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Venezuela seems like a solid case for a privately-financed coup (Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe are there too, but in EG this was already tried and failed for s
by rdl 9y ago
Venezuela seems like a solid case for a privately-financed coup (Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe are there too, but in EG this was already tried and failed for stupid reasons). I don't know who they'd put in power (is there a viable opposition still?), but really anyone would be better. It's not an inherently poor country, but horribly misgoverned, and it's sad to see people suffering for decades as a result.
- notthemessiah 9y agoBecause ousting democratically-elected leaders and replacing them with right-wing dictators have been SO successful at making things better for the people of South America in the past, right?
- fjsolwmv 9y agoRight wing / left wing , dictators never tend to do well
- notthemessiah 9y agoThey do well for themselves, don't they? Dictatorships are also quite stable for people living under them compared to the chaos right now in Libya, Syria, and Iraq. Policies of regime change without changing the basis of the economy just leads to power vacuums which leads to nothing good but bloodshed, and most often a dictator worse than before. However, some defense contractors get good contracts through interventionism, and that keeps the US economy going, right?
- selectodude 9y agoYep, 18.6 trillion dollars worth of intervention-related defense spending per year. Not much else going on in the US economy.
- fjsolwmv 9y agoThe entire US federal government budget is only $4 trillion
- notthemessiah 9y agoselectodude was referring to the GDP of the US, not the national budget. I was referring to the way that foreign influence is exerted is felt in nearly every industry: finance, the petrodollar, contractors who make deals selling weapons and surveillance around the world...
- fjsolwmv 9y agoDeposing a dictator causes chaos. That doesn't mean that installing a dictator is healthy. Quite the opposite, really: installing a dictator is setting up the house of cards that will fall later.
- notthemessiah 9y agoThat's what I was saying.
- api_or_ipa 9y agoGovernment must have the consent of it's people or in the long run it will never work. Foreign intervention leads to malcontent, corruption and decay; real change must come from within the country and grow organically among the people.
- rdl 9y agoEquatorial Guinea (and NK, and some others) are cases where I think a 6.5 Creedmoor round delivered by a foreign agent would produce positive results -- whatever local replacement emerged would be better (or repeat until it is).
- owebmaster 9y agoSure. See: Libya.
- emmelaich 9y agoIdeally. But it worked in Grenada. "The date of the invasion is now a national holiday in Grenada, called Thanksgiving Day, which commemorates the freeing, after the invasion, of several political prisoners, who were subsequently elected into office." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Grenada