I’m not sure about the troop readiness these days, but afaik, USA is currently very close to its military capacity.
For everything it’s doing by having a quarter of 1 million troop stationed around the world and having between 3 and 5 Aircraft carrier groups floating around the world if they fully commit to an armed conflict with Venezuela they are basically spent.
That’s the moment any army can decide to do whatever the fuck they want and the USA can really basically only bark and look on. (Technically they could of course fight, but that would mean they sacrifice actual defence of homeland). So that would mean that China could take Taiwan, Russia could really take Ukraine or even poke further into Europe. Not to mention the Middle East would basically be without a guard dog.
If this happens this most likely would be the final nail in the coffin of the US Empire and almost analogous with how the Roman empire crumbled. (And of course the ultimate payoff for Vladdy to have helped Donnie get in the White House).
I don’t think there’s a whole lot of risk that the USA will try to take Canada or Greenland because of this.
There are people who are saying that we are at the same point as we were in Germany In the 1930s. I would argue this is much closer to Hitler having just taken all of Europe and now deciding to also go and take on The Russians.
Also don’t forget that Trump is truly one of the dumbest strategists we’ve ever had. The only success he’s having is because he has a very well oiled machine but even a well oiled machine has absolute nonnegotiable thresholds which Donald and Drunk Pete will probably try to ignore by renaming a department from defence to war and by hoping that will work.
Curious what others think about this situation?
E: spelling
Thing is, Venezuela may be a done thing because of Trump's cozying up to Russia. They are dividing up their areas of influence as well as toppling the old world order of norms so they can do things like this. Next thing you know might be Russia invading yet another neighbor, say one of the Baltic states or even Finland near where they've built, and then the US dangles the NATO card to claim they need to move into Canda and Greenland to bolster their defenses and deployment strength in the region "to help Europe" and begins bulking up their military bases in the region until they begin "securing" the spots with all the natural resources they are interested in. Then they broker a "Ukranian ceasefire" that has hastily been translated from Russian with the rest of Europe, Russia gets a bit more land and the US gets Greenland and parts of Canada.
At least in the short term, because dictators are poor bedfellows when they are the only ones and have to fight against themselves. Trump won't care, he's been cozying up to oligarchs, despots, and criminals all his life.
The US is also providing the excuse for China to invade Taiwan while they've been making deals with TSMC to begin transitioning their foundries over to the US and have been using AI BS along with "these are totally going to be future AI data centers and that's why we have been hogging RAM, chips, and SSDs even though we are decades off before we would theoretically have the power to run them" warehouses that will allow them to continue to have supply while their foundries are set up.
It topples the world order based on diplomacy and makes the whole thing a strong arm loyalty test for the US where countries either submit to them completely under the flimsiest of rhetoric or they deny the imperialism and colonialism of the past only to be consumed by it in the present. The plan is getting pretty obvious because Trump is a pretty flat caricature who can barely stop himself from blurting it all out.
Very interesting take. Thanks