How the US is preparing a Caribbean staging ground near Venezuela
reuters.com
reuters.com
This is going to be a repeat of this if the Americans decides to invade Venezuela.
Military industrial complex gets bored quickly.
> Illegal drug production exploded after the 2nd gulf war and invasion of Afghanistan.
Glowies need money too.
That really seems just wrong. The established interests here haven't been pushing for a Venezuela action at all. They want to sell arms (via western assistance) to Ukraine, which is much more lucrative and clearly something the Trump adminstration has stymied at all opportunities.
If you have to push for a Capitalist String Pulling Conspiracy angle here (which I don't buy either) it makes much more sense to view this as an oil industry play. American-driven regime change in Venezuela opens up its state-owned petroleum industry to American petrochemical interests.
But no, 99% of of this is simple pique and bullying. Maduro is a loudmouth antiamerican and weak, Trump is a bully. This is just what bullies do. Pushing around antisocial nerds in the schoolyard is how bullies demonstrate authority to their base.
For example, the capitalist interests didn't want to strand their assets in Russia and eat huge losses in 2022 but most of them still did it without much protest.
Half of the imperialists in the deep state seem to have realized that piling money and resources into the war in Ukraine didn't achieve the goal of advancing their power and influence so they're looking elsewhere (China, Venezuela, Panama... Greenland even). The other half wants to escalate the war.
Trump isn't actually very coherent on this issue, probably because he's getting pulled in two directions (e.g. rubio/lindsay graham is pulling him one way, witkoff the other) - hence why he keeps (for example) threatening Tomahawks sometimes and pulling back other times.
The one thing US imperialists can all agree on is that every Latin American country led by an opponent of the US needs to be overthrown. I think they've done this somewhere between 15 and 30 times in the last century.
If money controlled politics to that degree, Trump already wouldn’t be in office right now because every large corporation would be fuming at his stock market nonsense with tariffs. Apple alone has a larger market cap than every public US defense contractor combined and wars tend to not do good things for the rest of the market.
FWIW the easier evidence here is that if money controlled politics to that degree the tech industry would be our explicit overlords. The defense industry is a bunch of mid-size Fortune 500's with no particular economic might to note. I don't think there's a single one with more than $100B of revenue. Any of the top five tech companies could buy the whole lot with a few stocks swaps and no one would notice.
They are buying pencils, IT, software, gasoline, electrician services, plumbing services, non-defense contractors, education, health care, insurance, providing (via their actions on the other side of the coin) opportunities for fundraising and action for anti-war NGO and aid organizations, funneling money into industries in poor communities (via earnings of enlisted soldiers), and it goes on.
When the entire government is dependent upon you for such a critical role, it's basically inescapable for them to end up with an amount of influence that can't be overstated. This is precisely what Eisenhower tried to warn us of. Well one among a few things, all of which he ended up being completely, and unfortunately, correct on. [1]
[1] - https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh... (scroll down a bit for transcript)
1. Stocks are soaring right now. A few small shocks that recover in a week won't make corporate turn on Trump.
2. Line go up isn't the only thing corporations care about. Trump slash corporate taxes and is pretty much letting any merger go through. It's prime time right now to focus less on maximizing revenue and instead consolidste power.
The best part is that they are somehow having their cake and eating it. There's really been little downside if you're a billionaire corp in 2025.
Eisenhower coined that term. During the Korean War, defence spending was 12% of GDP; in the 1970s during the Cold War, it was 8%. It is currently about 3.5% of GDP:
* https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1o919po/why_i...
It's not a small amount, being the largest discretionary line programs in the federal budget, but it's no where near what it once was.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget
And it should be noted that keeping that industry (and manufacturing in general) alive is important:
> Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car.
> Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself.
Here [1] is a graph of US military spending, inflation adjusted. It's going up, up, and away.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
Real shame it didn't take that long after those soldiers of WW2 died out to forget all the lessons taught.
If there is some parallel dimension where after WW2 we went something much closer to isolationism, perhaps with some baseline effort to balance against the USSR, the US and the world alike would be a vastly better place today. And most notably this whole issue continues on to this very day. Our foreign policy is completely self defeating.
I see this conflict as the impotent rage of a dying empire.
The invasion of Panama to overthrow a CIA backed dictatorship was needlessly over the top because of concerns that the US had lost its mojo after Vietnam and was seen as a chance to test out a bunch of Reagan's new weapons.
The F-117, the wonder-weapon of Panama, was funded by the Carter Administration.
As was the B-2.
I think it's difficult for people to understand the war machine when the messaging is effective. When we make it reasonably clear what's happening, you have a more informed electorate. And I think that's a very good thing.
Theyre all over this thread - both those who think it is genuine and some who think it is real.
Over the past decade, 12 of China’s 17 loans to Venezuela have been specific to the energy sector—a total of $55 billion. China’s most significant commitment to Venezuela’s oil sector was its investment in the Orinoco Belt, one of the world’s richest oil areas, which produces extra heavy crude oil and sits across central Venezuela. In 2010, China’s national oil company signed a 25-year land grant for a 40 percent investment in one portion of the Orinoco Belt. The energy industry is at the heart of Venezuela—economically, politically, and socially. Oil accounts for 95 percent of the country’s exports and provides the cash to import everything else. Therefore, China’s focus on the energy sector could be viewed as a “power play” to gain authority over the political and social structures of Venezuela, as well as its extensive oil reserves.
A lack of basing infrastructure also creates opportunities for adversaries to gather intelligence on U.S. movements. Several of the ships currently deployed to the Caribbean on counternarcotics missions called into ports where China exercises influence. The Arleigh Burke–class destroyer USS Sampson docked at Manzanillo, Mexico, in July, where Hong Kong–based conglomerate CK Hutchison operates a terminal. More recently, the USS Lake Erie, a guided missile cruiser, docked at Hutchison-operated Port of Balboa in Panama before transiting the Panama Canal on its way from the Pacific to the Caribbean theater. Naval port calls represent potential intelligence vulnerabilities where China can gather data on U.S. standard operating procedures and patterns of life that could be applicable to the Indo-Pacific.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/when-investment-hurts-chinese-...
https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalation-against-maduro-regi...
I like to think everything is about prepping for what happens when China takes its rightful place in the sun.
It would be weirder imo if they didn’t write about it and afaict they are just looking at publicly available OS data.
Looks more like "hey generals & Maduro, here's what's coming for you if you don't bend to us"
Leaks can be a strategy to turn a military buildup into political/psychological leverage.
The buildup requires much more effort than the leak. So in the buildup + leak strategy, the vast majority of effort goes to the buildup, not the leak.
If you understand what is going on in terms of Trump's very personal, broken malignant psychology and his very literal tendency to agree with the last person who spoke to him, you can see very old-fashioned US business interests have persuaded him to gin up an old, old fight.
(Always interesting to think that Trump may be projecting his own faults onto Maduro; every accusation a confession)
The last time this happened, Hugo Chavez very nearly had a much shorter trip in a helicopter than was scheduled, and the US ambassador rushed down from the embassy uncomfortably too early to congratulate the new guy only to find that the new guy was still the old guy. Almost as if they were expecting something to happen that didn't.
(Don't read this as a suggestion that I think Maduro is legitimate; I don't.)
Also, any sane government would be against starting a war against Venezuela for no reason.
(But I don't think there's gonna be a war)
I presume you mean the UN? They can only actually do anything about international law violations if no permanent UNSC member vetoes it. The US is a permanent member, so...
>For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack:
>on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America, on the Algerian Departments of France 2, on the territory of Turkey or on the Islands under the jurisdiction of any of the Parties in the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer;
>on the forces, vessels, or aircraft of any of the Parties, when in or over these territories or any other area in Europe in which occupation forces of any of the Parties were stationed on the date when the Treaty entered into force or the Mediterranean Sea or the North Atlantic area north of the Tropic of Cancer.
Venezuela became more authoritarian and poorer. The oil industry collapsed because of mismanagement and the production of drugs rose. Venezuelans fled to Colombia, Brazil, the U.S., everywhere. The usual stuff for 3rd World dictatorships.
> what the beef is between him and Trump?
The same beef Trump has with everyone that he can blame for anything. Trump just wants a scapegoat for his own incompetence, to blame someone else. He thrives on confrontation. That's why he sends troops to Chicago and L.A. and battleships to the Caribean.
This is about empire and oil.
Venezuela could be an identical country in every respect and if Maduro was a puppet of the United States sitting on the world's largest oil reserves instead of an opponent the New York Times would be writing stories about how they're reforming and improving.
Not saying it justifies Trump’s action in the slightest. Just a point of order.
The first US backed coup dedicated to overthrowing that pretty clear cut democratic decision came in 2003.
That woman who won the nobel prize recently also supported it, so...democracy clearly isnt her thing either.
This is one scenario where it might actually have a positive outcome. Maduro looks to have barely won his reelection in 2018. The 2024 election he lost, badly. All the individual precinct results had him at 30-40%. Conveniently, the central election database was "hacked" and they lost all the final numbers. But not to worry, Maduro definitely won!
Was the CIA/USAID involved? Almost certainly, and in 2018 it was barely hidden. The U.S. has been meddling in Venezuela long before Chavez came to power, and has not helped the situation in any way.
Even given all that, the Venezuelan people want Maduro gone. The help of the U.S. to remove the regime might actually have a positive end. This isn't like other countries where the U.S. foisted democracy upon a population that had never experienced it. Venezuela has been imploding, for years. Nearly 8 million people have left in the last decade. The diaspora represents nearly 1/4 of all Venezuelans.
LOL - this is how they always do it
> the Venezuelan people want Maduro gone. The help of the U.S. ...
They don't want us to invade their country, shoot their family and neighbors, bomb their cities .... Imagine how you would feel to have a foreign military on your streets, with guns, tanks, etc. Remember that Venezualan soldiers are family of other Venezualans.
When the US military has 'helped', it hasn't turned out well for civilians. Conservatively, 100,000 died in Iraq. Militaries aren't for helping; they are for destroying things and killing people and only appropriate for self-defense.
Most wars since WWII have ended badly for the US: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan ... Korea ended in stalemate. Wars are political actions - enacted through violence - and only end with political outcomes. What is the peaceful political outcome in Venezuala?
>Polls show that the Panamanian people overwhelmingly supported the invasion. According to a CBS News poll, 92% of Panamanian adults supported the invasion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Pana...
guess it depends a bit if you can shift the dictator without killing too many people.
I guess the peaceful political option would be kick out Maduro, put Edmundo González Urrutia in power (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/19/venezuelan-pre...)
Apparently Urrutia got about 2/3 of the votes in the 2024 election but Maduro claimed victory and wouldn't go.
The US has offered $50m for information leading to Maduros arrest and the Miami Herald said a 'source' said "there is now more than one general willing to capture and hand him over" so maybe the US is hoping that kind of thing will happen?
In the cited Wikipedia article, most of the descriptions of Panamanian reactions are negative. It also says CBS polled 158 people ... and that 20,000 people were displaced, etc. I don't put much stock in Wikipedia; my point is that citing only that poll seems like cherry-picking.
People don't like armed soldiers threatening them, especially from other countries, especially killing their own people.
> without killing too many people
Killing a few people is fine, then - how many? Might makes right.
Maduro is the wrong kind of South American dictator, i.e. one that doesn't bend the knee to American interests. Trump threatening to overthrow him and put a nationalist puppet that will sell out to America is not unusual for a US president.
To be clear, I am not defending Maduro. Everyone sucks here, but let's not be fooled, this will not improve Venezuelans lives. Just look at what happened to Chile and the others.
I mean, this time round: the man is unequivocally not good. No one thinks Maduro's regime is legitimate — there's pretty broad consensus in North and South America. Internationally he has less support than Hugo Chavez had, because he has no legitimacy at home.
But the reality is still the same: old-fashioned interests in the USA want much more control over what happens in Venezuela, what Venezuela sells to and to whom.
Trump, spurned for admiration and a Nobel peace prize, wants a war presidency now, because that's an easier source of narcissistic supply.
(And also as he has mused in the past, perhaps a source of "wartime powers", which may most simply explain why he's renamed the DoD to the Department of War: it's all part of the narrative he is building for himself and his supporters.)
He knows nobody is going to have a credible argument that Maduro is legitimate but we're back in the second gulf war territory: the "why now" of it.
He is picking a fight and waiting for them to lash out.
2. We have got to do something
3. This is something
4. The president has something to offer as a solution. For everything. (It is unusual to have a president who is so willing to try to solve everything.)
5. No one commenting in the news has enough info of the plan (or of the future) to offer a useful appraisal of this particular something.
Whether or not this something is actually a useful and good thing [and whether or not it will lead to other good things, and if those other things will be good...] will definitely be biased by your view of the administration, your policy towards war, and you risk tolerance.
As someone who has lost family members to Fentanyl, I at least recognize my bias :/
We don't even know what "this" even is.
There are no receipts: no narco captures, no confiscated drug hauls.
One would hope the latter is required, before going through with an execution.
In reality, most likely these are legit drug traffickers but being used as pawns for geopolitics rather than a meaningful attempt to curb drug use.
How can we have enough evidence to know these people deserve to die for drug crimes when we don't even know who they are?
The few people who survived, we just released them. No charging them with crimes, no courts, just sending them on their way. If they were really hardened drug criminals with enough evidence to murder everyone else around them, how were we not able to charge them with any crime?
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1153966324414...
They are almost always used as narco trafficking. However, we only know that is usually the case, not that this particular one was used for that purpose.
There are a handful of civilian legal use submarines of this form and submersibles used for tourist and science purposes, however if a scientist or tourist rich enough to fund recreational submarines were killed it's likely the family would have come forward by now.
Someone has pointed out gold, people smugglers, and fisherman could be explanations but I don't think such submarine is suitable for much but the gold smuggling case there.
It is suspicious, that is all. Most time these form of submarine are used, it is to transport narcotics. Coast Guard has boarded many of them, this almost always the case.
Is it proof they are guilty beyond reasonable doubt? No
Do I think they deserve to die based on evidence? No
Hell, I'm not arguing we should even do anything about it.
If my cousin Niko was spotted on one, I would have questions, because it's suspicious. I wouldn't conclude he needs executed.
How do you know that? They haven't released any evidence. I don't think they've shared any with Congress.
I'm not going to argue you're wrong. Suspicious is subjective, and possibly even semantic. However, such vessels of this form are mostly used for drug trafficking, and occasionally for tourism or science. But we've heard nothing but crickets in regards to families of scientists or tourists. I'm left suspicious it was probably a narco submarine, which as I've repeated several times, in no way is trying to justify execution or even state I know for sure what the narco-submarine appearing vessel was.
And it sounds like you mostly agree, but to me being in a kind of vehicle that often has drugs on board isn't enough reason to me to be murdered.
They're being murdered because they're likely to be perceived as an unsympathetic target and a way to escalate hostilities with Venezuela.
No one in the know could possibly think pot shots at a few vessels has any meaningful impact on the drug trade.
IIRC at least one of the targetted vessels were in Venezuelan waters.
Venezuela has F-16 and Su-30.
No matter how prepared US is, it's not necessarily a sure thing they could pull that off without death of US personnel. US personnel that had to actually go on the ground were routinely killed in Afghanistan despite absolute force and technology superiority.
The conservative argument I've seen is basically it needs to just blow them up from above because in such case US forces are not risked. While I don't agree with the mission, the strategy makes sense.
Which one you pick will largely come down to personal morals or ethics.
The addictive properties of the drug and profits seem to make the responses of more mellow legal incentives -- inelastic. The addict does not give a shit he may go to jail. The high-level supplier does not care he might be risking life, when he is making a gazillion dollars and plans to go out shooting anyway. The low level suppliers, well they fall under the same problem as the 'addict' bucket because you can get as many as you need from that one, no matter the consequences.
Any solution that is predicated on uncorruptable police and politicians is not going to work. I wish we didn’t have such corrupted police and politicians so we could have nicer policies but we don’t so we can’t.
The state dept report from 2025 found that fentanyl basically only comes to the US through Mexico and Venezuela is not a major player.
I find your point 5 to be particularly anti-democratic to be honest, we don’t know because Trump doesn’t think us nor Congress need to know beyond some tweets on Truth Social.
I am sorry for your loss, I have some friends who passed the same way, and it is horrible.
In the majority of cases (not to assume the one you experienced) this is but a new variant of 'slow suicide', alongside excessive drinking, gambling, various forms of risk seeking.
It's not enough for me to agree that making a new Vietnan is 'something we've got to do'. The scars of America's war adventures are widely visible and part of the reason we uniquely suffer from these slow suicides.
Blowing up other citizens is easy (at first). Not unlike the addicts this purports to protect, this administration thinks this one quick fix they don't want you to know about will cure our ails. Unfortunately the something we can do (must do) is hard. It means addressing why American society is increasingly disenfranchised, lonely, and unhappy.
If the market for fentanyl is there, the drug will come. And one of the reasons the market became so big because of all the legal opioid drugs being so broadly prescribed.
Unfortunately it is not a coincidence that the solution to all problems is always (a) make a loud noise (b) take your stuff (c) take away your ability to object to taking your stuff. Amoral sadistic narcissist gonna amoral sadistic narcissist. If you think you don't have enough information to predict how that's going to play out as far as family members you care about, ok.
I'm sorry that you're being swayed by propaganda as this isn't solving anything and will most likely make it worse.
But maybe the hospitals and American drug corps are all covert Venezuelan operations. Probably not, though. This makes as much sense as invading Iraq for a terrorist attack carried out by a rich Saudi Arabian family.
You thinking killing some random people thousands of miles away is some sort of step in the right direction is honestly just sad. Imagine Botswana having a problem with lion attacks and their president kills your family on the other side of the earth because the people of Botswana want the president to do something, and killing someone, doesn't matter where, is progress towards a solution. I'm an American, but it's stuff like this that makes me realize that hundreds of years from now, people will hold the US's government and its people in the same regard as King Leopold and colonial Belgians.
2. Does something
3. Un(intended) consequences of doing something (problem is now worse or different)
4. Back to number 1
Venezuela network traffic Venezuelian first (some of which you probably killed, not unexpected from a bloodthirsty country, but still), gold second, and drugs a far away third.
Killing gold traffickers probably help Brazil and France, while most Venezuelian drug is probably still headed to Europe through Dutch vessels.
If the Cheeto in Chief declared war on salad forks, all salad forks are now illegal in the US, death penalty for all those trafficking in salad forks, it'll help stop fentanyl trust me, would you also be for it? After all, it's doing something, and we need to do something. Or would you see it as something unrelated and would make no impact while making most people less safe?
> No one commenting in the news has enough info of the plan (or of the future) to offer a useful appraisal of this particular something.
Do you not find that incredibly troubling though? That the US government is gearing up to go to war against a country and yet the populace isn't being read in on the slightest in whatever evidence they may have that these boats they're bombing are actually drug boats or that Venezuela actually is a primary source for fentanyl or whatever? Isn't that an immensely troubling thing that we should push back on until they actually tell us good reasons to go to war?
>3. This is something
Killing random people extrajudicially is not "doing something".
You could use your argument to justify the Holocaust...
That's a mistake. We need to do something with good results. Doing something with bad results is worse than doing nothing.
> Whether or not this something is actually a useful and good thing [and whether or not it will lead to other good things, and if those other things will be good...] will definitely be biased by your view of the administration, your policy towards war, and you risk tolerance.
You're accusing random people of bias - you don't even know who they are. It's a way to shut down discussion and reason.
Whether or not it's good and useful doesn't depend on bias, but on reality. We can talk about reality here, without shutting each other down.
From what I understand, fentanyl doesn't come by boat, and few drugs do.
> 5. No one commenting in the news has enough info of the plan (or of the future) to offer a useful appraisal of this particular something.
If that's true, it's a major problem in democracy, where the people have sovereignty. Their elected representatives in Congress decide on wars, not the White House.
With all due respect, how did you come to the conclusion you did without even 1 minute of research to verify that your beliefs were actually correct?
I've read a lot about it but don't know: what is the Cartel of the Suns? And what allegations by who, with what evidence?
- Demonstrable ties with US adversaries Hezbollah and Iran.
- Close ties with US adversary Russia.
- Close ties with US adversary China.
- Indisputable drug production and transit.
- Threatened neighboring Guyana and previously Columbia.
- Rigged at least one and likely two elections.
- Ruined its economy for most of its citizens.
- Strategically aided illegal immigration of criminals into US.
No responsible government would permit a country this hostile to US interests to persist. This build up is part of a high stakes negotiation to peacefully change regimes in VZ. If Maduro rejects it, he and his cronies will be forcibly removed.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
They're shipping poison that kills our people to our country, so I'm ok with them getting what they deserve.
> They're shipping poison that kills our people to our country
Drugs transit many countries; can we arbitrarily convict and kill everyone connected to those countries?
Most of the people involved are Americans, in the US.