I’ve been seeing some choice Alt-media headlines these past few days. Like Caitlin’s World’s most tyrannical government wants to free Venezuela from tyranny, followed the next day by her Sorry if this is antisemitic but I think it’s wrong to train dogs to rape prisoners. Not to be outdone, Socialist Equality Party’s WSWS gave a fitting response to Trump’s racist tirade, notable even by his exacting standards, at a cabinet meeting this week. See The “garbage” in the White House: Trump’s racist diatribe against Somalis.
Meanwhile it’s back to Venezuela for me. As a nod to my idea of that elusive sabbatical – as you likely noticed, empire criminality pauses for no one, not even steel city scribe – I’m minded to put up posts that take less of my time. Like more third party texts with shorter intros or none at all. To that equally elusive end I’ve spent a good many hours viewing podcasts on US pirates of the Caribbean. Most were by pundits I know of old: Duran, Kernow Damo, Classified Defence, Danny Haiphong, Rachel Blevins with Doug Macgregor, Larry Johnson and Max Blumenthal.
Max had facts at his fingertips as ever. In a Piers Morgan stand-off with Biden’s ambassador to Venezuela, James Story, he elicited a slow-motion fade out before our eyes of the man’s toothy smirk. 1 Go on, spoil yourself with a little schadenfreude. It’s all over in three minutes!
Most of the other podcasts boil down to the weighing of one question. 2 Since Nicolás Maduro shows no sign of caving as Washington racks up the tension – simply the latest thuggery in a quarter-century of threats, coup attempts, lethal ‘sanctions’, efforts to instal puppets and, in the shape of asset ‘confiscations’, outright theft – will Trump now dial down or follow through?
The case for betting on dial-down was put by John Mearsheimer, previous post. Venezuela isn’t Iraq or Libya. Its size dwarfs both, while daunting Andean mountains and dense jungle make it a far cry from the Iraqi sands, over which US Sherman and British Chieftain tanks sped with such devastating effect in 2003. A land invasion would come at high political cost given a US public notably averse to its sons and daughters coming home in body bags – a general rule here triply applicable due both to Venezuela’s low rating as issue of concern for America’s struggling, and to their president having pledged to end the forever wars – while Russian S-300s make “no fly zones” unenforceable as Iranian drones and hypersonic missiles with reaches of 2000 miles and more promise catastrophic optics should a single F-35 be downed, or so much as a boatshed on the Louisiana bayou take a hit. Given its world-beating powers of narrative control, such costs might be considered acceptable by a US ruling class united, but we’re a long ways from that. Of course Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, gold and rare earths – and an end to ‘socialism in our back yard’ – still hold the appeal they had when, twenty-six years ago tomorrow, Hugo Chavez first took office. But regime change in Caracas is neither an existential matter, making such extreme measures costly but necessary, nor Venezuela the dying empire’s only problem. Since this and the other hot spots grow more interwoven by the day, the fruits of escalation could prove more bitter than mere lack of success. 3
And the case for a follow-through wager? Though the pundits I’ve listed give it house room, the only one seeing this – albeit through the eyes of a man staring in horror at a needless but, with the driver on crack cocaine, inexorable trainwreck at the next bend – as more likely than not is Col. Doug Macgregor. A conservative whose politico-military assessments I value, while noting his tendency to go easy on Trump even when criticising him, he thinks two things will outweigh, in DC calculations, the obstacles. One, when a superpower assembles so huge a show of force, only to de-escalate with nothing to show for its braggadocio, it’s a climbdown whose effects, as the world shifts from unipolarity to multiple centres of power, are not confined to bruised pride. Two, Trump combines an outsize ego with low attention span and a fascinating inability to think ahead about anything at all. Those same ‘no-reverse-gear’ deep state Neocons who forced him, at eyewatering cost to his support in the MAGA, to strike Iran while failing to end “Biden’s war” in Ukraine may therefore prevail here too.
Me, I’d still bet on dial-down. Just not with my shirt.
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- A pity the snippet ends before Blumenthal can respond to Story’s charge, giving Trump and Bibi a run for their money in its detachment from any known reality, of the GrayZone, and Max personally, being funded by Vladimir Putin. The fact that Story, invited by Piers Morgan to respond to Max’s fact-packed take-down of empire talking points, begins not with rebuttal but baseless smear tells us all we need to know.
- Corporate media my side of the Atlantic are muted, given the stakes, in their coverage of Venezuela. Insofar as they do so at all the story, for liberal media both sides of the pond, is war secretary Hegseth. His fate hangs in the balance due both to ‘Signalgate‘ and his nauseating efforts to shift blame downwards for September’s double tap war crimes. A post on Sneaky Pete then? Maybe. But other than as a symptom of Western degeneracy, he’s minor league.
- In summarising factors pointing away from US escalation, I’ve excluded those intrinsic to the Venezuela body politic: popular sentiment, and the loyalty of its armed forces. But the facts speak in large degree for themselves. Why have twenty-six years of sustained effort to eradicate Chavismo failed? One reason, surely – powerfully augmenting the others – is that while the masses may chafe at the cronyism and worse usually attendant on state capitalism, too many recall the horrors of their country as a Chicago School poster child to cheerlead for a return to what it pleases empire managers to call ‘democracy’.