Remember the 'Arab spring' and what came after.
Without a full military occupation it might just turn into another Haiti just on a much bigger scale. Of course US will probably have to intervene to "secure" the oil industry...
https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/venezuela-explosions-car...
Trump is far from universally loved, but just imagine what the US would become if an outside nation swooped in and captured him. 100% of the american people would be screaming for blood.
Oil industry in Venezuela is Chinese, or for China, this is not gonna change either.
What we are seeing here is a show, or may be also more related to Venezuela being a narco-state.
The oil production there is completely decimated. They have huge reserves but production is low and falling because the regime doesn't do any maintenance or support of anything in the oil production and supply chain. It is very much the meme of "living in the ruins of a once great society".
>Her brother, Jorge Rodriguez, the head of the national assembly, is in Caracas, three sources with knowledge of his whereabouts said.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuela-vice-presid...
"Trump says that the US is going to be "strongly involved" in Venezuela's oil industry moving forward." [0]
Today. She's still part of the same regime and party. It's not obvious Trump will let her stay in charge. Also the control the government had over the criminal gangs/syndicates/cartels was seemingly very weak anyway. Even if the current decapitated regime is allowed to stay it won't be very strong.
Any student of history would be skeptical. The US record after interference in a country is abysmal. Relatively recent failures: Iraq, Afghanistan. Less recent failures: Nicaragua and throughout Central America.
Because they failed doing that in Iraq and Afghanistan, both cases where they did try, and there is also Libya (where they did not try all that much, if at all, I'll give you that). I mean, they did put some of their puppets in both Kabul and Bagdad, but the puppets in Kabul eventually got swept by the Talibans, while the puppets in Bagdad switched over to Iran's side by 2015-ish.
It is unclear what will happen next, but likely the regime or large elements of it will survive. Perhaps a more moderate faction will take control? That would be the best case scenario.
The US has not toppled Venezuelan government.
I am little confused about the meaning of "peace"
What gives you that impression? I haven't seen a single comment that is surprised or wasn't aware of the existing history between the two nations, nor a single comment saying that "Ok, I'm glad/sad that that's over now". What comments specifically are you talking about?
Could be!
Could also be really bad.
Only reason I know, is that if I check out any of the explore pages on IG etc. I get too many of those pages.
Statements made by politician need not be taken as truthful.
Of course Venesuela isn't that similar to Panama or Granada in various ways. Given the massive amounts of internal issues, and insanely high levels of crime/murder removing the government and washing your hands might turn it into something like Haiti...
Fundamentally on the moral level removing oppressive tyrants like Sadam, Maduro, Gaddafi etc. is the right thing to do. Of course nobody ever figured out how to prevent the situation from getting even worse in the aftermath..
What's the next stage then according to the administration?
This is kind of more like a "gasp" moment, even if Maduro sucks.
> This is like the first stone of an avalanche.
And things have already happened. Close allies have stopped sharing intelligence information with the US. Even if the US doesn't need the info the deterioration of those partnerships is concerning. Or maybe good from the perspective of weakening the global surveillance machine but that's a whole other issue.
Not to mention all the other things that happen that when you put together are more concerning.
People forget, there are no real "big things".
Instead there's just a bunch of little things that come together to look big. As programmers we should be intimately familiar with this. Though normally we're using it in the other direction: taking a big problem and determining all the little problems that come together to create the big one. Working in the assembly direction is much harder than the disassembly direction (far larger solution space) but the concept is still the same.
But I agree with you, this isn't the end. This is definitely a concerning inflection point.
"Allies" like "The West" who take our money, don't have the same beliefs or core values, no shared religion or culture? those "Allies"?
good riddance. I am sick of us propping up failed European states
Anybody who voted for current POTUS who is actually surprised at this turn of events...words fail me.
Whether you like the man or not, DT and his team have been more than forthcoming on what their plans were and they have more or less delivered to a T.
The one thing that is a given is that kidnapping foreign heads of state - no matter how despicable - is now on the menu. I'm pretty sure that this isn't the last time we see this. And the pretexts are unconvincing given how Trump dealt with that other drug dealer. I'm guessing Maduro didn't want to play ball more than anything, this feels very personal.
There we have it. The real reason for the invasion. Looks like the start of yet another avalanche as you say.
Jan 6th, extrajudicial killings, ICE deportations, threatening to takeover Greenland, and now the kidnap of a foreign country's leader. The world needs to wake up and realise the USA is just China/Russia with better PR.
Edit: And now he's confirmed the US will run the country until they decide otherwise.
It's almost like that dude who keeps saying, "FSD in my EVs is just months away."
This is not surprising, this is how society ultimately works, even internally, not just on international scale.
I live in a democracy. I could still name several laws of the land that I consider fundamentally unjust, but the might of the majority translated into political and physical power means that I have to obey them, right or wrong. It is better that this power is controlled democratically and not by a single autocrat or a single ruling party, but it is still fundamentally coercion.
Are there even any alternatives? Ultimately we cannot all agree on what is right for everyone.
Very deep observation.
Maduro had to be removed, this is a win for Venezuela. On one side he's a criminal, on the other side people at the country are cheering for this [1].
He didn't even win the most recent election. I'll write that again, he was not elected.
I haven't seen a convincing argument about why it would have been better if he remained in power.
All of the reasons you list apply to many world leaders, legitimately elected or not. You must be ecstatic about the pardon of Hernández then.
Let's just focus on the not-legitimately-elected ones. Venezuela was a functioning democracy until Maduro took control through force and fraud. Shed not one tear for him.
That's correct. One at a time, I'd say. :)
Trump is risking organized human life by helping accelerate global warming and ecological collapse.
This is not a good outcome for the world.
After all most of the country wants him out, he's a felon and broke the law countless times since his election.
Seems like a win for the people of the US and America.
You're way off base here. No one is arguing that he should be in power. It's the way it was done. You're also ignoring a very important question: now what?
Sorry, but the last year has not inspired confidence that this administration knows what it's doing.
The most recent election in Venezuela was in 2025 and Maduro's faction(s) won a landslide victory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Venezuelan_parliamentary_.... Nothing indicates that the results were fraudulent.
Venezuela was a prosperous, serious and fully democratic country before Maduro and their predecessors took over.
Trump just said in the press conference that from now on the US will run Venezuela...The US is "designating" the people that will run the country.
They mentioned the president of Colombia has to "watch his ass" and that Cuba is a mess. And said that the US will be selling the oil to other countries, and the US will take "our oil".
Insanity does not even starts to describe it...
I hope to be wrong, but think it certainly will. all the money everyone is spending on arms it seems soon the only game left in town in the military industrial complex. the other career options are to become a doctor, or nurse.
the US in its current form is heading towards long drawn out collapse like the Roman empire, and they're dragging all their former allies down with them. there seem to be no peaceful options to prevent that collapse.
E.g.:
- I do not see any way they can modernize their messed up political system.
- their population is divided more than any country on the planet
- thanks to heavily propagandized citizens they don't have the critical mass to bring in change (not in a country where the companies have so much power)
The Roman empire collapsed for more than 250 years. Longer than US exists. I think it's too early to compare those two.
Was it for oil? Socialism bad? To stop drugs? I think you latter is the narrative I’m most familiar with.
Immigration would be the most logical, since this administration and political base care a lot about that, but I don’t think they’ve drawn a clear line between economic success and emigration. Logic isn’t exactly a cornerstone for these idiots.
I’m guessing we did it to flex and distract from our own economy, but usually there is at least some pushed narrative for why America did the thing?
> Or did a very lousy job of it.
It's more obvious than lousy.
However, fentanyl is produced mainly in Mexico and reaches the US almost exclusively via land through its southern border."
When Noriega was arrested by the US, the legitimate president started operating normally a few days after.
I'm skeptical it will be over soon.
We in the USA now own Venezuela. It's all our fault going forward.
Trump has done a great deal already to incentivize nuclear proliferation by destroying confidence that the US will be a reliable defensive ally.
I doubt any of our allies like Canada or European countries can trust us again.
Think of it this way - Maduro could had died from choking on a turkey bone over Christmas - would there inevitability be a civil war?
What matters is whether there is a fight for political power as a result - and particularly what the generals think. ie any fight is much more likely to start from the top rather than the bottom.
My guess, and it's just a guess, is that the smoothness of the extraction mission strongly suggests serious inside info/cooperation. ie somebody did a deal with the US - involving giving up Maduro in exchange for removal of the sanctions ( particularly oil which the US has escalated with tanker seizures ) which was crippling the country.
So my prediction is an internal smooth transition of power, cooperation around oil, with neither the US nor the new leader being keen on quick elections as that will interfere with the execution of the deal.
All the Trump cares about is the public 'win' and the oil and minerals flowing. The Venezuelan leadership will want to end the US sanctions and get the countries economy working again - if this happens they will think election prospects will improve - can't see Trump caring that much about Venezuelan internal politics as long as he get's the win and a positive flow of oil revenue and strategic access to minerals.
The real knee-on-the-neck was the US blockade/piracy of oil tankers and associated sanctions.
Venezuela is Catholic and while it definitely has crime issues, there's no religious/fundamentalist element to the violence so the odds of anyone fighting to the death to support their failed dictator and his ideology is slim to none.
The indecision of the international community to act is what caused the suffering lasting a decade, led to the rise of ISIS and refugee crisis of enormous proportions.
Both of them were more moderate than ISIS lol.
But yeah, Egypt is more moderate than the Muslim brotherhood. Jordan is moderate. The non-Hezbollah part of Lebanon. UAE, Qatar, Oman all quite moderate. The Saudis are even secularizing a tad to try calming down fundamentalist sentiment. All these states actively suppress Islamism and generally are pro-west.
Colombia managed a decades long violent armed conflict with the same demographics. Organized crime, political instability, political ideologues, etc all can get people to kill each other without religious extremists.
Oh, the so called "extremists" are/were the ones with power. This is where it tops out. I know it's hard to see from a distance but you have no idea how bad can it get under the safe and sound status quo.
Too late, Maduro is in custody - that bargain is for the next Venezuelan president to make
The arab spring exploded, because obama rerouted us-surplus food from subsidizing allied regimes (egypt) into bio-fuels, causing wild price spikes to the bread prices in egypt and the arab world. These situations are not really comparable - like at all. Not even on the surface level.
Soon you will be telling me the Taliban still run Kabul.
https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-12-22/oil-gold...
As long as they can protect the mining and refining operations the rest doesn’t matter. And I fully expect the America First, America Only group that claims to be the next thing after MAGA, to find ways to justify this regime change and corruption.
It may not work out this time but when you start from a terrible rock bottom status quo the chances are already biased.
It may actually mean next to nothing geopolitically other than to outrage the rest of the world and make Trump look tough.
But only to his loyalists.
The people he needs at home are pretty simple. This type of thing makes it easier for his loyal propagandists to do their thing.
It be like the Russians taking out Trump only to have Vance take over. Hes still propped up by miller, hegseth, bondi, the house AND senate AND courts and the cavalcades of sycophants who really only are doing the whims of oligarchs who have no interest in helping society as a whole.
It never really recovered. Probably need a hearing aid, but I can just use the other one.
So, your prediction is "anything is possible".
I gotta say nobody can disagree with that.
It's actually more like grandstanding to satify oneself emotionally. It's "I am right" esque type of answer because "anything can happen" is always true.
The statement can be omitted because it literally adds nothing to any discussion.
> but anybody telling you they have a crystal ball is lying.
Then, we can add to a discussion saying which part might not be true, which assumption is incorrect, and etc.
Nobody would predict anything with 100% confidence. You make that up and state "anything can happen"-type of statement to satisfy yourself emotionally.
If those people were that sure about their predictions, they would bet on polymarket and become a billionaire already.
So you'd prefer.. inaction? So we know for a fact we will going to reach world peace ten years from now having done absolutely nothing?
The non-intervention principle applies if you are not actively suffering intervention.
The flaw however, is that applying non-intervention in this instance, is choosing to ignore the real, direct hurt currently endured by non-actors (LATAM + US citizens) from the policies of Maduro.
I do concede that whatever follows Maduro, may be worse.
If I'm getting poked by a neighbor for years and i finally punch back, punching is a valid response. If the neighbor then comes back later and shoots me with a gun, it doesn't mean that my self-defense act was invalid.
People want an Eisenhower doing these kinds of things, not whoever is doing currently doing it.
> People want an Eisenhower doing these kinds of things
Why would people who don't want Trump doing it want an Eisenhower doing it? He helped overthrow democratically elected Árbenz in Guatemala with even weaker justifications than Trump overthrowing Maduro (Maduro at least seems to lack popular support and probably cheated in elections).
Eisenhower:
Overthrow of Árbenz to protect fruit company profits > series of military dictators > 30+ years of civil war where the US-backed government committed a genocide against Maya people
You, sir, are no Ron Paul.
He sounds insufferable.
Why do you think it won't work like that with Venezuela?
PS: I realised that i made a mistake, so-called Palestine is absolutely pro-Russian, the entire ethnic group is created by Russians out of thin air in 1967, but it's a separate case and they did not participate in Arab Spring anyway.