Even if that doesn’t take the form of a palace coup that deposes the pliant parties and turns the Venezuelan regime as a whole back into a unified enemy of the US, a sizable break within the Venezuelan military, militias, or “collectives”—pro-regime armed gangs—could quickly break into a large, decentralized, and well-armed insurgency that would be a lot harder to put down than a centralized conventional force. If they really try to—or try to threaten the current regime into making the changes that would have been brought about by a regime change—there is a real risk that it could devolve into the exact kind of forever war Trump and his cabinet have been so dismissive of these last couple days where, at best, a sizeable sum of taxpayer dollars are spent to bankroll a Venezuelan-led counterinsurgency and, at worst, American troops have to go fight and die in yet another unnecessary nation-building war. And that speaks to a broader point that is so important to keep in mind amidst all these new developments with Venezuela: that the primary factor at the core of so many of our societal problems—including most that Trump himself ran on—is the attempt by the American political class to maintain a global empire, with all the economic, moral, security, and cultural decay that brings.
Author: Connor O 'Keeffe
Published at: 2026-01-07 23:30:06
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