Maduro manipulated and arguably stole an election in 2019 rather than give up power to interests who the US prefers.
I mean, this time round: the man is unequivocally not good. No one thinks Maduro's regime is legitimate — there's pretty broad consensus in North and South America. Internationally he has less support than Hugo Chavez had, because he has no legitimacy at home.
But the reality is still the same: old-fashioned interests in the USA want much more control over what happens in Venezuela, what Venezuela sells to and to whom.
Trump, spurned for admiration and a Nobel peace prize, wants a war presidency now, because that's an easier source of narcissistic supply.
(And also as he has mused in the past, perhaps a source of "wartime powers", which may most simply explain why he's renamed the DoD to the Department of War: it's all part of the narrative he is building for himself and his supporters.)
He knows nobody is going to have a credible argument that Maduro is legitimate but we're back in the second gulf war territory: the "why now" of it.
He is picking a fight and waiting for them to lash out.
I mean, this time round: the man is unequivocally not good. No one thinks Maduro's regime is legitimate — there's pretty broad consensus in North and South America. Internationally he has less support than Hugo Chavez had, because he has no legitimacy at home.
But the reality is still the same: old-fashioned interests in the USA want much more control over what happens in Venezuela, what Venezuela sells to and to whom.
Trump, spurned for admiration and a Nobel peace prize, wants a war presidency now, because that's an easier source of narcissistic supply.
(And also as he has mused in the past, perhaps a source of "wartime powers", which may most simply explain why he's renamed the DoD to the Department of War: it's all part of the narrative he is building for himself and his supporters.)
He knows nobody is going to have a credible argument that Maduro is legitimate but we're back in the second gulf war territory: the "why now" of it.
He is picking a fight and waiting for them to lash out.