I’m not going to wade into the usual MSM garbage about the rights and wrongs of El Trumpo’s Venezuelan gambit.
Nicolas Maduro was an unpleasant and destructive post-Chavezian leader who has cost his country dearly in tumbling living standards.
Minimum wages look terrific under Maduro.
Until you discount for inflation. The latest reading, which is greatly improved, is 173% per annum!
Whatever kind of post-Chávez anarcho-communist Maduro is, he is no economist.
My concerns are what this means more broadly for geopolitics, most notably given the prospects of stuff going very, very wrong under El Trumpo.
Not all El Trumpo policies are bad. The problem is he frequently fails to implement his ideas effectively.
The cause appears to be some combination of El Trumpo hubris and brain dysfunction. Arrogance often overpowers idiocy, resulting in even greater idiocy.
And now he is responsible for a foreign country with apparently no legitimate government.
The possibility of unintended consequences here is alarming.
- Venezuelans may be glad to be rid of Maduro, but they don’t want El Trumpo and a Houston cartel in charge.
- Who will maintain peace during this transition process? Boots on the ground and MAGA do not go together.
- The risk of a quagmire is obvious and more likely than a positive outcome.
- The risk of a Pinochet-like government arising from the military is obvious.
- South American governments may be cowed on Chinese links for now, but what about governments elsewhere?
- If China were to replicate the truncation model in Taiwan, it would immediately subjugate the entirety of Asia.
- The US would lose all its influence in Asia, including Australia, which is governed by the cowards of Canberra.
Indeed, if this precision power politics becomes a normative governing international relations in Cold War 2.0, then Australia’s position within it will be so precarious that our borders will cease to have any meaning at all.
Arguably, it would be better to sell Australia to El Trumpo now, though we wouldn’t get much for it beyond a US garrison, before a couple of Chinese helicopters kidnap a willing Albo and your nation becomes the enslaved quarry of Great Southern Canton.
