How Venezuela became a prop, Isaacman became an experiment, and the Peace Institute became a punchline Trump wrote himself
Every administration, sooner or later, finds itself needing to move military assets around without sending the country on a run for toilet paper. Most presidents handle this discreetly, via quiet memos, closed-door briefings, and an admiral or two, who swear not to breathe a word, on the life of their post-retirement yacht. While any other president would move assets with utmost discretion, Trump is not any other president.
Apparently, Trump decided to obscure his true objectives in a showdown with Venezuela. Not because Venezuela did anything, and not because Venezuela can do anything. In fact, Venezuela has less of an idea about what’s going on than the rest of us. If geopolitical confusion was a national export, Caracas would be running a trade surplus.
And that’s why Trump is suddenly “going after” Venezuela. Not because they matter, but because they’re convenient, plausible, and so strategically insignificant that Trump can park the entire US Navy off the Eastern Seaboard without anyone demanding to know why. The real mission? Let’s just say it rhymes with “finding Russian nuclear submarines before they find us.” Actually, numerous threats lurk across the bodies of water separating the North American continent from its very many enemies, from swarms of drones above to fiber-optic cables below.
So instead, Trump points at Venezuela, the geopolitical equivalent of a scarecrow with a flag, and says, “THEM.”
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