MAGA has become MCGA: Trump is Making Colonialism Great Again. After a hundred years out of favour imperialism is back! A century ago my own nation Ireland managed to wade through blood, bullets, mud and death to tear itself out of the largest colonial power in three centuries the British Empire. Two wold wars finished that the British Empire but now, ironically, another revolutionary child of the British Empire has decided to revive this really bad idea. Welcome to the short age of Trumpian Colonialism.
Washington DC has attacked Caracas adding that mineral-rich nation to its budding Empire. Trump is doing this just because he can and because Rubio wants to weaken Cuba. Rather, Trump thinks he can, just like in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
The real reasons this invasion happened now is Trump’s plummeting approval ratings. He promised jobs to his MAGA supporters but they got tariff inflation with tax cuts for the rich. Now they’re losing their jobs to AI, a process that’s accelerating. His popular promise to end wars is obviously going the wrong way. He couldn’t convince the European subcontinent not to tear itself apart and Netanyahu twisted him round his little finger while lying his through genocide with immunity. Time Magazine has published a wish-list for more invasions from Cuba to Colombia and from Denmark’s icy subcontinent, Greenland, to Mexico City. Rubio and Hegseth are calling for a bloodbath as Trump’s senile delirium is reaching a dangerous zenith.
His midterm election prospects are so bad —and at his age they will be his last election— the Republican Party may lose control of both the Senate and the House. This means Trump could end up a lame duck president which will make his hawkish element —with Cuban-American Marco Rubio at the helm— even more dangerous. The military hawks have convinced Trump that kidnapping a president and stealing oil and minerals might help look like a tough guy in the election. What they didn’t emphasise is that the Venezuelan situation could unwind very quickly to the detriment of all of the Americas (Trump included).
Trump’s primary focus is on heavy crude, Bitumen, to be processed by Koch Industries and other heavy crude in their refineries. Trump doesn’t believe in climate change but he likes gold and the price almost doubled this year. Stealing both mining operations in Venezuela from China and Russia is not a good look.
Trying to project strength as he reaches his 80th birthday, this strategy could go very wrong for him, for the Republican party, and definitely for Venezuela and South America. Rubio paints Donald as a man of action for the hawkish deployment. Trump allowed Rubio, Hegseth and others to convince him that this was a good idea but they failed to ask for Congressional approval to go to war in Venezuela, instead the CIA-plus-military operation was couched as a “policing” move. “We are at war against drug trafficking organisations, it’s not a war against Venezuela”, Rubio claimed at Meet the Press. George Stephanopoulos asked Rubio “Why wasn’t congressional authorisation necessary?”. He replied “[…] this was not an invasion. We didn’t occupy a country. This was an arrest operation. This was a law enforcement operation. [Maduro] was arrested on the ground by FBI agents, read his rights, and removed from the country”.
If that is an arrest operation then what is an invasion?
If Trump loses control of congress and the senate, calls for his impeachment for the invasion might prosper. More than 110 people have died Saturday for an election ploy including 32 Cubans (thank you Mr. Rubio). In Venezuela it is not over till the fat lady sings and there is anger in the streets at the treasonous sellout of a corrupt Venezuelan military. Russian air defence systems didn’t fire. Soon they will find out who was responsible. They will know who were the military officers that the CIA special operation made rich. Trump’s trillion dollar war machine may bankrupt his nation but it will kill a lot of people first.
Resistance is growing among a few younger anti-war anti-Trump Democrats but US bipartisan support for “the troops” is a fatal flaw in US politics, has been for decades. Impeachment might work but only if Trump loses the midterms very badly or he creates a massive bloodbath that even the hawkish Democrats can’t ignore.
The Chilean deputy of Irish descent, Camila Dowling, explained the situation clearly from a southern cone perspective. Trump wants Venezuela’s oil saying he’s taking political and administrative control of that nation but this will not just be a problem for Venezuela, she said, mentioning copper and lithium in the Southern Cone, Dowling says Trump is threatening the territorial integration of all of Latin America. It is time to open our eyes, she said. He is telling us that just because he has power he can do what he wants in his own back yard. That is something no nation in Latin America can permit! National sovereignty is not negotiable.
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