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How the US is preparing a Caribbean staging ground near Venezuela

pythonic_hell 1y ago
Nothing good can come from this. Illegal drug production exploded after the 2nd gulf war and invasion of Afghanistan. This is going to be a repeat of this if the Americans decides to invade Venezuela.
- jack_tripper 1y ago
  >Nothing good can come from this. Military industrial complex gets bored quickly. > Illegal drug production exploded after the 2nd gulf war and invasion of Afghanistan. Glowies need money too.
  - ajross 1y ago
    > Military industrial complex That really seems just wrong. The established interests here haven't been pushing for a Venezuela action at all. They want to sell arms (via western assistance) to Ukraine, which is much more lucrative and clearly something the Trump adminstration has stymied at all opportunities. If you have to push for a Capitalist String Pulling Conspiracy angle here (which I don't buy either) it makes much more sense to view this as an oil industry play. American-driven regime change in Venezuela opens up its state-owned petroleum industry to American petrochemical interests. But no, 99% of of this is simple pique and bullying. Maduro is a loudmouth antiamerican and weak, Trump is a bully. This is just what bullies do. Pushing around antisocial nerds in the schoolyard is how bullies demonstrate authority to their base.
    - pydry 1y ago
      Capitalist interests and imperialist interests in the US are distinct and often at odds with one another. Usually the former defers to the latter though. For example, the capitalist interests didn't want to strand their assets in Russia and eat huge losses in 2022 but most of them still did it without much protest. Half of the imperialists in the deep state seem to have realized that piling money and resources into the war in Ukraine didn't achieve the goal of advancing their power and influence so they're looking elsewhere (China, Venezuela, Panama... Greenland even). The other half wants to escalate the war. Trump isn't actually very coherent on this issue, probably because he's getting pulled in two directions (e.g. rubio/lindsay graham is pulling him one way, witkoff the other) - hence why he keeps (for example) threatening Tomahawks sometimes and pulling back other times. The one thing US imperialists can all agree on is that every Latin American country led by an opponent of the US needs to be overthrown. I think they've done this somewhere between 15 and 30 times in the last century.
    - gengwyn 1y ago
      In line with your comment, I wish people that believed in the military industrial complex theory would look at the defense market cap more often and realize that, even in their own reality, their theory doesn’t make sense. If money controlled politics to that degree, Trump already wouldn’t be in office right now because every large corporation would be fuming at his stock market nonsense with tariffs. Apple alone has a larger market cap than every public US defense contractor combined and wars tend to not do good things for the rest of the market.
      - ajross 1y ago
        > If money controlled politics to that degree FWIW the easier evidence here is that if money controlled politics to that degree the tech industry would be our explicit overlords. The defense industry is a bunch of mid-size Fortune 500's with no particular economic might to note. I don't think there's a single one with more than $100B of revenue. Any of the top five tech companies could buy the whole lot with a few stocks swaps and no one would notice.
      - mothballed 1y ago
        The value of war to industry doesn't stop at companies that are labeled as 'defense market.' They are buying pencils, IT, software, gasoline, electrician services, plumbing services, non-defense contractors, education, health care, insurance, providing (via their actions on the other side of the coin) opportunities for fundraising and action for anti-war NGO and aid organizations, funneling money into industries in poor communities (via earnings of enlisted soldiers), and it goes on.
      - somenameforme 1y ago
        The MIC influence doesn't come from money, but power. As our soft power has been dying for decades and is verging on non-existent, the main way that the US exerts influence worldwide is by threatening to attack you, threatening to give weapons to somebody else who will attack you, or by threatening to no longer give you weapons imperiling your ability to attack people. And this is all 100% fueled by the military industrial complex. Without the military industrial complex US influence on a global level would rapidly plummet. And this influence also plays a major, if indirect, role in economic matters by helping to, amongst other things, maintain the USD. When the entire government is dependent upon you for such a critical role, it's basically inescapable for them to end up with an amount of influence that can't be overstated. This is precisely what Eisenhower tried to warn us of. Well one among a few things, all of which he ended up being completely, and unfortunately, correct on. [1] [1] - https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh... (scroll down a bit for transcript)
  - shadyKeystrokes 1y ago
    [dead]
  - throw0101a 1y ago
    > Military industrial complex gets bored quickly. Eisenhower coined that term. During the Korean War, defence spending was 12% of GDP; in the 1970s during the Cold War, it was 8%. It is currently about 3.5% of GDP: * https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1o919po/why_is_the_militaryindustrial_complex_perceived/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1o919po/why_i... It's not a small amount, being the largest discretionary line programs in the federal budget, but it's no where near what it once was. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:Fy2024_federal_budget.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget And it should be noted that keeping that industry (and manufacturing in general) alive is important: > Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car. > Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself. * https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now
    - somenameforme 1y ago
      Percent of budget doesn't really mean much of anything. We currently spend something like $1.2 trillion on interest payments alone thanks to burying ourselves in debt. And on the note of burying ourselves in debt, we also tend to spend on a large deficit each year which artificially increases the budget. These sort of things already make percent of budget fundamentally misleading. Here [1] is a graph of US military spending, inflation adjusted. It's going up, up, and away. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#/media/File:U.S_-_China_-_Russia,_Military_Spending.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
- trueismywork 1y ago
  They don't want to stop drugs. They just want to be the ones to pocket the profit
  - portaouflop 1y ago
    No idea why you are getting downvoted; this is true.
    - johnnyanmac 1y ago
      Quite a few Americans who haven't properly realized that we have in fact become the baddies we used to tell tales about defeating 89 years prior. Real shame it didn't take that long after those soldiers of WW2 died out to forget all the lessons taught.
      - mostlysimilar 1y ago
        Who's "we"? Most of us didn't vote for this administration.
        johnnyanmac 1y ago
        Royal "we". "i" didn't vote for this, but "we" did. Or at the very least, a third of us did and another third of us didn't think it mattered enough to vote one way or the other.
        somenameforme 1y ago
        It's not this administration alone, or even this decade alone. We've had many decades of sociopathic wars and CIA operations. And while I'm sure they think they're just being Machivalien and achieving some greater good for America, more often than not they are completely myopic, completely backfire, and screw over US interests on a global level. And in exchange we get to go tens of trillions of dollars into debt and lose all soft power on a global level. If there is some parallel dimension where after WW2 we went something much closer to isolationism, perhaps with some baseline effort to balance against the USSR, the US and the world alike would be a vastly better place today. And most notably this whole issue continues on to this very day. Our foreign policy is completely self defeating.
- cjbgkagh 1y ago
  Foreign wars are used to launder money not stop drugs, Opium production in Afghanistan increased during US occupation, if the actual goal was to stop drug production it would be more effective to put the Taliban in charge of Venezuela. I see this conflict as the impotent rage of a dying empire. The invasion of Panama to overthrow a CIA backed dictatorship was needlessly over the top because of concerns that the US had lost its mojo after Vietnam and was seen as a chance to test out a bunch of Reagan's new weapons.
  - woleium 1y ago
    Opium production in Afghanistan more closely tracked the cost of solar to pump water up the hill to grow poppies than any us influence
    - cjbgkagh 1y ago
      Seems that the Taliban rule reduced Opium production by 95% but the cost of solar didn't go up 20x? At best the US did nothing to stop it. I would include displacing the Taliban as a direct result of US influence.
      - woleium 1y ago
        You are right, i wonder where i got my earlier info from…
  - dingaling 1y ago
    > was seen as a chance to test out a bunch of Reagan's new weapons. The F-117, the wonder-weapon of Panama, was funded by the Carter Administration. As was the B-2.
    - cjbgkagh 1y ago
      I was thinking more new to combat not new to Reagan, although if Carter buys it and Reagan uses it wouldn't that still be new to Reagan.
- pydry 1y ago
  This upcoming war has absolutely nothing to do with drugs whatsoever, just like the 2003 invasion of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with WMDs whatsoever.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    I rather appreciate that they're not even bothering to try to make some big lie of it. The drug stuff is the most half-hearted messaging I have ever seen. Rare is going to be the person who truly believes we're invading a country, which has the largest oil reserves on the planet, to stop drug smuggling. I think it's difficult for people to understand the war machine when the messaging is effective. When we make it reasonably clear what's happening, you have a more informed electorate. And I think that's a very good thing.
    - pydry 1y ago
      >Rare is going to be the person who truly believes we're invading a country, which has the largest oil reserves on the planet, to stop drug smuggling. Theyre all over this thread - both those who think it is genuine and some who think it is real.
- foofoo12 1y ago
  It's not about the drugs. It's the oil they're after.
  - treetalker 1y ago
    Don't forget the proof that the Epstein Files are a hoax! We know it's in Venezuela … must be around here somewhere …
- valcker 1y ago
  It’s not about drugs, it’s about oil.
le-mark 1y ago
Can anyone give an overview of what has happened in Venezuela since Maduro took over and what the beef is between him and Trump? Looks like US going to start exporting Freedom again..
- diego_moita 1y ago
  > Can anyone give an overview of what has happened in Venezuela since Maduro took over Venezuela became more authoritarian and poorer. The oil industry collapsed because of mismanagement and the production of drugs rose. Venezuelans fled to Colombia, Brazil, the U.S., everywhere. The usual stuff for 3rd World dictatorships. > what the beef is between him and Trump? The same beef Trump has with everyone that he can blame for anything. Trump just wants a scapegoat for his own incompetence, to blame someone else. He thrives on confrontation. That's why he sends troops to Chicago and L.A. and battleships to the Caribean.
  - pydry 1y ago
    The world is filled with poor, authoritarian countries. That has nothing to do with why the US would send a carrier group their way. This is about empire and oil. Venezuela could be an identical country in every respect and if Maduro was a puppet of the United States sitting on the world's largest oil reserves instead of an opponent the New York Times would be writing stories about how they're reforming and improving.
    - gengwyn 1y ago
      To be fair, going by the track record, if Venezuela was an oil rich government under a U.S. supported authoritarian, Caracas would look more like Riyadh and there’d be no need for cruisers. Not saying it justifies Trump’s action in the slightest. Just a point of order.
      - pydry 1y ago
        It was quite a bit like Riyadh before Chavez swept to power in a landslide election in 98. The first US backed coup dedicated to overthrowing that pretty clear cut democratic decision came in 2003. That woman who won the nobel prize recently also supported it, so...democracy clearly isnt her thing either.
Qem 1y ago
Making a Vietnam for America Again
mkoubaa 1y ago
Methinks the war in Ukraine must be nearing its end and the arms deals must go on.
sam_goody 1y ago
1. Deaths by overdose, especially of Fentanyl is through the roof (it has surpassed road accidents, heart attacks, etc.) 2. We have got to do something 3. This is something 4. The president has something to offer as a solution. For everything. (It is unusual to have a president who is so willing to try to solve everything.) 5. No one commenting in the news has enough info of the plan (or of the future) to offer a useful appraisal of this particular something. Whether or not this something is actually a useful and good thing [and whether or not it will lead to other good things, and if those other things will be good...] will definitely be biased by your view of the administration, your policy towards war, and you risk tolerance. As someone who has lost family members to Fentanyl, I at least recognize my bias :/
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  "3. This is something" We don't even know what "this" even is. There are no receipts: no narco captures, no confiscated drug hauls.
  - Spooky23 1y ago
    It’s an opportunity to find out which military officers are good soldiers vs. good men.
  - Thorrez 1y ago
    >Since early September, the United States has carried out at least 14 strikes against alleged drug vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing 61 people.
    - vel0city 1y ago
      Alleged drug vessels. Any proof there were drugs on those boats? Do we even know who has been on those boats?
      - mothballed 1y ago
        Enough evidence to be suspicious. Not enough evidence to be sufficient for what is required to convict and sentence for a crime, that is beyond a reasonable doubt. One would hope the latter is required, before going through with an execution. In reality, most likely these are legit drug traffickers but being used as pawns for geopolitics rather than a meaningful attempt to curb drug use.
jalapenos 1y ago
If you look at this article with a squint - it seems to be a publicized threat from the US government to the Maduro regime, loosely veiled as an independent news article?
- portaouflop 1y ago
  Idk the actions the US takes in the Caribbean are the threat and Reuters is reporting on those actions? It would be weirder imo if they didn’t write about it and afaict they are just looking at publicly available OS data.
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    Just the way the article's formulated, e.g. mixing in a reference to how Maduro's generals will be scared by this - how do they know that? Looks more like "hey generals & Maduro, here's what's coming for you if you don't bend to us"
    - portaouflop 1y ago
      Looking at what happened in Iran and how unpredictable the US is recently it would almost be stupid to not be scared.
- Thorrez 1y ago
  The article is the threat? Or the actual buildup of military assets?
  - FrustratedMonky 1y ago
    Or the actual missiles hitting boats.
  - azernik 1y ago
    The leaks that led to the article
    - 1y ago
myself248 1y ago
Likely related: https://gpsjam.org/?lat=9.53471&lon=-62.10624&z=5.8&date=2025-10-29 https://gpsjam.org/?lat=9.53471&lon=-62.10624&z=5.8&date=202...
FridayoLeary 1y ago
[flagged]
- jLaForest 1y ago
  You are advocating for extrajudicial murder for alleged crimes that are not even punishable by death. The US government has admitted it doesn't even know the names of the people it is slaughtering.
  - FridayoLeary 1y ago
    You call it extrajudicial murder, they call it war. Hundreds of thousands of dead americans back them up. What can you bring to support your case. A distaste for the reality of violence? I'm not going to bother explaining the nuances of war and why some things that are unacceptable in times of peace are justified in the context of war. I'm sure you are intelligent enough to understand that in theory. Nobody has managed to deal with the crisis because they've been looking at it the wrong way. I don't even know that this new direction will help. What is clear is that everything that's been tried up until now hasn't worked.
    - vel0city 1y ago
      So Trump can use the military to go kill anyone anywhere for any reason just by saying the word "war", with no oversight or actually reasoned justification at all? The President doesn't declare war. Congress does.
- nickthegreek 1y ago
  there is no proof they are drug boats. many weren’t even heading in the direction of the usa. even if drugs are there, they are most likely cocaine and not even fent. also, i see no judge saying they are guilty and I see no administration providing justification as to how their actions are legal.
- Epa095 1y ago
  You don't see the problem with the same actor being the prosecutor, judge and executor, killing people it does not even know for a crime it has not bothered to prove?
shadyKeystrokes 1y ago
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deleted 1y ago
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motbus3 1y ago
Why is not NATO involved in none of this? This seems quite weird stretch to not have any international laws being broken
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  Venezuela is not part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
- riffraff 1y ago
  NATO is a defensive alliance, why should it be involved in this? Also, any sane government would be against starting a war against Venezuela for no reason. (But I don't think there's gonna be a war)
- azernik 1y ago
  NATO only guarantees the mutual defense of its neighbors. I presume you mean the UN? They can only actually do anything about international law violations if no permanent UNSC member vetoes it. The US is a permanent member, so...
- Vasbarlog 1y ago
  Of course there are international laws being broken. But as always, the laws apply to all except the US.
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    You honestly think the US is the only country violating international law without being held to account?
- apexalpha 1y ago
  NATO has a clause that says it does not fuck with anything happening in the southern hemisphere. This was done at the request of the US who did not want to defend European colonies.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
theturtle 1y ago
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jimmis 1y ago
I'm sure the Trump supporters who voted for him to "end all wars" are going to be strongly opposed to this.
- xboxnolifes 1y ago
  Gotta start the war to end all wars.
howmayiannoyyou 1y ago
Venezuela: - Demonstrable ties with US adversaries Hezbollah and Iran. - Close ties with US adversary Russia. - Close ties with US adversary China. - Indisputable drug production and transit. - Threatened neighboring Guyana and previously Columbia. - Rigged at least one and likely two elections. - Ruined its economy for most of its citizens. - Strategically aided illegal immigration of criminals into US. No responsible government would permit a country this hostile to US interests to persist. This build up is part of a high stakes negotiation to peacefully change regimes in VZ. If Maduro rejects it, he and his cronies will be forcibly removed. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
- blargthorwars 1y ago
  Just because we're warmongers doesn't mean the dictators in VZ are good people. They're shipping poison that kills our people to our country, so I'm ok with them getting what they deserve.
  - mmooss 1y ago
    Random people in boats are getting killed; the dictators are fine. And who decides who is guilty and what they deserve? A single person? That's against freedom, democracy, and everything the US stands for. > They're shipping poison that kills our people to our country Drugs transit many countries; can we arbitrarily convict and kill everyone connected to those countries? Most of the people involved are Americans, in the US.
- leosanchez 1y ago
  Most of the points you listed can also be attributed to Pakistan, a US ally.
hermannj314 1y ago
In HOI4, you got to level up your troops and generals with amphibious assault experience with a minor nation to prepare for the war with the major nation down the road. I like to think everything is about prepping for what happens when China takes its rightful place in the sun.
themgt 1y ago
Venezuela is a narco dictatorship failed state, but its true crimes are violations of the Monroe Doctrine. America's hegemony in Europe, Asia and the Middle East is in serious decline, so it's become all the more important to flex muscle in our hemisphere and make an example out of someone. Pour encourager les autres. Or, from the horse's mouth: Over the past decade, 12 of China’s 17 loans to Venezuela have been specific to the energy sector—a total of $55 billion. China’s most significant commitment to Venezuela’s oil sector was its investment in the Orinoco Belt, one of the world’s richest oil areas, which produces extra heavy crude oil and sits across central Venezuela. In 2010, China’s national oil company signed a 25-year land grant for a 40 percent investment in one portion of the Orinoco Belt. The energy industry is at the heart of Venezuela—economically, politically, and socially. Oil accounts for 95 percent of the country’s exports and provides the cash to import everything else. Therefore, China’s focus on the energy sector could be viewed as a “power play” to gain authority over the political and social structures of Venezuela, as well as its extensive oil reserves. A lack of basing infrastructure also creates opportunities for adversaries to gather intelligence on U.S. movements. Several of the ships currently deployed to the Caribbean on counternarcotics missions called into ports where China exercises influence. The Arleigh Burke–class destroyer USS Sampson docked at Manzanillo, Mexico, in July, where Hong Kong–based conglomerate CK Hutchison operates a terminal. More recently, the USS Lake Erie, a guided missile cruiser, docked at Hutchison-operated Port of Balboa in Panama before transiting the Panama Canal on its way from the Pacific to the Caribbean theater. Naval port calls represent potential intelligence vulnerabilities where China can gather data on U.S. standard operating procedures and patterns of life that could be applicable to the Indo-Pacific. https://www.csis.org/analysis/when-investment-hurts-chinese-influence-venezuela https://www.csis.org/analysis/when-investment-hurts-chinese-... https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalation-against-maduro-regime-venezuela-puerto-ricos-emerging-role-us-power-projection https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalation-against-maduro-regi...
fakedang 1y ago
The more I read into this, the more I'm inclined to support the American stance, as long as it's a quick and dirty operation as the admin states. If the allegations are true (highly likely) that Maduro heads the Cartel of the Suns, then he is directly complicit in the overdose crisis.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  You need warships for one guy?
  - fakedang 1y ago
    Are the warships actively engaging the Venezuela? Didn't you bother to think that this might have been some form of posturing still?
- IAmGraydon 1y ago
  Except fentanyl is not what’s being shipped through Venezuela (or any opioids). It’s cocaine. Fentanyl in the US almost entirely originates from Mexico. China is involved in a more indirect way because they ship precursor chemicals to Mexican labs. With all due respect, how did you come to the conclusion you did without even 1 minute of research to verify that your beliefs were actually correct?
  - fakedang 1y ago
    So fent is the only narcotic entering into the US? And it's alright for them to ship whatever because it's not fent or an opioid?
- mmooss 1y ago
  > If the allegations are true (highly likely) that Maduro heads the Cartel of the Suns I've read a lot about it but don't know: what is the Cartel of the Suns? And what allegations by who, with what evidence?
kaycey2022 1y ago
USA busy accumulating bad karma instead of GDP
zombot 1y ago
It would be surprising if a terrorist state that engages in ethnic cleansing at home (terror on the home front) would not also engage in international terrorism.

Nothing good can come from this. Illegal drug production exploded after the 2nd gulf war and invasion of Afghanistan. This is going to be a repeat of this if the Americans decides to invade Venezuela.

jack_tripper 1y ago
>Nothing good can come from this. Military industrial complex gets bored quickly. > Illegal drug production exploded after the 2nd gulf war and invasion of Afghanistan. Glowies need money too.
- ajross 1y ago
  > Military industrial complex That really seems just wrong. The established interests here haven't been pushing for a Venezuela action at all. They want to sell arms (via western assistance) to Ukraine, which is much more lucrative and clearly something the Trump adminstration has stymied at all opportunities. If you have to push for a Capitalist String Pulling Conspiracy angle here (which I don't buy either) it makes much more sense to view this as an oil industry play. American-driven regime change in Venezuela opens up its state-owned petroleum industry to American petrochemical interests. But no, 99% of of this is simple pique and bullying. Maduro is a loudmouth antiamerican and weak, Trump is a bully. This is just what bullies do. Pushing around antisocial nerds in the schoolyard is how bullies demonstrate authority to their base.
  - pydry 1y ago
    Capitalist interests and imperialist interests in the US are distinct and often at odds with one another. Usually the former defers to the latter though. For example, the capitalist interests didn't want to strand their assets in Russia and eat huge losses in 2022 but most of them still did it without much protest. Half of the imperialists in the deep state seem to have realized that piling money and resources into the war in Ukraine didn't achieve the goal of advancing their power and influence so they're looking elsewhere (China, Venezuela, Panama... Greenland even). The other half wants to escalate the war. Trump isn't actually very coherent on this issue, probably because he's getting pulled in two directions (e.g. rubio/lindsay graham is pulling him one way, witkoff the other) - hence why he keeps (for example) threatening Tomahawks sometimes and pulling back other times. The one thing US imperialists can all agree on is that every Latin American country led by an opponent of the US needs to be overthrown. I think they've done this somewhere between 15 and 30 times in the last century.
  - gengwyn 1y ago
    In line with your comment, I wish people that believed in the military industrial complex theory would look at the defense market cap more often and realize that, even in their own reality, their theory doesn’t make sense. If money controlled politics to that degree, Trump already wouldn’t be in office right now because every large corporation would be fuming at his stock market nonsense with tariffs. Apple alone has a larger market cap than every public US defense contractor combined and wars tend to not do good things for the rest of the market.
    - ajross 1y ago
      > If money controlled politics to that degree FWIW the easier evidence here is that if money controlled politics to that degree the tech industry would be our explicit overlords. The defense industry is a bunch of mid-size Fortune 500's with no particular economic might to note. I don't think there's a single one with more than $100B of revenue. Any of the top five tech companies could buy the whole lot with a few stocks swaps and no one would notice.
    - mothballed 1y ago
      The value of war to industry doesn't stop at companies that are labeled as 'defense market.' They are buying pencils, IT, software, gasoline, electrician services, plumbing services, non-defense contractors, education, health care, insurance, providing (via their actions on the other side of the coin) opportunities for fundraising and action for anti-war NGO and aid organizations, funneling money into industries in poor communities (via earnings of enlisted soldiers), and it goes on.
    - somenameforme 1y ago
      The MIC influence doesn't come from money, but power. As our soft power has been dying for decades and is verging on non-existent, the main way that the US exerts influence worldwide is by threatening to attack you, threatening to give weapons to somebody else who will attack you, or by threatening to no longer give you weapons imperiling your ability to attack people. And this is all 100% fueled by the military industrial complex. Without the military industrial complex US influence on a global level would rapidly plummet. And this influence also plays a major, if indirect, role in economic matters by helping to, amongst other things, maintain the USD. When the entire government is dependent upon you for such a critical role, it's basically inescapable for them to end up with an amount of influence that can't be overstated. This is precisely what Eisenhower tried to warn us of. Well one among a few things, all of which he ended up being completely, and unfortunately, correct on. [1] [1] - https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh... (scroll down a bit for transcript)
- shadyKeystrokes 1y ago
  [dead]
- throw0101a 1y ago
  > Military industrial complex gets bored quickly. Eisenhower coined that term. During the Korean War, defence spending was 12% of GDP; in the 1970s during the Cold War, it was 8%. It is currently about 3.5% of GDP: * https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1o919po/why_is_the_militaryindustrial_complex_perceived/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1o919po/why_i... It's not a small amount, being the largest discretionary line programs in the federal budget, but it's no where near what it once was. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/media/File:Fy2024_federal_budget.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget And it should be noted that keeping that industry (and manufacturing in general) alive is important: > Democratic countries’ economies are mainly set up as free market economies with redistribution, because this is what maximizes living standards in peacetime. In a free market economy, if a foreign country wants to sell you cheap cars, you let them do it, and you allocate your own productive resources to something more profitable instead. If China is willing to sell you brand-new electric vehicles for $10,000, why should you turn them down? Just make B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps, sell them for a high profit margin, and drive a Chinese car. > Except then a war comes, and suddenly you find that B2B SaaS and advertising platforms and chat apps aren’t very useful for defending your freedoms. Oops! The right time to worry about manufacturing would have been years before the war, except you weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for the future. Manufacturing doesn’t just support war — in a very real way, it’s a war in and of itself. * https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/manufacturing-is-a-war-now
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    Percent of budget doesn't really mean much of anything. We currently spend something like $1.2 trillion on interest payments alone thanks to burying ourselves in debt. And on the note of burying ourselves in debt, we also tend to spend on a large deficit each year which artificially increases the budget. These sort of things already make percent of budget fundamentally misleading. Here [1] is a graph of US military spending, inflation adjusted. It's going up, up, and away. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#/media/File:U.S_-_China_-_Russia,_Military_Spending.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
trueismywork 1y ago
They don't want to stop drugs. They just want to be the ones to pocket the profit
- portaouflop 1y ago
  No idea why you are getting downvoted; this is true.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    Quite a few Americans who haven't properly realized that we have in fact become the baddies we used to tell tales about defeating 89 years prior. Real shame it didn't take that long after those soldiers of WW2 died out to forget all the lessons taught.
    - mostlysimilar 1y ago
      Who's "we"? Most of us didn't vote for this administration.
      - johnnyanmac 1y ago
        Royal "we". "i" didn't vote for this, but "we" did. Or at the very least, a third of us did and another third of us didn't think it mattered enough to vote one way or the other.
      - somenameforme 1y ago
        It's not this administration alone, or even this decade alone. We've had many decades of sociopathic wars and CIA operations. And while I'm sure they think they're just being Machivalien and achieving some greater good for America, more often than not they are completely myopic, completely backfire, and screw over US interests on a global level. And in exchange we get to go tens of trillions of dollars into debt and lose all soft power on a global level. If there is some parallel dimension where after WW2 we went something much closer to isolationism, perhaps with some baseline effort to balance against the USSR, the US and the world alike would be a vastly better place today. And most notably this whole issue continues on to this very day. Our foreign policy is completely self defeating.
cjbgkagh 1y ago
Foreign wars are used to launder money not stop drugs, Opium production in Afghanistan increased during US occupation, if the actual goal was to stop drug production it would be more effective to put the Taliban in charge of Venezuela. I see this conflict as the impotent rage of a dying empire. The invasion of Panama to overthrow a CIA backed dictatorship was needlessly over the top because of concerns that the US had lost its mojo after Vietnam and was seen as a chance to test out a bunch of Reagan's new weapons.
- woleium 1y ago
  Opium production in Afghanistan more closely tracked the cost of solar to pump water up the hill to grow poppies than any us influence
  - cjbgkagh 1y ago
    Seems that the Taliban rule reduced Opium production by 95% but the cost of solar didn't go up 20x? At best the US did nothing to stop it. I would include displacing the Taliban as a direct result of US influence.
    - woleium 1y ago
      You are right, i wonder where i got my earlier info from…
- dingaling 1y ago
  > was seen as a chance to test out a bunch of Reagan's new weapons. The F-117, the wonder-weapon of Panama, was funded by the Carter Administration. As was the B-2.
  - cjbgkagh 1y ago
    I was thinking more new to combat not new to Reagan, although if Carter buys it and Reagan uses it wouldn't that still be new to Reagan.
pydry 1y ago
This upcoming war has absolutely nothing to do with drugs whatsoever, just like the 2003 invasion of Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with WMDs whatsoever.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  I rather appreciate that they're not even bothering to try to make some big lie of it. The drug stuff is the most half-hearted messaging I have ever seen. Rare is going to be the person who truly believes we're invading a country, which has the largest oil reserves on the planet, to stop drug smuggling. I think it's difficult for people to understand the war machine when the messaging is effective. When we make it reasonably clear what's happening, you have a more informed electorate. And I think that's a very good thing.
  - pydry 1y ago
    >Rare is going to be the person who truly believes we're invading a country, which has the largest oil reserves on the planet, to stop drug smuggling. Theyre all over this thread - both those who think it is genuine and some who think it is real.
foofoo12 1y ago
It's not about the drugs. It's the oil they're after.
- treetalker 1y ago
  Don't forget the proof that the Epstein Files are a hoax! We know it's in Venezuela … must be around here somewhere …
valcker 1y ago
It’s not about drugs, it’s about oil.

le-mark 1y ago

Can anyone give an overview of what has happened in Venezuela since Maduro took over and what the beef is between him and Trump? Looks like US going to start exporting Freedom again..

diego_moita 1y ago
> Can anyone give an overview of what has happened in Venezuela since Maduro took over Venezuela became more authoritarian and poorer. The oil industry collapsed because of mismanagement and the production of drugs rose. Venezuelans fled to Colombia, Brazil, the U.S., everywhere. The usual stuff for 3rd World dictatorships. > what the beef is between him and Trump? The same beef Trump has with everyone that he can blame for anything. Trump just wants a scapegoat for his own incompetence, to blame someone else. He thrives on confrontation. That's why he sends troops to Chicago and L.A. and battleships to the Caribean.
- pydry 1y ago
  The world is filled with poor, authoritarian countries. That has nothing to do with why the US would send a carrier group their way. This is about empire and oil. Venezuela could be an identical country in every respect and if Maduro was a puppet of the United States sitting on the world's largest oil reserves instead of an opponent the New York Times would be writing stories about how they're reforming and improving.
  - gengwyn 1y ago
    To be fair, going by the track record, if Venezuela was an oil rich government under a U.S. supported authoritarian, Caracas would look more like Riyadh and there’d be no need for cruisers. Not saying it justifies Trump’s action in the slightest. Just a point of order.
    - pydry 1y ago
      It was quite a bit like Riyadh before Chavez swept to power in a landslide election in 98. The first US backed coup dedicated to overthrowing that pretty clear cut democratic decision came in 2003. That woman who won the nobel prize recently also supported it, so...democracy clearly isnt her thing either.

Qem 1y ago

Making a Vietnam for America Again

mkoubaa 1y ago

Methinks the war in Ukraine must be nearing its end and the arms deals must go on.

sam_goody 1y ago

1. Deaths by overdose, especially of Fentanyl is through the roof (it has surpassed road accidents, heart attacks, etc.) 2. We have got to do something 3. This is something 4. The president has something to offer as a solution. For everything. (It is unusual to have a president who is so willing to try to solve everything.) 5. No one commenting in the news has enough info of the plan (or of the future) to offer a useful appraisal of this particular something. Whether or not this something is actually a useful and good thing [and whether or not it will lead to other good things, and if those other things will be good...] will definitely be biased by your view of the administration, your policy towards war, and you risk tolerance. As someone who has lost family members to Fentanyl, I at least recognize my bias :/

JKCalhoun 1y ago
"3. This is something" We don't even know what "this" even is. There are no receipts: no narco captures, no confiscated drug hauls.
- Spooky23 1y ago
  It’s an opportunity to find out which military officers are good soldiers vs. good men.
- Thorrez 1y ago
  >Since early September, the United States has carried out at least 14 strikes against alleged drug vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing 61 people.
  - vel0city 1y ago
    Alleged drug vessels. Any proof there were drugs on those boats? Do we even know who has been on those boats?
    - mothballed 1y ago
      Enough evidence to be suspicious. Not enough evidence to be sufficient for what is required to convict and sentence for a crime, that is beyond a reasonable doubt. One would hope the latter is required, before going through with an execution. In reality, most likely these are legit drug traffickers but being used as pawns for geopolitics rather than a meaningful attempt to curb drug use.

jalapenos 1y ago

If you look at this article with a squint - it seems to be a publicized threat from the US government to the Maduro regime, loosely veiled as an independent news article?

portaouflop 1y ago
Idk the actions the US takes in the Caribbean are the threat and Reuters is reporting on those actions? It would be weirder imo if they didn’t write about it and afaict they are just looking at publicly available OS data.
- jalapenos 1y ago
  Just the way the article's formulated, e.g. mixing in a reference to how Maduro's generals will be scared by this - how do they know that? Looks more like "hey generals & Maduro, here's what's coming for you if you don't bend to us"
  - portaouflop 1y ago
    Looking at what happened in Iran and how unpredictable the US is recently it would almost be stupid to not be scared.
Thorrez 1y ago
The article is the threat? Or the actual buildup of military assets?
- FrustratedMonky 1y ago
  Or the actual missiles hitting boats.
- azernik 1y ago
  The leaks that led to the article
  - 1y ago

myself248 1y ago

Likely related: https://gpsjam.org/?lat=9.53471&lon=-62.10624&z=5.8&date=2025-10-29 https://gpsjam.org/?lat=9.53471&lon=-62.10624&z=5.8&date=202...

FridayoLeary 1y ago

[flagged]

jLaForest 1y ago
You are advocating for extrajudicial murder for alleged crimes that are not even punishable by death. The US government has admitted it doesn't even know the names of the people it is slaughtering.
- FridayoLeary 1y ago
  You call it extrajudicial murder, they call it war. Hundreds of thousands of dead americans back them up. What can you bring to support your case. A distaste for the reality of violence? I'm not going to bother explaining the nuances of war and why some things that are unacceptable in times of peace are justified in the context of war. I'm sure you are intelligent enough to understand that in theory. Nobody has managed to deal with the crisis because they've been looking at it the wrong way. I don't even know that this new direction will help. What is clear is that everything that's been tried up until now hasn't worked.
  - vel0city 1y ago
    So Trump can use the military to go kill anyone anywhere for any reason just by saying the word "war", with no oversight or actually reasoned justification at all? The President doesn't declare war. Congress does.
nickthegreek 1y ago
there is no proof they are drug boats. many weren’t even heading in the direction of the usa. even if drugs are there, they are most likely cocaine and not even fent. also, i see no judge saying they are guilty and I see no administration providing justification as to how their actions are legal.
Epa095 1y ago
You don't see the problem with the same actor being the prosecutor, judge and executor, killing people it does not even know for a crime it has not bothered to prove?

shadyKeystrokes 1y ago

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motbus3 1y ago

Why is not NATO involved in none of this? This seems quite weird stretch to not have any international laws being broken

lotsofpulp 1y ago
Venezuela is not part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
riffraff 1y ago
NATO is a defensive alliance, why should it be involved in this? Also, any sane government would be against starting a war against Venezuela for no reason. (But I don't think there's gonna be a war)
azernik 1y ago
NATO only guarantees the mutual defense of its neighbors. I presume you mean the UN? They can only actually do anything about international law violations if no permanent UNSC member vetoes it. The US is a permanent member, so...
Vasbarlog 1y ago
Of course there are international laws being broken. But as always, the laws apply to all except the US.
- _heimdall 1y ago
  You honestly think the US is the only country violating international law without being held to account?
apexalpha 1y ago
NATO has a clause that says it does not fuck with anything happening in the southern hemisphere. This was done at the request of the US who did not want to defend European colonies.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

theturtle 1y ago

[dead]

jimmis 1y ago

I'm sure the Trump supporters who voted for him to "end all wars" are going to be strongly opposed to this.

xboxnolifes 1y ago
Gotta start the war to end all wars.

howmayiannoyyou 1y ago

Venezuela: - Demonstrable ties with US adversaries Hezbollah and Iran. - Close ties with US adversary Russia. - Close ties with US adversary China. - Indisputable drug production and transit. - Threatened neighboring Guyana and previously Columbia. - Rigged at least one and likely two elections. - Ruined its economy for most of its citizens. - Strategically aided illegal immigration of criminals into US. No responsible government would permit a country this hostile to US interests to persist. This build up is part of a high stakes negotiation to peacefully change regimes in VZ. If Maduro rejects it, he and his cronies will be forcibly removed. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

blargthorwars 1y ago
Just because we're warmongers doesn't mean the dictators in VZ are good people. They're shipping poison that kills our people to our country, so I'm ok with them getting what they deserve.
- mmooss 1y ago
  Random people in boats are getting killed; the dictators are fine. And who decides who is guilty and what they deserve? A single person? That's against freedom, democracy, and everything the US stands for. > They're shipping poison that kills our people to our country Drugs transit many countries; can we arbitrarily convict and kill everyone connected to those countries? Most of the people involved are Americans, in the US.
leosanchez 1y ago
Most of the points you listed can also be attributed to Pakistan, a US ally.

hermannj314 1y ago

In HOI4, you got to level up your troops and generals with amphibious assault experience with a minor nation to prepare for the war with the major nation down the road. I like to think everything is about prepping for what happens when China takes its rightful place in the sun.

themgt 1y ago

Venezuela is a narco dictatorship failed state, but its true crimes are violations of the Monroe Doctrine. America's hegemony in Europe, Asia and the Middle East is in serious decline, so it's become all the more important to flex muscle in our hemisphere and make an example out of someone. Pour encourager les autres. Or, from the horse's mouth: Over the past decade, 12 of China’s 17 loans to Venezuela have been specific to the energy sector—a total of $55 billion. China’s most significant commitment to Venezuela’s oil sector was its investment in the Orinoco Belt, one of the world’s richest oil areas, which produces extra heavy crude oil and sits across central Venezuela. In 2010, China’s national oil company signed a 25-year land grant for a 40 percent investment in one portion of the Orinoco Belt. The energy industry is at the heart of Venezuela—economically, politically, and socially. Oil accounts for 95 percent of the country’s exports and provides the cash to import everything else. Therefore, China’s focus on the energy sector could be viewed as a “power play” to gain authority over the political and social structures of Venezuela, as well as its extensive oil reserves. A lack of basing infrastructure also creates opportunities for adversaries to gather intelligence on U.S. movements. Several of the ships currently deployed to the Caribbean on counternarcotics missions called into ports where China exercises influence. The Arleigh Burke–class destroyer USS Sampson docked at Manzanillo, Mexico, in July, where Hong Kong–based conglomerate CK Hutchison operates a terminal. More recently, the USS Lake Erie, a guided missile cruiser, docked at Hutchison-operated Port of Balboa in Panama before transiting the Panama Canal on its way from the Pacific to the Caribbean theater. Naval port calls represent potential intelligence vulnerabilities where China can gather data on U.S. standard operating procedures and patterns of life that could be applicable to the Indo-Pacific. https://www.csis.org/analysis/when-investment-hurts-chinese-influence-venezuela https://www.csis.org/analysis/when-investment-hurts-chinese-... https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalation-against-maduro-regime-venezuela-puerto-ricos-emerging-role-us-power-projection https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalation-against-maduro-regi...

fakedang 1y ago

The more I read into this, the more I'm inclined to support the American stance, as long as it's a quick and dirty operation as the admin states. If the allegations are true (highly likely) that Maduro heads the Cartel of the Suns, then he is directly complicit in the overdose crisis.

JKCalhoun 1y ago
You need warships for one guy?
- fakedang 1y ago
  Are the warships actively engaging the Venezuela? Didn't you bother to think that this might have been some form of posturing still?
IAmGraydon 1y ago
Except fentanyl is not what’s being shipped through Venezuela (or any opioids). It’s cocaine. Fentanyl in the US almost entirely originates from Mexico. China is involved in a more indirect way because they ship precursor chemicals to Mexican labs. With all due respect, how did you come to the conclusion you did without even 1 minute of research to verify that your beliefs were actually correct?
- fakedang 1y ago
  So fent is the only narcotic entering into the US? And it's alright for them to ship whatever because it's not fent or an opioid?
mmooss 1y ago
> If the allegations are true (highly likely) that Maduro heads the Cartel of the Suns I've read a lot about it but don't know: what is the Cartel of the Suns? And what allegations by who, with what evidence?

kaycey2022 1y ago

USA busy accumulating bad karma instead of GDP

zombot 1y ago

It would be surprising if a terrorist state that engages in ethnic cleansing at home (terror on the home front) would not also engage in international terrorism.