BREAKING NEWS: Nicolás Maduro has been captured | America bombs Venezuela 🇻🇪🇺🇸

[oldhandle]

So what's even happening with Maduro now, does anyone even care anymore?

[zazen]

On 18/01/2026 at 8:32 PM, zazen said:

In the connected comment to above I also said US would lose its economic tariff war against China. They also know they aren’t a clean match for any military adventure with China - Hegseth has said they lose to China in war game scenarios.

This leads them to rhetorically downgrade China to a “economic competitor” rather than a “adversary” (more hostile language) in the national security strategy - despite project 2025 calling China the main threat. It’s still considered so (to empire)  but they must adapt to reality.

Make no mistake, this isn’t a strategic retreat - containing the rise of a rival superpower to maintain primacy is desired - but direct confrontation is too costly and high risk.

Because they can no longer cheaply dominate everywhere due to imperial overstretch and rising powers competing - they must recalibrate and prioritise. Part of that is to tactically retreat to consolidate whatever they can ie low hanging fruit in Latin America (Venezuela) and from their own allies (Greenland) + ask their allies (vassals) to pay tribute and burden share (increase military spending and nod Japan to start barking via proxy at China).

Hence the pivot to fortify with resilient supply chains and re-shoring industrial manufacturing for a possible (not necessarily a wanted) war case scenario. It’s necessary and smart to be self sustained to the degree that if a future confrontation were to happen it wouldn’t be as suicidal. It’s normal for every country to fortify what’s critical.

The US has to deal with two uncomfortable facts:

- It can’t decisively defeat a peer like China at acceptable cost.

- It also can’t rule out confrontation entirely (even if highly unlikely or unwanted due to mutually assured destruction).

So that forces a third path which is to reduce vulnerability. There’s obviously a more ethical way of doing this via influence and win-win partnerships - but empire is choosing to conduct itself imperially instead.

China is actually more vulnerable than the US (imports food and energy on sea lanes its rival superpower navally polices). This same power has think tank pieces gaming naval blockade scenarios. This same power is starting to play pirates of the Carribean and more recently the Arctic.

How did China plug these vulnerabilities? Trade, belt and road initiative, development projects and good relations with countries that can provide what it needs. As a diplomat said “when the West comes to Africa we get a lecture, when China comes we get a bridge”

Commented just last week and on the previous page how China is tactically downgraded as a threat, to strategically maintain primacy and consolidate power and leverage wherever possible.

Yesterday Pentagon released its new defense strategy : https://news.sky.com/story/china-no-longer-americas-top-defence-priority-pentagon-says-13498252

“The main focus on the homeland includes a section about the US no longer ceding key terrain in the Western Hemisphere and how the Pentagon will provide Mr Trump with "credible options to guarantee US military and commercial access to key terrain from the Arctic to South America, especially Greenland, the Gulf of America, and the Panama Canal."
 

These are material structural shifts in the world order. The US had imperial dominion over the whole earth which it considered as its sphere - it had universality. That era has upended and is now challenged with the rise of other powers specifically China - Thucydides trap in effect. They know they can’t challenge or contain this rival directly without paying enormous cost.

So this Thucydides trap will be managed and not catastrophic or world ending. What has usually ended up in war between the rising power vs the unipolar power seeking to maintain the status quo - is not applicable today due to mutually assured destruction.

What will be replaced by universality is exclusivity and locking in of a imperial US orbit and core. Alignment and loyalty to a US-centric system used to be assumed but now has to coerced and enforced.

This is why the US now views it “allies” not as junior partners but as assets to extract from, maintain and cement US primacy. They ironically call for “stronger allies” and a “stronger Europe” whilst calling for them to be strategically kneecapped and ties to solely US interests. Strong but not sovereign.

Europe has structural reasons as to why it will struggle to be a geopolitical pole - its not a rival the US in any threatening way. It is only seen as a threaten so far as it drifts East to where it naturally connects geographically outside of US control - which is Eurasia. Continental integration is a hedge against the Atlanticist monopoly of Europe which seeks to keep it tied to its interests.

Venezuela is likewise a disciplinary move to enforce this US-centric economic / systems level iron curtain. Ditto with Trump threatening 100% tariffs on Canada for trade dealing with China. A neighbour like Canada whose part of NATO and a G7 nation, exercising its autonomy in this way  is seen as defiance within the imperial core - an unacceptable example that emboldens others to diversify, defect and hedge: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4qww3w72lo.amp

Keir Starmer will be in China soon to boost ties: https://www.politico.eu/article/britain-finance-trade-chiefs-to-join-keir-starmers-china-trip/

EU looking to have a trade deal with India: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgyz1ejw9no.amp

US vassals already attempting to hedge with BRICS nations - the same nations they lectured about funding and aiding Russia. Reality re-asserts itself against delusions of ideology.

US uni-polarity is ending, its hegemony in relative decline is inevitable - only expedited by its own desperate actions. Don’t mistake this as just a Trump phenomena - it’s institutional not just personal. There is a deep state apparatus behind him looking to maintain if not manage this imperial decline by coercively carving out its position in a multi-polar world - as the Pentagon itself confirms.