xiaohongshu [none/use name]

@ xiaohongshu @hexbear.net

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1 yr. ago

xiaohongshu [none/use name] @hexbear.net 2小时前

China is not going to help Iran this time.

According to Chinese media (article here, use machine translation), when Trump withdrew from JCPOA in 2018, China’s Dalian port provided shelter for the 3.4 million ton Iranian oil under sanction (worth $2 billion). Over six years, the storage has racked up over $450 million in port fee. When Iran’s foreign minister visited China in January 2025, apparently they demanded that China return the sanctioned oil but refused to pay the port fee.

Chinese nationalist propaganda says that the Chinese leadership is pissed at Iran and did not like to be made a fool of, and China’s apparently decided to go its own way. If Iran doesn’t want to play ball, then China will simply not rely on Iran at all. Apparently China’s leadership is also pissed at the Iranians making a deal with India, but I cannot verify this.

On the other side, it is also worth noting that in 2021, China and Iran signed a 25-year cooperation program that was supposed to have China investing $400 billion in Iran over 25 years. Yet after nearly 5 years, only a tiny fraction of that investment money ever made it to Iran, apparently because of Iran’s solidarity with Palestine made many Chinese investors wary of a war in the region that could cause them to lose their investment altogether.

You can imagine what Iran feels about China’s commitment to the deal as well. My impression is that both countries never really took each other seriously, and were only “pushed together” by US geopolitical actions. So it should not surprise you that they’re no longer seeing eye to eye after a few years.

Meanwhile, according to the “Chinese business circle intelligence network” (lol) that has been floating on the social media in the last few days, many Chinese businessmen in Iran are sounding pessimistic about the situation. Although the protests never reached the scale of the 2023 Amini protest and very likely involved foreign agents, what they’re saying is that unlike the Amini protest, which was mostly ignited by religious/social affairs in nature, this time the protest is very much driven by the cost of living, hence why the protests erupted mostly in the peripheral regions that have been enduring the largest burden of the economic pain.

Since the 12 day war with Israel last June, rial has significant depreciated (by ~44%) and inflation is now through the roof. Although the IRGC and the Iranian government may well survive this round of protest, the foundation is being shaken to the core because the ruling class can no longer keep the people placated with the spiraling inflation. The problem with the protest movement is that they are not organized or led by a credible leader, so it’s bound to be hijacked by foreign agents.

Many Chinese businessmen are now frantically looking for exit, while just a year ago they were still fairly optimistic about the situation in Iran. Things really took a drastic turn after the 12-day war and Trump’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities.

Just a few observations from what I’ve seen on the Chinese side of the conflict.

2天前

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

xiaohongshu [none/use name] @hexbear.net 2天前

Chongqing model - a potentially very different path taken by China if Bo Xilai was not embroiled in the famous scandal (many believe it was persecution by the reformist faction) and gave way to Xi Jinping’s rise, who is more moderate and acceptable by the liberal reformers.

A cornerstone of Bo's Chongqing model was a series of egalitarian social policies aimed at lessening the gap between rich and poor and easing the rural-urban divide. Bo promoted the notion of pursuing "red GDP"—an economic model embodying communist egalitarianism—and suggested that, if economic development were analogous to 'baking a cake', then the primary task should be to divide the cake fairly rather than building a larger cake.

2天前

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

xiaohongshu [none/use name] @hexbear.net 2天前

China is going to be fine. The CPC leadership is not stupid, obviously. China has been intensely building up self-sufficiency in the last few years, the strategic petroleum reserves and food stocks are at an all time high, as well as the push for technological breakthroughs and especially in clean renewable energy.

The problem, as I have said, is internal and ideological in nature.

I think the biggest surprise for everyone was how China’s domestic consumption has failed to pick up since abandoning Zero Covid in early 2023. I remember even Western financial presses during 2021-2022 were like: “just wait until China opens up its economy, then global demand will soar and we’ll all be making money”.

We’re now in 2026 and China’s domestic consumption is unlikely to return to the pre-Covid 2019 level anytime soon, and at least not in the next few years (the most optimistic analysis I’ve seen say at least wait until 2030).

I’ve written a lot about the deflationary economy so won’t be repeating here. Property market is imploding and the local government debt crisis being the major factors, and this translates into a slump in domestic consumption which also means that China is now even more dependent on its export sector (which is also under attack by Trump’s tariffs, and the EU unable to substitute the US as a consumer market since the Ukraine war) as well as making profitable investments overseas (which is being undone by Trump’s B-2 stunt in Iran and the Maduro capture stunt in Venezuela - note that both endeavors required only minimal effort from the US without being dragged into a long war that many predicted).

And it’s not that the Chinese leadership doesn’t know the importance of domestic market. The Dual Circulation strategy has been implemented since April 2020, it simply did not produce the result even after 5 years. If anything, the opposite has happened where trade surplus is now at a record high while the domestic consumption plunged.

So China is in a very weird spot right now when it comes to its international relations:

Militarily, China has been building up its military but still inadequate to protect its overseas investments, as other users have pointed out. This demonstrates an overly optimistic view of the Washington-led international order, which has greatly benefited China’s fast growth in economy but the lagging military expenditure also means China cannot project its power like the USSR did, which I still see as the superior foreign policy compared to China’s win-win cooperation model.

(NOTE: this is not to say that China cannot put up a fight if it wants to. Warfare is an extension of politics, and with hybrid warfare the goal is to exert enough costs - political, economic and social costs - to force your opponents into backing down and mitigate the damage. So it’s not always black and white, like the only victory can only come from complete neutralization of your enemy)

Economically, China has amassed great influence all over the world. See that even Argentina, who is now effectively US colony, still continues to trade with China, because nobody can really decouple from China. So, China does indeed have a lot of economic levers if it wants to assert its interests. However, China continues to adhere to neoliberal ideology that makes them very difficult to abandon their export sector, and as a result of needing to run trade surpluses, finds themselves continue to be dependent on the global free market. The failure to build a strong consumer market (which is really the result of over-reliance on export and supply-side investment) also made China unable to absorb global export surpluses and replace the US consumer market. It keeps them in a competitive state with the rest of the exporter economies in the Global South instead.

Finally, I want to point out that the US is not “invincible” either. The 2022 Ukraine war and the sanctions that ensued caused global energy supply disruption and the high inflation in the US resulted in the Biden administration hiking the interest rates. This placed the US dollar at an unprecedented perilous situation, and with Russia calling for global de-dollarization and many Global South countries looking to abandon the dollar because they started to run into dollar liquidity crises, China’s reluctance to go with it (because China is still too dependent on and benefited greatly from the dollar hegemony) has caused this opportunity to be missed.

So, it is very important to understand that while the US has given China the room to grow into a global economic superpower, it also tied China to become highly dependent on the US consumer market. China has become addicted to the neoliberal free trade and the dollar hegemony that made them wealthy. Remember that 70% of Belt and Road investments were made in US dollars - this is as clear a signal of the intention behind China’s foreign investment strategy.

It’s unlikely that China will lose anything substantial, but it makes the relationship with the Global South a very distinct one from the USSR, where the latter was ideologically driven. This is why I said the problem with China is internal and ideological.

2天前

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

xiaohongshu [none/use name] @hexbear.net 2天前

Some interesting commentary from Beijing moves to cut losses in Venezuela after Maduro’s capture Asia Times:

China has drawn up plans to minimize losses in Venezuela and fine-tune its broader overseas investment strategy after the United States captured the Latin American country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, on January 3.

Since the US military operation in Venezuela, the Chinese government has been busily assessing the situation and calculating potential losses to its economic interests.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Chinese officials, media and commentators started expressing their views, showing that Beijing has finished its assessment.

In general, Beijing regrets having put too many eggs in one basket and having been too ready to believe that its investments in Venezuela would face minimal risks under international law. It also admits that it had underestimated the Trump administration’s ambition in the Western Hemisphere.

Some commentators are saying that, in the short run, China wants to ensure it can continue receiving crude oil from Venezuela, which still owes it about US$10 billion to US$20 billion. In the middle and long term, China may seek to sell certain fixed assets in Venezuela to Western firms or form partnerships with them to limit losses.

…

‘Law of the jungle’

When the Trump administration said in its National Security Strategy on December 4 that the US would strategically refocus on the Western Hemisphere, many Chinese commentators initially responded with mockery, arguing that the US was no longer wealthy or capable enough to sustain military dominance simultaneously in the Indo-Pacific, Europe and its own backyard.

That assessment has since shifted sharply, with commentators now acknowledging that Maduro’s capture has had a significant negative impact on Chinese investments in Venezuela and across Latin America.

A Beijing-based columnist surnamed Xu says in his article that China’s long-running oil-for-loans arrangements with Venezuela have left Beijing heavily exposed.

“Since 2007, China has provided Venezuela with US$60 billion in loans. At the end of 2025, more than US$10 billion was still outstanding,” Xu says. “The debt is repaid with crude oil, requiring Venezuela to ship about 610,000 barrels a day to China.”

Xu says that with Maduro’s arrest, China could face substantial losses. He warns that Chinese firms have invested billions of US dollars in Venezuela’s energy sector, including large-scale drilling platforms and upstream oil projects, many of which could be forced to halt, while daily crude oil shipments used for debt repayment could be disrupted.

Such disruptions, he adds, would force refineries in eastern China to seek alternative supplies, potentially driving up oil prices and fuel costs. Besides, a range of Chinese-invested infrastructure, manufacturing and telecommunications projects in Venezuela would face heightened default risks.

We already know that China already switched to Canadian crude since last November, right after the Trump-Xi meeting:

So it’s quite possible that the US gave China some “grace period” to reroute their oil supply before the actual operation in Venezuela. China has also built up a massive amount of strategic petroleum reserves so the oil stock in China should be quite safe for now.

Obviously it’s still early days and much of this kind of commentary is still speculative, but if the US goal in Venezuela is indeed to replicate what they did in Iran with the bombing of nuclear facilities, which is to scare off Chinese investors, then it’s going to have a broader impact to Latin America as a whole, as it did to the ME/NA region where both Russia and China are pulling away their strategic interests from.

3天前

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

xiaohongshu [none/use name] @hexbear.net 3天前

Honestly the Chinese model cannot really be replicated anywhere else.

China has something that the US wants but most countries lack: vast reserve of labor force and a relatively complete logistics chain to produce cheap goods.

Energy producing countries like Russia, Iran and Venezuela are destined to be opposed by the US. This is why it’s completely nonsense when people say the US can ally with Russia, unless Russia bends the knee like the Saudis. This is because the US won’t allow these oil-producing countries to simply take advantage of their oil revenue to develop their domestic economy.

Hence the Saudis could only use their vast dollar revenue from selling oil to purchase US weapons and US treasuries instead of investing in their domestic economy. This is what “petrodollar” really meant.

Another region that has a similar advantage as China is the ASEAN economies (Southeast Asia). However, since the 1980s, Southeast Asia has been Japan’s backyard (Japan invested heavily in SEA together with technology transfer).

I remind everyone that Thailand’s GDP per capita in 1990 was $1500 USD, while China’s was only $300! They were one of the fastest growing economies at the time.

Mahathir’s proposed East Asia Economic Caucus would have moved ASEAN closer to Japan while opposed integration with Clinton’s APEC. This, the US cannot allow. Thus the Southeast Asian economy was destroyed during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis.

China would replace Southeast Asia’s role as the global manufacturing hub after joining the WTO in 2001. Because the US was behind it.

3天前

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

xiaohongshu [none/use name] @hexbear.net 3天前

Comrade @FuckyWucky@hexbear.net is correct. The shift from fiscal (Keynesianism) to monetary policy (Monetarism) reflects the paradigm shift with the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s. Fiscal is government spending, monetary is central bank controlling interest rate to “influence money supply”.

What this monetary loosening is really saying is that “look, our household debt level isn’t as high as those of Western countries and Japan, so we need to encourage the people to take on more debt to spur domestic consumption”.

This is not to say that the Chinese government is not doing fiscal policy, but a lot of those came in the form of subsidies to promote trade-ins of automobiles and electrical appliances. As I have been saying, the real fiscal spending should spent on creating job guarantee, ensure social safety net, and directly raise the income of the rural/migrant worker population.

The key number to watch is deficit spending from the government (currently ~4% of GDP), which reflects actual fiscal spending from the government that has not been taxed back.

For comparison, the US has been running 6-7% deficit for the past two years. The problem with the US is that most of that money did not reach the working class people, but it does not change the fact that the US government (as do any country that has monetary sovereignty) has the power to create new money out of thin air. The most recent example was the Covid stimulus, where each person in the US received a lump sum $2000 in cash, while still far from adequate, still prevented the US (and the world) from going into recession during the pandemic.

The easiest way to think about the difference between “state created money” (deposits created from central government deficit spending) and “commercial lending” (deposits created from commercial bank loans) is that the former is the money that can circulate permanently in the economy (until or unless they are taxed back by the government, otherwise they cannot go anywhere), while the latter drives up money supply but it has to be paid back at some point in the future (with interests), so there is no net financial asset creation (you cannot “save” those money).

When the private sector debt is high, the only way to offset this is for the government to create new money (run the deficit itself) so the private sector has access to new source of permanent money that they can use to service their debt. If not, the private sector (and local governments) will have to rely on borrowing from commercial banks to access new money, and when their debt bubble gets too large, the economy slows down, which is exactly what is happening in China today.

4天前

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

The handsome Chinese soldiers… even though they’re fighting us and we’re supposed to be enemies, I like that they’re all brave and patriotic. Very professional. I wish our soldiers are more like that!

4天前

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

Last week Trump watched Jack Ryan, this week he watched Sicario.

4天前

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

Tracks with what I have been saying for almost a year now that a renewed status quo between US and China is going to be the most likely outcome:

Both the US and China are dealing with their own internal contradictions and cannot afford to keep the animosity going for too long. What’s most likely to happen is a renewed status quo, with new boundaries established, after Europe and the Global South have been properly harvested.

In other words, the US and China will be the big winners in this new global reconfiguration.

Both countries need each other more than they thought. The US might want to decouple, but China has adeptly showed Trump how decoupling will be painful, very painful. After all, all the best cards (especially rare earth restrictions) are being used to keep the US from going through the divorce.

Also this FT article from last week - Why China is doubling down on its export-led growth model has some very interesting paragraphs that give us insight into how Chinese officials think about the US:

During a recent visit to Beijing, one senior European businessman says he was shocked by the reception he received at one of the ministries. Previously welcomed as a valued foreign investor, he said a senior figure at the ministry treated him like a diplomatic adversary and accused Europe of being an unreliable partner.

Others told him the Europeans should stop fixating on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and human rights. “We like Donald Trump,” another official told him. “Why? Because he doesn’t talk about Ukraine and human rights. We can make deals with him.”

Europe is China’s biggest export market after south-east Asia, but Beijing’s success in the trade war with Trump has made it more dismissive of all-comers, the person says.

“China is single-handedly focused on the United States,” the person says. “They think that if they can handle Trump, they can handle Europe easily.” He adds: “The Chinese believe that ‘we can always deal with Europe on our terms. And if it’s not on our terms, we don’t talk to them’.”

This tracks with what I understand about the basis behind China’s win-win cooperation, which is built upon a transactional relationship where mutual benefits are maximized.

4天前

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

While I do not share the same pessimism, I do want to point out that the poster in question was bullied right here on the news mega when Syria was falling… a lot of people doubted their takes (who was one of the few here that correctly saw the swift collapse in Syria) until the news inevitably proved the doubters wrong.

I guess we need to embrace more diversity on thoughts and opinions here, as long as they’re not reactionary or peddling imperialist propaganda, we should let people have the freedom to voice their opinions even when we don’t agree with them. This is a discussion forum after all and not an echo chamber.

4天前

is it naïve of me to feel, deep in my bones, that despite how bleak it is now, the Western Bourgeoisie are overplaying their hand

China ordering the dumping of all US assets by Nov 2026, and the bond market collapsing.

Just to correct a misconception here: there is no such thing as China dumping US assets. This has been the biggest Republican scaremongering about China and we don’t want to perpetuate it.

In order to sell an asset, you gotta have someone to buy it in the first place. The US dollar operates under a free floating exchange rate mechanism so if you try to dump a large amount of US dollars, and nobody wants to buy them at a rate that’s profitable for you, you lose.

In the past, this worked during the fixed exchange rate era because the central bank promised to convert the currency into gold or whatever metal/currency they are pegged to, and if you dump a huge amount of the currency at the same time, you’re betting that the central bank won’t have enough reserves of the gold/metal/foreign currency to defend their exchange rate. This was how Soros screwed with the Bank of England and the Thai central bank in the 1990s.

You literally cannot dump US assets today because it is not pegged to anything, so the Fed doesn’t have to defend the dollar exchange rate. Your best bet is finding a buyer stupid enough to buy from you at a rate that’s profitable for you, but the market players aren’t stupid (especially not the people/institutions/countries who can move trillions).

5天前

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

China’s not going to bend the knee. What people don’t really appreciate is the fact that Trump actually speaks Chinese.

This recent article here from FT - Why China is doubling down on its export-led growth model is a long article but the most interesting are these paragraphs that provide insight into how Chinese officials think about the US:

During a recent visit to Beijing, one senior European businessman says he was shocked by the reception he received at one of the ministries. Previously welcomed as a valued foreign investor, he said a senior figure at the ministry treated him like a diplomatic adversary and accused Europe of being an unreliable partner.

Others told him the Europeans should stop fixating on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and human rights. “We like Donald Trump,” another official told him. “Why? Because he doesn’t talk about Ukraine and human rights. We can make deals with him.”

Europe is China’s biggest export market after south-east Asia, but Beijing’s success in the trade war with Trump has made it more dismissive of all-comers, the person says.

“China is single-handedly focused on the United States,” the person says. “They think that if they can handle Trump, they can handle Europe easily.” He adds: “The Chinese believe that ‘we can always deal with Europe on our terms. And if it’s not on our terms, we don’t talk to them’.”

It’s very clear that China prefers to deal with Trump than with Europe, because Trump thinks like a businessman, and China reaallllyy loves the transactional nature of business dealings. This is the basis behind China’s win-win cooperation model. And China is confident about dealing with Trump because he speaks their language lol.

5天前

is it naïve of me to feel, deep in my bones, that despite how bleak it is now, the Western Bourgeoisie are overplaying their hand

Yes that makes more sense.

I will reiterate my position: China is rolling out a lot of policies to promote domestic consumption, but my take is that you cannot truly resolve that without resolving the elephant in the room, which is the massive wealth inequality.

The economists look at the record amount of household savings and think that they need to “trick” people into unleashing their savings, but this misses the fact the problem is a distribution problem. A lot people choose to save is because of the economic uncertainty. People are afraid of losing their jobs and since there is no social safety net, they prefer to save than to spend. This situation did not exist before 2020 by the way, when China’s economy was very much on the upward trajectory with the real estate booming.

I have said this before but just to write it out again, the solution to this will be:

The government provides job guarantee to the unemployed, so people will not have to worry about losing their jobs and lose their household income.
The government provides social safety net so people won’t have to worry about dishing out large expenses in case of medical emergencies and during unemployment.
Wealth redistribution.

The first two require the central government to run high deficit. In order for people to have the money, somebody’s gonna have to spend it. Previously this was foreigners money through export, as well as the money from infrastructure investment. But since the export and investment-led growth are hitting a wall, it can only be the government running deficit (spending beyond what they earn) to offset that.

The third is… uh… let’s just say very difficult.

5天前

is it naïve of me to feel, deep in my bones, that despite how bleak it is now, the Western Bourgeoisie are overplaying their hand

It’s a real dilemma (when divorced from the other macro policies). The PBOC has given in somewhat since late December Bloomberg article and there is a strong international pressure for the yuan to appreciate, but at the same time the PBOC is giving out reassurances that they will keep the exchange rate stable. Commentaries about it are split: some predict the yuan will rise to 6 by the end of 2026, others think the PBOC will hold the line.

For the third world countries, it’s a real dilemma as well. On the one hand, weaker yuan competes with their export industries, while a stronger yuan makes it more expensive to import from China as you said.

This is why I keep saying that China having a strong consumer market is going to be key because it solves this problem altogether.

5天前

is it naïve of me to feel, deep in my bones, that despite how bleak it is now, the Western Bourgeoisie are overplaying their hand

Thank you for the response, though a lot of that is too speculative that, while I would love for them to come true, simply does not refute the fact that we’re looking at a lot of inactions today, both domestically in the US, and on the international stage. Yes, there are movements, but not enough to threaten the empire.

The tragedy of the woman murdered by ICE yesterday is one such example. ICE has been kidnapping people for nearly a year now, although most of them aren’t white. They are emboldened because nobody’s stopping them, and the fact remains that if nobody will stop the Gestapo, we all know what that will eventually lead to.

Regarding the specific points on China:

China's new 5 year plan includes building up domestic production. There is no indication that they will fail to implement this strategy.

China is already in over-capacity. It needs to build up domestic consumption market to absorb global export surplus goods and drive the domestic demand, not more investment on production. If China fails to do so, the US will remain the world’s largest consumer market and dictate world trade.

China has swapped US debt for 2 African countries for the equivalent in Yuan. We may see even more of this down the road.

Which is probably the worst thing any country should do about their external debt situation right now.

The yuan is currently under a lot of pressure to appreciate, and if (when) it does, these African countries that just swapped the loan for yuan are fucked, because the lower interest rate will not make up for the more expensive yuan they have to earn to repay. In this case, they’re probably better off sticking to dollar debt and take advantage of the USD depreciation instead.

Regardless, no country should take on external debt not denominated in their own currency. It’s a guaranteed way to lose your economic sovereignty.

Besides, since China is running a record $1 trillion trade surplus last year, the question becomes where are those countries going to earn the yuan to repay the loans? In the end, they still have to sell their goods to countries who are willing to run a trade deficit (that means the US) to earn the foreign currencies, sell the currencies on the forex market to buy yuan, and then pay back their Chinese creditors.

It’s extra steps to take advantage of the lower interest rate, but the risks are being shifted to hoping that the Chinese yuan does not appreciate down the road.

Furthermore, the internationalization of yuan (and the rise of China’s consumer market) necessarily involves the appreciation of the yuan itself. You cannot have it both ways - that you want an internationalized Chinese RMB with an artificially devalued exchange rate.

In other words, if you’re betting on the yuan supplanting the dollar, then you should expect the yuan to appreciate and the dollar to depreciate. In this case, it does not make sense to swap the dollar loans for yuan.

What China can do right now is to use its vast USD foreign reserves to pay off those African countries’ debt (the entire external debt of the African continent is $800 billion, well within the reach of China’s several trillions of dollar reserve as well as its $800 billion worth of US treasuries), THEN flood those countries with Chinese yuan in a Marshall Plan style to give them the money to import from China. This will simultaneously raise the income of the Chinese working class, build up China’s domestic consumer market, who will now have more purchasing power to import from the developing countries in return while their countries are freed of debt bondage to foreign financial institutions. This will raise the income of both Chinese working class and those in the developing countries together - a true win-win strategy.

5天前

is it naïve of me to feel, deep in my bones, that despite how bleak it is now, the Western Bourgeoisie are overplaying their hand

ICE has been openly kidnapping minorities for nearly a year, and yet you do not see any meaningful resistance to stop them, including from the so-called leftist organizations.

The US openly supports genocide, bombs Iran, kidnaps Venezuelan president, and yet you do not see the other world powers come together to stop them. (The most you can argue is maybe Russia against NATO expansion in Ukraine, but even that was a situation forced upon Russia, who would otherwise be happy to let the status quo persists).

So, no, the empire did not overplay its hands. The empire is free to do so because there is no organized left, not domestically, nor internationally, to stop them. It is pure cope to believe there will be some kind of divine justice against the empire. They are not scared, they are emboldened.

The materialist answer is much simpler: unlike in the past century when there were strong labor movements and international solidarity, today neoliberalism rules the world and every country is more interested in taking advantage for their own gains than to come together as a cohesive force against Western imperialism.

All the pretense about social democracy, civil rights and upholding international laws were relics of the past when Western capitalism had to compete against the Soviet Union. It simply took some years for these institutions to become fully eroded after the 1990s. In other words, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its consequences.

5天前

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela

You have to trust that he knows he can convince Trump into softening his stance against Latin America.

See how Mamdani gets a pass at condemning the US action in Venezuela? Because Trump likes him.

5天前

Bulletins and International News Discussion from January 5th to January 11th, 2026 - The New Old Colonialism (And Long Live Chavismo) - COTW: Venezuela