I'm taking a 'Wait and see' approach more with Trump. His MO seems to be, say one thing, do another. The guy talks a shit ton of smack and hyperbole. I'm not thrilled with that, but that is how Trump operates it seems.
We'll see what he actually does in Venezuela soon enough.
Oh, and China's Belt and Road program is one of bait and switch. They come in, loan counties money and build infrastructure, and then like a shady contractor suddenly change the terms of the agreement to make the nation they negotiated with on the hook forever in payments they didn't agree to initially.
And assume these things for this example, and do not counter with other ways things could play out, which you can pose in another post, if you want.
Assumptions:
- Trump gives Big Oil enough assurances (whatever those end up being) that Big Oil agrees
- based on that either Big Oil, or Private Investors, or the US tax payer funds this Nation Building exercise to a successful point where Venezuela now has a fully developed Fort McMurray (Canada Tar Sands) like region producing enough dirty oil that it is on the verge of profitably
- profits are not flow mostly to US big Oil interests with a much smaller part being captured by the Country and its people
At that time a new Venezuelan POTUS wins who runs a very open and transparent populist campaign based on Nationalizing Venezuelan assets for the benefit of the Venezuelan people and he promises a Country wide referendum, which is over whelming won by citizen vote directing the Nationalization.
Result:
- Venezuela begins the process of Nationalization and gets World Court rulings that they have a right to determine what happens with their country resources and that such an over whelming citizen referendum win, is the justification behind that ruling. the people of Venezuela have spoken.
- Imagine US has a POTUS, at the time, who does not want to flout World Court rulings or the norms of Countries being able to control and determine what is done with their assets and as such they refuse to fight it.
- US Big Oil are left with the only recourse, to sue Venezuela for breach of contracts and loss of assets but Venezuela argues all prior agreements were implemented under extreme duress and coercion, using Trumps own words of 'him running Venezuela and thus being on both sides of deal' and the threat of continued military force against the country.
Based on the above again World Courts rule for Venezuela, leaving Big Oil with its only recourse, which is the US tax payer guarantees to pay them out for all losses of costs and profits, which the taxpayers are forced to underwrite.
My Question:
- even if you think it would play out another way do you agree the path i paint above could be one path as to how this played out? If not, pick out which points SPECIFICALLY i say that you think CANNOT happen? (not ones you think unlikely as this is not about alternatives which do exist but then avoid addressing this hypothetical)
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Again if you want to paint a counter view of how it might play (i am not denying we could not create many) i will not reply to it here and will just cut and paste this to you again to see if you will reply to MY post. I would reply to your counter view in its own separate post after you reply to mine in a way that is not just changing the premise so you do not have to deal with it.