Trump: US is ‘not afraid of boots on the ground’ in Venezuela……. Trump Snatches Maduro But Leaves His Regime in Charge for Now….
The US has captured Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro after a large-scale strike on the South American country, US President Donald Trump has said. Venezuela’s left-wing president and his wife, First Lady Cilia Flores, are at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, US media reports, after they were flown to an air base in New York. They have been charged with drug and weapons offences.
During a news conference on Saturday Trump said the US would “run” Venezuela “until a safe and proper and judicious transition”, adding that American oil companies would also move into the country.
Trump also said American oil companies would move in to fix infrastructure “and start making money for the country”. He said “we’re going to be taking a tremendous amount of wealth from the ground” which would go to people in Venezuela and to the US, adding “we’re going to get reimbursed for everything we’ve spent”.
He also said the US would sell oil to other countries.
Asked whether US troops would be deployed to Venezuela, Trump said “we’re not afraid of boots on the ground”.
Trump Snatches Maduro But Leaves His Regime in Charge for Now
Hours after President Donald Trump stunned the world by saying the US plans to “run” Venezuela, uncertainty over what that means and who is in charge loomed over the South American nation.
Adding to the confusion was that the White House offered few details about what running an oil-producing nation of about 30 million people would entail. A US official said Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who has spent his career criticizing Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez — would take the leading administration role. President Donald Trump said American oil companies will “spend billions of dollars” to fix oil infrastructure in Venezuela. For now, there’s no plan spelled out to have American troops or administrators in Venezuela. But Trump signaled he’s keenly focused on the country’s petroleum, saying the US would have a “presence in Venezuela as it pertains to oil.” That could mean a greater role for Chevron Corp., which still operates in Venezuela under waivers from sanctions, as well as for other major American oil companies.
Trump’s resistance to keeping American boots on the ground and his dismissal of Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado as a “nice woman” not ready to take power suggest he decided on giving Rodríguez and other Maduro loyalists a second chance over full-blown regime change.
Trump is “essentially trying to control the vice president and people around her through carrots and sticks to get the outcomes the United States wants,” said Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. “We’ll see if it works.” Trump appeared to confirm that approach with his remarks later in the day to the New York Post, when he said that US troops on the ground would not be necessary as long as Rodríguez “does what we want.”
That strategy is a huge gamble — particularly for a president who campaigned in 2016 on ending America’s “forever wars” but has since used the US military to strike targets in Iran, Yemen, Nigeria and the Caribbean Sea.
Rodríguez, considered by many to be the most powerful person in the country after Maduro, gave mixed messages in her public comments on Saturday. She called for the ousted president’s return, but she also said Venezuela could still have “respectful relationships,” perhaps offering a path to a detente with the US if she can consolidate power and the two sides cooperate.
Trump: “All political and military figures in Venezuela should understand what happened to Maduro can happen to them, and it will happen to them” if they weren’t “fair” to the Venezuelan people, he said. Following the Trump news conference, a US official laid out some priorities for the coming days, saying that administration officials will engage diplomatically with those remaining in the Venezuelan government, as well as with oil executives on expanding output. The official said the US military will remain ready and the oil embargo will remain in effect. US strikes on suspected drug vessels will continue.
Yet the uncertainty over what really happens next hung over Caracas as it settled into its first night without Maduro in more than a decade, with many of his regime’s loyal backers still in the country.
CSIS’s Berg wrote on Saturday. “Venezuela will enter a long transition with even greater US involvement in shaping the government to come.”
That reality, and Rodríguez’s long history with Maduro, are “why I’m a bit skeptical this can work out long term,” said Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “A bigger concern really would be that this all falls apart here, that there isn’t an effort to make sure there’s a successful handoff,” said Matt Terrill, managing partner at Firehouse Strategies.
NN: Nation building take years. I remind you US troops were stationed in Germany and Japan for nation building after WWII. They are still their. Iraq after Bush broke it is still a shit house mess. It will take years to reverse the damage Chavz and Maduro did. And the oil infrastructure will take 10 years and 20 billon to rebuild.