Don’t have to. Just bully each one, most fold, make examples out of those who don’t with limited strikes, assassinations, kidnappings, sanctions, etc until they fold and move on. Cuba’s the only one that cannot really fold. The only thing they can offer the US is total capitulation and installation of a fascist neo-liberal dictatorship for the west.
Cell phone tracking. Facial recognition of those at the protest used via cross-reference with federal databases like state real ID photos most people get with their drivers license. Very easy. If you’re not masked (and probably wearing big sunglasses) and not leaving your phone at home those are just two of the many ways they could do it.
But people post photos online of themselves too at the protest so there’s always really low hanging fruit too.
On the other hand they have zero chance of getting Maduro back by force or of getting any relief by force. They are entirely outgunned and outmatched and have no interest in fighting a long war against the US to emerge victor of the ashes. So sucking up to empire, bending the knee, being cordial, and being beyond cordial are about all they have for trying to get what they want out of this situation.
I think it’s foolish. I think it’s doomed to failure and the US is just going to come back again for another pass. But it’s hard to say to your people that we must be the ones to fight the US empire when it seems like if you play your cards right you can get the empire, the eye of sauron to focus on another country and spare yours for a time, make someone else fight for you. And everyone has this idea so the US keeps getting concessions from everyone including the major powers because there’s no desire to band together. There’s no desire for pain and shared sacrifice. Too many people look back at the 20th century and Vietnam and Korea and are terrified into submission by those and Iraq. US may not win but you won’t either. Your development will be set back decades, you’ll endure horrific losses of civilian life, horrific lowering of quality of life. It was so much easier to resist when most people were peasants living very basic lives and had little to lose. Development has brought the trap of having far more to lose in a modern life if you challenge the empire.
Eh I doubt it.
Look to history. As much terrorism and violence as the right did over the civil rights era when the US federal government used some level of strong-arm tactics including deploying troops, siccing the FBI on them, etc, etc the people murmured and murmured in rage and then exactly nothing happened. Their politicians raged at the podium, they raged in the papers, they raged on TV and then nothing happened.
That’s exactly what will happen this time. Trump will beat down Democratic opposition while at least half of Democratic voters cry foul for their party not standing up to him and the liberals and ourselves will seethe and rage. And there will be teeth gnashing and fiery speeches in the press and protests. But nothing will happen.
This isn’t going to cause the US to break apart. It’s not going to be civil war 2.0. It won’t cause alliances of states. It won’t result in challenges to federal power. It’ll result in Trump bowling over opposition to implement what he wants and then Dems once back in power refusing to use those levers of power he just used so effectively because of muh norms and need to rebuild civility and blah blah blah. Democratic voter-base rage and anger will simmer but not boil over. Not over this.
Not really. EU is vassalized to the US as well and instantly folded in Trump’s tariffs negotiations.
Democrats like:
Rein in ICE: 
Let ICE reign: 
US according to various commentators: told Russia and China it would allow them spheres of influence and pull back.
Meanwhile also the US: pours more money into war machine than ever in history, demands it increase production capacity of high end and low end weaponry by vast amounts.
If it were one or the other you could argue US just intends to use such weapons in wars and regime change in Latin America but to have both can only be for fighting a peer power like Russia or China. High tech weapons are the ones the US prefers using against outgunned adversaries in precision strikes and carefully crafted campaigns but low end weaponry is what you need to sustain a peer power conflict when you can’t possible keep up production of your $10 million a shot missiles at a pace of a hundred day for months on end. Probably also why Trump is doing the Trump battleships/cruisers because they saw in Ukraine how important basic artillery is and figure if they have a bunch of these they can have more staying time in naval battles which are important for encircling, blockading, and choking off China from suppliers and customers when they decide to have that blow fall.
Because Iran refuses to adapt and most of their government has liberal-capitalist brain worms I think chances of US/Zionist pressure succeeding in neutralizing them either with complete decapitation and regime change or just getting tools installed who let the zionists/US do whatever they want in the region, break ties with Russia/China, etc are very, very, very high this year and next.
They’re going to keep pouring on the pressure as it’s the last stumbling block to totally US hegemony and control of the middle east and indeed to completely blocking all aspects of the belt and road overland. Iran being killed off also of course means basically all resistance groups operating in the region opposing the zionist outpost stop getting major funding, weapons, intel, etc and become a lot less effective.
So they’re definitely going to try. More decapitating strikes, an attempt to kill the supreme leader for intimidation but more basically attempts to take out military leadership.
Surprised they were given launch authority. VZ air defences should’ve stuck to Iglas because now they’ve lost a bunch of BUKs to an enemy that would’ve never been at risk, despite being still comparatively threatening should a colour revolution turn a country like Brazil to the Empire.
The operators had no way of knowing what was happening. It’s easy to arm-chair general but for all they knew this was the start of a general US invasion of their country and the only chance they’d have to fire before all assets were hunted down and destroyed. Not like the US rang up Venezuelan air command and told them not to panic, just kidnapping your leader and leaving (and not like a perfidious country like the US should be trusted if they did ring you up with that story).
Pictures I’ve seen show a very, very white woman.
By the accounts I’ve seen so far she either was trying to block them with her car as other people sounded the alarm and they murdered her for it or she genuinely had some car trouble or a moment of panic and got stuck blocking their convoy.
Three outcomes here:
China and India (but especially China given they’re China) reach never before seen levels of cutting their own hands off, bend the knee and help the US destroy Russia or at least badly humiliate and isolate it in a move it won’t forget when they’re in trouble.
China or India or both don’t bow and this finally kicks things into motion regarding de-dollarization.
US passes this but then starts handing out waivers or something and essentially backs off itself and uses it to beat on smaller countries and force anyone who isn’t India or China sized to decouple from China/Russia and get into their orbit. If China impassively watches this happen and watches the US grab much of the world and drag it behind its high fence and does nothing well they’re going to have a very bad middle half of this century 2030s when the US turns the screws on them.
I’d almost bet on Trump trying to do 3 as it seems to be the move US empire wants to make anyways but I figure they might see if India and China will bend the knee first and only compromise if they don’t and look like they’re going to cause trouble.
There’s easily 20% of Americans who if you told point blank they won’t see a cent of it would still say “well I still believe it’s the right thing to do to give it back to its rightful owner who makes more in an hour than I will in my entire life destroying my body”. Protestant slave ethic is a disaster for the human race.
It’s a fake-out most likely.
Venezuela had to put everything on highest alert in case Trump announced “as I speak 15 minutes ago our forces entered into a war with Venezuela” or whatever. Now that the moment has passed they relax a bit. US waits a while, does some more bombing then suddenly with minimal telegraphing begins huge strikes just after Christmas or on New Years or what have you.
It’s clear they want to take out Maduro. That’s a matter of getting the right intel and a sprinkling of luck. So IMO they wait until they have good intel on his location for a period of say “next hour”, then move out and strike. Either to kill him or to quickly bring down Venezuela’s air defenses, create a diversion, and drop special forces to capture him, extract and bring him to the US where they have a show trial and then sentence him to death (or life in prison). That or they kill him during the raid and bring his body back as a trophy. Once that happens, once the decapitating strike occurs, whether it succeeds or fails the US will roll out the rest of what it wants to do. That may be nothing. That may be expeditionary force to capture parts of the capitol and create a green zone, install an “international community recognized” government with the recent nobel winner at its head and bring in some Latin American pawns as occupation, sorry “peacekeeping” forces to help stabilize things, have their pawn declare the oil or some huge amount of proceeds thereof goes to the US and/or its corporations, then just beat on the Venezuelan military, destroy anything mechanized, anything too organized, etc.
I don’t think they’re foolish enough anymore to get drawn into trying to do jungle warfare and Vietnam 2.0 to pacify the whole country and they’ll likely do the Iraq/Afghanistan thing with an internationally recognized green-zone they defend where their puppet government that rubber stamps things is which they viciously defend and fortify and then the rest of the country (minus oil fields) which they allow to be ruled by remaining elements of the Bolivarian revolution as unimportant. Meanwhile they strangle those parts of the country by not allowing significant imports or exports except through their puppet government, declare anything else to be illegal narcotic trafficking, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, etc. This continues on for a decade until they get pushed out but by then they’ve made their moves on China and denied them a toe-hold in this hemisphere and by controlling Venezuelan oil they have near total control of global oil and can squeeze China economically.
I believe it’s because geopolitical concerns come first and foremost. What good is socialism if it is suffocated in the cradle by external forces?
If I’m being charitable and to China and the CPC I am, this would be in my mind a big concern. The moment the west is economically decoupled from you is the moment they can afford to do ANYTHING. From yes sanctions and blockades and conflicts to prevent you from selling to other markets like Europe, MENA, Africa, Latin/South America, Asian vassals, etc that strangle you and isolate you from the world like the USSR to truly violent and desperate acts like using nuclear weapons because there are no economic concerns. I think there may be those in the CPC who view the US with incredible concern as a deranged, violent maniac that only isn’t attacking them viciously on multiple fronts because of their intertwined dependency. So the thinking goes you can’t transition to socialism YET because doing that will scare off the capitalists, result in de-coupling, re-shoring (not necessarily to US but India for example) and result in a conflict. Better to bide your strength as long as you can and when the moment comes be as strong as you can be with people, industry, tech as advanced and built as you can reasonably make it so you hit the ground on the new cold war conflict running.
The problem with this type of thinking and planning of course is you risk having types who constantly make excuses for why now is not the right time even when it is, who resist change because they’re risk averse or genuinely liberal thinking and enjoy all this private enterprise and capitalist market economy mode. So you have a risk of not striking at the ideal time and of rot setting in as well as of course the cost born by the Chinese people in situations of economic decline where rather than going the state planning route harder to alleviate that you believe they just have to endure it for the sake of “the plan”. I am hopeful that China is just waiting until 2030 as their plans state and at that point having accumulated as much as they can in the interim and remaining as entangled with the west as they can economically they’ll begin to change things around. But it’s a real danger. It’s playing with fire because it gives liberal-roaders, revisionists and opportunists opportunities to put a socialist sounding logical spin on their desires to keep things free market. And as others note deeper in this thread there’s a real risk they can push for delays if economic stagnation occurs and they can say “we need more time to build up, just another 10 years, just let us clear this stagnation, we need to open up more” and that can lead to even worse things like the kind of decay and rot that claimed the USSR. They need very steady hands at the very top for the next 5 years at least.
There’s a real risk of hesitancy because of how the US has set up dominoes to strangle the B&R for example so I hope 2030 is set in stone as far as possible because by then China’s military will be reasonably modernized, enough to likely stand up to the US very effectively, a lot of tech will have caught up, independence on semi-conductors could be a reality, etc.
Russia is the one who has experience fighting starlink’s use by Ukraine and having to come up with solutions to blocking it. If Russia didn’t provide such assets directly they certainly provided methods, intel, and the info Iran would need to build such jamming assets.