• darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 years ago

    They still believe Maduro’s government is illegitimate and recognize the opposition. Them cutting out Guido means nothing as he hasn’t been doing anything for many months if not well over a year. The gold they keep and dole out to the opposition for funding subversion of Maduro’s government.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          2 years ago

          Cuba is a huge political issue in Florida because that’s where all the slave owning families fled. US basically can’t normalize relations with Cuba because any party that tries to do it would lose the Florida vote.

          Meanwhile, Iran is basically their main enemy in the Middle East right now. Iran has close relations with Russia, it basically runs Iraq now, they also have good relations with Syria, and now starting to have diplomatic relations with the Saudis. It’s looking increasingly likely that Iran will become the dominant power in the region and will be able to push US out.

      • darkcalling@lemmygrad.ml
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        2 years ago

        We’ll see. That’s only if Maduro demands it as a condition. They don’t /need/ the oil, they could stand to benefit from it, industry will continue running without it, it’ll just lower prices. There is no high law in the US barring them from using some limited decree to do business with Maduro’s government in a time-limited way. Just like there’s no law that they can’t use rebel fighters in Syria to steal oil there as they’ve done.

        Thing is if they do agree to that it will be meaningless for them getting their foreign gold back from the UK which in this case the US will shrug about and pretend it has no power over them. Venezuela is unfortunately a petro-based economy, they paid for massive social welfare and investments off the back of high oil so they’re kind of hurting because of the sanctions and trouble and a simple deal for their oil for US dollars or other currency usable on international markets could be quite attractive to Maduro in that it could provide some limited material relief to his people.

        The US trading with you is absolutely not an endorsement of your legitimacy from them and/or any insulation from sanctions and outright theft of your assets abroad.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOP
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          2 years ago

          They most certainly do need oil. Biden managed to deplete the strategic reserve to lowest levels since the early 80s already, and the reserve is how US has been stabilizing the price of oil up to now. Once the reserve runs dry US is basically fucked because the whole country is built around car culture. I expect that dumping Guaido is the first step of US caving and recognizing Maduro government as the legitimate government they’re going to have relations with.

          Venezuela might be hurting right now, but the government there is stable and there’s no imminent crisis. This puts Venezuela into a strong bargaining position. Demanding that US recognizes the government and UK returns foreign reserves is an obvious card to play here.

          We’ll see how it plays out though.