David McCloskey

Because on one level, you think, okay, well, the Russians and the Chinese aren't going to like this.

You think the Chinese have energy and mineral deals with Venezuela.

Chinese private buyers are the biggest customer of Venezuelan oil.

There's question marks over sort of

These deals, the, you know, sort of resource extraction from Venezuela that the Chinese have been conducting, I think, big question mark over that.

There have been protests, of course, from Beijing about the removal of Maduro.

You know, Russia also has deals or had deals with him.

So I guess at one level, you don't like it.

On the other level, though, you do wonder if the assertion of, I don't know, almost kind of spheres of influence, to some degree, you know, if you're

Yeah.

Yeah.

us getting there at some point, maybe in the not so distant future.

Maybe let the Russians do what they want in Ukraine and let the Chinese do what they want in Taiwan.

We're not there yet.

Again, I want to be clear.

But this kind of the logic of a US backyard where we do what we want could suit other great powers as well.

I think the other potentially big losers would be

anti-American strongmen throughout the rest of the Western Hemisphere, right?

Because Trump has already made clear that, you know, Cuba, which has benefited from sort of below market pricing on Venezuela oil, you know, and had supplied the bodyguards for Maduro, many of whom presumably were

were killed.