Matisyahu's Blog

I’ve been following a few people on YouTube from the left, centre and right so I can see what their analysis of the situation is and I thought I may as well throw my 5 cents worth out into the ether of the internet. At the moment there is a lot of speculation in the media with the situation not being helped when the Trump administration not appearing to have a coherent narrative regarding the justification for what took place, the plan is in the immediate future and some sort of macro level long term vision they have for the Americas.

The one thing I have noticed is that the Trump administration has factions all vying for influence and with each faction justifying the operation in Venezuela in their own way – Trump with is “to the victor go the spoils”, Rubio and the neoconservatives they see it as part of a larger operation to pull Venezuela into the US sphere of influence then cripple the Cuban regime (as part of a larger reorganisation of the international order) and the anti-immigration faction who is it as an opportunity to get rid of the obstacle that will allow them to report refugees back to their country by dealing with the regime that cause the refugees coming to the US in the first place.

When it comes to the issue regarding Oil, I think it an excuse that Trump uses because Trump isn’t exactly a deep philosophical thinker and needs a nice simple explanation eg “that country has something I want, I’ll take it”. The problem is that 5 minutes worth of research will bring up facts about their oil which kind of undermines Trump. The sort of oil that is found in Venezuela is known as ‘sour crude oil’ aka some of the nastiest oil on the planet that requires a lot of energy to turn it into something that can be mixed with sweet crude oil and light crude oil. That doesn’t even touch on the fact that oil is already had historical lows in terms of pricing which is why even though there are oil wells out there it doesn’t make any sense running them given the low price not to mention the exploration rights that aren’t being utilised because, once again, the price isn’t high enough to make it worth while.

There is the Neo-conservative view is part of a larger project where the toppling of Venezuela will cut oil supplies off from Cuba and then force regime change in Cuba then the next focus is on regime change in Iran (hence the recent threats put out by Trump regarding what he’ll do if the Iranian shoots protesters). As for where North Korea, China and Russia fit into it, that is the million dollar question – I don’t believe they have thought that far ahead (or the believe the pressure will force reform within those countries without firing a shot) or otherwise they wouldn’t be doing what they doing in the first place. Long term Europeans take over their own security, the Middle East is left to Saudi Arabia and Israel to take care of along with a democratised Iran thus leaving the United States to focus on it’s ‘own back yard’ along with the Asia-Pacific region.

Then there is what I call the anti-immigration faction who see the opportunity to engage in regime change as a means to achieve their end goals of deporting refugees back to the countries they were escaping from – now that the threat from a dysfunctional and despotic regime they will use that as a justification for ending refugee protection for people from those countries.

Basically the three factions have their own reasons for supporting the neoconservative project of conducting geopolitical engineering on a grand scale. I can’t help but get the feeling that they’re wanting to get Venezuela and Cuba sorted out before the midterms and the intervention in Iran is started before the mid terms – utilising the whole ‘war time president’ shtick in a hope that it’ll shape the mid terms. I could be wrong and in the next days, weeks or months I’m shown to be a fool but I thought I may as well put my thoughts out there.