Gunboat diplomacy

The US has a long and sordid history of military extortion. The latest example is Trump’s saber-rattling movement of Navy battle groups off the coast of Venezuela and the extrajudicial assassinations the administration has been conducting off the Venezuelan coast in the name of drug interdiction.*

Writing for the Boston Globe, Stephen Kinzer, a senior fellow at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University offers a cogent analysis of what’s really going on here. 

Part of it is the classic right-wing pathology: Venezuela has huge oil reserves and a government unfriendly to the US. If Trump can depose Venezuela’s president and install a US puppet regime, it will flood the world market with cheap oil, lowering gas prices in the US. 

The other part, Kinzer asserts, is that Venezuela is the only remaining benefactor of Cuba. Cut off that lifeline and Cuba folds, realizing the life-long dream of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Casual inspection of the history of US gunboat diplomacy doesn’t inspire confidence, but since when have history, facts and evidence deterred the right-wing fever dream?

*imagine if the cost of this were instead allocated to support healthcare for veterans.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/06/opinion/trump-venezuela-maduro-invasion/

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