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Weekly: The Diosdado Cabello Question
Late Friday, Delcy Rodriguez, in her capacity as interim president of Venezuela, said her country's
You break it, you own it.
Whatever, this won’t end well.
There’s never an end to anythng, occasionally things rise to the level of well enough.
My advice to Trump is he has to put Putin in his place at Ukraine to be taken seriously.
He’s a little ham fisted about Greenland, but the truth is the top of the world just become navigable Waters. Chinese and Russians are shipping stuff back-and-forth in the summer up that way.
Excellent analysis Mr H. Instead of trying to navigate a labyrinth, Ur excellent analysis implies a zero-sum situation in which Delcy’s survival and US goal of stability, is dependent on her expeditious elimination of a constant threat from an obvious rival and opportunist. Sooner or later, it’s either him or her. Peaceful co-existence with such a guy seems wishful thinking.
Thanks for an outstanding post. It really does seem like Trump is “way too far over his skis”. Does he really know how to deal with top level drug lords, who have been in power for decades?
And I really appreciated your reference to “sailing between Scylla and Charybdis”. What an amazing story, which I just recently finished reading (the Fagles version).
I’d be willing to bet Trump uses his Soleimani cheat code and assassinates Cabello. Trump (and the MAGA cult for that matter) doesn’t care how many brown people he has to kill to do it as long as it doesn’t require boots on the ground. Maybe he can even use some bunker busters or napalm to incinerate the Venezuelan rain forests and stick it to all those hippy environmentalists while he’s at it.
This. Maybe a bit harder than taking out Hezbollah, and Hamas but easy enough and no need to destroy the whole country.
H-Man, Delcy has the backing of Trump and Cabello the backing of Cuba. If Cabello does not snap to, he will disappear and provide notice to anyone who wants to be Cabello II. The country today is nothing more than a special op’s project.
Excellent summary of the key players, the situation and the dilemma. I have little to add other than some anecdotal info. Chevron requested a meeting with our company in Caracas next week, we had not heard from them since 2018, even though Chevron always maintained some presence in the country. Also, I had been trying for years to sell a (very nice) office space in Maracaibo for pennies, with zero interest from anyone other than the occasional “Chinese” entrepreneur, the prospects of selling it were so bleak that I was ready to donate the space to LUZ (Zulia state university). This week I received multiple offers by as much as 3x asking price from agents purportedly representing “US Oil.” These anecdotes along with what appears to be real intentions to reopen the US embassy had me thinking that a lot of what Trump-Rubio claim in terms of collaboration from the Rodriguez administration is somewhat true. Airlines also commenced flying to Venezuela again, I even made plans to be in Caracas early February until I saw that today the US State Department issued a warning to US persons to not travel to Venezuela, contradicting the administration’s rhetoric and my “on the ground” signals, clearly the situation remains fluid.
Thank you for your continuing comments. It really helps me to get a “feel” for what’s happening on the ground.
I really appreciate these analyses. Your summary of the current condition in Venezuela is extremely helpful, as has your summaries of events in the Middle East. With the news buzzing with “clickable” stories and social media extending clickbait designed to pique my interest, it is really valuable to be able to come here and see an informed and mature assessment of history in the making.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the charges against Maduro het dropped on the basis that the operation to capture him with illegal. That would definitely throw a wrench into the works.
As expected, the Trump team is lazy and never do the necessary hard work. By all reasonable accounts Venezuelan oil is not a pot of Leprechaun gold. They also should have taken (out) Cabello and Lopez along with Maduro if they wanted half a chance to succeed. This is about as well run as the Tariff Wars. If recent reports are true, the Ayatollah is doing just what Trump told him not to. Trump now has 3 big actors giving him and his threats the finger.