Although tensions between the Communist government of Venezuela and the United States were pretty obvious over the last six months or so I didn’t expect to see the Communist leader of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro removed so quickly and efficiently by the American military. It’s been clear for a while that even under the Biden regime Maduro was a marked man and that the US had valid and genuine concerns about the actions of Maduro. These actions didn’t just include facilitating the export of cocaine to the USA, which Trump is determined to try to slow down, but also the links that Maduro had with the Chinese communist government, the Russian government and non state terror actors like Hezbollah. Venezuela under Maduro was shaping up to be a regional threat to the US and its interests and was an entry point for the US’s adversaries and terror groups that have helped to turn parts of the Middle East such as Lebanon into hellholes and which have destabilised the Levant.
There are a whole host of good reasons to believe that removing Maduro via military means might be a good thing. Included in those reasons and which are separate from the drug trafficking allegations against Maduro are the return of US assets that the Venezuelan communists seized from US companies, the thwarting of Chinese communist desires for Venezuela’s oil and Russian influence on Venezuela and removing a state sponsored entry point for Islamic terrorists such as Hezbollah. The bonus prize on top of these gains is the freeing of the Venezuelan people from being governed by kleptomaniac Communists who have forced the citizens of an oil rich nation to live in penury. The removal of Maduro could also have second order positive effects on the region and its people such as curtailing Communist Cuba’s access to the petroleum that Cuba needs to survive. The toppling of Maduro’s government might start the push for freedom for Cubans if the Cuban government is sufficiently weakened by the destruction of Venezuela’s communists. For my entire life Cuba has been under the jackboot of Communism and we might finally be seeing the time when the Cubans are free from Communism. Let’s hope and pray that this is the case.
The extraction and bringing to the US of Maduro for trial is an amazing military feat and appears to have been accomplished with very few injuries to US forces or to non-Communist civilians. If the claimed low death and injury toll is correct then this has been a fantastically well organised operation but it remains to be seen if Maduro regime elements manage to regroup and create trouble for both the US forces and government and for the Venezuelan people.
If the Americans can hold onto Venezuela and not make a mess of things and guide the country to the sort of market economy that unlike socialism, doesn’t end up with people having to eat their pets to survive. However, as the EDI Jester said on a recent video ‘the Americans might mess things up (in Venezuela) but it is better than the alternative’ meaning Maduro’s Soviet style socialism.
There’s bound to be geopolitical fallout from this intervention by the Americans. After all Trump and his government have put a lot of noses out of joint in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and among various well connected and none too pleasant ‘non-state actors’. Oil that might have gone to China from Venezuela is now unlikely to be sent there, processing will instead be done for the benefit of the Americans and their allies and hopefully the Venezuelan people. Iran and its proxies such as Hezbollah now no longer have the sort of friendly base in Venezuela that they once had under Maduro. Russia has also lost an ally in Maduro but from what I can gather it’s the Chinese and Iranians along with the Iranians pet jihadist savages who might have lost the most. This is a bigger story than many people might realise and it’s going to reverberate greatly and have all sorts of effects some good some bad.
One a basic level what’s important here, at least at this point in time, is that a whole nation that has been enslaved for decades by a truly awful type of socialist government has now hopefully been freed from that burden. I remember the joy and exuberance of those freed when the Iron Curtain came down and what’s happened in Venezuela reminds somewhat of that time. Yes for many countries the destruction of the Soviet bloc brought hard times for some people and for some time (some like the Russians more so than others), but what came out the other end of those chaotic hard times following the fall of the Iron Curtain, was for many better than what came before and let us hope and pray that this is the outcome for the Venezuelans.
NB: There are other developments to this story that I could not include for time reasons. Hopefully I will be able to write about these other developments later. F211 Ed.