Trump Rebuilds Fortress America - a Masterful Exercise of Realpolitik

... 1. It took out the head of a major international organized crime cartel. The cartel, which the US has labeled the "Cartel de los Soles," or Cartel of the Suns, is responsible for cocaine trafficking into the United States. Maduro had turned the upper levels of the Venezuelan government, military, and security services into a huge organized crime entity. The Department of Justice is prosecuting Maduro and others for running what a federal grand jury indictment calls "a corrupt and violent narco-terrorism conspiracy."...

2. It took out the leader who flooded the United States with hardened criminals, organized terrorist gangs like Tren de Aragua, and millions of refugees. Once a new leadership is established in Venezuela, the country can take back its criminals and terrorists, and its refugees can return home and rebuild.

3. It took out the leader of an international terrorist organization. Maduro's Cartel of the Suns is a federally designated foreign terrorist organization, or FTO, which the State Department said is “responsible for terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere.”

4. It took out the sponsor of Hezbollah and other jihadists on our southern maritime border...

5. It took out the sponsor of Iranian surveillance and kamikaze drones on our southern maritime border...

6. It deprived Communist China of plans to deploy its navy around Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and the Panama Canal...

8. It restored and modernized our 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine...

9. The operation was not a war...

... Under the illegitimate Maduro regime, Venezuela had become the Latin American crossroads for all of the USA's principal enemies. Maduro was nurturing relationships with Russia, Hezbollah, and Iran. Worst of all, Venezuela was eagerly becoming a part of Red China’s Belt & Road Initiative.

As America's enemies were lining up Venezuela as their base of operations in the Western Hemisphere to cause mischief and destruction for the USA, Maduro was at the same time making Venezuela a trafficking point, safe haven, and enabler for all manner of narcoterrorist operations, ranging from Colombia's FARC to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel to Venezuela's homegrown cartel, Cartel de los Soles.

On top of all that, Venezuela had become a key player in the illegal alien invasion of the USA, shipping members of its very worst gangs to the USA in a deliberate and comprehensive destabilizing operation that might have worked had Donald Trump not won in 2024.

Venezuela's oil is of equal significance. The global and regional ambitions of both China and Russia are, in large part, dependent on the politics of petroleum, and the USA just deprived both of the cudgel afforded by friendly Venezuelan oil...

The reality is that the Maduro takedown was a Monroe Doctrine-driven necessity that has greatly enhanced the national security of the USA.

This was brilliant realpolitik on the part of President Trump and his team, and it has greatly enhanced America’s national security with zero casualties in what was a textbook example of the unique military capabilities that only America possesses...

... The importance of the Venezuelan pipeline to the Cuban communist regime cannot be underestimated. Cuba didn't buy oil from Venezuela - it was given to them...

... there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 Cuban intelligence and security operatives, not to mention medical professionals who were 'leased' to Maduro as another source of hard cash, who are now fleeing back to a crumbling Cuba...

When the strategic fuel reserves run dry in roughly 20 days, the Cuban military effectively loses its mobility...

There was a multi-billion-dollar, pseudo-clandestine cooperative drone program between the two countries that had been running with impunity for years. Iranian designs were manufactured in Venezuelan factories overseen by Iranian management and scientists. An article from this past September is pretty illuminating and should have been alarming, had it been more widely disseminated.

China, as I noted in my earlier post, now has a real problem on its road to Taiwan conquest. With the US in control of one of its two sources of oil and the other - Iran - looking as if the China-friendly regime there is not long for this world, Xi may literally not have the gas to go to war...

In snatching Maduro, Trump pulled the linchpin holding China’s global strategy together...

CCP war planners almost certainly never thought the U.S. would depose Maduro. Xi is unlikely to invade Taiwan under these new conditions, and Trump’s dominance over China’s oil supply can dent Xi’s seeming invincibility as party leader and the patron of the Global South, which is already bleeding...

The expected quick recovery of Iranian oil production, along with the slower, long-term recovery of Venezuela’s decrepit oil infrastructure atop the world’s largest reserves, will keep oil prices down. That’s good for America and terrible for Russia...

If the U.S. steers its policies properly, Venezuela and Iran will revert to selling their oil only in American dollars, and not Chinese yuan...

The loss of Venezuela and, ultimately, the Cuba domino, on top of Trump’s decisive move early in 2025 to ensure American interests in the Panama Canal, will deprive the CCP of any hope of establishing naval port access in the Caribbean...