This Venezuela Nonsense…
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It’s not at all obvious to me what the Trump administration thinks it’s doing with respect to Venezuela. I’m pretty sure that Trump himself does NOT want to become entangled in a long-term regime change operation… and I’m pretty sure that there are figures in the administration who are trying to convince him that a few airstrikes will be more than enough to do the job. Some thoughts at NSJ:
The current buildup in the Caribbean appears to be a compellence campaign. Compellence is the concept that the threat of military force can persuade a target country to alter its behavior. A mugger, for example, threatens a target with violence in order to acquire a wallet.
A campaign of compellence does not necessarily result in military action; the target can comply with a demand (making war unnecessary), or resistance may reveal the campaign was a bluff.
The US is assembling way more force than it needs to hunt drug smugglers, and US officials have made (albeit in contradictory fashion) statements that sound like the US is preparing for an extended military campaign.
But for compellence to work, the target needs to know what it’s supposed to do and be able to do that thing; the victim needs to have a wallet and to have the capacity to turn the wallet over to the mugger.
In this case, it’s not entirely clear what the Venezuelan government can do to appease the Trump administration.
I’ll add that the kind of idiot who likes to talk about “spheres of influence” from a progressive point of view as a reason to cease US support for Ukraine generally doesn’t understand that this kind of talk invites US military action in Latin America… but this particular flavor of idiocy is why the Quincy Institute is able to call itself “bipartisan” as it continues its Try Hard effort to become MAGA’s in house foreign policy think tank.
Some other Venezuela links:
- The USS Ford is sailing around in circles as the administration figures out what to do.
- Russia is sending air defense equipment to Venezuela.
- Some thoughts on the administration’s internal “logic”…
- On the evolution of Maduro’s foreign policy…