Please include sources for any claims; baseless speculation is counterproductive. Remember that this is not a win for the US, just another outburst of a dying empire.
Please include sources for any claims; baseless speculation is counterproductive. Remember that this is not a win for the US, just another outburst of a dying empire.
It reminds me of the bullshit ultimatum Austria-Hungary gave to Serbia before the outbreak of WWI.
Strikingly that ultimatum was made in bad faith, with A-H knowing Serbia wouldn’t accept it in the first place. The ultimatum was only made so A-H could pretend it was being fair to Serbia so when they inevitably rejected the bogus demands they’d have an excuse to invade. I’m getting the same vibe here tbh. I think Caracas won’t accept and I also think Washington knows this and is in fact counting on it to justify a full-fledged invasion.
The fact that they chose to do a cowardly kidnapping in the middle of the night and run away before Venezuela could fight back makes it much more likely that this is another bluff. If they were willing and able to do a full-fledged invasion, don’t you think they would have done that instead?
It would have been more advantageous from a PR perspective to present such an ultimatum to Maduro and to invade when he refused. Now that the media has already declared that “the dictator is gone” they will have a harder time justifying an invasion.
Also, there were never enough military assets and troops assembled for a full-fledged invasion, and now there are even less, which again points to a bluff. They may do more bombing and almost certainly more piracy, but i don’t think they can put boots on the ground for any extended period of time.