Stonekettle Station
Jim Wright
Looks like a scene from a Kubrick film: Doctor Blanketfort.
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Winning the battle but loosing the war.
"The U.S way of war is upside down. It does the granular really well, but it absolutely fails in looking at the bigger picture, and this is typical.
I think something that we’re seeing in Venezuela, and what the U.S always does, is downplay the important role of allies; that’s hugely important, working with other countries. In fact, I can tell you there is only one rule for an intervention that has any chance of success. The only way an intervention has any chance of success is if the people on the ground are going to fight for you. If you have allies who are willing actually to fight—like say, the Ukrainians—then you have a chance of success in an intervention. If you’re going to do the fighting, if you’re going to go into Afghanistan, Vietnam and infantilize the people who might support you, you’re going to lose that war. But that’s how the U.S. way of war operates, it infantilizes other countries, demeans them, says the U.S. can do everything, and then the U.S. ends up winning battle after battle and then losing the war because they can’t keep it going. This could be something we’re going to see in Venezuela if we keep seeing these kinds of interventions. We don’t actually have any support in Venezuela, we’re alienating the Venezuelan opposition with our behavior and we’re alienating a lot of other countries in the region. I think these countries are looking around and saying, “what the heck? Who’s going to support this?”
[Phillips O'Brian in conversation with Paul Krugman]
