Selwyn Manning and I resumed the “A View from Afar” podcast series with a look into the end of liberal internationalism as a global ordering device and the likely rise of an illiberal international system in its wake. The future remain uncertain but one thing is certain: a page has been turned. See the show here.
Media Link: Pablo on the Bradbury Group.
I did an interview on the left-leaning Bradbury Group weekly podcast las Tuesday April 14th. There are other political types on the show but my segment starts around the 18:45 mark.
Iran War, Climate Crisis & 7.5% Inflation? | Ngarewa-Packer, Buchanan, Hooton | Bradbury Group
Rumble in a strategic jumble.
In boxing terms, Iran is doing an Ali rope-a-dope defense against the US. Strategically, the US, like Foreman, sought the fight in order to burnish its fearsome (some might say brutish or thuggish) reputation. In return, Iran had to take the fight because it came to it as a matter of reputation, honor and physical defense. For one. the fight was an (ill-advised and ill-conceived) opportunity; for the other, it is existential.
Theoretically a mismatch between a much more powerful state and a far weaker adversary, at a tactical level the conflict has turned into an asymmetrical war of attrition. Asymmetrical because it is not just about weapons capabilities but also about political and social will and comparative timetables. The US has midterm elections, domestic economic factors and the global system of trade to consider and operates on chronological calendar-defined notions of political, military and economic time. The Iranians have their existence to consider and operate on cloud time, not because they are dreamy but because like the movement of clouds, they operate with a different, far slower and longer conceptions of temporal movement. The US initially said that it would win in 6 or so weeks, and because that time frame has now been reached without a win, it has rushed to seek a means of saving face and going home–or even to the status quo ante. It will not achieve the latter but will have to do the former sooner or later. This is an own-goal that makes W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq look like strategic genius.
Saving face will be hard to do, so the MAGA administration may decide to double down and as Trump suggested a few days ago, turn the conflict into a religious civilisational war of annihilation with apocalyptic objectives. That may be delusional, but given what else has happened with the Trump 2.0 administration it is no longer in the realm of the impossible save for the intervention of the global community. Meanwhile, the Iranians have expected and prepared for as much.
For the moment the Iranians are doing the rope-a-dope, Middle Eastern style. Absorbing blows, shifting its centre of gravity, counter-punching just enough to stay in the fight–nimble, agile and patient. Under Trump and Hegseth the US is a lumbering Foreman looking for a knockout but, because it has no strategic rationale, instead is exhausting itself politically/diplomatically while doing so. Meanwhile, after the initial US/Israeli onslaught, Iran is recovering, conserving its resources, digging (further) in and keeping its powder dry for the next rounds.
The difference with the original Ali-Foreman bout is that Iran will not eventually counter-punch a knockout blow, but will force the US to retreat, reduce its barrages, stumble about seeking a different type of military opening, hope for a draw and/or quit. The apocalypse scenario will only delay and raise the costs of the eventual stalemate, even if Israel or the US decide to abandon all rationality and exercise their nuclear options against what still remains a non-nuclear weapons state. Then yes, armageddon may come.
Short of that, the post-fight scenarios will be negative for both aggressors as well. Neither the US or Israel will have the eyes and ears inside of Iran that they once had, Iran will still have its maritime toll system in the straits of Hormuz (basically a pay to play scheme in order to guarantee safe passage), will still have weapons and U235 stockpiles hidden away, and former US and Israeli allies and clients will re-calibrate their relationships with both while the world trade systems adjusts away from Western-centric financing, insuring and perhaps fossil fuel dependency itself (to include derivatives such as plastics and fertiliser as well as non-renewable energy supplies). As others have written, the ultimate irony is that Iran may well come out of this strengthened and the global of system of trade less US-dependent than they were before the preventative US/Israel wars of preventative aggression were launched against the Persian nation-State.
Think of it this way: the Arab oligarchies that thought that they sat safely under the US security umbrella now are being bombed by Iran because they allow the US to attack Iran from bases on their soil. Yet they are too afraid to counter-attack Iran because they fear the implications of a wider regional war on their material fortunes. NATO has now seen what the US security guarantee looks like in practice, and with Trump ranting about quitting the alliance and taking Greenland (while appeasing Putin with regard to Ukraine), they see what the future holds if they persist in trying to accomodate the bully. As for Taiwan and its US security guarantee–may the goddess protect them. Meanwhile, other Great Powers or Great Power wanna-be’s bide their time…
Getting back to the original boxing analogy, this juror’s score is TKO or win by points for the Iranians. Someone needs to tell the self-proclaimed champ that it is time to retire.
An analogy and an axiom.
Some words to the wise.
Analogy: Trump’s war against Iran might be the geopolitical equivalent of Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn. Built on arrogance born of easy bullying in lesser conflicts, he has overestimated his capabilities and grossly underestimated his opponent. Iran may be Trump’s Sitting Bull, but the analogy holds only if Custer had a malevolent manipulator like Netanyahu leading him to his ignominious comeuppance.
Axiom: History shows that the side that prevails in war is not always the one that can deliver greater punishment to the adversary but the one that can absorb the most punishment and keep on fighting. Superior weapons do not always overcome determination and will.
Remember that “asymmetrical warfare” does not only refer to differences in weapons capabilities, kinetic mass and quality of forces brought into battle. It also refers to the motives and commitment that adversaries bring to the fight.
The US is an instant gratification, short attention span culture with a low social pain threshold and technology fetish, especially when it comes to gadgets, weapons and war-fighting (which feeds into the other cultural traits). Iran is the birthplace and seat of a 6000 year old Persian culture that invented chess and carpet weaving. Both of these endeavors require consummate patience, perseverance, imagination, complex multidimensional thought and extended foresight that sees the “play” several moves ahead of the current moment. At the behest of an international pariah client-state partner unable to “go it alone,” the US has launched an opportunistic expeditionary war of aggression against Iran during a midterm election year. Iran is fighting an existential defensive war of attrition in and from its ancestral homeland against the US and its regional (including Arab) allies, including the pariah state.
Given these differences, the axiom could well explain the analogy.
Podcast Update: Latest “A View from Afar” is now available..
Selwyn Manning and I will be discuss the how’s and whys of the illegal Israeli/US war of aggression against Iran but with a different angle than most because we eventually focus on potential upsides to the conflict. Yes, you read that right. Rather than dwell on war porn and weapons fetishism, we outline some positive systemic repercussions and consequences looking forward.
That is our bias for hope.
You can find the show here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtJOeVMshc8
Counter-Force versus Counter-Value in Conflict.
Given the amount of dis/misinformation being pushed about the nature of the conflict between the Israel-US alliance and Iran, it might be good to understand some basic concepts. I will leave aside for the moment that blatant illegality of the US/Israel preventative war of aggressive choice on Iran and instead concentrate on the nature of their respective approaches to the conflict when seen in broad context.
Counter-force strikes are lethal kinetic operations against “hard” targets like military installations, command and control bunkers, air, land and naval platforms, missile depots, launchers and launching sites, and anything that is involved in an enemy’s ability to mass and project force. This includes intelligence-gathering and military communications grids and even satellite surveillance and sensor stations. The key to the definition is that the targets are identifiably military or military-related in nature. The purpose of counter-force strikes is to degrade or eliminate the enemy’s military capabilities and ability to fight whether or not it has the will to continue to do so. Along with strikes on airfields and naval depots, Ukraine’s attacks on missile and drone production sites in Russia are examples of counter-force targeting,
Counter-value strikes are lethal kinetic operations undertaken against “soft” targets. The include all non-combatants and non-military infrastructure like civilian power grids, water treatment plants, hospitals, schools, churches, athletic and community facilities and anything that is not directly involved in a military effort. Counter-value strikes are generally prohibited under international law, including the Laws of War, but have continue to be used as a psychological weapon whose purpose is to undermine the collective morale of and willingness to continue support for the fight by the targeted population. This can be done to provoke a popular uprising, prompt socially disruptive internal refugee flows and to foment political unrest, or can simply be designed to psychologically break people and destroy the material and social cohesion of society.
The firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo in WW2, as well as the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were counter-value strikes. The Japanese military campaigns in East Asia, particularly in China and Korea, were mostly counter-value in nature. The Russian drone campaign against civilian targets in Ukraine is a recent example. So are most terrorist attacks regardless of who commits them. Assaults by military forces on civilian targets with the objective of eliminating popular support for insurgencies, be they in Gaza, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chechnya or Afghanistan, are another instance of counter-value targeting. All hark to a previous era where unlimited wars of annihilation were waged by societies, not just military forces representing them. As exercises in collective punishment, they are all contraventions of international law.
Long term readers will remember when I posted here at KP about the error of thinking that the nuclear doctrine of “mutual assured destruction” (MAD) still applied to contemporary nuclear targeting strategies. Killing cities is a counter-value proposition, and in the days of dumb bombs and inaccurate guidance and surveillance technologies, was deemed the necessary means of bringing wars to their earliest conclusion (although the repercussive effects would remain for decades). Heavier throw-weights (warheads, as measured in mega or kilotons of nuclear explosive yields) compensated for inaccuracy (as measured by Circular Error Probables (CEPs), which is the circumference around a target point within which a warhead can be expected to fall). But as military technological advancements took hold by the 1970s, MAD was replaced with “flexible response,” where nuclear strikes were first directed at counter-force targets like ICBM missile silos, air and naval bases with nuclear weapons presence. CEPs were reduced to meters as distances and numbers of warheads increased per missile launched, which along with real-time manoeuvrable guidance systems allowed the use of lower throw-weights on more accurately designated counter-force targets.
Having killed the enemy’s response capabilities, surrender can be compelled or negotiated with the defenceless decision-makers on the other side. If that fails, their societies remain as easy counter-value targets. That logic now spans the spectrum of warfare capabilities from the battlefield to the strategic level.
In conventional wars, militarily superior actors–those with dominant military capabilities and resource bases–prefer counter-force targeting because it suits their strengths and degrades the opponent’s military capabilities without excessive “collateral” damage amongst civilians. As the old saying goes, after the strikes have achieved their strategic objectives there needs to be someone to negotiate with and a society that is capable of restoring some sense of functionality to its institutions and administrative and logistical capabilities. Removing a threatening military presence without removing or destroying its host society is seen as the most cost-effective means of achieving post-war peace and stability on the dominant actor’s terms.
Military inferior actors–say, guerrilla groups or less powerful states (as measured in military capabilities, resource bases and social support for political decision-making processes and institutions)–prefer to engage in counter-value strikes. They cannot afford to fight toe-to-toe against a more powerful foe or engage in a counter-force wars of attrition. That only plays to the stronger opponent’s strengths and hastens inevitable defeat. Think of Saddam Hussein’s strategy in the first Gulf War (Desert Storm), where he tried to use old Soviet era tactics to confront the US military and its allies in Kuwait and Iraq as if they were peer competitors. Instead, “Shock and Awe” did not go well for Saddam’s forces. The war lasted six and a half months and although Saddam was allowed to remain in power because no better options were deemed to be available, it was believed that he had learned a lesson and returned to his “box.” As it turned out, it just set the stage for the second Gulf War and his overthrow a decade later.
Most militarily inferior leaders are not as foolish as Saddam was and do not “stand up” to fight countries like the US and Israel on symmetrical terms. Instead, their best bet is to resort to unconventional, irregular warfare tactics that place a premium on counter-value targeting and flexibility of maneuver as part of widening and prolonging the conflict into non-military spheres. They seek to involve the enemy populations and neutral actors in the fight, making it an ongoing engagement with economic and social repercussions that extend far beyond the conflict zone. That raises the direct and indirect political and material costs of the militarily-superior opponent.
That is what Iran is doing in response to the US/Israeli attacks. While it does some counter-force operations against Israeli and forward-positioned US forces, its strategy is also based on counter-value targeting of civilian infrastructure in neighboring Arab countries as well as Israel. That includes key shipping lanes and transportation/logistical hubs. The counter-value targeting is illegal, to be sure. But from the Iranian perspective it is a necessary part of its defensive strategy against the military superiority deployed against it. It cannot win the war on military terms, although it might be able to force a stalemate if the will of the US (and perhaps Israeli) public turns against continuing the war, something particularly significant given that the US holds midterm elections in November.
Raising the economic, social and political costs of the war, including but not limited to oil prices, is one way that the Iranians can compensate for their militarily inferior position. Threatening civilian targets in the Arab oligarchies, along with the threats to shipping through the Straits of Hormuz, has an adverse ripple effect on tourism, air and sea passenger travel, merchant cargo and air freight prices and supply chain schedules, insurance premiums, and much more. It also sows fear in the populations of states that Iranians target because of their alignment with the US and Israel, even if they do so in a passive way (say, by allowing military overflights and/or forward US basing). That in turn can pose domestic problems for Gulf oligarchies because even if they aren’t democracies and are as closed when it comes to governance as is the revolutionary Islamic regime in Iran, most have significant Shiite minorities living and working in them. Killing the Shiites’ spiritual leader as well as the head of the Islamic State of Iran, Ayatolla Khamenei, does not sit well with his millions of co-religionists, so Iranian attempts to stoke tensions along sectarian lines via kinetic operations on civilian targets inside Sunni Arab territories can be expected as part of its counter-value campaign. In other words, it brings the war home to the Arab oligarchs.
For their part, the US and Israel have engaged in a hybrid or mixed conflict model: they use both counter-force and counter-value strikes as part of their military campaigns. They both emphasise to the public the successes of the former, including the Israeli strike on the compound that killed Khamenei (along with his wife, daughter-in-law and grandson and his son-turned-successor badly wounded). The MAGA administration boasts of destroying dozens of Iranian warships (including a lightly armed frigate that was over 2000 nautical miles from Iranian waters when it was torpedoed off of the coast of Sri Lanka after participating in an Indian-led naval exercise) and aircraft as well as hundreds of land-based military targets (e.g., missile launchers and weapons storage facilities).They are less keen to acknowledge their counter-value strikes, such as the bombing of a girls school that resulted in over 170 deaths (the US says it had dated targeting coordinates for the double Tomahawk missile strikes on the site), a desalination plant and an oil refinery in Tehran, to say nothing of numerous civilian buildings throughout the country. (Incidentally it is against international law to target water supplies and bomb facilities that result in great environmental damage, such as the refinery Tehran).
From the various US statements about why it chose to make war on Iran–first to destroy its nuclear program (supposedly destroyed last year), then eliminate it as the “greatest sponsor of terrorism in the world” (although the 9/11 attackers, al-Qaeda, Taliban and ISIS are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim and unrelated to Iran and recent mass attacks in the West have been carried out mostly by rightwing extremists), and then to pursue regime change, to now a bit of “all of the above”– it is clear that the hybrid warfare strategy is basically a catch-all assault blanket designed to destroy Iranian society as much as its military and political regime. In other words, it is an attack on the Iranian nation-State, not just those at the top of the bureaucratic ladder (and now subjected to “decapitation” strikes).
Perhaps the US believes that a popular uprising will emerge from the rubble and that someone like the son of the ousted dictator Shah Reza Pahlavi will restore the Peacock Throne. If so and inspire of what Iranian exiles in the West claim about the strength of organised opposition to the Islamic Republic inside and outside of Iran, they are deluded and will be disappointed because the revolutionary regime is resilient, determined, well-prepared for a protracted struggle and very much infiltrated into every aspect of Iranian life. Plus, Persian ethno-nationalism is a very strong ideological bind in Iranian society, so even if the US and Israel attempt to “Balkanise” Iran via the arming and funding of irredentist ethnic groups like the Kurds, it is unlikely that Iranian society will atomise along ethnic lines over the long-term. But if it does, that will only lead to more instability and conflict as primordial divisions spill into modern conflict modalities.
Israel has a different strategic agenda. Convincing the US to join it in its attack on Iran citing “existential” grounds is just part of the larger plan to redraw the map of the Middle East in an image more favorable to Israel. With an accommodation having been reached with its Sunni Arab neighbors on regional security issues (including intelligence-sharing and non-support for an independent Palestinian state), October 7 was the catalyst-precipitant for the move, which has been decades in the making amongst Zionist strategists and intellectuals. Once Hamas gave Netanyahu the excuse–and saved him from his ongoing legal troubles in the process–with its indiscriminate as well as ill-fated assault on Israeli civilians as well as military personnel, the gears were set in motion for a multi-fronted/multi-pronged hybrid war involving conventional and unconventional means (and perhaps nuclear weapons if the desired geopolitical outcomes of the war look increasingly unachievable by conventional means).
US and Israeli war-mongering is also a double “wag the dog” scenario. Netanyahu needed to divert attention from his court case and the costs of occupying Gaza and the West Bank, whereas Trump needed to divert attention from the Epstein files and his unpopular domestic policy agenda. For Israel, destruction of Iran as a nation-state is seen as a way to remove a longer-term existential threat to not only Israel but Jews is general (because Iranian proxies have targeted Jews around the world). This is why the possibility of an Israeli first strike use of nuclear weapons on Iran cannot be discounted. Should the US quit the fight and/or the war bog down and become a Ukrainian-style quagmire, then the resort to nuclear strikes may be put on the table. Given Israel’s record when it comes to international conventions and the Laws of War, that is a worrisome prospect. Given the global community’s record when it comes to stopping aggression and thwarting nuclear weapons first use (even the US refuses to renounce first use strikes and Israel certainly does not), who is going to stop them?
When militarily-superior actors become frustrated by their lack of success in forcing opponent’s capitulation via counter-force targeting, they are tempted to resort to counter-value targeting in order to intimidate and force the opponent’s population into submission. That denies the opponent its support base and cannon fodder in a protracted war scenario. But it also is a type of state terrorism in wartime and as such a war crime. And it often has the opposite effect, as besieged populations abandon short-term internecine enmities in favour of uniting against the common aggressor. Think of it this way: whether the parent’s of the murdered schoolgirls opposed the ayatollahs or not, they all know very well who killed their daughters. It was not Khamenei and they will not forget.
Given that the US has been the most consistently at-war country in the world over the past 60 years and Israel has consistently used counter-value targeting as a social control instrument in occupied Gaza and the West Bank over the same period, both have dark records of moving from counter-force to counter-value operations depending on tactical circumstances, This is more the case for the US, where failures in strategic framing and overly-optimistic reliance on weapons technologies and belief in “effects-based” results have left gaps in short-and medium-term goal-setting and contingency planning. Be it in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran, the US has consequently veered into counter-value operations well beyond the counter-force objectives of its initial rules of engagement. In a sense, the move to counter-value targeting is a sign of the desperation on the part of political and military leaders when their counter-force superiority does not produce the results that they anticipated in the (short) time frames that they hoped for (remember that the US likes its wars short and snappy, much like the video games many of its soldiers played before they joined the kinetic real world).
For Israel, the resort to counter-value targeting pursues both tactical and strategic objectives. At the broadest level, this is what distinguishes Israeli from US military objectives in Iran. It can be argued that there is some legitimacy of the Israeli position in that some of the extreme anti-Semitic statements of Iranian leaders over the last 4 decades have involved threats to eliminate the “Zionist Entity” in its entirety. Clearly that is a poor choice of words when it comes to menacing a nuclear-armed regional rival backed by a declining superpower, but in any event it has given Israel a (largely contrived) justification for its actions along “kill or be killed” lines.
The summary outlook for this war is for it to slow down, widen and become more of a counter-value than a counter-force affair that costs millions in treasure and litres of blood, and eventuate with a status quo that is different at the margins but essentially the same at its core–but all at a far higher price in terms of international stability and global order.
The situation distilled: This war has plenty of background but the immediate reason is that two powerful and malevolent guys and their respective support retinues needed and therefore staged a diversion from their respective personal and political foibles by picking a fight with some other distasteful foreign fellows just because they could.
Others are and will suffer the consequences long after they are gone.
US and Israel gone rogue.
First the US kidnaps the president of a sovereign state after killing more than a score of civilians on the open seas without warrant or evidence of wrongdoing. Now it kills the head of state and supreme religious leader of another sovereign country, teaming up with a regime credibly accused of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank in order to do so. Whatever one may think of the individuals and regimes targeted (I happen to not be a fan of either) or the narrative spin given by Western governments and media, the selective unilateral application of force without international approval in the absence of imminent threat from either country demonstrates two things: 1) the US and Israel have gone rogue; and 2) in doing so they have set a dangerous precedent for others to follow suit (think China with regard to Taiwan). That this act of belligerence is taken in part as a “wag the dog” diversion from Trump’s Epstein and domestic policy problems as well as Netanyahu’s legal troubles only makes the matter worse.
It also reinforces a core notion of nuclear deterrence theory: having nuclear weapons deters attacks. North Korea, China and Russia are all despotic but nuclear armed. They are not attacked by other nuclear states (and for those who might raise the issue, Ukrainian strikes on Russia are retaliatory and limited). Pakistan and India are nuclear armed but limit their military encounters vis a vis each other to conventional weapons. Same with Pakistan and Afghanistan–their conflict is limited to guerilla and conventional exchanges. Israel has nukes so is not subject to full scale attacks, again, just limited and often unconventional sporadic strikes by missiles and guerrillas/terrorists.
But Venezuela and Iran are not nuclear armed (even if the latter is trying to develop that capability for the reasons described here), so they are attacked with impunity. This confirms the deterrent value of even a small number of deliverable nuclear weapons, including so-called “dirty” bombs. Even just having one any day will keep full scale aggressors away.
Whatever the outcome of the US/Israeli attacks on Iran both short- and long-term, and in spite of the Western media fascination with war and weapons porn, things seem poised to get worse as a result. Iran has limited experience with democracy (and the CIA helped orchestrate a coup against its last democratically-elected president in the early 1950s), so even if Mossad and the CIA are organizing post-conflict political forces to replace the theocratic regime, there is no guarantee that what follows will be democratic (and if people think that the Shah Reza Pahlavi’s son living in LA is the answer, they are sorely mistaken). Plus, Iran’s scattershot military response against Gulf States is designed to inflame the Sunni/Shiite divisions within them as well as anti-US and anti-Israel sentiment. That could spell trouble for the Western-backed sultanistic dictatorships that control them (none of the Arab Gulf States are democratic, which makes the hypocrisy of US rhetoric justifying its aggression against Iran and Venezuela more obvious. Especially when Trump honors and does business with Saudi prince Mohammed bin-Salman, who ordered the murder of US citizen and Washington Post columnist Jamal Kashoggi in 2018 ). Moreover, Iran and its proxies have cells in many foreign countries, including the US, which will now be likely activated because of the egregious nature of the preventative and/or regime change-focused war of opportunity (as opposed to a war of necessity) unleashed upon it.
As for the response inside Iran, it is difficult to ascertain. Even with Mossad/CIA agitators in place, Persian nationalism and anti-interventionist sentiment against “the Great Satan” and “Zionist Entity” may prove a significant obstacle to installing a pro-Western regime. The Revolutionary Guards can clearly see that they have nothing left to lose by doubling down on their hardline response to the US and Israeli calls for an uprising and coup, and relying on airpower alone will not allow the US and Israel to impose their political will on Iranian society (which besides the usual rural-urban divides also includes religious hardline and moderate divisions, modern secular elements versus cultural traditionalists, educated versus uneducated sectors, gender divisions, etc.). In other words, while prudent from a US/Israeli perspective, the “no boots on the ground” approach may be insufficient to enforce regime change on Iranian society even if the new regime is autocratic as well. That leaves the field for other actors to get involved, even if in surreptitious ways.
In the previous KP post, I spoke of the death knell of liberal internationalism exemplified by the Epstein client list. Now, with the US and Israel having gone rogue, we witness the demise of Westphalian principles like respect for sovereignty amongst nation-states, to say nothing of concepts like jus ad bellum (reasons for war). On top of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Israel’s scorched earth approach to its fight against Palestinians and unlawful aggression at home and abroad by a number of other regimes around the world, the package of precedents being opened up is ominous for world peace and international order.
Time to button up and batten down.
Military Extortion as Coercive Diplomacy (UPDATED).
The lethal theatre of the absurd that has been the Trump administration’s sabre rattling performances in the Central American basin over the last few months culminated with the military attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president and his wife in the early hours of Saturday morning, Caracas time. The tactical precision of the special operation was excellent, efficient and low cost when it came to human lives. While the exact number of Venezuelan casualties are yet unknown (although there have been reports of dozens killed, including Cubans), US forces suffered eight injuries and although some of the helicopters deployed suffered shrapnel damage, all assets returned to base safely. From a military tactical standpoint, the operation was a success and a demonstration of capability.
Even so, the broader picture is more complicated and therefore less straightforward when it comes to assessing the aftermath. Here I shall break down some of the main take-aways so far.
The strike on Venezuela was interesting because it was a hybrid decapitation and intimidation strike. Although US forces attacked military installations in support of the raid (such as by destroying air defence batteries), they only went after Maduro and his wife using their specialist Delta Force teams. That is unusual because most decapitation strikes attempt to remove the entire leadership cadres of the targeted regime, indulging its civilian and military leadership. They also involve seizing ports and airfields to limit adversary movements as well as the main means of communications, such as TV and radio stations, in order to control information flows during and after the event. The last thing that the attacker wants is for the target regime to retain its organizational shape and ability to continue to govern and, most importantly, mount an organised resistance to the armed attackers. This is what the Russians attempted to do with their assault on Kiev in February 2023.
That did not happen in this instance. Instead, the US left the entirety of the Bolivarian regime intact, including its military leadership and civilian authorities. Given reports of CIA infiltration of Venezuela in the months prior to the attack and the muted Venezuelan response to it, it is likely that US agents were in “backdoor” contact with members of the Bolivarian elite before the event, providing assurances and perhaps security guarantees to them (amnesty or non-prosecution for crimes committed while in power) in order to weaken their resistance to the US move. US intelligence may have detected fractures or weakness in the regime and worked behind Maduro’s back to assure wavering Bolivarians that they would not be blamed for his sins and would be treated separately and differently from him.
This might explain Vice President Delcy Rodriguez’s promise to “cooperate” with the US. That remains to be seen but other Bolivarian figures like Interior Minister Diosdaro Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, notorious for their leadership of Maduro’s repressive apparatus, may not be similarly inclined given that their post-Maduro treatment is likely to be very different–and they still may have control over and the loyalty of many of the people under their commands.
Trump says that the US “will run” the country for the foreseeable future until a regime transition scenario is developed, but in light of the limited nature of the military operation, it is unclear how the US proposes to do so. What is clear is that the US had real time intelligence from the CIA and perhaps regime insiders that allowed them to track and isolate Maduro in a moment of vulnerability. Ironically, for Maduro this proved fortunate, because given the surveillance that he was subjected to, any attempt to escape Caracas could have resulted in his death by drone. Instead, he and his wife get to be a guest of the US federal justice system.
(As an aside, it is noteworthy that the Maduro’s were indicted on cocaine trafficking charges and possessions of machine guns. No mention is mentioned in the indictments of fentanyl, the justification for the extra-judicial killings of civilians at sea by US forces and one of the initial excuses for attacking Venezuela itself (the so-called “fentanyl shipment facilities”). Possession of machine guns is not a crime in Venezuela, certainly not by a sitting leader facing constant violent threats from abroad. So the US is basically charging them with unlicensed firearms violations in the US rather than in Venezuela–where it has no jurisdiction–even though they do not reside there while switching the basis for the kidnapping from a fictitious accusation to something that may have more evidentiary substance. But in truth, the legal proceedings against the Maduros are no more than a fig leaf on the real reasons for their extraordinary rendition).
Even if limited in nature as a decapitation strike, the immediate result of the US use of force is intimidation of the remaining Bolivarians in government. Unless they regroup and organise some form of mass resistance using guerrilla/irregular warfare tactics, thereby forcing the US to put boots on the ground in order to subdue the insurgents (and raising the physical and political costs of the venture), at some point the post-Maduro Bolivarians will be forced to accept power-sharing with or replacement by the US backed opposition via eventual elections, and as Trump has indicated, the US will take control of Venezuelan oil assets (in theory at least). In his words: “they (US oil companies) will make a lot of money.” For this to happen the US will maintain its military presence in the Caribbean and adjacent land bases, in what Marco Rubio calls “leverage” in case the Venezuelans do not comply as demanded. This is coercive diplomacy in its starkest form.
Put bluntly, this is an extorsion racket with the US military being used as the muscle with which to heavy the Bolivarians and bring them to heel. In light of Trump’s and the US’s past records, this should not be surprising. The question is, has the US read the situation correctly? Are the Bolivarians ao much disliked that the country will turn against them in droves and support an ongoing US presence in the country? Is the military and civilian leadership so weak or incompetent that they cannot rule without Maduro and need the US for basic governmental functioning (which is what the US appears to believe)? Have all of the gains made by lower class Venezuelans been eroded by Maduro’s corruption to the point that a reversal of the Bolivarian policy agenda in whole or in part is feasible? Will average Venezuelans, while thankful for the departure of the despot, accept abject subordination to the US and its puppets? Or will Cuban and Russian-backed civilian militias and elements in the armed forces retreat into guerrilla warfare. thereby forcing the US into a prolonged occupation without a clear exist strategy (i.e. deja vu all over again)?
There are some interesting twists to the emerging story. Maria Corina Machado, the CIA-backed opposition figure-turned-Nobel Peace Prize winner, has positioned herself to be the power behind the throne for Maduro’s heir apparent, Edmundo Gonzalez, who most election observers believe won the 2024 presidential elections but was denied office due to Maduro’s clearly fraudulent manipulation of the vote count. But Trump says that she “is not ready” and does not have the ” support” or “respect” within Venezuela to run the country. This seems to be code words for “too independent-minded” or “not enough of a puppet” (or even “female”) for Trump, who seems unaware of how a close overt association between his administration and any potential future Venezuelan leader may receive mixed reactions at home and abroad. In any event, sidelining Machado could have some unexpected repercussions.
Then there is the issue of how the US and its Venezuelan allies propose to purge the country of foreign actors like Hezbollah, Russians, Cubans and most importantly from an economic standpoint, the Chinese. Rounding up security operatives is one thing (although even that will not be easy given their levels of experience and preparation); dispossessing Chinese investors of their Venezuelan assets is a very different kettle of fish So far none of this appears to have been thought out in a measure similar to the planning of the military raid itself.
Finally, Trump’s claims that Venezuela “stole” US oil is preposterous. In 1976 a nationalisation decree was signed between the Venezuelan government–a democracy–and US oil companies where Venezuela gained control of the land on which oil facilities were located and received a percentage of profits from them while the private firms continued to staff and maintain the facilities in exchange for sharing profits (retaining a majority share) and paying sightly more in taxes. That situation remained intact until the 1990s, when a series of market-oriented reforms were introduced into the industry that loosened State management over it. After Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998 on his Bolivarian platform, that arrangement continued for a short time until 2001 when the Organic Hydrocarbon Law was reformed in order to re-assert State control and foreign firms began withdrawing their skilled labor personnel and some of their equipment when taxes were increased on them. By 2013 the oil infrastructure was decrepit and lacking in skilled workers to staff what facilities are still operating, so Chavez (by then on his death bed) expropriated the remaining private holdings in the industry.
This was clearly unwise but it was not illegal and certainly was not a case of stealing anything. Moreover, the Venezuelan oil industry limped along with help from Bolivarian allies like the PRC and Russia because it is the country’s economic lifeline (and cash cow for the political elite dating back decades). So it is neither stolen or completely collapsed. As with many other things, the complexities of the matter appear to be unknown to or disregarded by Trump in favour of his own version of the “facts.”
Regardless, the PRC and Russia have stepped into the breech and invested in Venezuela’s oil industry with people and equipment. They may resist displacement or drive a hard bargain to be bought out. It will therefore not be as simple as Trump claims it to be for US firms to return and “make a lot of money” from Venezuelan oil.
It is these and myriad other “after entry” (to use a trade negotiator’s term) problems that will make or break the post-Maduro regime, whatever its composition. In the US the word is that the US “broke it so now owns it,” but the US will never do that. It has seldom lived up to its promises to its erstwhile allies in difficult and complex political cultures that it does not understand. It has a very short attention span, reinforced by domestic election cycles where foreign affairs is of secondary importance. So it is easily manipulated by opportunists and grifters seeking to capitalise on US military, political and economic support in order to advance their own fortunes (some would say this of the MAGA administration itself). If this sounds familiar it is because it is a very real syndrome of and pathology in US foreign affairs: focus on the military side of the equation, conduct kinetic operations, then try to figure out what else to do (nation-build? keep the peace? broker a deal amongst antagonistic locals?) rather than simply declare victory and depart. Instead, the US eventually leaves on terms dictated by others and with destruction in its wake.
One thing that should be obvious is that for all the jingoistic flag-waving amongst US conservatives and Venezuelan exiles, their problems when it comes to Venezuela may just have started. Because now they “own” what is to come, and if what comes is not the peace and prosperity promised by Trump, Rubio, Machado and others, then that is when things will start to get real. “Real” as in Great Power regional conflict real, because launching a war of opportunity on Venezuela in the current geopolitical context invites responses in kind from adversaries elsewhere that the US is ill-equipped to respond to, much less control.
The precedent has been set and somewhere, perhaps in more than one theatre, the invitation to reply is open.
Stay tuned and watch this space.
A return to darkness.
In 1994 I was the lead author of the US National Security Strategy for the Western Hemisphere (in reality, the region below the US-Mexico border and adjacent waters). In that section of the Annual US National Security Strategy Report (which covers the entire globe), my colleagues and I focused on regional democracy promotion and cooperative security arrangements after years of authoritarianism and internal conflicts in Latin America, focusing on civil-military relations, conflict resolution and non-traditional security concerns like environmental degradation, drug production and so-called “human security” issues (e.g. poverty alleviation) that could be mitigated via international military assistance and cooperation programs. That section, as with other regions around the globe, was written with input from various other foreign policy agencies, including the intelligence community, State Department, NSC, Treasury, Customs and Immigration and various service branches, although the Office of the Secretary of Defense compiled and published the report under the Department of Defense banner.
An underlying premise of our work at that time was to try to end the history of US military and grey are/covert (and obsessive anti-communist) interventionism in the region, in particular by deliberately ignoring the 1823 Monroe Doctrine and 1904 Roosevelt Corollary that saw Latin America as the US “backyard” where it played the role of regional policeman via Gunboat Diplomacy and other Big Stick means.
It is therefore with profound alarm that I read that the 2025 US National Security Strategy for the Western Hemisphere explicitly bases itself on the Monroe Doctrine (which is neither a Treaty or sanctioned by international law), and adds a “Trump Corollary” to the Roosevelt Corollary. The Trump Corollary states that the US is the determinant of Latin American fortunes rather than these stemming from the sovereign exercise of a Latin American country’s free will.
Implicit in this strategy is the notion that the US will and can intervene I the internal affairs of Latin American states. It’s interventionism is not guided by support for democracy and/or opposition to autocracy. That is irrelevant to the new US strategic calculus. What matters is the age-old geopolitical concern with having “friendly” and pro-US regimes installed in and foreign competitions pushed out so that the US (or better said, Trump-connected interests) can maximise regional opportunities of an economic and political sort.
The 2025 National Security Strategy for the Western Hemisphere is an outright claim to unilateral US imperialist interventionism. Seen in that light, it frames recent US actions in the region in sharper (and darker) relief and explains its recent meddling in the internal affairs of places like Argentina, Brazil, Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador and Venezuela as component parts of this new (neo) imperialist strategy.
That augers poorly for regional peace and security. The PRC is now the leading trade and investment partner of several LATAM countries and is unwilling to surrender its interests to the US (or better said, Trump-aligned economic interests). It has a satellite tracking facility in Argentine Patagonia and is heavily involved in port management in several countries (including a newly opened container processing port facility and transportation hub in Peru, the largest of its kind in Latin America). It is deeply involved in resource extraction and infrastructure development throughout the region. This is the type of soft power influence that the US used to wield, but which is now being replaced by crony capitalism, election meddling and Gunboat Diplomacy. Although there is much to dislike about its approach, the PRC “does business” with Latin Americans as partners and sovereign equals. The US rattles sabres and extra-judicially kills Latin American civilians under pretexts, regarding its Southern neighbours as nothing more than assorted lawn furniture that can be arranged at will or whimsey.
At some point push may come to shove. The US currently has the strategic advantage over the PRC and other extra-regional competitors, but they may only be temporary as the MAGA administration hollows out the federal government and sows partisan political and social division within US society. In a weird sense, the US could wind up like the USSR at the end of the Cold War: a bloated military machine standing on a fractured society and skewed oligarchical economy where the interests of a connected few prevail over the needs of the many.
Whatever happens, born of ignorance and hubris, this year’s US National Security Strategy is a retrograde turn in its relations with its Latin American neighbours.
Rats fleeing a moral slum.
Apropos the Washington Post/CNN stories regarding Pete Hegseth verbally instructing the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) Commanding Officer (Admiral Frank Bradley) and SEAL Team 6 to “kill them all” when survivors of a missile strike were seen clinging to the wreckage.
Well, the inevitable happened once the story got out. After weeks bragging about ordering attacks on supposed drug-running boats that have killed 81 people so far (no tangible evidence of drug-smuggling has been provided and even if they were involved in such activities, the penalty for drug-smuggling is imprisonment, not summary extrajudicial execution at sea), Trump and Hegseth are trying to distance themselves from the order to kill shipwrecked survivors of a US military strike on a unarmed civilian boat by throwing Admiral. Bradley under the bus.
Trump says that Hegseth told him that he did not order the strike and that he (Trump) would not have ordered it if he knew about it. Hegseth says that he did not give the “kill them all” order and did not watch the live feed coverage of the second strike (aka “double tap”) that killed the survivors even though he watched the rest of the operation up until that moment. They both pointed the finger for giving the “pull the second trigger” order at Admiral Bradley, who according to the original story passed it down the chain of command to SEAL Team 6, who then fired the Hellfire missile that killed the two people treading water. In total, 11 people died in the two strikes. No drugs were located.
This sequence of blame-shifting was predictable because Trump and Hegseth have no sense of honour or ethical compass guiding their actions in what conservative writer George Will calls a “sickening moral slum of an administration.” We can only hope that Admiral Bradley, whose career is finished regardless of who ultimately gave the double-tap kill order, has receipts or a document trail that will provide evidence of where the illegal order came from and who, precisely, gave it. Because killing shipwrecked survivors, during times of war and certainly doing times of peace, is a war crime, a crime under US and International law, and a violation of the Geneva Conventions and US code of military justice. That the people in question were defenceless civilians not engaged in a real conflict with the US makes things worse and opens up the possibility of criminal liability for those involved in giving and executing the order.
Interestingly, Admiral Alvin Holsey, the previous commander of the Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which is the lead command involved in the military pressure campaign against Venezuela and its supposed drug-running activities, tendered his resignation 45 days after the Sept. 2 double tap strikes. He was not involved in the chain of command that conducted the strikes so likely was ignorant of operational details (SEAL Team Six was answering to JSOC, not SOUTHCOM). He had not yet completed the first year of his three year term and may have to forfeit the fourth star promotion to Admiral that came with his appointment to be the Southern Command boss (that is significant in terms of his retirement benefits). It could well be that Admiral Holsey resigned in protest against the illegal extrajudicial kills of mariners at sea. Should he be called before Congress to testify under oath about what he knew and when he knew about the double-tap and other kinetic operations carried out in the SOUTHCOM Area of Responsibility (AOR), things could get interesting.
Likewise, the Post story claims to be quoting two people in the room when Hegseth gave the “kill them all” order, with corroborating statements by five other people with direct knowledge of the operation. Given the high level decision-making involved, these are likely to be senior military officers and/or civilian Defense Department personnel. Should they be requested to appear before Congressional investigations committees and be questioned under oath, things could well get dicey for Hegseth in particular, but potentially for Trump as well if he knew about the “kill them all” policy in advance of the strikes.
As things stand, while Admiral Holsey will retire honorably, Admiral Bradley could well wind up court-martialed, sentenced and imprisoned, dishonorably discharged and all retirement benefits forfeited. For a 35 year service naval office and former SEAl, this is a tremendous fall from grace. The same could well happen to others in the chain of command that fateful night.
Which is why I hope that they carry receipts in the form of documentary evidence about the mission.
Even so, the Supreme Court has ruled the Trmp is immune from prosecution for actions taken in his official capacity as President (including murder). Trump can use his pardon powers to shield Hegseth, Bradley and others in the chain of command who participated in the operation. Trump has already demonstrated his willingness to exercise his pardon power as he deems fit, including pardoning war criminal Eddie Gallagher, a former SEAL.
Whatever happens, one can only hope that this is the beginning of the end for the corrupt and incompetent (yet dangerous) deck of cards known as the MAGA White House. Because just like the garish gold decor now festooning its walls like it was a Liberace showcase in Vegas, the term “gilded” in its original sense seems most appropriate.
Shiny on the outside, rotten on the inside.