so, the russians get free oil to pay off the debt, and will then resell it on the market at a higher price.

the dominant narrative is going to be that the trump administration tried to isolate venezuela and it backfired, and this is clearly true, but it's missing the point: america is an empire, and it needs to be able to control resources in order to survive. that's not going to stop me from criticizing it, but my criticism of empire can hardly be taken seriously by the empire itself.

the actual problem here is that they fucked around for weeks, trying to employ a series of hare-brained schemes to avoid the use of hard power. and, the lesson that the americans ought to learn from this - and they should have in fact learned this years ago, when the sanctions against iran failed - is that the era of soft power is over.

soft power required american hegemony; it rested on the assumption of total american military dominance, and the absence of any serious competitor. but, as the russians have regained their space as the second-tier power, and china has become increasingly assertive, those assumptions no longer hold.

all that soft power did here was give the russians time to move in.

they should have physically blockaded the country like i told them to; but, here we have it - they fucked around like a bunch of doddering old men and they've lost venezuela to the russians.

bravo.

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Venezuela-Halts-Oil-Exports-To-India.html