more than jumping through rhetorical hoops to support naked imperialism by any brutal dictator who says "death to America!"

The history of the dispute is quite messy, and shows how these things never end. It involves miltiple treaties ratified and then disputed.

I find the analysis particularly ridiculous. It of course blames the USA--a country which has never used military in the region, has no bases in guyana, and wasn't the colonial power that created this mess--as the instigator.

Because America is to blame always. It's responsible for all actions it takes, but also responsible for not taking action when it should have.

> China gets 36% of its food source from this region.

Doubtful on that one.

China grows about 2/3rds of its own food. It definitely doesn't get 100% of the rest from South America.

Why do you doubt that? China's population is so large, even their ample farming capacity isn't enough to support it on its own. To whom do you think they turn to fill the deficit if not South America?

see the next answer.

Common sense tells you they grow more than 64% of their own food. And any imports would mainly come from other Asian countries or North America, not across the Panama Canal and 6,000 miles of ocean,

Do you want to place a bet on this?

When they talk about “this region” they’re bundling together the entire continent. Brazil exports massive amounts of soy and meat to China.

https://www.cepea.esalq.usp.br/en/brazilian-agribusiness-new...

For both vegetable products https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/vegetable-pro... and meat & edible offal https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/meat-edible-o... South America is a more important source than North America.

Just a little bit of geographic, economic, political, historical sense would be adequate to raise that doubt.

china imports around 10% of its food needed. the specifics get complex depending on how you measure and what you measure - but it is not at all credible that 36% of china's food is from south america. and in the recent past they were far less integrated with global trade

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/food-imports-percent-of-m...

Would you care to enlighten me on each of these 4 factors, in specific terms?

The statement, algebraically, was (China's food imports from "this region") / (China's total food consumption).

Other answers have provided more than enough detail on this.

Probably she meant (China's food imports from "this region") / (China's total food imports)

Where "this region" means Brazil, not just the disputed province.

I would not, no.

Don't doubt it. China is the primary consumer of brazilian soy exports.

36% was a quantitative statement, clearly wrong.

2021 is the latest year listed here.

It is possible that they mean 36% of all chinas food imports?

https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/CHN/Yea...

Now that, I can believe. Different denominator.

Wonder if that is meant to be 36% of its food imports are from this region. Or even wronger would be 36% of exports from this region go to China.

from that treemap, it does look like the former. "this region" is a poor choice of words if they mean all of Brazil, not the northern area.

It's probably 36% of food imports, but oil & gas is also an incredibly important strategic resource China does not have nearly enough of. Which means their domestic crops are reliant on oil imports from which fertilizer is derived. But also most everything else they hope to manufacture.

https://i.imgur.com/o0z9Rk2.jpg

China is the single largest producer, and consumer, of grain. they still import tons, but they produce quite a lot.

the US is the overall top exporter of grain.

Latin America, however, still sends a lot to China.

As everyone knows, jungle warfare is SE Asia was a cluster-fuck. War in Amazonia is going to be 10x worse.

That's not really comparable. Southeast Asia was an area of high population density engaged in a series of real and very deeply motivated civil wars. Vietnam (Cambodia too) was tearing itself apart entirely separate from the fact that global superpowers decided to use the nation as a proxy war.

This is a dispute over an almost empty tract of land motivated by local politics in its neighbors (and potentially also over oil wealth, something that is new to Guyana in the last few years). Most likely nothing happens, but if it does the only larger power that's going to care much is Brazil. The US is more than capable of defending the relevant oil rights whether or not Guyana controls its western jungle.

The US is part of it, but I'd imagine the UK Commonwealth getting a piece too, since Guyana is part of that.

Canadians, the Black Watch, and Kiwis in the Jungle, etc.

Maduro (Venezuela) sees what Putin is doing, and how the West is maybe half supporting Ukraine, and sees an opportunity to do the same to their neighbor (Guyana), expecting the West will probably do nothing. It's remarkably similar in "justification" because "we want this land we owned 100s of years ago back, forget about the prior agreements and the borders that have long been in place.

tl;dr it's really about the oil, which does make it different from Putin trying to feel like a big man

Or Putin asked him to do it to further reduce aid for Ukarine from US. Basically - opening another front.

Ukraine was to a degree also about oil/gas and cutting off a rising competitor with their new capabilities gearing up.

eh kinda.

Euromaidan happened because UKR voted in a Pro-EU, relatively anti-corruption (by UKR standards) candidate. Russia never invaded before because they basically called the shots via corruption and the mafiya.

When it looked like he wasn't going to die from poison or riots and would stick around, "separatists" launched an effort to take the eastern part of the country, with a lot of industry, as well as Crimea -- a highly desired port for the Russian fleet.

That kicked off a whole mess of EU and NATO assistance to UKR, so the recent war was to gobble up the rest of the country before it got too strong to resist. Turns out they took too long -- they probably would have won handedly in 2016, but in 2022 the AFU had been training and re-equipping, and realized what was at stake.

It's like a manufactured claim in Europa Universalis

I watched some analysis a while ago that stared that the war broke out to prevent Ukraine from tapping into some natural gas reserves that were uncovered at that time. Those reserves are located near Crimea. Sounds more plausible than pure ego.

That gas field isnt going to pay for even a small fraction of the cost of the war. It doesnt make any sense as a cause.

The most plausible reason for the war is still the publicly stated reason: preventing NATO expansion to Ukraine.

NATO is not a threat, just an excuse

Both sides know that to be the truth. NATO would never start a war, the rules prevent article 5 from being usable should a member decide to start one on their own

edit, I see parent edited their "NATO threat" comment to be "prevent NATO expansion", the JM thesis is utterly wrong, these countries are choosing to be part of a defense alliance, it is not forced on them

The threat Ukraine poses to Russian leaders is a demonstration that a better life is possible without an authoritarian at the helm

> publicly stated reason

Putin wrote an essay in July 2021. That is the foundation, and most plausible publicly stated reason, to understand why they decided to invade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Historical_Unity_of_Rus...

It would have, though, if Putin's "conquered in three weeks" had panned out.

Russia has plenty of oil & gas in their existing territory. If anything, Putin wants to prevent Ukraine from becoming the supplier to Europe

Most experts see the reasoning as Putin wants a sphere of influence, and since no one is volunteering besides Belarus, he decided to do it by force. It's more Make Russia Great Again (like the times of czars, not soviet union)

Preventing Ukraine from becoming a supplier still fits the parent comment.

Except for the last sentence

This one: "Sounds more plausible than pure ego"? We seem to believe ego well enough (we certainly succumb to it), so if that's what you refer to, I do take your point.

Russia would never risk losing access to the Black Sea, as it’s the only year-round military port they have.

For that extremely obvious reason Russia would never allow NATO to control that region of Ukraine.

This is the answer -- they want the port.

The grain and industry in UKR is also a plus, but a lot of wars have been fought over Crimea, and for good reason.

> which does make it different from Putin trying to feel like a big man

This simplification ignores alot of contextual history of the region. Regardless, even with Putin out of the picture, I suspect the situation would be the same. If the USSR invaded Mexico, I suspect the US would be rolling tanks in real fast. This is just an extension of Cold War posturing, like during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

> Maduro (Venezuela) sees what Putin is doing, and how the West is maybe half supporting Ukraine, and sees an opportunity to do the same to their neighbor

I'm sorry, I'm completely lost on what exactly you think about the Russian adventure in Ukraine is worth emulating. It's been a disaster for Russia. Ukraine too, obviously, but no way would Putin do this again if he knew a two-year stalemate and global shaming of his vaunted army was going to be the result.

He is still occupying large parts of Ukraine that may become Russian permanently if Ukraine doesn't manage to take them back. That may be the most important thing for him.

oh, I don't think they should try to emulate, just that there is an amount of similarity in the self-justification of the dictators. China's claims to Taiwan fit the same mold

The mistake putin made can be easily summarized up in the following phrase: two weeks to stop the spread.

Turns out, war ain’t easy. Not against people, not against viruses.

After all, look at how well Afghanistan turned out for the USA.

There are more interesting ideas when you compare "winning the war" vs "winning the peace"

For the US context, you can look at WtW in Iraq, Afghanistan vs WtP in Germany, Korea, Vietnam

Ukraine needs to win the peace more than they need to win the war. There will most likely mean they need to make concessions and join the EU & NATO

I perceive that part of the reason the west doesn't wade into the conflict in Ukraine (rightly or wrongly) is that there is a fear of the conflict escalating into a brawl between western nations and Russia (which is probably at least a near-peer to western militaries and nuclear armed). Venezuela is neither a near-peer military power nor nuclear armed as far as I understand, and their ability to hit back (again rightly or wrongly) against other regional powers, the US or whatever other western nations that might intervene (maybe Britain or France?) seems very limited, and thus Maduro's tactical and strategic position seems really different than Putin's.

Sure, but with the situation in Ukraine rapidly deteriorating and likely heading into a push for a ceasefire - if not officially, then at least effectively over the winter - it would make for another ideal proxy war location in the “war of pawns”.

Both Russia and the US would greatly prefer to keep this at a Kabinettskriege level instead of escalating to full blown Volkskriege WW3.

If that's his strategy then Maduro's even dumber than I thought. Putin's got nukes. What the hell do these south american communists have?

It's hilarious. These communists are actually delusional. They actually think they can create some kind of south american soviet union here. All they've managed to do so far is throw our economies into the gutter. And now brazilian president Lula is "moving troops" and generally making moves that get us all further into this mess instead of away from it just because it's his communist friend Maduro's ass on the line? It's unreal. Imagine actually dying for this bullshit.

Which country did Victoria Nuland visit recently?

Can the USA afford to supply weapons to another war until they finally pull the plug on Ukraine?

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