Entirely irrelevant Eurotards assure the world they are "closely monitoring the situation" after the U.S. strikes Venezuela and captures President Nicolás Maduro
Also open thread.
As everybody now knows, the United States launched a series of airstrikes against Venezuela early this morning. The attacks targeted communications facilities and military bases inside the country. At 5.21 am, U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that American soldiers had captured President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. They are presently aboard the USS Iwo Jima, which will take them back to the United States, where they will face criminal charges for “narcoterrorism” and other offences. The action follows months of military buildup in the southern Caribbean and American military strikes on Venezuelan vessels said to be trafficking drugs. At a press conference just a few hours ago, Trump said that his administration intends to “run” Venezuela, at least in the meantime. Formally, the government remains in the hands of Maduro’s acting President (and Maduro’s former Vice President) Delcy Rodríguez.
The European Union, a geopolitically irrelevant if extremely expensive bureaucratic behemoth that has spent a great deal of energy since 2022 lecturing the world on the evils of military aggression and the inviolability of national borders (at least when those borders are Ukrainian) learned about these events from the internet, along with the rest of us. Finally, around noon, the mentally vacant EU foreign affairs girlboss Kaja Kallas logged onto X to assure the world that “the EU is closely monitoring the situation in Venezuela,” as if anybody gives the slightest shit what these people are doing.
Very bizarrely, Kallas also announced that “the EU … has defended a peaceful transition” of power in Venezuela (I guess by tweeting), and she called for “the principles of international law and the UN Charter” to “be respected.” Finally, Kallas declared that “the safety of EU citizens in [Venezuela] is our top priority,” which in light of how much the rest of Kallas’s words are worth, probably means any EU citizens in the country should get the hell out of there.
Never has this Karl Rove quote been more apt:
“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
I’m relieved to hear assurances from Kier Starmer that Britain was not involved.