Episode Summary:

One day after the shock attack on Caracas, Nick returns with an update on the US intervention in Venezuela. With President Maduro reportedly abducted and Donald Trump promising to “run Venezuela,” we delve into the grim logistics of occupying a nation larger than France.

Drawing parallels with the Boer War, Vietnam, and the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, Nick argues that while the US may have the firepower to win a battle, it lacks the numbers, the political will, and the institutional memory to win the peace. Has the Trump administration purged the very experts who would have warned against such a folly? And will this act of imperial hubris mark the moment American hard power finally collapses under its own weight?

Key Topics:

• The Logistical Nightmare: Why occupying Venezuela would require hundreds of thousands of troops.
• Trump’s “Quiet Part Out Loud”: The explicit goal of seizing oil resources.
• Asymmetric Warfare: How drones and insurgency could bleed an occupying force dry.
• Institutional Memory Loss: The danger of purging the State Department and Pentagon of dissenting voices.

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