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Comment by SpicyLemonZest | Hacker News Reader

Emphasizing that I’m not defending this war at all, but one key difference I’m extremely confident in is that the US will not attempt to annex its favorite regions of Venezuela.

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It doesn't care about regions. There's a lot of precedent for annexing resources though.

Let's see if some american company is granted all kinds of rights to Venezuelan oil in the end.

Which, if it happens, should really be treated as blood oil like blood diamonds are and then sanctioned by the world

FWIW Russia was initially quite happy with "independent" Ukraine provided that their guy Yanukovich was in charge. It was only when he was ousted that they switched to open invasion tactics.

So from that perspective, I don't think US is really much different, just better at keeping its own puppets in power.

Russia didn’t react to his ouster by demanding a restoration of proper governance, they reacted by sending clandestine troops to seize Crimea in preparation for annexation the next month. Annexing other countries’ sovereign territory is a red line for good reason.

I'm not defending Russia here. Yanukovich was ousted for good reasons (and arguably he carried out a coup first when he reverted the country's constitution). My point is that, if we don't invade other countries only because their leadership does what we want, then we aren't really qualitatively any better.

Absolutely no reason to believe that

do you think that a pro US replacement regime in Venezuela will get US backing and support for it’s claims to eastern Guyana?

No. I suppose I’m less confident in that, but I still don’t think it’s very likely. The American oil companies with contracts in Guyana would certainly be unhappy about it and it’s not clear what political benefit anyone in the US could hope to gain.

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