David McCloskey

The reason why I think this answer, I think, by the way, the sort of power politics answer encompasses the oil piece, right?

Because oil is a component of that.

And in the eyes of the Trump administration, not just the eyes of the Trump administration, the actual language of the national security strategy, key assets, if they're not in US hands, they need to be in the hands of friendly people.

actors who will sort of do what the US wants.

And I think you'd have to say that, you know, the world's largest proven oil reserves, plus, you know, we haven't talked about it, Gordon, because you cut that check, right?

And quote, all the mines, you know, in Venezuela.

Yeah, it has a massive sort of amount of mineral deposits that are also strategic assets.

You don't want those to be in the hands of the Chinese, right?

And that's, I think, the logic for a lot of what the administration has done over the past couple days.

One thought I had just listening to the Panama Parallel is just how far the US has come in its mastery of these kind of operations.

36 years ago, you needed... Now, I understand.

It is a different context.

But I think nonetheless, 36 years ago, you needed tens of thousands of troops.

And in this operation, you end up with two dozen dead Americans in Panama.

In Venezuela...

you have no dead americans right a bigger country bigger military bigger country bigger military the ability when when sort of the u.s special operations and intelligence apparatus focuses in on a target whether that's bin laden uh you know even think about escobar how long it took to find escobar and to you know to track him down like these operations have gotten

so exquisitely planned and timed.

It's really incredible.

It's really an incredible feat.

I guess you could look at this different ways, couldn't you?