cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/52511055
The escalation of threats to Venezuela by United States President Donald Trump may be easy to dismiss as one of his random whims, but it is too closely linked to major confrontations to be seen as a regional affair with limited impact on the rest of the world.
Venezuela is turning into a bargaining chip in the game of global superpowers, along with Ukraine.
Not a major power at all, Venezuela still matters globally – not only as a country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but also as a political ally of China, Iran and Russia – countries the US-led West sees as its archrivals. Of these three, Russia is the one which finds itself in the most delicate position when it comes to Venezuela. The US-driven escalation poses risks for the Kremlin, but there are also potential gains to be made.
The main factor is the unexpected thaw which happened in relations between the US and Russia during Trump’s second term as president.
Since Putin’s ascent to power in 2000, the Kremlin has seen the US first as an unreliable partner, then as a full-fledged adversary with an ambition to divide and rule in the ex-Soviet neighbourhood.
But it all suddenly went back to a partnership of sorts when Trump returned to the White House at the beginning of 2025. The US all but terminated its financial aid to Ukraine and adopted the posture of near-neutrality, though it still supplies crucial intelligence to the Ukrainian army. In the latest iteration of its National Security Strategy, the US even dropped Russia from the list of “direct threats”.
There is also the aspect of cynical political calculation. The geopolitical gains from the US launching a military attack on Venezuela potentially exceed the losses.
That is because it would put Russia and the US on an equal moral footing with regard to the war in Ukraine. If the US can dictate its will by means of military aggression in what Americans call “their backyard”, then why can Russia not do the same in its own? The US aggression in Venezuela would justify Russian aggression in Ukraine in the eyes of many, especially in the Global South. Handily for the Kremlin, it would also sow further divisions between the US and Europe as well as feed polarisation within the US itself.
If, in addition to Venezuela, the Trump administration presses forward with its irrational desire to occupy Greenland, the situation would be ideal for the Kremlin. It may even open avenues for post-Ukraine rapprochement with the EU-led part of Europe, currently its main global nemesis.
Generally, the Russians see themselves as the keepers of the old order, ultimate foreign policy conservatives. They see the US-led West as a revisionist force responsible for undoing the post-World War II order and see the war in Ukraine as a way of countering that revision.
But, as their thinking goes, if there is no return to the old order, for which the West is to blame, let us negotiate a new one: an order in which the US does as it pleases in its Western hemisphere, and Russia retains influence over the ex-Soviet neighbourhood.
It's really easy to come to conclusions you were taught since grade school, isn't it?
You think I learned in school the president of the U.S. would one day be tag teaming with dictator of Russia in order to betray his own nation and participate in a global fascist take over?
Idk what schools they're teaching that in, but
A. it definitely isn't something I learned in "ultra liberal" rural West TN, I just pay attention and think critically.
B. What you're dismissing as propaganda, (that Atlantic article about the novel which literally predicted the invasion of Ukraine years before it happened) was written by a dissident who fled Russia due to of threats to her life, and has been trying to warn people about this for several years while battling constant disinformation by people who want to (very poorly) attempt to gaslight others into believing these invasions that followed the novel being published, are not documented facts or somehow simply coincidences we should simply ignore.
LOL. You're so cooked.
No, our school age propaganda taught us that Russia is our mortal enemy and the enemy of democracy. Fuck, it was the entire premise of Command and Conquer Red Alert (what if the Russians were the real fascists?)
Russia had been appeasing and then matching US escalation in Eastern Europe and particularly Ukraine for a long time. No need for this dissident novelist to warn everyone through "fiction". Russian military build was open and obvious. You're living in a fantasy world of spy games between the good democratic guys and the evil fascists, never asking once why the US saved thousands of Nazis, with the help of the Vatican, to not only flee the country but integrate them throughout the Western hemisphere while the Soviets did nothing of the sort. Never once stopped to ask why West Germany had openly Nazi political leaders take over under the Allies watch while East Germany was accused of totalitarianism because it kept purging Nazis and their sympathizers.
Look, Russia today is not Soviet Union. They're a liberal capitalist hellscape in the same philosophical category as the US. But the US is clearly the enemy of democracy everywhere, having overturned a dozen or more democratic governments all over the world.
This article is the topic though. And this article is total fucking trash.