U.S. Strikes Venezuela, Maduro Deposed: My thoughts

I was going to write about California’s proposed wealth tax, but with the breaking Venezuela news, that will have to be postponed.

In hindsight, it’s little surprise that the Trump administration attacked Venezuela. He had been signaling action throughout December and finally pulled the trigger around the New Year. Too bad, I didn’t mention this in my 2026 predictions post, or profit from it on Polymarket.

Unsurprisingly, people are crying foul about alledged insider trading on Polymarket for contracts that stood to profit significantly from the strikes:

The account, which was created on December 27, has only bet on two things: the U.S. invading Venezuela, and its president, Nicolás Maduro, being forced out of leadership by January 31. The user bet $35,000 when the market estimated the probability of intervention in Venezuela at only 6 percent.

It would seem trivial for someone with forewarning of the strikes to profit on Polymarket. Unlike stocks or options on regulated markets and exchanges, it’s virtually impossible to tie Polymarket trades with actual individuals, being that all trades are settled with cryptocurrency on a largely unregulated platform. There is a small window where informed traders are profiting big, before the regulation on prediction markets is eventually finalized.

It’s also interesting to see the division by Fuentes’ followers:

I’m surprised Fuentes is celebrating this with a U.S. flag emoji, given that a week ago he tweeted a list of grievances about the Trump administration, among them “bombing Venezuela”:

Isolationists, of course, opposed the attacks. The notion of an anti-interventionist President is an oxymoron. The POTUS is the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world of the most powerful country in the world. The U.S. historically has always used its military might to protect or enforce its interests abroad. That is par for the course, regardless of which party is in office.

The question is if it was justified. I’d argue it was. It advances American interests, and Maduro is complicit in the global cocaine trade, with drugs flowing through neighboring regions and ultimately into America. However, Colombia was spared despite sharing a border with Panama and Venezuela and arguably being equally complicit. Regarding the interventionism debate, this is not analogous to U.S. involvement in the Middle East, which involves a different region altogether, and is less directly connected to U.S. domestic concerns.

Some have drawn comparisons to the 1989 invasion of Panama. There are two key differences.

First, the stated justification was Noriega annulling the 1989 Panamanian general election. Although Maduro was given a December ultimatum by Trump to step down–and negotiations collapsed when Trump refused to grant him legal immunity–the strikes nonetheless appeared much more unprovoked or random, much more analogous to Mossad-style operations, except instead of killing Maduro outright, he stands to spend the rest of his life at ADX, which some would argue is a fate worse than death anyway.

Second, after Noriega was extricated and indicted in the U.S., the power void was filled by oppositional candidate Guillermo Endara. In the case of Maduro, the void will be harder to fill, leading to a situation closer to Iraq or Afghanistan, in which the U.S. will be tasked with the role of rebuilding the leadership structure of the country. No one knows what will happen. But it’s an understatement to say this is a huge deal. Expect this to consume the rest of Trump’s presidency in terms of filling the power void. Maybe a puppet government, similar to the Shah of Iran, or a U.S.-sponsored coup, similar to the rise Pinochet.

Richard Hannia is optimistic, writing:

This of course assumes Venezuela will have a government at all, and not just devolve into a brutal civil war, which might in fact be worse than the Maduro regime. Again, the odds here are low. Venezuela is not in Africa, doesn’t have radical Islam as a factor, and has a very recent history of democratic governance. No one knows what will happen, of course, but this is a matter of weighing probabilities, and we have to keep stressing that Maduro is really, really bad.

Even outwardly successful examples such as Brazil are famously corrupt and liable to electing socialists. ‘Democratic government’ doesn’t mean the same as it’s understood to mean in America. I also predict the global cocaine trade will be unaffected. The whole continent is a hotbed of drugs, and this attack does not change that much.

As to the legality, it speaks to the innocent naïveté of the Left on Reddit to ask if the strikes legal. If the U.S. does it, then it’s technically legal. International law is irrelevant when you literally create the law. The opinion of the always-ineffectual ‘international community’ has and always will be inconsequential. No one cares if ‘world leaders’ condemn the attacks. The ‘world police’ meme is truer than ever. No other country comes close to having the wherewithal to pull this off.

Other stuff will be pushed to the periphery, such as ‘affordability,’ which will get worse as oil prices rise. This also agrees with my post about how foreign policy is still the most important aspect of the GOP platform, not household economic issues. This also works to Trump’s advantage in the short-term because it’s a distraction from falling public support for his domestic agenda and Epstein. Similar to after the start of the Iraq War or after 9/11, expect Trump to see a bump in his approval ratings.

It also speaks to the short-sightedness of people who are now celebrating these attacks, despite having spent just a month ago “blackpilling” about affordability. When nothing changes, they will return to complaining about affordability. Expect more blackpilling if the situation turns into a quagmire, with many who currently support the attacks later recanting their views. Similar to the period shortly after 9/11 and the Iraq War, there is considerable peer pressure to support the president.