Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing cannot accept any country acting as the “world’s judge” after the United States captured Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
The world’s second-largest economy has provided Venezuela with an economic lifeline since the U.S. and its allies ramped up sanctions in 2017, purchasing roughly $1.6 billion worth of goods in 2024, the most recent full-year data available.
Almost half of China’s purchases were crude oil, customs data shows, while its state-owned oil giants had invested around $4.6 billion in Venezuela by 2018, according to data from the American Enterprise Institute think tank, which tracks Chinese overseas corporate investment.
All that NK artillery was the real deterrent. Before NK developed Nukes, after the cold war the US could have relatively easily crushed them except for the incredible amount of collateral damage they could have done to SK. However, in the post Ukraine/Trump presidency age, securing a stock of nukes or joining a defense coalition that includes at least one member with nukes seems like the wise decision. Heart breaking really.
The US could also have easily crushed the Vietnamese./s
Well… yeah, we could have.
If war was literally as simple as “kill the other person and damn the consequences” the US could have casually wiped out the viet cong at pretty much any point during the war. The political consequences for doing so were the limiting factor - an extreme example, but we could have just nuked north vietnam to glass and been done with it (and obviously that wasn’t a realistic option (despite the number of times some psycho general or the other tried to advocate for it)).
They tried that towards the end, sending B-52s to carpet bomb Hanoi. Dozens of planes were shot down, hundreds survived, thousands of civilians were killed. If the US continued, they would have managed to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians, but eventually they’d run out of planes before the Vietnamese ran out of people or willingness to defend themselves.
You all act like we didnt already have dozens of nukes at that ppint and couldnt straight up glass the entire country. It wasnt capability that stopped the US is was political willpower or lack there of.
They escalated, yes - absolutely not denying that. But the point was that they didn’t just nuke the city. Winning was important, but there was a point that the consequences of winning were deemed to outweigh the victory itself.
“we coulda won but we just didn’t feel like it.”
Not a very convincing argument.
That’s an oversimplification to the point that it really doesn’t represent my argument at all, though. But to treat with what you said, I’m not sure how
is a bad representation of the situation? The US didn’t drop sarin on the ho chi minh trail, nor did they nuke Hanoi, mobilize full wartime production, draft the “desirables” etc. Politics are a massive part of any war. “An army marches on it’s stomach” isn’t simply a literal adage about the importance of supplies.
The key difference, for those unfamiliar with Asia or history, is that South Korea is a cohesive modern nation with a competent military and a strong sense of national identity that feel genuine friendship with the US (for now at least). All things that weren’t true about South Vietnam.
South Korea was essentially invented by the US in 1947, it took trillions in investment, and decades of propaganda+imprisoning/killing everyone left of Sygmon Rhee to create the nation of South Korea…
I think you’re giving the US way too much credit here. They helped south korea establish itself with a massive investment, but they didn’t “invent” the country, and its pretty insulting to south koreans that you’re so willing to take away their agency in the matter.
There literally was no South Korea, just Korea before the US drew a line on a map.
if i remember correctly, the north koreans also had a role to play in drawing that map, seeing as how the north korean army was pushed all the way north to china’s border.
No, I mean at the end of WWII, there was just japanese-occupied Korea, the US drew the line, held a sham election to put their puppet in power, and prepared to take the rest of Korea.