Last week it was ‘buy’ Greenland…..
This week its a naval blockade of Venezuela…
In going back to time when America ‘helped’ place friendly leaders in power….Donald Trump wants to squeeze things so tight for the people of that country that it’s leader President Nicolás Maduro will step down….
Up to recently, the the Pentagon has resisted the idea ….
In doing so?
It has angered Trump and his political people over in the White House ….
Who have since replaced several national security and military people since…
Things have gotten to point that Trump’s people are working with Venezuelan drug lord, such is the Trump foreign policy operation right now…
Thus far, Trump has sought to strangle dictator Maduro with escalating sanctions. Senior administration officials say they are focused on diplomacy and economic pressure and have little interest in military options, though they won’t rule them out.
- Trump is deeply frustrated that the Venezuelan opposition has failed to topple Maduro — more than 3 months after a failed uprising, and more than 6 months after Trump led the world in recognizing Juan Guaidó as the legitimate leader of Venezuela.
Trump has had good reason to be frustrated, current and former officials said. For the first year and a bit of his presidency, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and chief of staff John Kelly collaborated to ignore or stymie what they judged to be dangerous requests from Trump. This included, in Mattis’ case, a request for military options to topple Maduro, according to sources with direct knowledge of Trump’s unfulfilled asks.
- Trump would berate his former national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, asking him why he hadn’t produced the Venezuela military options he’d requested. But McMaster wasn’t the obstacle to producing the options for Venezuela; it was Mattis, according to sources with direct knowledge.
- McMaster grew so exasperated with Mattis that around September 2017, he sent him a memo saying the president had requested new options for Venezuela.
- In the classified memo, which has never been reported on until now, McMaster gave Mattis a deadline to present the military options, according to sources familiar with the memo’s contents. Mattis ignored the memo and blew past the deadline, these sources said.
- This dynamic changed once John Bolton and Mike Pompeo took over….