I'm thoroughly enjoying the left-wing/progressive meltdown over President Trump's attack on Venezuela and arrest of that country's (illegitimate) President and his wife. By the time you read these words, they may be facing their first court hearing in New York City.
Here are some of the thoughts I've been having on the matter, in no particular order.
- Remember how upset the loony left was when a conservative Republican bought Dominion, a provider of automated electoral systems? One of its biggest rivals, Smartmatic, had provided technology that was used to fraudulently influence Venezuelan elections, allowing Chavez, Maduro et al to take power. It's also alleged that the company assisted in "manipulating" the 2020 USA election results. With the leadership of Venezuela now decapitated, how much longer will it be before we learn all that the Venezuelan government knows about that? And will that lead to more criminal charges in the USA, on top of those already pending? Pass the popcorn...
- The Democratic Party is losing its collective mind over the attack. One wonders why they didn't become this engaged when President Obama encouraged and supported the "Arab Spring" revolts that led (among other things) to the murder of Libya's Moammar Ghadafi, or when he authorized drone strikes that killed American Citizens on foreign soil without trial. What's the old saying? "If it weren't for double standards, they'd have no standards at all."
- China, Russia and Iran have lost their most reliable ally on the South American continent, and in the process their much-vaunted military technology has been shown to be toothless in the face of a truly high-technology opponent. Israel has proved that in the Middle East on numerous occasions. Now it's been demonstrated yet again in Caracas. All those billions Maduro spent on anti-aircraft radars and missiles, and high-technology strike aircraft with anti-ship missiles? Not a peep out of them - and I suspect there are rather fewer of them in Venezuela today than there were on Saturday morning. Did any of them come back to the USA for examination? It wouldn't surprise me.
- Poor Hugo Chavez. His mausoleum was intended to serve as a South American equivalent of Lenin's Tomb in Moscow during the days of the old USSR: a place of pilgrimage, a monument to socialism and all its works. Well, it (and his body) appear to have been fairly thoroughly demolished during the attack. They should leave it as it is now - a much more appropriate monument to where socialism always leads.
- Cuba's in a world of hurt. It had about 20,000 "enforcers" in Venezuela helping to maintain Maduro's illegitimate regime, and in return most of its oil and food came from Venezuela at very low "friendly" prices. It now has to get all those "enforcers" back home, and is facing the loss of most oil and food supplies. Can the Cuban government survive without that? The general consensus is that it can't, unless someone else steps up to the plate with free or low-cost donations of all it needs. Did President Trump plan for that as a useful side effect of his strike? I wouldn't be surprised. He sees wheels within wheels. What price a collapse of government in Cuba within the year - maybe even a completely new, non-Communist revolution? I daresay there are Cubans in Miami who would very much like to see that, and I suspect they have a friend in the White House.
Interesting points all, and they're far from complete. From a geopolitical perspective, this affair is going to be making waves around the world for months, even years to come.
I've also been getting rather annoyed with the so-called "strategists" who are complaining that Trump is focusing far too much on regional affairs (Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, the war on drugs, etc.) than he is on world politics and tensions. Folks, there's a very, very old strategic dictum that's held up for not just centuries, but millennia:
If you try to be strong everywhere, you will be strong nowhere.
If you're trying to cover everything, you're spreading your resources and your forces too thin. They can be defeated in detail anywhere an enemy chooses, before you can concentrate your forces to face the attack. You have to choose what to defend as your first priority, and that means your base and the region in which you live. If you're strong there, other powers will have a hard time mustering enough resources and forces to attack you, and you can venture out from your strong base to give them a hard time. You might even build up enough forces to project power worldwide - but if you haven't got a strong base from which to operate, you're a paper tiger.
You also have to choose your points of concentration. Another strategic dictum is that if you want to force an engagement with the enemy, you have to either attack something they have no choice but to defend, or defend something they have no choice but to attack. Pick those points, and put enough resources at or near them that you can be sure of being able to prevail if it comes to a fight. Right now, the USA does not have enough forces to do that around the globe. We're having to encourage our allies and partners to pony up the money and resources to do that for their own vulnerable points.
While they're doing that, we're rebuilding, but we've got a long way still to go. It'll take years, not months - decades, in some cases. We've let our armed forces and our industrial base run down to such an alarming extent that we're spread too thinly to be effective all around the globe. Worse still, we've depleted our war reserve of weapons and ammunition to give them to Ukraine and other allies when they needed them. Given the tempo of modern war against a first-level opponent, I don't know that we could operate for more than thirty to sixty days without running out of fuel, ammunition and equipment; and we'd lose so many of our first-line forces that we wouldn't be able to replace them. Our shipyards and factories would be run off their feet trying to repair our weapons, let alone build new ones - and in an age of long-distance, highly accurate missile warfare, there's no guarantee those shipyards and factories would be around to do so.
The current world situation may cost us dearly. If China decides to invade Taiwan, I honestly don't think we have enough forces to stop them, or get there in time to make them pay a heavy price. China knows this, I'm sure, and knows how weak our industrial base is in terms of replenishing and expanding our military forces. It knows it's got the edge right now in terms of hardware, and in terms of raw numbers, it's ahead there too (although we don't know the quality of its personnel). I won't be at all surprised to see China trying to humiliate the USA with a quick strike that will gain victory against a US ally without our being able to help in any effective way. That would also give it a major psychological and propaganda victory to use at home to bolster the image and reputation of the Chinese Communist Party.
Give President Trump and his successor(s) (presuming they're good successors) a decade to turn things around, and that will change. Do we have a decade? I personally don't think so. I hope I'm wrong. However, the President's decisive action against Iran, and now against Venezuela, must give pause for thought to rival strategists and politicians, and may buy us time. One hopes they will continue to do so.
Peter
21 comments:
Glad to see we can still pull off a special ops mission. Someone leaked it to the press who wisely kept their mouths shut. Hunting the leakers should be a priority and punishment in public. Our force size is too small in all the services. Large scale drone/cruise missile production has started- needs to go faster. All systems need to be able to operate without GPS. Any weapon system that can be located can be killed. The loss of life from loosing an aircraft carrier would be heartbreaking.
Now the big question is did Pam Bondi drop the ball by letting Maduro be sent to NYC for trial? In front of a 93yo judge described as "far left of a typical liberal" ? What happens if this judge says Trump is a orange bad man and lets Maduro go free? Something smells rotten here.
The standard refrain - don't get cocky! The Russian anti-air hardware was operated and maintained by Maduro's flunkies, selected for ideology instead of competence. There are some very smart people in Venezuela, but few of them worked for Maduro. My bet is that the equipment is a few generations behind ours, but could still cause trouble if properly handled.
we have enough firepower in the area to send every chinese warship to davy jones' locker in about ten minutes. we also armed taiwan to the teeth, and are in process of re-arming japan and the south korean navy and the phillipine navy. formerly secret docs claim the chinese figure they can't take taiwan before 2027, after several key elements are met, one being huge stockpiles built up of...venezuelan oil. number two was rare earth minerals. number three was hard currency. silver bumped 80 bucks an ounce and will go up more, must be bought in dollars, crippling their efforts to back up their currency. trump just proved their hardware was junk. russia is tied down in the uke. i think we're okay on this one.
Not strong enough to stop deficit spending or welfare corruption. Just a distraction from those blackmail pictures showing most of the elites are remotely controlled. Politicians should wear sponsor logo patches like race car drivers.
Talk about Paper Tiger - Look at Russia...
I'm pretty sure the advisors of FDR were sure that the US Navy was far superior to the Imperial Japanese Navy when they shut down their far east oil supplies to Force Japan to respond.
FDR needed a way to get Great War remembering Americans into a war against Germany and Japan. The battleship Admirals didn't think that aircraft would be that dangerous to Battleships. Thus Pearl Harbour was permitted.
Happy to say we had enough Manufacturing abilities to repair and replace our losses FASTER than Japan could.
NOT SO TODAY.
While our Navy still has teeth it's incompetence against the pitiful Hothis in what 3 engagements so far Hothis 3 Navy 0 and plenty of examples of how poorly we've learned from drone warfare your Assumption that we'd send the Chinese fleet to Davy Jones Locker.
Michael the anonymous
Another low-hanging fruit in this game is Canada. I predict that Canada will fall in Trump's lap in 2026, 2027 the latest. There are already bad signs from Canada economy/finance-wise, and US access to Venezuela oil makes Alberta oil redundant.
Without Venezuelan (and possibly Iranian, may the mad mullahs be gone) oil, would West Taiwan have the resources to sustain an invasion of Formosa?
Cleaning up the messes that are close will free up resources to start tackling the messes that are further away.
I just found it funny that Venezuelans in other countries, or at home, cheered and were happy that Madura was taken, while the white libs in the US and Europe are trying to convince everyone that’s terrible. I think the Venezuelan ex-pats would be correct and have a better idea about life back there.
Southern NH
Funny how no Dems were upset with Xiden put a $25M bounty on Maduro...
I think the failure to function of Venezuela's expensive Chinese and Russian air defense systems is going to cause the risk averse Chicom leadership to re-evaluate whether to invade Taiwan or not. While BDA reports are fairly thin on the ground what we have includes pictures of expensive radars in barbecue form and a number of videos of large secondary explosions of the sort that you get when a bunch of missiles cook off.
It seems that US systems can take out your air-defense and when you necessarily have large convoys of troop ships crossing almost 100 miles of sea you really don't want that. Ships have limited ability to dodge and CIWS is a lot harder when you can't see the attacking missiles.
Winnie the Flu knows perfectly well that if he loses while invading, or even wins at the expense of much of his invasion force he, personally, will be held responsible and that is not a survivable experience. He's going to go for blockades first. He also will likely delay until 2029 because he is now aware that Trump and Heggseth are competent and aggressive, unlike their immediate predecessors. Maybe 2029 will let a dem in or see enough of a collapse in MAGA support that Trump's successor can be impeached? It's a lot less risky to wait and put pressure on Taiwan than it is to actually attack it
Cuba is closer to the US than Venezuela; if Cuba is desperate for another sugar daddy, I'm sure the CCP would love to move in like the Russians did.
Decade? I'm not sure we'll make it past the '28 elections.
Did we take Venezuela down just to prove to West Taiwan that we could do it ?
This episode will turn into another giant circle jerk. The charges were filed in the commie cesspool New York. The judge overseeing the case is a 92 year old Clinton appointee and the jury will be selected from the crowd of pro Maduro protestors outside the courthouse. Talk about an expensive pointless joke of an "arrest".
The real question about Willie the Flu is can he last till 2029. The recent video of him at a military revue showed him with potentially Parkinson's, as he was unstable and shaky.
And, of course, why go to Taiwan when Russia's NE territories have been stripped bare to support the war in Ukraine? All the ChiComs need to do is stop selling supplies and materials to Russia (and stop any transfers from North Korea,) wait 3 months and then walk in. Especially with a bit of psyops about how Russia can't feed, fuel or protect Siberia but the ChiComs can.
The best way to attack a big target is to reduce all its allies and smaller outside targets, cut supply lines, let them whither on the vine.
China is a major exporter of silver and they announced last year they will not ship out any more silver bouillon. Silver has significant industrial uses. They have 100 times our shipbuilding capability, we have 11/66 nuclear subs awaiting long term maintenance. They can quit sending us exports. India, as a member of BRICS and on the same continent would probably follow suit. We lose major feed stocks. America manufactures advanced products but relies on imports for feeder stocks. Modern war is industrial war.
Drone warfare. I take out a power plant with a $100 drone. I worked in power plants for years, this is not hyperbole. We've been told Chinese males of military age were smuggled across our boarder. How many of our computer chips have backdoors or kill switches? COVID was developed in a Chinese lab and the vaxx appears to lower your resistance. What if the original strain is re-released. Or is there something meant to use that as a springboard. There are still significant health impacts taking place due to COVID and the vax.
The US doesn't sell our best tech when we sell weapons, why would the Chinese or Russians. It can be sold or captured. Your technology assessment is probably wrong.
Taiwan has significant tourism from mainland China. I've been there and seen it. How many sleeper agents are already there? Further, China could very easily go into denial mode. I.e. bomb electric plants and chip manufacturing facilities. China has their own chip manufacturing plants on the mainland now.
Then of course there are our public tensions. A little AI and propaganda with a false flag event initiated by sleeper agents could get some good riots going.
I'm just a farmer that wakes up early, wakes up the rooster, and then peruses the internet. What about guys that think about this full time?
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains.
Chavez who? Maduro who? Biden who?
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