The first step is kicking America out the Olympics and and any international sports. Countries who invade people can go fuck themselves entirely.
https://www-cbsnews-com.cdn.ampproj...unity-reactions-nicolas-maduro-capture-trump/ There are, as always, two sides to every regime. Some Venezuelans in Florida don't mind it, apparently. The dude was living on a military base, probably to be protected from large percentage of his own citizens. But, what do we know? Nothing. None of us know what it's like in Venezuela. Except that if I were sailing by it on a round the world trip, I would leave a large distance between Venezuela and myself..
Trump just admitted that it is all about controlling the oil infrastructure in his press conference. Which seemed obvious, given his past actions: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...-hernandez-pardon-honduras-drugs/87564181007/
The ghost of Dick Cheney is rattling his chains in the afterlife, just now realizing he could have admitted "war for oil" all along. Years of academy CIA training, wasted.
Another swing-and-a-miss for the Trump Admin. Venezuela spent the last 20 years destroying their own oil industry. They barely put out 1M b/d at this point, and it's some of the shittiest oil you can get on Earth. I don't think we're necessarily trying to take their oil since the US already exports orders of magnitude more and the world has a huge over-supply of oil on the market. It's probably to scuttle chances of China getting it, maybe? Who the fuck knows, there's zero clarity on anything.
Listen to Trump talk about alternative energy and convince me he gives any deeper thought to this shit than "Fossil fuels good. More fossil fuels better." He'll just sign contracts allowing American companies to build whatever infrastructure they want and take as much oil as they please. If this doesn't cover what Trump feels the US is "owed," well, there's always the old imperial standby of enslaving the locals.
For reasons I can't fathom, we can't refine a lot of the higher grade crude we produce. We have a lot more refineries capable of refining the heavy crude Canada and Venezuela produce. I think you're correct about trying to cut off China, but that's just a WAG.
It's the oil you get from traditional wells versus fracking. As far as the refineries, they cost billions so it's easier to export what you don't want and import the oil you do instead of retooling them. We still refine more oil than anyone else, though. Actually I think China does more net refining, but the US refining processes are far more advanced and efficient per capita.
Not much the Venezuelans can do about it. There's a video of a US helicopter hovering above a military base just evaporating it with missiles. They have no functional military or defenses. A Delta Force team could just roll in and take him in, which they did.
It's actually surprising to me when anyone questions how the most powerful, most funded, most trained, and most advanced technological military ever assembled is able to easily defeat 3rd world nothing countries in matters of warfare. We see Ukraine beating back Russian forces on the daily riding into battle on horses, it's not surprising the US can just waltz into almost anywhere with enough firepower strapped to a couple helicopters that would make every dictator on earth cream their pants.
"Spies, drones and blowtorches" https://www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject....ttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdred61epg4o Also, in Kentucky, a scale replica of the site of the operation... https://www.wdrb.com/news/u-s-rehea...cle_ca31b027-6fc5-40e3-b82b-7d8b417b942e.html