Sinking of "narcoterrorist" ships, staging of large amounts of naval asset and news of covert operations inside Venezuela are signs of Washington playing it's games in America's back yard again. What makes this ominous is the resignation of key military commanders, starting from the SOUTHCOM head, admiral Alvin Holsey, who was basically responsible for this playground in the world for the US armed forces. Military commanders can either follow the orders from the political leadership or resign, so when they start resigning, it tells something.

Yet this is the Trump presidency, which makes it quite hard to estimate just what is comes out of this? Will the "Department of War" live up to it's name or will this fade later into the background, just as with invading Greenland, Panama or Canada happened? Likely US territory won't be enlarge by pieces of Venezuela, but the question is just to what level will this conflict develop. Will it be:

a) The same as now, sinking of "narcoterrorist" vessels and few clandestine operations.
b) Surgical strikes and then a declaration that Maduro isn't a threat anymore. (Like bombing of Iran)
c) Overthrow of the regime... somehow.
d) a longer and wider war

First of all, Trump doesn't create alliances or set any real international agenda for other countries to follow. His approach in Latin America is more like "bully everyone", which actually only makes the US weaker in it's own continent in the long run. But things like that Trump doesn't care shit about. For Trump's own base, that works, because they either don't care a shit about relations with Latin America. When some leader of a Latin American country say or does something that Trump doesn't like, his first reaction is to have punitary tariffs on the country and stop any aid to the country. This basically is a recipe for making Latin American countries to feel like Canada when it comes to the US. Then there's the short attention span of the senile President. Trump lives off from being in the media and in the center stage of everything, which naturally changes a lot. There is no long term plan followed faithfully from one year to the next.

The US has enjoyed the Superpower status basically because it's alliances and good relations with other countries, a thing that the average Trump supporter is totally ignorant of, because the populist line is that everyone has unfairly benefited from this. This isn't so. A case example are the US-Columbian relations. The US systematically helped the country to fight the drug cartels of the country and also helped to deal with the leftist insurgency threat. Columbia ought to thus in good terms with the US, but not so in the Trump era.

Perhaps the only bright light here is that at least Guyana, which likely will avoid any hostility from Venezuela at this stage now. A small fact, which just tells how hideous the Maduro regime actually is.

But what do you think what will happen?