Putin’s Geopolitical Judo Triggered Pompeo to Rant About Venezuela

Russia recently dispatched two nuclear-capable bombers to Venezuela.

This sudden development came shortly after President Maduro’s visit to Moscow where he secured $6 billion worth of investment in the oil and gold industries and an agreement for Russia to supply 600,000 tons of wheat for his people. In addition, it occurs in the context of the US announcing its planned withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty on the unproven pretext that Russia is supposedly violating its conditions,suggesting that Moscow might mean for this to be an asymmetrical response to Washington that could portend more regular flights of this nature in the future once America finally pulls out of the agreement sometime next year.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was so incensed by what happened that he took to Twitter to hypocritically attack Russia for “sending bombers halfway around the world”, totally forgetting to mention that his country has much more than two nuclear-capable bombers on the other side of the planet. He even went further and ranted that “The Russian and Venezuelan people should see this for what it is: two corrupt governments squandering public funds, and squelching liberty and freedom while their people suffer”, making it seem like this is some ultra-costly military operation that broke the Russian bank and placed the Venezuelan people under foreign occupation.

To the contrary, flights such as this one cost an insignificant fraction of the Russian military budget and are aimed at securing Venezuela’s sovereignty in the face of the US’ HybridWar threats, though it’s precisely because of this and the fact that Moscow could leverage such moves as an asymmetrical response to Washington’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty that Pompeo blew a fuse and felt triggered to tweet about it. Whatever one’s personal stance may be towards the beleaguered Venezuelan government, this stunt didn’t cost them a thing and has nothing to do with supposedly curtailing the people’s civil liberties.

Pompeo flat-out fearmongered about it because he himself is scared of the strategic implications of Russia regularly dispatching nuclear-capable bombers to the Western Hemisphere, something tha this country is incapable of stopping unless it succeeds in overthrowing the democratically elected and legitimate Venezuelan government, which is itself becoming ever less likely as the authorities receive significant financial assistance from their Russian and Chinese partners that could theoretically trickle down to the population if properly managed. As such, Pompeo’s rant should be interpreted as a scream of desperation after President Putin just pulled one of his signature geopolitical “judo” moves.

By Andrew Korybko
Source: Oriental Review