perestroika

Correction of facts: the announcement is still up or has reappeared, though it was inaccessible for a while, enough for some journalists to provide an archived copy.

Personal opinion:

• diagnosis: raging delirium / stable genius syndrome
• prognosis: at this level of progression, ritual suicide within 18 months

The comment is a bit poorly thought out.

It would be picking a fight with Putin on his terms, him being former KGB. He has a tendency to order poisonings - ask Kyrylo Budanov, he narrowly escaped eating heavy metals and his wife Marianna was poisoned. Doctors saved her, but she will likely need long-term treatment.

Russia also still has satellites in the sky, moles in US agencies and spies on US soil - so Putin would have a decent chance of knowing. Trump and Vance would not want to personally die in gruesome ways or lose family members.

Russia also has a tendency to detain foreign citizens (including but not limited to spies - businessmen also have a high risk) on various excuses, eventually exchanging them for Russian citizens detained abroad if they're in favour. They know the game of kidnapping and exchanging people. They just do the kidnapping on their own soil.

If "what to do next" would be stopping to f**k with military assistance to Ukraine - to sell the tools they need, even if Biden gave tools for free - yes, I would agree, that would be logical. But Trump has demonstratively sabotaged assistance to Ukraine from day one. It's a bit far fetched to imagine he would reform himself.

I don't know if the Kremlin has leverage on Trump or Trump has delusions about the Kremlin. If they have a special relationship, it would be nice if it broke down over Venezuela, but I don't see it happening - I see Trump threatening Greenland, Colombia, Mexico and Cuba.

According to surveys, US population is against leaving NATO...

...and by a narrow margin, was even against the attack on Venezuela. In case of Venezuela, the US population is quite firmly against installing a government on them.

But the US is not ruled by the US population. It's ruled by the Trump idiocracy.

A note: EU treaties also have a mutual defense clause.

So at that point, even if NATO stops existing, the EU would help Denmark fight the US.

Militarily, EU countries won't be able to defend Greenland. It would get occupied by air. But some could make occupation a misery (e.g. "unfortunately a Swedish submarine has again sunk an aircraft carrier").

If it became a military conflict, the EU would almost certainly ask China for an alliance (and ask to ensure Russian neutrality in return for alliance, which China could ensure since it contols Russia's chip supply), and to prevent the US from moving its Pacific fleet to the Atlantic.

Even without Chinese involvement, given their attitude to US adventures, South American countries might make it impossible for the US Pacific fleet to move through the Panama canal, which the US would have to open by force. But it might become blocked with scuttled cargo ships and impossible to pass anyway. At which point global trade routes would be badly distorted. The US would likely try using the Suez canal to move its Indian Ocean assets to the Atlantic. EU would likely try to negotiate its closure or force it closed with sabotage - some cargo ships accidentally sinking there to considerably delay the rate of arrival of US vessels to the Mediterranean, so that they could be sunk there (likely to succeed, back yard fight). The US might try sending reinforcements through the Arctic, which they're currently not well prepared for (Canada might or might not obstruct them). Meanwhile, global economic crisis would be hammering everyone, but Eurasia being a large contigous piece of land with the most people on it - damage would likely be reduced there.

With the US Pacific fleet sufficiently diluted, China would either negotiate the surrender of Taiwan or conquer it.

Overall, I think the US would get Greenland. In case military activity starts, it would get considerable losses at sea. An exchange of islands would happen. A vast island with 50 thousand people against a small island with 20 million people and globally vital industries.

In any case, everyone would get an exceptionally bad economic crisis. In the worst case, a world war with nuclear exchanges might start, and might escalate into civilization-ending war.

The current US administration should be somehow made aware of this. I wonder how to communicate to them a sentence like "the US seizing Greenland means a 100% chance of China seizing Taiwan and a 50% chance of world war (most likely the last of them)".

Possibly:

• or the EU will sell all its US debt, and will refuse to buy / hold US debt
• or the EU will refuse to settle payments in US dollars, and will divest itself of them (leaving euro and yuan as world currencies)
• or the EU will enact very damaging sanctions on the US
• or the EU will request a geopolitical alliance with China, and ask China to influence its junior partner named Russia to stop attacking Ukraine (I note that this would likely work, and Russia would stop)

...at that point, the world order would have changed. Not necessarily for the better, but definitely for much worse for the US (it would be plunged into an economic crisis and have no chance of hegemonizing around the planet), but sadly also for Taiwan. China would very likely demand ignoring them. :(

EU and China could be reasonably certain of either side not attacking the other.

It doesn't need to happen, a credible threat of pivoting east should be enough.

It is possible for China to start selling US government bonds, essentially refusing to lend the US money and hold its debt. But I don't think they'll do it as a sanction for this event. They'll do it when they think it's optimal for their own plans. When a US president needs punishment from their perspective. The current president, from their perspective, doesn't need punishment because he's making enemies all over South America and shouldn't be disturbed while doing that.

As for European countries, I am fairly confident that US defense industry is already frustrated by inability to sell long-term projects. Ukraine will buy what it can right away, but others will think twice. By the way, I've got an F-35 to sell you... but you're only allowed to use it for US-approved conflicts. ;)

Short version: it seems that Trump declared victory too early.

As far as I can make sense - I could be wrong or the situation could have changed, in which case please correct - Venezuela is not currently run by Trump, but the Venezuelan interior ministry (minister Diosdado Cabello, who has served as acting president before) and the defense ministry (minister Vladimir Padrino López, no political experience). Their vice president, according to rumours that spread in the morning (no confirmation or appearance that I know of) is hiding in Russia. The only public appearance that I know of, was by the interior minister during the night, after the raid.

As far as I understand, emigrees are celebrating Maduro's fall, but their joy might be premature because the regime is still armed and controls the streets.

Any diplomatic process of peaceful power transfer is going to have setbacks too, as 95% of South American countries have condemned the US attack, alongside China, EU and Russia. Trump just spent all of his legitimacy.

Opposition leaders likely cannot simply fly into Venezuela, as they'd risk getting shot.

If he wants something, Trump is going to have to attack again, but this time against people with a military background, in a country that has mobilized at least some of its (small) military. But the US force on the Carribean is not remarkably big either.

It would be far better if they negotiated. I guess they currently are negotiating.

Going by competences relevant to the situation: they captured the bus driver, but the general and captain escaped unscathed.

Since I find that my own optimism was premature (I should cross out my last paragraph), I will cool your optimism too. As much as I currently understand, Maduro is gone, but the ministers of interior and defense, and the vice president, are fine. The figurehead is gone, the regime is armed and retains power.

That would be bad news, because then a US-Venezuela war (as opposed to a series on one-sided strikes) would still be on the cards.

I don't know enough about Venezuela to make a good guess.

There's also the question of how quickly (if quickly at all) they could organize reasonably un-manipulated elections. An armed attack has likely triggered special circumstances in Venezuela, and nobody can demand elections right now.

If Maduro's allies try holding on to power, it could end with faction A ruling one province and faction B ruling another...

Assuming he is saying what the military has confirmed to him...

...well, this gives hope that full-scale war won't follow. It seems likely that Maduro had his system running on personal loyalty. If that is so, with him gone, the house of cards is likely to collapse.

A few words about Venezuela's air defense. Or the lack of it - the total lack of it was impressive. And in considerable contrast with Maduro's boastings of how many thousand MANPADS they supposedly had.

A convoy of helicopters which civilians could film slowly proceeded above Caracas and - not a missile, not a quickfire gun, seemingly not a shot was fired at it - unfathomably lucky b******s. A few guys on the wrong randomly picked rooftop could have ruined their day or life, but there were none.

As for what this means politically: Trump should now get a free apartment in the Hague (preferably next to Maduro's and Putin's apartments). But alas, he won't.

Meanwhile, South American countries have good reason to check if they actually have air defense, because with such a president in the US, maybe they will need it.

It seems like those helicopters carried special forces that are now on the ground and doing what they are there to do.

It actually seems they hit the jackpot - they claim to have taken Maduro prisoner and claim to have taken him out of the country.

If all of that is true, I'm still not sure if I'm impressed by the operation. A loose grid of guys with shoulder-launched missiles on a few rooftops could have ruined absolutely all of it.

But if they got in without getting shot down, got Maduro and got out without getting shot down, then luck favoured them and war will hopefully not ensue.

Maduro had likely built everything on personal loyalty to himself. A normal country would continue fighting and delegate authority downward, but Maduro wasn't running a normal country, apparently.

What I've found so far: CNN has a team present in Caracas and witnessed the strikes.

• 7 explosions reported - likely missile strikes to disable air defense
• 2 (correction: many more) smoke plumes reported - likely from sites struck with missiles
• a flight of helicopters which could be MH60 Sea Hawk - nothing very impressive, a random civilian filmed them going low and slow, MANPADS fodder but it seems they got lucky on that leg of the run

(Some X account posted footage from the Iranian attack on Israel and claimed it to be Venezuela.)

Opinion:

So it's international agression then. Taking out air defense and inserting helicopters over the capital of another country is generally considered an act of war. I guess Trump thinks he needs a war for some reason. It might be smart to prevent him from getting a full-scale one - and the next best thing that might dissuade him might be casualties.

An extremely unpleasant side effect: unless Maduro stumbles and falls really quick, he's pretty much legitimizing Maduro and causing his supporters to consolidate around him. In the game of diplomacy, that's not the right move.

Some other countries would certainly benefit from Trump getting bogged down anywhere, in any country. Especially a large and technically sophisticated country which wants to annex an island well known for its electronic products would approve of the US going on adventures in random places and getting bogged down.