The way we will know whether the administration is serious about Venezuela is based on whether they involve María Corina Machado in the proposed regime change.
Every country with an authoritarian regime has a real opposition and a fake opposition. The fake opposition has no interest in coming to power. It wants to collect grants, prizes and awards for bravely standing against the regime in words but not in deeds.
Machado is fake opposition. Trying to whip her up into anything workable will be a complete waste of time. If the administration doesn’t know that, then they are not serious.
Clarissa's Blog 
Who is the real opposition in Venezuela?
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What do you think about this? It does seem weird to kidnap Maduro and leave the rest of the government intact. Is this even a regime change?
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Trump just wants the oil and to keep China and Russia away. He clearly doesn’t care about freedom, democracy, or the Venezuelan people.
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Is there something wrong with wanting to keep nearby strategic assets out of the hands of Russia and China?
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I have no idea if the following could be trusted:
Penelope Howe
ostorepSdnm62i1hfh6g57440u0tgu4hh9i813a2l96uiut9cfu1u1g66u51 ·
The Foreclosure of a Country
There is a glitch in the Venezuela story that most people are missing. The official line is that we captured a dictator to “restore democracy” and “stop drugs.” But those reasons don’t explain the timing. There is a $13 billion transaction happening right now that does. It’s called the Citgo Auction.
Most people don’t realize that Venezuela’s “crown jewel”—the massive Citgo refinery network—is being sold off in a Delaware court this month. It’s a forced liquidation to pay creditors, but the auction had been frozen for years by political chaos. The capture of Maduro didn’t just change the regime. It cleared the title so the sale could close.
The winning bidder isn’t an oil major or a democracy activist. It’s Amber Energy, an affiliate of Elliott Management. That is Paul Singer’s fund, the most feared “vulture capitalist” in the world, famous for seizing sovereign ships to collect old debts. He isn’t betting on freedom. He’s closing a distressed asset deal.
The timeline tells you everything you need to know. The sale to Elliott was approved by the court late last year, but it needed a “change in political circumstances” to finally clear regulatory hurdles. Maduro was the obstacle blocking the transfer. His capture on January 3rd wasn’t a police action. It was the final signature on the closing documents.
This reframes the entire operation. We aren’t watching an episode of Law & Order; we are watching a foreclosure. The legal doctrine allowing the capture turns a President into a defendant, but the economic doctrine is simpler. It’s a distressed asset restructuring with a military escort.
The playbook is the same one private equity uses for a failing mall, just scaled up to a sovereign nation. You depress the asset value with sanctions, buy the debt for pennies on the dollar, and use the courts to force a liquidation. Then you send in the troops to evict the tenant so you can collect at face value. It’s a leveraged buyout with an air force.
If you look at who is getting paid, the “democracy” frame falls apart completely. It isn’t voters waiting in line; it’s a queue of corporate creditors like Crystallex, ConocoPhillips, and Siemens, with Elliott Management at the front. Marco Rubio isn’t representing a constituency here. He’s processing a payout.
There is a simple way to prove the drug war angle is just wallpaper. Two weeks ago, the administration pardoned Rubio’s own brother-in-law for cocaine trafficking. You don’t pardon traffickers while invading a country to stop trafficking. The drug story is decoration. The $13 billion asset transfer is the load-bearing wall.
That’s why the bonds rallied before the raid. The market wasn’t guessing about justice; it had inside information about the closing date. Power is just physics with a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet says the auction is finally closed.
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I still prefer the Egyptian beekeepers in maroon T-shirts.
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https://x.com/i/status/2007891344987922765
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Exactly. She’s a perfectly nice lady but she can’t form a government. Her purpose is completely different.
Rubio and Trump said the exact same thing about her, so I’m not seeing a disconnect.
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https://donsurber.substack.com/p/the-three-hour-war-in-venezuela
this source (no idea whatever if reliable) claims the person about to assume power is Gonzalez, who won the election after Machado got booted?
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but apart from leaders’ personalities – what is the long game?
most of the government, including those involved in drug trafficking and/or collaborating with the Russians, the Chinese and the Iranians, or just too socialist, are still there. If the new government starts doing something seriously pro-US, such as denationalization of the oil fields, or actually seriously diminishing the drug business, their interests will be affected and there would be a lot of resistance, including sabotage and guerilla fighting. Destowing a couple of SAM sites is much easier than fighting a guerilla war.
I’ve read at least one opinion that China is manipulating the US into one more nation-building boots-on the ground project a la Iraq. To destract the US from Taiwan.
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I don’t know how to explain that any analogy between Venezuela or Iraq is completely misplaced. Venezuelans are normal people, like you and me. There are no religious fanatics with Uzis running around. Nobody is blowing themselves up for Allah. These are normal people who did have an actual country for as long as nation-states existed. These are people with history, literature, art. They are completely Western. You don’t have to nation-build for them. They already have a nation. Look how fast Spain bounced from an actual fascist dictatorship. Look at how fast Argentina and Chile came back from theirs. Even the DR recovered from Trujillo fast enough. Why shouldn’t Venezuela recover from a dictatorship that was only 26 years long?
Cuba will be harder but it’s not completely hopeless. Definitely not like Iraq or Afghanistan. Hispanic countries always have dictatorships. That’s just how they are. But they always bounce back.
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