The U.S. plan emerges

And it resembles an old colonial playbook.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on NBC and made remarks summarized here by Jake Sherman of Punchbowl:

One way to interpret this is:

The U.S. does not intend to run Venezuela, in the sense of setting up a government.

Nor does it expect the opposition to take power. The party that the U.S. says won the 2024 election is to be left on its own for now.

The existing government is expected to do what the U.S. tells it to do, on the issues the U.S. cares about, while managing on its own everything that the U.S. doesn’t care about.

Since we seem to be, almost explicitly, re-running the McKinley presidency, a look at the colonial history of that period is useful.

What Rubio, Trump et al are sketching out does not sound like the Philippines plan, where the United States took over a country in 1898, crushed an independence movement, and not only governed but built its own capital city.

Nor, for that matter, are they describing Iraq-style nation building.

What they describe sounds closer to a classic British colonial model. In the 1800’s, the British controlled some countries directly. But many others had notionally independent governments, to which the British sent an ambassador (or high commissioner) who would be high-handed in saying what his government expected of the local prince or ruler.

Occasionally, a new ruler would be installed. Sometimes troops were required.

And sometimes, as in Afghanistan, the arrangement would be resisted, go horribly wrong, and lead to bloody wars.

That is an aspect to be realistic about. The U.S. is describing a low-cost, high-reward intervention. But they are not the only player in the game. Sometimes events take their own direction; there was a brief phase when the plan for Iraq also seemed to be installing a friendly chieftain and moving on to other adventures. Didn’t work out that way.

The U.S. has its own long history of military interventions in Latin America, and almost always commands great influence. But I can’t think of any intervention in a country as populous as Venezuela - about 28 million. This is not Grenada or Panama, nor Haiti, nor even Cuba. It’s a big move and the story is just beginning.