Let's talk about Trump, chess, Venezuela, Ajax.... - Belle of the Ranch

[TexasTowelie]

Well, howdy there Internet people. It's Belle again. So, today we're going to talk about Trump, chess, and Venezuela.

We've got a question and a little history lesson today that might shed some light on why many analysts are skeptical of the ultimate success of Trump's Venezuela move. Here's the question. You've implied that this might not work. I'm looking at Maduro in his little jumpsuit and cuffs and think it looks like it worked to me. It sure seems like Trump plays chess while you're playing checkers. What? Do you think they're going to come try to get him back? Right. Because the leader of the country being captured means the end of the game like it did when we captured Saddam in 2003.

See, this isn't a chess game. It's foreign policy and the game doesn't end when the king or king and queen in this case are captured. The game goes on. It's not chess. It's an international poker game where everybody's cheating. The effects of one hand being played sometimes don't reveal themselves for quite some time.

Here's a little history lesson. In a recent video, I dropped the name of a cleaning product. It was a reference to a situation where an oil rich country decided to nationalize its oil interests and the US and UK wanted to put a new person in power because hey, we're in the oil business. Sounds familiar, right? History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. So, the West did its regime change number and Operation Ajax occurred in 1953 and the US got its preferred leader.

The long-term effects of that little misadventure weren't really revealed for more than 25 years. And by the time it was revealed, the embassy had fallen. Then, American aircraft and troops fell at Desert 1. It teed up almost 50 years of tensions, nuclear concerns, and wars. Without Ajax, there's no SAVAK. Without SAVAK, you've lost a major catalyst for the 79 revolution. Without the revolution, you didn't have the Iran Iraq war. Without the Iran Iraq war, well, you get the picture.

A move very similar to this in 1953 set a chain of events in motion that leads to the Iran that exists today. It's not chess. It's nothing that civilized or that final. One game impacts the next. It's poker and everybody's cheating, sliding chips to each other. And if you want an idea of how cynical and underhanded the chip sliding gets, it might be worth remembering that sometimes bigger nations consider smaller nations chips.

“The Russians at this particular juncture were signaling very strongly that they wanted to somehow make some very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine. That's from an October 14th, 2019 deposition of Trump's former adviser on Russia, Fiona Hill. It's weird how Trump is pushing Ukraine to give up and Russia didn't help their ally in Venezuela, right? The downstream effects from these kinds of operations are incredibly unpredictable. This isn't chess, and it sure isn't a real estate deal.

Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good day.