Taking on the World
DJT is "running" Venezuela, can snowboarding in Greenland be far behind?
I want to highlight two bits of foreign policy news today - Venezuela and Greenland - on a day when our domestic Gestapo military force - ICE - shot and killed a woman in Minnesota.
Seems there is more than enough tragic foolishness to go around.
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Trump’s Venezuela Moves Pose a Challenge for G.O.P. in Congress
From the New York Times:
Trump administration officials on Wednesday outlined a sweeping albeit bare-bones plan to effectively assume control of selling oil from Venezuela indefinitely.
The details emerged throughout the day, as cabinet officials sought to fill in the gaps of what President Trump had sketched out on social media, where he announced late Tuesday that Venezuela would soon hand over tens of millions of barrels of oil to the United States.
For a little more realism and context about this confused and often crazy story I recommend Paul Krugman’s analysis today about the economics of the Trumpian oil adventure in Venezuela:
Oil prices are low mainly because of increased supply due to fracking, and the potential for more fracking is likely to keep them low for the foreseeable future. The breakeven price of fracked oil — the price at which it’s just profitable to drill a new well — is around $62 a barrel in the most important U.S. producing regions. While global oil prices fluctuate, they tend to return to that breakeven price after a few years:
And $62 a barrel wouldn’t be high enough to make investing in the Orinoco Belt, where the estimated breakeven is more than $80, profitable even if there were no political risks.
In short, Trump’s belief that he has captured a lucrative prize in Venezuela’s oil fields would be an unrealistic fantasy even if he really were in control of a nation that is, in practice, still controlled by the same thugs who controlled it before Maduro was abducted.
In other words: what the … ?
The White House’s Greenland problem starts growing on Capitol Hill
And in news from the frozen north … this from Semafor Media:
Even as most Republicans praise the president’s ouster of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro amid criticism from longtime US allies, some in the party worry that Trump’s intensifying interest in taking Greenland could harm the US’ standing in NATO. As Europe conveys its harsh disapproval, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Wednesday he would meet with Danish officials next week but declined to offer further details.
Ahead of that meeting, Republicans are hoping to see the administration cool down the way it talks about Greenland. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s Tuesday statement that “utilizing the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal” undercut lawmakers who had laughed off Trump’s remarks about taking the island.
“I think that military action against Denmark or Greenland should be off the table,” Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., told Semafor.
Asked if the administration should stop reminding its allies that Trump could use the US military in Greenland, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said “sure, they should,” adding that “we need to not threaten a peaceful nation that’s an ally where we have a military base already.”
For a little more realism and context about this confused and often crazy story I recommend perhaps the greatest joke ever told by the late comedian Norm Macdonald.
Macdonald appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2015 and told his joke. You can watch the video here and the partial transcript is below:
“I don’t know if you guys are history buffs or not, but in the early part of the previous century Germany decided to go to war and who did they go to war with – the world. That had never been tried before.”
MacDonald went on to recount that about 30 years later Germany, with “that guy” in charge, decided to go to war again, choosing as its enemy … the world.
“But you’d think at that point the world will go, listen Germany here’s the deal you know you’re not gonna be a country no more on account of you keep attacking the world … who do you think you are, Mars or something.”
“The bottom line is this — their plan is insane,” Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut said of Venezuela, and the same goes for Greenland.
All I can say is you’d think at this point the world would say, here’s the deal America, who do you think you are, Mars or something …
Trump’s Venezuela raid is being sold as a clean “win”, but the strategic ledger tells a very different story—and the implications run straight through India.I just broke down how the Maduro operation exposed America’s biggest weaknesses and road‑tested a three‑weapon playbook that’s already live in India’s information space.If you care about India’s strategic autonomy and how power actually operates behind headlines, this is worth a read.👉 Full analysis here:
https://substack.com/@geopoliticsinplainsight/p-183843075
Solid framing on the Krugman breakeven analysis here. What often gets missed is that Venezuelan heavy crude requires specific refining infrastructure that most US facilities aren't even set up for without major retrofits. I remmeber reading somewher that the last time we tried ramping up Orinoco imports, it took years and billions in upgrades. This whole thing feels more like theater than strategy.