Maduro using the USA as a bogeyman is a lot different from going to war with the USA.
At this point, the USA is looking for an excuse to go to war and Maduro has backed down from a lot of positions to keep the USA from having any excuses.
The first Trump administration did the same thing to Iran that this administration is trying to do to Venezuela, get the weaker nation to do something that would be construed as a casus belli to justify regime change. Trump wants to be a wartime president without being the aggressor.
Maduro may be bleeding support, but Venezuela can’t win a war against the USA and Trump is looking for any excuse to go to war. Having an American ship parked off shore should be enough to pull in some patriotic support. However, any aggression against the USA now could be used as an excuse for regime change.
Except there was no regime change in Iran. They just rattled their swords for the crowd, which is all they’re doing now.
And for the record, the US has a long history of losing to so-called “weaker countries”, when asymmetrical warfare is involved. The only war they actually managed to “finish” recently, was the invasion of Iraq…and that was largely because the Iraqi population wasn’t actually trying to fight back. Venezuela would not be the same.
And I’m not trying to say this would be a smart move by Maduro…just desperation. Right now, half the population in Venezuela don’t even believe the government when they say there’s an American fleet parked offshore. The government has been saying shit like that every other week for the last 12 years, and it always turns out to either be totally overblown, or straight up bullshit. People there just aren’t buying into the propaganda like they used to. Which is never a good sign for a dictatorship that relies on fear mongering, in order to maintain loyalty.
Maduro using the USA as a bogeyman is a lot different from going to war with the USA.
At this point, the USA is looking for an excuse to go to war and Maduro has backed down from a lot of positions to keep the USA from having any excuses.
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The first Trump administration did the same thing to Iran that this administration is trying to do to Venezuela, get the weaker nation to do something that would be construed as a casus belli to justify regime change. Trump wants to be a wartime president without being the aggressor.
Maduro may be bleeding support, but Venezuela can’t win a war against the USA and Trump is looking for any excuse to go to war. Having an American ship parked off shore should be enough to pull in some patriotic support. However, any aggression against the USA now could be used as an excuse for regime change.
Except there was no regime change in Iran. They just rattled their swords for the crowd, which is all they’re doing now.
And for the record, the US has a long history of losing to so-called “weaker countries”, when asymmetrical warfare is involved. The only war they actually managed to “finish” recently, was the invasion of Iraq…and that was largely because the Iraqi population wasn’t actually trying to fight back. Venezuela would not be the same.
And I’m not trying to say this would be a smart move by Maduro…just desperation. Right now, half the population in Venezuela don’t even believe the government when they say there’s an American fleet parked offshore. The government has been saying shit like that every other week for the last 12 years, and it always turns out to either be totally overblown, or straight up bullshit. People there just aren’t buying into the propaganda like they used to. Which is never a good sign for a dictatorship that relies on fear mongering, in order to maintain loyalty.