What Just Happened Overnight?

I woke up to one of those surreal moments when all at once the world does not seem real. What—the US just invaded Venezuela, captured the president, and he has now been arraigned in court in New York? And all of this happened overnight? I slept through an entire war?

Hard to take that in. 

Besides sounding impossible, isn’t this a grave violation of international law? First, invading another country with whom you are at peace, and second, targeting the leader personally to take them out. 

Back when Bush Sr. invaded Panama to arrest Noriega, that was my position. 

But international law is not really codified; it evolves, like the common law. And I think it is evolving. 

It began with the massacre in Rwanda. Popular opinion condemned the French in particular for not stepping in and preventing it, when they had the ability. They, and the UN forces, were constrained by this doctrine in international law that one must not interfere with the internal affairs of another country. This left a deep trauma. Surely that cannot have been right.

In reaction, when things got nasty in Serbia over Kosovo, NATO collectively decided they had the right to intervene—although Kosovo was long an integral part of Serbia, with no history of independence.

The idea had evolved to a right and perhaps a duty to intervene to protect human rights in another country, when the violations are egregious. After all, all men are brothers. Do we want another Holocaust, and another? Had Hitler not invaded Poland, would we merely accept his extermination of the Jews as an internal affair?

Amnesty International and the UN Human Rights Watch accuse Maduro of multiple violations of Venezuelans’ human rights. On that basis, given this new doctrine of international law, Trump had a right to intervene. Not acting solely on his own opinion, but on that of recognized international bodies. He acted alone, not with a coalition of other nations—but that was necessary to make the action swift and relatively bloodless.

Does this give other regimes the right to do likewise? After all, this was more or less Russia’s justification for invading Ukraine: to defend the human rights of Russian-speakers in the Donbas against a “fascist” Ukrainian government.

That is no doubt a concern. But it is about what aggressors could always do under the old rules: fake some false flag operation, and claim they were defending themselves. This is what Hitler did to justify his invasion of Poland. In either case, we have to rely on the general opinion of nations. Are the claims plausible?

For Trump and America, there is also the issue of the drug scourge. It is a crisis in North America. Is it reasonable to see them, as Trump does, as a weapon intended to weaken the US? Wasn’t that what Britain did to China with opium centuries ago? Hasn’t China openly claimed they are pursuing war by unconventional means, “wolf warriors”? There are claims, too, that Venezuela has been subverting elections elsewhere, including the US.

Must the US just sit there and accept this? With changing technology, the weapons of war have changed. Perhaps we must begin to act accordingly.

And if you are justified in going  to war, Trump did so in the quickest and most bloodless way.

This may be the way of the future. Trump did something similar in Iran, the recent “twelve day war.” Which may now be bearing its final fruits in regime collapse. Go in, strike decisively, take out your opponent, and leave. He did something similar with Isis in Syria and Iraq. He seems to have understood something about how war has changed.

Bush Jr. could have done the same in Afghanistan or Iraq. The initial victories were quick and easy. He made the mistake of hanging around and trying to colonize.

It looks like Putin tried to imitate Trump’s approach in Ukriane—go in with a surgical strike, take out the opposing government, and it’s over. But Putin botched it. Russia does not have the technical capability and organization. They had to try it with brute force.

And Ukraine suggests that conventional war, in which armies line up on the field and shoot at each other, is obsolete; and of course, nuclear war works for nobody. Might it actually be the way of the future, and more just and humane, to fight by surgical strikes with superior coordination and technology?

The taking of Maduro seems, in any case, a brilliant strategic victory for the US. It should have an immediate effect in Iran, just when such a signal is needed. Trump has as much as said it is a warning to them. If they obviously violate Iranians’ human rights during the current protests, the US is will similarly step in. They are “locked and loaded.” “We know where you live.” 

A dealmaker, Trump is a brilliant psychologist.

This makes it much more likely the Iranian government, already on a knife edge, will fall.

Now imagine if Venezuela becomes, under a new government, an American ally, which is naturally likely to occur. Imagine if Iran soon also, under a new government, becomes a close American ally. Lots of oil previously used as a geopolitical weapon against the US and its allies now comes under their control. A huge geopolitical win.

Especially since it is oil sales that are propping up Putin and financing his aggression in Ukraine. He too may now see the writing on the wall. Three birds with one stone?

Or four birds... It should also have a dramatic effect in Cuba, already in desperate economic conditions, hanging on by a thin stream of oil extending across the Caribbean from Venezuela. Their source of electricity, and financial support until recently, is gone. 

It would surely be a great morale boost to America, and a boost to its prestige, if this thorn in its side were soon removed. Gulf of America indeed.

And, of course, the action is well calculated to frighten other hemispheric regimes into shutting down the drug trade and avoiding antagonizing America.

2026 is starting with a bang. Happy 250th birthday, America.

. 

Mad Maduro

 

I predict that nothing will come of the current Venezuelan threat to annex most of Guyana.

Of course, the reason they suddenly want to do so is that a large reserve of oil has been discovered off the Guyanese coast. 

How large? At least 11 billion barrels, putting it in the top twenty producers worldwide, with the second largest reserves per capita, after Kuwait. And there may be more.

I doubt, busy as it is elsewhere, the US will let Venezuela swoop in and take that oil, any more than they let Saddam’s Iraq grab Kuwait’s oil back in the 90s. The geopolitical stakes are too high. If the US is overextended, Britain or Canada, plus the Caribbean nations, as fellow members of the Commonwealth, might, at American urging, take up the cause, or join a “coalition of the willing.” The more so since Guyana is an English -speaking democracy, and Venezuela a failing dictatorship.

Or Brazil might. The Guyanese region actually has no roads connecting it to Venezuela. The only road runs through Brazil. In order to attack Guyana in any force, Venezuela will actually first need to invade Brazil. Brazil is not likely to be too keen on that, and they are much bigger and wealthier than Venezuela. Rather, a Venezuelan incursion into Brazil would give Brazil an excuse to go in and take Venezuela itself, with its own oil, while America approved.

Brazil has already sent a contingent, if a small contingent, of troops to the border. Ensuring at least that it will come to blows.

Might the Venezuelans try instead a landing from the sea? 

Perfect. Plays into the American or British strength: sea and air power.

Presumably this is all for Venezuelan domestic consumption, an attempt to rally the people behind the government by whipping up a foreign enemy. It is the sign of a government in desperation.

If Maduro is desperate and reckless enough to go through with it, I expect the result to be similar to what happened when the Argentine government tried the same trick over the Falkland Islands, or the Greek government over Cyprus. The main result will be the collapse of the Maduro regime.

Let’s hope nobody gets killed along the way.

A Journal of the Plague Year

Trump’s press conference yesterday felt more upbeat than it has been for a while. He was talking again about soon getting back to work. Most significantly, he was back to talking hopefully about hydrachloraquine. He called it not only a “game changer,” but “a miracle”—if it works, he carefully qualified. Mention of the drug had been eerily absent everywhere official for a while.

Trump surely knows that, if he pushes hydrachloraquine, and it turns out to be a dud, the press will crucify him. They have already done so for even suggesting it. He must have seen very promising and very solid data to take this risk.

You might argue that he is just trying to briefly boost morale at a dark time. But that cuts two ways; talking up a cure could also prompt people to take social distancing less seriously.

The media, less intelligent than Trump, have immediately gone after him again for promoting this harebrained miracle cure, as he must have expected. Now they have thoroughly identified the drug with Trump. If it does not work, he looks really bad. And if it soon proves to work, he is going to look very good.

He must be pretty confident.

Trump also made a point of saying that they had a good secure supply of the drug. This might also have been why the authorities were so quiet about it—they were worried about the supply. Now perhaps they have stockpiled enough to go public.

In bizarrely apocalyptic, and possibly related, news, Venezuela has fired on and rammed a German cruise ship in international waters.

In normal times, this would be insane: an act of war, on a cruise ship?

It cannot be that they feared this ship, like others recently, was infected with coronavirus. They were trying to force the ship to port—not drive it away. And it would be easy to simply refuse it moorage.

I think they must have feared the craft was either spying, or stuffed with US marines looking for an inconspicuous point at which to wade ashore.

And for all we know, they were right. What was a German cruise ship fitted out for Antarctic cruises doing idling along parallel to the Venezuelan coast, just beyond territorial waters?

When the Venezuelan warship rammed the civilian cruise ship, the warship sank. The cruise ship had a reinforced hull for slicing through the Antarctic ice.

That might also have been useful for making unconventional landings in shallow waters.

I suspect the US is gearing up to invade to secure the vital ingredient for hydrachloraquine, for which Venezuela is a source. I suspect Venezuela suspects what I suspect.

Data collected from smart thermometers in the US shows there are actually significantly fewer people reporting a high temperature now than you would see in a regular flu season. And that number is dropping fast.


It looks like the social distancing is working effectively.

At the same time, the thermometer data shows social distancing is reducing the number of people catching the normal flu. It is also reducing the number of deaths by accident, since fewer people are out moving around. The terrifying overcrowding of hospitals we have feared may not happen. The hospital ship Comfort, originally slated to handle trauma cases, freeing the regular hospitals for coronavirus, has been shifted over to coronavirus, because there were not enough trauma cases.

Modified social distancing, based on this experience, may become a part of the culture going forward. No more handshakes. More facemasks during flu seasons. More telecommuting.

It is also possible that the coronavirus is burning itself out. Viruses commonly do so; Ebola did.

It also looks possible that the virus is sensitive to weather, as flu viruses are, and will naturally abate over the next few months at least in the far more populated northern hemisphere. Notably, Australia, which gets a lot of traffic from China, has never yet experienced a breakaway local spread: most cases are still imported. The Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India, Taiwan, all close to China, although they have had their troubles, have not been hit with the intensity of Europe or the US. If you look at the Johns Hopkins world map, equatorial Africa also seems to have seen an oddly low number of cases. While some South American countries have seen larger outbreaks—these are the Andean nations, where high elevations produce cooler and drier weather.

Trump suggested this might be because they had good stores of chloraquine, being malarial areas. But it might still be the weather. For what it is worth, more northerly, significantly colder, countries also seem to have been somewhat less affected: Russia, Canada, Iceland, Finland, Scandinavia.

If the virus is abating for summer, it will no doubt come roaring back next fall. But that will give us adequate time to prepare more ventilators, more hydrachloraquine, more face masks, more effective protocols, and more research.

I feel the tide has turned.

In one flat note, Justin Trudeau spent some of his press conference yesterday boasting about how much of the government’s emergency funding to cope with the virus was going to go to more women’s shelters, to protect women and their children in case things are not safe in their home due to domestic violence.

But what about men facing the same situation, from an abusive wife and mother? They, and their children, are simply forced to stay in place and suffer.

This has nothing to do with the coronavirus. It is a handout to a client group at the expense of the general public, when we are all in dire straits.

So is the Canadian government’s special funding to aboriginal reserves to deal with the crisis. The whole thing about the Indian reserves is that, rightly or wrongly, they are the original example of enforced social distancing. Because of their segregation from other populations, often reinforced by great distances, they are probably the least likely of Canadians to be exposed to the coronavirus.

But in the midst of general crisis, vital funds must be diverted to another client group.

Canadians may be pulling together, but our governments are not.

The Coming US War with Venezuela

Strange that Trump began his press conference yesterday with announcing enhanced counter-narcotics measures. And this was the prime focus of the press conference, in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. I had heard that the flow of narcotics into the US had actually recently slowed dramatically, and it stands to reason: with the closing of the Mexican border, and with the drying up of chemical supplies from China to the illegal drug manufacturers in Mexico. 

I suspect it is not about the drugs.

It is about invading Venezuela. Venezuela was mentioned several times.

Maduro is an enemy. Call him a drug kingpin, and the US has justification for going in and taking him out. They used the same rationale to overthrow Noriega in Panama in 1989.

In the meantime, the fight against the drug trade gives an excuse for getting the necessary forces into position.

But the underlying reason might be that Venezuela is a prime source for the tree bark from which one makes chloroquine. It has suddenly become a strategic resource. Reports are clear that chloroquine is now in short supply.

With the military mobilized and in position, the US can either go in and take the resource, or force Maduro to yield it up.

The US government does not want to make the real objective clear, because they do not want panic or hoarding over the lack of chloroquine.