Here’s what’s probably happening in Venezuela today. All over the country, army bases are quietly moving weapons and explosives out of storage and handing them out to loyal members of the ruling United Socialist Party. If Trump does put American “boots on the ground”, the resistance will want those weapons to be widely distributed and well hidden.
Trump was coy about how many boots he would send into Venezuela in his Mara-Lago “victory speech” last Saturday, but if he really intends to run the country until everything is “fixed” and the oil is flowing freely, it will be a lot of boots for a long time. Sooner or later, if there is an occupation, there will be a guerilla war against it. From Napoleon in Spain two centuries ago to the U.S.
army in Iraq two decades ago, military occupations by foreigners usually generate armed resistance movements. These will always be condemned as terrorism by the invaders, because resistance fighters cannot win stand-up fights against air strikes and armoured vehicles. Instead, they use car bombs, assassinations and other low-tech methods that can be seen as unfair and even criminal.
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Nevertheless, they usually win in the end, because the occupiers are fighting nationalism and sometimes also religion. It’s easy to conquer countries, but it’s getting harder to control them. We don’t yet know if this scenario will play out in Venezuela, because as far as we know there are not yet any U.S.
troops on the ground there. Without them, Trump has limited leverage on the Venezuelan regime, which has not been decapitated or even seriously crippled by the kidnapping of former bus-driver Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flore. So far, Trump has enjoyed the show.
“I watched it literally like I was watching a television show,” he said. “And if you would’ve seen the speed, the violence … it’s just, it was an amazing thing, an amazing job that these people did.” But it’s not clear if the U.S. president even understands that he now has to make a critical decision: Boots or no boots.
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