Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.
Author: Ian Welsh Page 9 of 436
This will offend some people because supposedly outsiders aren’t supposed to do anything but cheer Resistance actors or something.
- Russia offered them a formal military alliance and they refused;
- They have and had sufficient missiles and drones to overwhelm Israeli defenses;
- During the Gaza war they did not attack Israel which allowed Israel to defeat Hamas (note that if they had, Hezbollah would have gone all in if they encouraged it, so it would have been absolutely massive, 80% of Hezbollah’s missile stockpile had not been destroyed at that point.)
- They did not send troops to save Assad and keep Syria in their sphere,
- During the brief Israeli/Iran war, they were winning and Israel was a week or so from running out of interceptors. Israel asked for a ceasefire and they agreed;, and,
- They keep refusing to get nukes despite having the capability.
These are deeply foolish people and if they keep refusing to actually fight or make alliance, and keep letting Israel and the US take swings at Iran at times and places of their choosing they are eventually going to lose.
They should also get that formal alliance with Russia and make whatever agreements are necessary to get full economic support from China, which could end their inflation problems in half a year
The counter-argument is that winning the missile war might lead to nuking. I don’t think Israel would do that unless it was existential, nuking Iran would cost them extremely. But Israel having nukes is precisely why Iran either needs to get their own or to get under a nuclear powers umbrella. (Ideally you first make an alliance with Russia, then you get the nukes.)
I don’t know what the dysfunction is, exactly, but if they don’t fix it, it’s likely to be terminal. I suspect a lot comes from Khameini, certainly the nuclear ban does.
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Amid all the bad news, all the thrashing of a dying Empire, I re-iterate that while one needs to maneuver through this period deftly, the big picture remains unchanged.
There was a slow decline from 2014 to 2022, which could have just been part of normal perambulations. But from 2022 to 2025 the US dollar has dropped from 50% of reserves to 40%. That’s FAST. Right now there is no alternative reserve currency, everyone’s piling into gold. However trade is increasingly being done in local currencies.
This is exactly as predicted. It will continue to accelerate. Venezuela is in part an attempt to shore up the US dollar. It might make a slight bump, but it’s irrelevant to the trend or larger picture.
There’s a comment from Some Guy I want to highlight in whole:
The US is done. Done. Done. It will, as I keep saying, die ugly. But it is a walking corpse. This is really basic stuff. China can build infrastructure for less than 5% of the cost of America, and in less than a quarter the time. (Often 10% of the time.) This is a general Western problem, by the way, all of us are expensive and slow. Until we fix this very basic issue, nothing else matters. In fixing something this basic we will have to fix almost everything else.
It’s not just that China is ahead in tech, it’s that we are no longer even able to do things we could do twenty, forty or in many cases a hundred year ago in any reasonable time frame at any reasonable cost. This is, in Jane Jacobs’ term, a “Dark Age”, a forgetting. Dark Ages are when you lose the ability to do what you used to be able to do. That’s us. It goes far beyond building: we had defeated multiple infectious diseases like Mumps and Measles, for example, which are coming back. We literally can’t make products we used to make 30 years ago, because we sent all that industry to China and we DO NOT have the know-how any more. That know how is embodied in people and those people are dead or sixty or seventy or eighty years old.
Modern generative “AI” slop cannot actually learn. It is a copying mechanism. We do not have the people it can copy from. It cannot solve this problem for us, whatever the insane boosters say, and we have just laid our entire bankroll on the table in one huge bet, which we will probably lose and which even if we win will still not solve our fundamental problems.
If there was ANY sign of reversal, that’d be great, but there isn’t. In fact we are doubling down: we are deskilling even faster than we were before and giving up on research. We aren’t re-shoring industry, we’re still losing it.
Venezuela sucks. Gaza sucks. Greenland will suck. None of it matters to the big picture. State power since the Industrial Revolution is a function of industrial power and technological level as limited by resources and population. Population and resources are limiters, they are not useful by themselves except in rare cases that are weakening over time. (aka. mass infantry for horrific attrition warfare.)
If you’re in the West, prepare for the continued decline. If you’re elsewhere, know the the days of suffering at America’s hands are now running down. If you live another twenty years you WILL see the end of most of this nonsense. Trump has announced he wants to increase the military budget by 50%, but it doesn’t really matter, because money cannot buy what the US needs unless it fixes its real problems, which defense spending done the way Trump or Democrats will do it will not.
Empires die ugly. But this Empire IS dying and it is accelerating towards its end.
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So, some stuff has begun to come out though so far it’s all from the US and I haven’t seen Venezuelan confirmation. First, Trump:
Second, the oil blockade per Hegseth (Secretary of War):
And third, Miller:
Meanwhile a Russian flagged oil tanker was seized. I’m not sure that it’s legitimately Russian flagged, there’s some indication they may have changed the flag in the last two weeks, but if it was, the Russians now have a quandry. The only real response is something symmetrical: seize a US bound freighter, like Iran has. We’ll see if Putin has the guts. He’s overlooked too many red lines in the past for me to be confident in his response.
Anyway, the play is obvious: no oil gets in and out of Venezuela without going thru the US first. The current government may or may not be allowed to stay in charge, we’ll see, but the Venezuelan economy can’t survive without oil exports so the US expects submission.
If neither Russia nor China are willing to intervene and Venezuela isn’t willing to take horrific losses (they’d probably win, but they’d get hurt doing so), then this is what will happen. If I were China I’d probably just end all military and dual use exports including all rare earths while there’s any blockade. What America is doing is clearly piracy. US law does not determine whether other countries can trade with each other—not de jure, anyway.
If there’s to be any remaining shred of freedom of trade it’s going to have to be enforced.
The next question is Greenland. If the US seizes that, then NATO is finished. Anyone MAGA friendly in Europe will be annihilated. Everyone will fall into China’s grasp, there’s no other alternative and there will be a mad scramble of nuclear proliferation. (Should have happened long ago, but people didn’t want to admit the US was an evil overlord.)
Trump may be able to coerce Venezuela (though China could stop him, it seems unlikeley they will) but he is accelerating the collapse of the American Empire something fierce. Again, the US is auto-catabolic in economic terms, and this is just the mad thrashing of a dying Empire, dramatic as it is.
Venezuelan crude is heavy oil. It will be of little value to the US economy, China can replace it without much difficulty and Russia doesn’t need it. This is seizing a wasting asset, acting like it’s 1935 or 1970 and oil is the most important strategic resource. It isn’t. It isn’t even close any more, as long as you have enough. China is aggressively moving away from dependence on oil, in particular, and China is who matters.
Trump’s just an aggressive moron. None of this will stop or even slow US decline where it matters. Instead it will speed it up, and in the longer term, the US will not keep control of Venezuela either.
No one’s talking about Trump being a pedophile right now, however, so I guess it’s “Mission Successful.”
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Willingness to fight and to absorb damage is the most important thing. The Yemenis lost leaders, civilians and port facilities. They just kept going until the US withdrew. Everyone except the Chinese walks careful around the US because they know it can do a lot of damage to them: more than they can do to it.
But as the Vietnamese, Taliban, and Ansar Allah proved, if you’re willing to accept lopsided exchange numbers you can win just by being a lot tougher than Americans are. They’ll eventually give up and go away.
This was, by the way, Bin Laden’s explicit policy. He wrote as much. Get the Americans to invade Afghanistan and do to them what the Afghans did to Russia. It didn’t work that great (slow bleed, since they didn’t have Superpower support like they did against Russia) but then Bush decided to attack Iraq and whether you consider the occupation a win or a loss, it was a clusterfuck.
Venezuela is trying to avoid armed conflict, in part, I suspect, because they aren’t a unified society. That means the cost for the US is almost zero.
Hezbollah had the same problem with Israel and the US and it cost them a great deal. It may cost them everything. Their problem is and was exacerbated by the sectarian nature of Lebanon. If they had gone all out against the Israelis they could have inflicted massive damage, but Israeli retaliation might well have led to a civil war as other factions blamed them. Additionally, much of the issue, as with Iran, appears to have simply been a constitutionally extremely cautious leadership. (Khameini’s refusal to get nuclear weapons, in particular, is political malpractice of the highest order.)
America can absolutely be beaten. In fact, the US war record since WWII is abysmal. Great at winning battles, but if the opponent is willing to take the hits, the US cannot stay the course.
There are damn good reasons for trying to placate the US. The amount of damage they can do is insane.
But Trump is, even more than any other American President of my lifetime, a classic bully. If you back down to him, he takes that as a sign of weakness and that he can get more. He will keep pushing and taking till he has everything, or until you fight back and hurt him, even if it’s only just a little.
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The kidnapping of Maduro is fascinating and it’s interesting to speculate whether it was inside job. Some sources have claimed it, we’ll know by the actions the new leadership takes. If they let the oil majors and American “advisors” in, then the allegations are probably true. Other sources are saying that Acting President Delcy and the new leadership are actually more dedicated Chavistas than Maduro was. Until we see what the Venezuelan government we don’t know which storyline is true.
There’s also talk of taking Greenland and perhaps even Canada or Mexico.
This is all standard late Imperial collapse messiness.
But nothing has changed in the fundamentals. The US is in auto-catabolic collapse and so far there is no sign of the oligarchy losing control, which is the pre-condition for any attempts to change the trajectory. I’ve now seen data indicating China is leading in 89% of key tech fields, up from 80% a couple years ago. US industry is still collapsing. Research funding has been slashed. Final bastions like chips, AI, civil aviation and biotech/pharma are all under assault and will fall like dominoes over the next five to ten years. The US has no ship building capacity to speak of, is behind on drones and missiles (the key weapon systems of modern war) and can’t even make key components in its military chain without Chinese help. Dollar hegemony is no more than five years out from being lost.
None of the trends have changed, and there is zero sign that they will change. Actions against Venezuela will speed up the purchases of Russian and Chinese AA, missiles and drones by other countries to avoid this situation, and while China’s reluctant to send “advisors”, Russia is much less so and once the Ukraine war is over (this year or next) it’ll be happy to do so, with combat proven troops and tech. This is going to make South America more resistant to America and more determined to diversify away, not less.
As I have repeatedly said “Empires die bloody.” The US is no exception. But it is dying and NOTHING has changed which effects that. Imperial power in the modern world is entirely a product of industrial capacity and technological supremacy, with resources and population placing upper limits on what industry can accomplish.
The US is done, this is just the thrashing about of a dying giant. A lot of people will die or be hurt in the process, but, again, nothing of significance has changed.
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Didn’t expect this. Guess enough of the military wasn’t loyal or competent. Won’t work out well for the US in the longer run, but here we go again. Hell of a precedent to set. If I were Mexico’s President I’d be very worried. Hope she can trust enough of her military.
A lot will depend on if a new leader not approved by the US steps up, ideally a military man. Don’t know enough about Venezuela to have an opinion on this. Decapitation strikes don’t work on real movements (see Ansar-Allah.)
However, more likely a “unity government” will be announced, the US oil majors will be let back in and so on. It’ll be interesting to see if an insurgency springs up or not. If I were China (I’m not, and they tend to be more passive than I think is wise) I’d happily supply any insurgency that does happen.
Anyway, discuss here.
Update: US President #DonaldTrump said in a press conference that the US is going to “run #Venezuela.” Trump added that the #US will run the country until it decides a “safe, proper, and judicious” transition is in place. He said that the US does not want to be involved with “having somebody else get in and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years.”
Update 2: Could be that the kidnapping did nothing but replace Maduro with someone more competent. Alternatively Delcy, whom the US has acknowledged as head of state, lead the negotiations to sell out Maduro. We’ll see.
Statement from Vladimir Padrino López, Venezuela’s Minister of Defense and Commander-in-Chief of the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB):
—📄 BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF VENEZUELA
OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF THE MINISTRY OF PEOPLE’S POWER FOR DEFENSEThe Bolivarian National Armed… pic.twitter.com/XhDnVf4pqu
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) January 4, 2026
The Interstate Bridge crosses the Columbia River, connecting Oregon and Washington State. It has a moderate length, about 1km, and was built first in 1917 and then twinned in 1958.
There has been talk of replacing it for decades, but it was reported today that the estimated cost has risen to a range of $14bn – $18bn (USD), with the new estimate so high that is simply may not be feasible to replace the bridge. Part of the eye-watering price tag is the expected timeline for construction, with the replacement taking 20 years and finishing in 2045.
By way of comparison, and barely scratching the surface, China completed the Huajiang Canyon Bridge a few months ago. The bridge is not particularly long by Chinese standards, 2.8km, but is noteworthy for being the highest bridge in the world. It was constructed in under 4 years, for a cost of roughly $300mn USD.
Nothing more really needs to be said, in my opinion.