Why? It really isn’t anything new. The only new thing is the admission it is for oil, which we usually pretend it isn’t.
Those of us who are opposed to it probably didn’t vote for Trump and surely have no foreign policy influence, which is the same as when Bush invaded Iraq. Same old song and dance.
This isn’t out of line with past performance. We have spent decades toppling regimes. Basically since WW2.
Hows this any different than what we did to Noriega? Saddam? Qaddafi?
That’s my original point, to anyone who is paying attention it’s already been priced in. The method was novel perhaps, but nothing else about it was anything different. I’m not that old and I’ve already seen it happen several times.
If somebody punches you in the face from Monday through Friday, then they punch you in the face on Saturday you probably don’t feel any different about them on Sunday.
I certainly can’t say I expected the exact method of capture, but I had no doubt all of those carriers were moving to the Caribbean for some reason other than show. I figured we would just blow some stuff up and topple the regime that way.
I would guess not at all for any of them. Drugs clearly aren’t that much of the reason involved here. If you were listing the countries that export the most drugs to us, Venezuela wouldn’t even be top five. I am not sure I would be opposed to us taking out cartel leaders in Mexico, but there are certainly a lot of downsides to it that have held us back. I don’t think Gloria Shienbaum is on our enemies list.
What they have that we care about is a third of the world’s oil reserves. They are friendly with our biggest geopolitical rival, China. This is not to endorse what we did at all, but it’s pretty clear that there is a future coming where oil gets scarce, and the last thing we want is China to have a better supply of it than us.
I don’t think this was probably the right way to solve the problem, but it is a problem that needed to be solved, and even though I don’t like it, I have to admit there is a lot of upside.
Going by the historical record the chances of a mess are larger than the chances of a net positive. One thing is for sure: the US reputation abroad just sunk a little lower and it really did not need that.
Certainly possible. There are plenty of examples where these sorts of interventions worked for the country we intervened in though. Even in Latin America, which I’ve travelled extensively. I’ve talked to them about it.
A year ago today I was in Grenada looking at a statue of Reagan. The Grenadians love America (and the older ones love to tell you about it) for our intervention in the 80’s which I was not old enough to remember. They did not want to become another Cuba and we saved them from it.
South Korea. Japan. Germany. There were some solid wins in our nation building along with the losses.
