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Sky news: https://news.sky.com/story/greenland-trump-white-house-live-venezuela-maduro-capture-strikes-colombia-latest-13489831 ”The US is attempting to seize a Venezuela-linked oil tanker after a more than two-week-long pursuit across the Atlantic, according to reports. A US official has told Reuters that the seizure is being carried out by the Coast Guard and military. Russian state news media outlet RT is also reporting that a helicopter, believed to be carrying US military forces, is attempting to land on the oil tanker.” From pirates of the Carribean to pirates of the Atlantic. Didn’t think a sequel would come this quick 😂 @BlueOak we both said it’s gonna be a turbulent year but fuck me we’re only a week in.

Reality isn’t purely material darwinianism and law of the jungle. Might makes right is pre-concious, although utopian liberals think being concious means rejecting the reality of power/survival dynamics existing or that they are above it. Power needs to be buffered by principles that come from our own conscience intuition of what is “right” and “wrong”. A lot of the right wing just want to default to our animal nature because it’s simpler than dealing with the complexity of having to nurture nature to more humane ends that actually create civilization.

I generally likes his takes but he assumes a level of coordination that isn't there and is way too confident about the conclusion. There's also quite a few holes and contradictions in his argument. The incentives are also incoherent - he correctly says US companies can't be profitable from Venezuelan oil and don't want low oil prices to destroy their own heavy investment in US/Canadian oil. But then says the Gulf countries will come in with the investment and drive prices lower to kill off their competition which they can then consolidate and buy up. He somehow squares that the gulf and Western capital elite are on the same page here - but how can they be? Firstly, even if finance elites like Blackrock etc aren't as exposed to oil stocks - having very low oil affects other things that indirectly can affect the financial system through credit risk and contagion etc. Finance want boring stable oil prices not low prices. Secondly, why would gulf countries invest billions into a asset they they themselves are trying to diversify away from because the macro trend of the world is to go to push towards renewable? Just because gulf countries can extract oil at much lower prices doesn't mean they want those lower prices - they need higher priced oil to fund their own budgets and projects. That's something Shahid always talks about - how the Gulf countries through their sovereign wealth funds are shaping the region to become the new Europe 2.0 - but with what money if their main revenue stream is cut because they ''deliberately flooded the market with cheap oil and lowered the price of oil''. The logic may be that lower the price and sell more oil - but oil is a commodity and doesn't work like a retail product. It's inelastic. Which means if the price goes down, the demand isn't going to all of a sudden jump to the same degree - people aren't going to all drive 50% more because its cheaper. That's why OPEC+ have always kept prices within a stable band that's profitable for them. His framework assumes these transnational elites use the state for their own interest but then underestimates or overlooks the national security state (deep state) which thinks more in empire logic and not always in capital logic. Also - these same OCGFC (Blackrock etc) depend on the platform of the US itself (that the empire maintains) - but by his logic they are transitioning away from it and eroding it by shifting to the east. No other platform as yet exists with the depth of capital markets and law and order of Western finance for them to jump away from and towards - and if they did they are dealing with BRICS and Gulf type countries running those platform who will subordinate private capital more than Western platforms.

Europe has all the ingredients to be powerful yet it isn't considered a great power because it has no unity or ability to command that power - specifically militarily. And military is the hardest dimension of power and sovereignty which they outsourced. To resolve inter-Euro rivalries after the world wars US took the lead in the security domain via NATO - no Euro nation trusts the other to lead so they sub-ordinated that function to a allied superpower placing them under its security umbrella. The fact that this superpower is across the pond and may have its own interests means it can use Europe for its own geopolitical adventures in containing rivals (Russia) and not have to suffer the consequences. Europe isn't a great power because it refuses the moral and political costs of being one. It's structurally paralyzed because the position to lead the military command would be contested between France, Germany and UK which also disbanded via Brexit. Unity is just noise without a command - armies don't function on consensus but authority. A company can have multiple stakeholders or directors but only one CEO. In a military showdown you can't wait to get consensus from 27 capitals with 27 different threat perceptions and 27 different domestic political situations. A army needs a hierarchy designed to make violent decisions faster than the other side. Consensus is a luxury only democratic civilians can enjoy. NATO isn't even European defense exactly but is American command of European forces - with the assumption that the US will lead those forces in a direction that benefits European interests and security. If US and European interests diverge - Europe's security architecture is still beholden to being US led via NATO. US also has a kill switch to the military eco system Europe depends on. If the US wanted to take Greenland what could Europe actually do? Militarily not much due to that dependency and operational paralysis around who would lead the charge against the US anyway. The first to take US's side would be Atlanticist Britain, then what? All they could do is political (protest with words) or economic (sanctions and decoupling) which assures tanking the continent. This is why it's important to have military sovereignty but also never have total dependence on a single power, but instead play them off and spread the risk. In a way this is what India has done - it hedges itself by maintaining economic ties with China, energy and military ties with Russia, and both military and economic ties to the US along with its tech stack. That allows it a level of strategic autonomy Europe doesn't have despite Europe being much more richer and advanced than India.

Late stage USSR and post-USSR Russia under US puppet Yeltsin (opening to neoliberalism shock therapy) are a parallel to this. “The Brezhnev Doctrine was a Soviet foreign policy stated by Leonid Brezhnev, asserting the Soviet Union's right to intervene militarily in any Warsaw Pact nation to preserve communist rule, justified by the idea that reforms in one socialist country threatened all. It justified the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia (Prague Spring) to crush liberal reforms, solidifying Moscow's control over its satellite states and reinforcing Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe.” Replace Brezhnev doctrine with Donroe doctrine. What’s possibly to come: Funny seeing US empire clowns talk of how they’re gonna nation build and help the people benefit from oil revenues. Just like how corporate oligarchs re-invest into the US population and care so much. Listen to Rubio at 10-12 min: If the presence of other powers isn’t tolerated in their hemisphere why should China tolerate US in Japan, Phillipines etc. Same was said by Trump the Buffon about Greenland “lots of Russian and Chinese ships over there” no shit, Russia borders much of the artic. The presence of something alone isn’t a “national security threat” - a militarised power projection presence is. Child logic is “dollars are everywhere bro, US is a global threat”. No, not by itself - coercion or the future threat of violence to use the Western financial financial system where the US and it’s allies have veto power via SWIFT sanctions is the threat - back stopped by the force of global naval policing and 700+ bases. Globalisation naturally brings global presence - that presence wants to be denied or made conditional to benefit US empire interests - with force or the threat of it. That presence (Russian, Chinese) wasn’t an existential national security threat (yet), it was a threat to imperial architecture. It’s about the oil but also not in the way most think. It’s more about platform (system) dominance than the product (oil) itself. More money will be made through financialization of future claims to oil flow than ramping up production to max capacity - which will destroy big oil investments in Canada and US who require higher prices to profit from - thus are against flooding supply to market. With Venezuelan resources folded into the system with political alignment - it can then be utilised. Just to show the power of financialization - yesterday €100 billion in market cap was added to US oil stocks - simply through signal, not supply. Good listen from a oil guy:

@BlueOak Yeah most likely if no political resolution comes it looks like it will be a frozen conflict eventually. The thing about drones is true - but I don't know how much they obsolete manpower. If drones were enough we wouldn't have seen Russia makes the territorial gains they made in 2025, which before that had been barely anything for a good two years. I think drones make it very costly to push the front line and slow down the tempo, but don't erase it completely. Russia also came back to match Ukraine with its own improvement in drones so it seems like the side that can keep feeding into the grinder is wins ground - drones can't hold territory only manpower still can, though under the cover and with the help of drones and at greater cost and caution from incoming drones from the other side. It usually takes a average 3;1 ratio to offensively take ground, which is why Russia suffered more in taking what they did. If drones were enough of a game changer we'd surely have seen Ukraine be able to push back and re-take ground from the Russian's but that still requires manpower which is why they didn't. And now that initial advantage of a gap with drones has shrunk as Russia's caught up with their own. Soldiers still matter but drones heavily tax the movement of those soldiers and increase the cost of attrition. They increase the attrition - but the end is still that the side with more meat to grind endures and makes ground or fortifies any taken positions. This is also why Putin or Russia trying it with any other EU country (which legit has article 5) let alone attempt to take all of Ukraine is so over blown. At best, they may push to the river which is logistically a nightmare to cross, and consider that a natural border to draw the line. Perhaps attempt Odessa to further secure black sea, but even that would be very costly.

Multiple factions have their reasons to approve of this move in Venezuela. For Trump who's commercially minded and thinks very simplistically from a lens of power and money it was an easy sell = take oil get rich lol. For neocon hawks like Rubio and Lindsey Graham its more ideological (anti-socialist, Monroe Doctrine, exceptionalism). The financial and industrial (big oil) elite aren't thinking they've hit a jackpot of oil supply - largest oil reserves doesn't mean profitable oil because type of oil, cost of extraction, political cost etc all matter. It would cost time and 10s of billions to re-vamp the infrastructure - all in a revolutionary minded jurisdiction that's not secure. Those investments could just be taken and nationalized down the line. What it's thought to provide US capital elites and the US empire more broadly is dollar dominance and system compliance. It protects (tries to) the platform their wealth relies on. The platform being US reserve currency and treasuries underpinning it - which is more essential than simply the product (oil). Apple cares more about the dominance of the platform (OS) than the apps (product) on it. The idea is to signal to the world that the US (OS) is still strong and that flirting with playing outside the system can have consequences. This can obviously and most likely will backfire. The US flopped on the trade war with China, has struggled dealing with the Houthis in the Red Sea, hasn't managed to eradicate Hamas via its ally in Israel, and still has a defiant Iran after their little party trick hitting a mountain which they framed as victory. Russia despite being sanctioned is chugging along with trade and India hasn't bent the knee to follow suit with those sanctions either. Seems a show of force out of desperation was in order. It's not a full on regime change yet, but a regime adjustment by taking out the leader. The regime still stands and Trumps notion of running Venezuela from the US whilst warning the new head is basically saying ''your our puppet now and must follow orders. If not, then we'll come in with round 2 for a full regime op” - which he's also threatened. What happens next we'll have to see. If the people don't see any improvements in their living standard within a reasonable time they could revolt, including insurgency, which may happen regardless against US actions. The issue is improvements takes time - especially in a petro-state which needs oil refinery investment and revenue + nation building. If the new head opens up Venezuela we could see a very similar parallel to Yeltsin in Russia that caused a shit show of asset stripping and privatization that caused in-equality etc and eventually gave rise to Putin who came in hard fisted against that neo-liberal shock therapy to stabilize things. Or we could just see US entanglement and Vietnam 2.0 which will seal the end of the empire.

Katie Miller is Stephen Miller's wife (the White House deputy chief of staff for policy). See what she tweeted about Greenland and what Denmark’s Ambassador to the US responded: https://x.com/dkambusa/status/2007607563601273179?s=46&t=DuLUbFRQFGpB8oo7PwRglQ Russia’s special military op at least has some security logic behind it that can be understood - even if the response to events on the ground are completely unjustifiable and aggressive. This US special op doesn’t and is blatant imperialism. Had China or Russia placed bases and missiles pointed to US then it would have introduced a security logic making it more understandable. Maduro may be bad (many Venezuelans are happy for his removal) but the system that decides who’s “bad” is even more dangerous because it’s unaccountable and selectively applied by a US led Western hegemonic order that can unilaterally impose sanctions - that deteriorate conditions that render the leader of a country less legitimate and thus more ripe for overthrow. All the Euro leadership is barking and toeing the same line “Maduro was illegitimate and we believe in international law and democracy” LOL Maduro was a democratically (maybe contested) elected leader governing a fragile petro-state, whose legitimacy was eroded through external economic warfare that created the very conditions later used to justify his removal. Now ya’ll know what BRICS and the global south are trying to extricate themselves from and why. https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/opinions/2025/9/3/us-and-eu-sanctions-have-killed-38-million-people-since-1970 ”The Lancet Global Health, which gives us a global view for the first time. Led by the economist Francisco Rodriguez at the University of Denver, the study calculates the total number of excess deaths associated with international sanctions from 1970 to 2021. The results are staggering. In their central estimate, the authors find that unilateral sanctions imposed by the US and EU since 1970 are associated with 38 million deaths. In some years, during the 1990s, more than a million people were killed. In 2021, the most recent year of data, sanctions caused more than 800,000 deaths. According to these results, several times more people are killed by sanctions each year than are killed as direct casualties of war (on average, about 100,000 people per year). More than half of the victims are children and the elderly, people who are most vulnerable to malnutrition. The study finds that, since 2012 alone, sanctions have killed more than one million children. Hunger and deprivation are not an accidental by-product of Western sanctions; they are a key objective. This is clear from a State Department memo written in April 1960, which explains the purpose of US sanctions against Cuba. The memo noted that Fidel Castro – and the revolution more broadly – enjoyed widespread popularity in Cuba. It argued that “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba,” by “denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government”. The power of Western sanctions hinges on their control over the world’s reserve currencies (the US dollar and the Euro), their control over international payment systems (SWIFT), and their monopoly over essential technologies (eg satellites, cloud computation, software). If countries in the Global South wish to chart a more independent path towards a multipolar world, they will need to take steps to limit their dependence in these respects and thus insulate themselves from backlash. The recent experience of Russia shows that such an approach can succeed.”

China plays the long game - it won’t move unless the timeline gets compressed with the crossing of red lines on the US’s part - which they haven’t yet. Chips alone won’t be fought over because a war means the loot (fabs) will be destroyed anyway. Both US and China are also heavily investing in domestic capacity for semi’s so Taiwan will lose that monopoly. Chips are critical but not existential to the point of going to war against a peer competitor over. Taiwan hasn’t formally or de facto integrated into any sort of rival military architecture - no permanent US bases, defence treaty flirtation, or NATO style command integration. Independence rhetoric is mostly symbolic but not crossed into being cemented structurally by law or UN recognition - red lines haven’t been crossed the way they were in Ukraine where the time to act was compressed. China has so far tolerated plenty of ambiguity and so has Taiwan maintained it without clear defection because all parties involved know the line. “Lay low and bide your time” - some Chinese don.

If the US really wanted to promote global democracy they could offer some kind of NATOesque democracy enforcement treaty. Any leader whose approval rating sinks below a certain level gets efficient Maduro treatment. Bin Laden and Gaddafi era was whack a mole logic, now it’s pluck a homie logic. Could be as easy as so: Ironically - the countries that may trigger article pluck a homie more often aren the ones currently lecturing everyone else about democracy. Merz, Starmer and Macron would get couped by their own rules. Real poll-itic.

I initially commented calmly, but have no issue matching energy back when responded to with temper tantrums. Tao Te Geopolitics and happy new year - what a start lol.

Same - imagine the Hollywood movies coming out about this. US and Israel are very competent at these kind of precision operations and shock and awe campaigns. They accomplished the operation at low cost to life - but maybe a cost will be paid in the long term depending on what happens next. Their saying it was a negotiated exit - I don't think US would have risked a messy kidnapping had they not had them on side. Must be bought off military that allowed things to go this smoothly. Only question now is whether factions fight with ensuing guerrilla warfare due to a power vacuum or does it stabilize under a US puppet like that nobel prize winner. Like what Jack says: A lot of Venezuelans definitely despised Maduro - but what comes next like you said may be worse. We just have to look at history - which tracks till today as to which nations are ''demonised'' as a axis of evil or resistance by the current Western hegemony. The states with memory of submission refuse to repeat it - and that refusal threatens the universality of the current system. After the fall of the USSR, Boris Yeltsin submitted to the Western order (economic shock therapy) which lead to high in-equality, privatized asset stripping and looting of the economy. That led to Putin coming in with a hard fist stabilizing things. Leading till today. Iran learnt the same lesson earlier with the nationalising of their resources under Mossadegh leading to a British-US backed coup installing the Shah, which later lead to the revolution. Resisting till today. China learnt the same lesson even earlier during Pax-Britannica from the century of humiliation and opium wars. Lesson being - never again allow external powers to dictate the terms of development. There's a common pattern to why nations are lumped together to be ''contained''. They are civilizationally strong enough and geographically insulated enough to resist and rebel (in Irans case) submission to the US led, Western dominated order that sets the terms to their favor. In the world system you either have those that are integrated (close allies) or submitted (weaker nations), or those that resist and hedge (swing states like India or the gulf). Much of the global south would like to resist or hedge but don't have the strength / leverage to do so. The rise of China leading the way with stronger nations in BRICS have given confidence to smaller / weaker nations to collectively re-balance the world order on equitable terms. What is being challenged is the West being able to unilaterally dictate - or 15% of the world population dictate to 85% of the world population because of a inherited colonial legacy system they reign supreme in. Venezuela is being used a example to stay compliant to the current system and not defect - or else suffer the consequence. If you have a openly defiant example of a country in your own hemisphere - what signal does that send to other countries in that same hemisphere? ''Oh we can just trade outside the dollar system with China and engage in BRICS development projects and survive the hissy fit sanctions from daddy US?'' not so fast because you'll be couped hombre lol. Tao Te Geopolitics.

Your way too emotional for politics. Didn't you start a thread ranting about how you ''no longer care about politics'' lol you already failed your new year resolution 3 days in son. You also have another thread asking ''why the US wants to steal Venezuela's oil& resources?'' to which I calmly went through all the possible reasons and came to the most plausible one in my opinion. You got triggered by that just like you have now. Have you answered your own question yet or are you still twiddling your thumbs confused about what's going on? Who knew that militarizing borders of buffer zones between great powers triggers security responses - whoever does it. This is how great powers behave once escalation is already underway. The Cold War ended rhetorically but NATO's military posture never rolled back - NATO nuclear sharing has had nukes stationed in Germany and Turkey within shot of Russia for decades. That same architecture crept forward towards Russia - and rightly so for the countries responding to Russian imperialism of the past. But there is a red line between great powers that overrides even the ''democratic choice'' of a nation to choose what it wants to do - and that was Ukraine. This is the distinction I was making - when influence and integrated trade turns into imperialistic power moves turning a country into a military threat against a rival power. Russia didn't station nuclear weapons in Belarus as some long standing imperial project - Belarus has been a Russian security partner for decades without nuclear deployment. The decision to move tactical nukes into Belarus was announced in 2023 and only came after - NATO’s eastward expansion, Ukraine becoming a de facto NATO military partner, massive Western arms flows, intelligence sharing, Finland joining NATO and Sweden moving to join after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. It's a reactive escalation, not a initial encroachment or posture. Explaining how a power acts isn't justifying it or endorsing it. We both don't agree - I don't elevate democracy as some absolute value in a black and white sense like a libtard - because there are certain democratic choices that will be overridden by power and survival dynamics. Small states don’t get infinite freedom without consequences in a great power system. If you love democracy so much then why are you bitching on a forum about Trump being democratically elected - by that same logic Hitler was elected democratically and should be embraced because ''democracy''. The difference is between what really is a security threat vs isn't. Same distinction as earlier - economic integration and political alignment doesn't necessarily cause a ''security'' threat. Massively arming up a country, creating military inter-operability, intelligence sharing and flirting with joining a security treaty by a country that openly wants to contain it's neighbor rival does pose a threat. Russia and China weren't doing that in Venezuela - as yet. On the one hand you talk about Western aggression and how Putin is cornered like animal bound to react - yet when I comment you forget all that nuance and have a temper tantrum against me lol your literally all over the place. I condemn all imperialism - but get correct on what is imperialism, or shut up and stick to your new year resolution by staying out of poltics which requires some minimal intelligence and emotional control. I literally said ''On the flip side - the imperialism of another rival power wanting to use a neighboring or regional country as a forward military base is something that any rational power will respond to. So if China or Russia were to station missiles pointed towards the US from Venezuela - it's totally rational for the US to do something about it and though unjustifiable - is understandable.'' By your own logic since you dick ride ''democracy'' and ''freedom'' - if Mexico or Canada chose to ally with Russia and China in a military sense - the US should just sit down and do nothing because the people ''chose it'. This is utopian thinking that disregards how power dynamics work in the real world - it doesn't mean endorsing the existence of power dynamics but acknowledging they exist and acting accordingly. Utopians deny power dynamics exist or moralise them away. Imperialists indulge power dynamics and justify them through dominance. Pragmatists accept power dynamics as a unavoidable reality that needs to be managed through diplomacy and restraint with force being a last resort if all else fails.

Even if they did care (many American oppose US adventurism) their democratic system wouldn't help resolving it the way they think. Because there is a deep state / permanent overlapping of private interests that use the state as a platform to exercise their interests THROUGH, at the expense of the national interest or goodwill of the demos / people. They are insulated from the ballot box decisions and above being disciplined by the state because the cultural DNA of the West is opposed to centralizing enough power in the state to be able to do so. This is why we have changing politicians but rarely a change in foreign policy or domestic policy that challenges powerful interests. Cucked to empire.

Highly unlikely WW3 will happen. Venezuela isn't existential for China or Russia to come to the rescue or whilst heightening tensions with the US. What's happening I think is we'r transitioning from a uni-polar world order to a multi-polar/nodal one where all the great-middle powers are jockeying/probing for position in that new system - whilst consolidating what they ''perceive'' as critical to them. Red lines and thresholds are being tested (even with smaller actors like UAE-Saudi like we just saw in Yemen). But the great powers themselves will avoid direct conflict, just as we have seen in Ukraine - even whilst covert proxy conflict occurs via ISR, intelligence, arms and drone operations carried out by the CIA. Nothing overt can happen (Tomahawks example) because the stakes are too high.Of course the chances aren't 0% either - because miscalculations can happen and things can spiral out of control during these transitions. The turbulence comes from flashpoints where these proxy fights will occur with some being existential for those powers ie Ukraine right on the border of Russia, Taiwan seen as part of China, or if Russia/China were to station up in Mexico or Canada right on the US border which they haven't even got close to doing.