Venezuela
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Sardines
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Boots on the ground in Venezuela for what?
fishonjazz
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Drill baby drill.
Red
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I’ve been saying for a while now that Trump sees the world as divided up among Strongmen, with portions of the globe they regard as “their own” to dominate and control. And so this NY Times article argues:
President Trump opened the year with pledges to seize the Panama Canal, take control of Greenland and rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
He is ending it by bombing boats from South America, stationingthe world’s largest aircraft carrier in the Caribbean and exploringmilitary options against Venezuela’s autocratic leader.
In a sharp shift of decades of U.S. foreign policy, the Western Hemisphere has become the United States’ central theater abroad. In addition to military threats and action, the White House this year has carried out punishing tariffs, severe sanctions, pressure campaigns and economic bailouts across the Americas.
Mr. Trump has said he is seeking to stop drugs and migrants from entering the United States. But, in other moments, top administration officials have been explicit that their overarching goal is to assert American dominance over its half of the planet……
……..
Many observers have begun calling the new U.S. approach “the Donroe Doctrine” — a term that appeared on a January cover of The New York Post — a Trumpian twist on a 19th-century idea.
In 1823, President James Monroe aspired to stop European powers from meddling in the hemisphere.
In 2025, the competing power is China, which has built up enormous political and economic power in Latin America over the past several decades.
Some foreign policy analysts believe that Mr. Trump would like to divide the world with China and Russia into spheres of influence. In recent months, top U.S. officials have explained their strategy in those terms.
“The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood — and we will protect it,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote Thursday, in the latest example.
—————————————————————————————-
And another thought:
When the attorney general of the United States took personal charge of Operation Mongoose, he declared it America’s “top priority”, saying “no time, money, effort or manpower” was to be spared.
The official in question was Robert Kennedy and the supreme objective that mattered more than anything else was toppling Fidel Castro and “liberating” Cuba from Communist rule.
Operation Mongoose and its famously futile campaign of subversion began in November 1961, inspiring plenty of Hollywood movies but not the dawn of freedom in Cuba.
Now, incredible though it seems, the evidence increasingly suggests that history may be repeating itself and Donald Trump’s administration is considering a comparable enterprise.
Trump has already concentrated about 10 per cent of the entire US Navy in the Caribbean, including guided missile destroyers, a nuclear-powered attack submarine and two amphibious assault ships. This formidable force has just been strengthened by the arrival of the USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s biggest aircraft carrier, having steamed westwards across the Atlantic at the head of a naval strike group.
The primary target of this military build-up – America’s biggest deployment in the Caribbean since an intervention in Panama in 1989 – is Venezuela’s far-Left and bitterly anti-US regime under Nicolas Maduro, the authoritarian successor to the late Hugo Chavez.
But that is not the whole story. Experts believe that Trump, and especially Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, may see regime change in Caracas as a necessary prelude for what they want most of all, which is regime change in Havana and the final “liberation” of Cuba, exactly 65 years after President Kennedy made this America’s top priority.
The rulers of both countries are certainly seen by Washington as ruinous, repressive, corrupt and dangerously close to America’s adversaries, particularly China and Russia. And the tradition of America asserting its pre-eminence over its own hemisphere – symbolised by Trump’s unilateral decision to re-label the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America – goes back more than two centuries to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823.
President Trump opened the year with pledges to seize the Panama Canal, take control of Greenland and rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
He is ending it by bombing boats from South America, stationingthe world’s largest aircraft carrier in the Caribbean and exploringmilitary options against Venezuela’s autocratic leader.
In a sharp shift of decades of U.S. foreign policy, the Western Hemisphere has become the United States’ central theater abroad. In addition to military threats and action, the White House this year has carried out punishing tariffs, severe sanctions, pressure campaigns and economic bailouts across the Americas.
Mr. Trump has said he is seeking to stop drugs and migrants from entering the United States. But, in other moments, top administration officials have been explicit that their overarching goal is to assert American dominance over its half of the planet……
……..
Many observers have begun calling the new U.S. approach “the Donroe Doctrine” — a term that appeared on a January cover of The New York Post — a Trumpian twist on a 19th-century idea.
In 1823, President James Monroe aspired to stop European powers from meddling in the hemisphere.
In 2025, the competing power is China, which has built up enormous political and economic power in Latin America over the past several decades.
Some foreign policy analysts believe that Mr. Trump would like to divide the world with China and Russia into spheres of influence. In recent months, top U.S. officials have explained their strategy in those terms.
“The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood — and we will protect it,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote Thursday, in the latest example.
—————————————————————————————-
And another thought:
When the attorney general of the United States took personal charge of Operation Mongoose, he declared it America’s “top priority”, saying “no time, money, effort or manpower” was to be spared.
The official in question was Robert Kennedy and the supreme objective that mattered more than anything else was toppling Fidel Castro and “liberating” Cuba from Communist rule.
Operation Mongoose and its famously futile campaign of subversion began in November 1961, inspiring plenty of Hollywood movies but not the dawn of freedom in Cuba.
Now, incredible though it seems, the evidence increasingly suggests that history may be repeating itself and Donald Trump’s administration is considering a comparable enterprise.
Trump has already concentrated about 10 per cent of the entire US Navy in the Caribbean, including guided missile destroyers, a nuclear-powered attack submarine and two amphibious assault ships. This formidable force has just been strengthened by the arrival of the USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s biggest aircraft carrier, having steamed westwards across the Atlantic at the head of a naval strike group.
The primary target of this military build-up – America’s biggest deployment in the Caribbean since an intervention in Panama in 1989 – is Venezuela’s far-Left and bitterly anti-US regime under Nicolas Maduro, the authoritarian successor to the late Hugo Chavez.
But that is not the whole story. Experts believe that Trump, and especially Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, may see regime change in Caracas as a necessary prelude for what they want most of all, which is regime change in Havana and the final “liberation” of Cuba, exactly 65 years after President Kennedy made this America’s top priority.
The rulers of both countries are certainly seen by Washington as ruinous, repressive, corrupt and dangerously close to America’s adversaries, particularly China and Russia. And the tradition of America asserting its pre-eminence over its own hemisphere – symbolised by Trump’s unilateral decision to re-label the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America – goes back more than two centuries to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823.
Last edited:
LogGrad98
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Exactly.