Time to dust-off the Monroe Doctrine.
"I'm very thankful for the agreement on grain, it has helped keep consumption in Venezuela stable," Maduro said. (Reuters)
My guess is it’s only upper level officers and commissar types who have enjoyed the hospitality of Russian, Cuban, and Chinese training while the rank and file are getting sick and tired of being ordered around by foreigners. That’s only a guess, mind you, but when the feces hit the fan I wouldn’t necessarily want to be a foreign officer surrounded by troops whose families back home are starving to death.
Yeah we should be scared. This article offers nothing but worries.
Russians are allover Venezuela. But held in restrictive compounds according to friends.
Could get a bit sporty
Oh look.
More NWO neocon garbage looking desperately for a way (any way) to get the Trump administration (can we please find a way) to get us into another war.
Yawn.
This is total fantasy.
“But some well-respected academics are warning that a military coup would more likely produce a Russia or China-backed anti-American dictatorship.”
We already have that, so there is no downside, eh?
This is a big worry but a US coup in Ukraine shouldn't bother Russia a bit; that's just plain illogical and irrational.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady does excellent reporting on VZ.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-cuba-runs-venezuela-1500240243
By Mary Anastasia OGrady
July 16, 2017 5:24 p.m. ET
“Yet like the rest of the oppositions strategywhich aims at dislodging the dictatorship with peaceful acts of civil disobedienceits not likely to work. Thats because Cubans, not Venezuelans, control the levers of power.
Havana doesnt care about Venezuelan poverty or famine or whether the regime is unpopular. It has spent a half-century sowing its ideological revolution in South America. It needs Venezuela as a corridor to run Colombian cocaine to the U.S. and to Africa to supply Europe. It also relies heavily on cut-rate Venezuelan petroleum.
To keep its hold on Venezuela, Cuba has embedded a Soviet-style security apparatus. In a July 13 column, titled Cubazuela for the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba website, Roberto Álvarez Quiñones reported that in Venezuela today there are almost 50 high-ranking Cuban military officers, 4,500 Cuban soldiers in nine battalions, and 34,000 doctors and health professionals with orders to defend the tyranny with arms. Cubas interior ministry provides Mr. Maduros personal security. Thousands of other Cubans hold key positions of the State, Government, military and repressive Venezuelan forces, in particular intelligence and counterintelligence services.
Every Venezuelan armed-forces commander has at least one Cuban minder, if not more, a source close to the military told me. Soldiers complain that if they so much as mention regime shortcomings over a beer at a bar, their superiors know about it the next day. “
A military coup would be the stupidest thing the US could do right now. Let it play out, thoroughly document who in the regime is doing what, and go for a Nuremberg-style trial when it all falls apart. Cuban Intelligence is the most underrated inte l operation in the world. Play our cards right and we’ll get to take the best shot we’ve had at them in decades.
Clearly, however, it's going to require a substantial foreign investment from somewhere to get Venezuela on the road to recovery. What that will require is a new regime with credibility enough to attract not just Chinese and Russian money, but money from investors all over the world, including non-oil companies the Chavez/Maduro machine have already ripped off; this will require confidence that they aren't going to get ripped off again. Anything short of that won't do, and there are roads to build and electrical grids to rebuild and hydroelectric generators to repair, none of which the Russians and Chinese are going to bring to the table.
Moreover, pre-empting existing creditors within the oil market may have long-lasting effects on China's and Russia's participation in it. For example, China at the table with, say, BP, negotiating a trade deal and BP says yeah, by the way, we're going to need a little premium on top of that price to replace our assets that you have - take it or leave it. And the other oil companies all say the same thing. It isn't an embargo, but it is business.
A democracy is just tyranny by popular vote.
Once upon a time, the CIA would have already orchestrated a coup in Venezuela. But today, the CIA is too busy orchestrating a coup in the U.S.
It is ALREADY an anti-American, communist dictatorship, with Soviet and Red Chinese assistance and influence.
Trump administration officials have made thinly veiled calls for a military coup that would topple the Venezuelan dictatorship and pave the way for democracy...
More nation building? How many billions would that cost?
...a military coup in Venezuela would probably lead to a pro-Russian or pro-China regime, rather than to a pro-American one.
Would make a nice american colony.
All that oil. We can put the natives to work, or send in our own and have the natives as domestic servants.
Democracy? DEMOCRACY?
That’s what got these idiotic Venezuelans where they are in the first place.
The electorate is a bunch of ignorant, gullible gibs.
Anyone who is a thinking person has already fled. Only the dumbells are left.
Anybody hear when the Monroe Doctrine expired?
Anybody hear when the Monroe Doctrine expired?