...a country in Central America that sits on an enormous pool of oil. Formerly the most prospereous country in the region, it became infested with Commies sniffing almost unlimited wealth. It turned out the wealth wasn't unlimited, the economy collapsed under the clownish Hugo Chavez, the murder rate exceeded places like Honduras and El Salvador. A significant proportion of the populace refugeed to Colombia and points south...watchers in the U.S. had pushed for indictments for a long time, but policymakers never found the opportune moment. That changed in March, as oil prices collapsed following the breakdown of OPEC+ talks between Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
and Russia. Oil makes up 98 percent of the Venezuelan economy, and the revenues from it have provided the socialist government cover for decades of economic mismanagement. "Once the geopolitics flipped in the U.S’s favor, the administration decided to accelerate the pace of its actions against the Venezuelan regime," Berg says.
Maduro had already suffered a blow when President Trump imposed sanctions on Rosneft for facilitating the Venezuelan oil trade. The Russians attempted to channel Venezuelan oil through a different subsidiary, TNK Trading International, but the Treasury Department swiftly moved to sanction that entity as well. And the shock from the coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
pandemic brought the price of oil so low that the Russians have now ceased operations in Venezuela altogether.
As oil revenue dries up, cutting off illicit revenue could push the regime toward insolvency. To that end, the U.S. Southern Command has moved three destroyers, a littoral combat ship, and surveillance aircraft into the Caribbean to interdict drug shipments in and out of Venezuela. The mobilization of some of the military’s most expensive assets marks a dramatic break from the diplomacy-driven anti-Maduro efforts of the past year. "This is about as pressure-intensive as the U.S. government can get," says Berg. Squeezing the regime’s finances could cripple Maduro’s ability to buy off military personnel, spurring long-awaited defections. But Frank Mora, a former Defense Department official, points out that the extent of Maduro’s dependence on drug money is unclear, and maintaining SOUTHCOM operations will incur continuing costs. "I don’t think that these assets can be deployed for more than 4‐6 weeks," Mora says. "There’s a maintenance cycle, a deployment cycle, and these assets are required elsewhere," which adds urgency to SOUTHCOM’s maneuvers.