Photo: Dietmar Rabich, Wikimedia.

Half a World of Water!

The Institute for Pacific Research is a non-profit thinktank which specialises in the Pacific Region.

Research Director: Niall Clugston, Australia, BA (Hons) (USyd), MComm (UNSW), LLB (WSU). IT assistant: Sam Kelly.

Further Afield: Venezuela

As I write, Nicolas Maduro and his wife have been extracted from his home in Venezuela in the middle of the night, taken to a US warship, and arraigned in court in New York!

This recalls George H W Bush’s similar treatment of Manuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama in 1989. Similarly, the Maduros have been charged with drug trafficking. Noriega died in a US prison in 2017. I wonder if the Maduro’s will suffer a similar fate….

The causus belli is drug trafficking and election stealing, but the Trump regime has openly admitted that control of the oil fields is key. I am reminded of the Gulf War and Iraq War, where we who opposed it used the slogan, “No blood for oil”. Trump has already met with oil executives to discuss taking over Venezuela’s oil reserves which are the greatest in the world.

However, the Chavista regime has not been toppled, and Maduro has been sworn in as acting president. Only time will tell how this will play out. There is another country starting with V: Vietnam. If Trump tries to place boots on the ground, patrolling the barrios, jungles, and swamps, he may be entering into another long and costly war. Only time will tell.