Comment by trhway
6 days ago
the popular conspiracy theory among Russian opposition is that Maduro exit was negotiated, so he will do small time at a Fed club and would preserve significant amount of his money (at least couple hundreds of millions), and after completing the time will end up with his money in Russia/Belarussia.
We can see that nobody was going to resist the operation in Venezuela, so it doesn't really matter that Venezuela doesn't have nukes. Using nukes isn't just a matter of pressing a button, it involves a lot of people and processes - thus any significant opposition inside the force or just widespread sabotage will make it unusable.
It strikes me as completely possible that the exit was negotiated. The fact that they knew his exact location and "luckily" nabbed him right before he went into some kind of panic room / bunker is certainly... something.
But it seems equally likely to me that he was sold out by somebody in the VZ government/military. And that the paltry military resistance was because they saw direct confrontation with the US as suicidal.
I think it is kind of both - the exit was ultimately negotiated because most of the VZ government/military either sold him or at least abandoned him and showed no interest in any further support of him.
80 of their guys died? Not just venuzuelans. If it was negotiated then maduro negotiated his own closest security forces to be killed as a cover.
Not impossible but certainly in the tinfoil hat range of possibilities.
> the popular conspiracy theory among Russian opposition is that Maduro exit was negotiated, so he will do small time at a Fed club and would preserve significant amount of his money
It sounds stupid. Maduro has no way to enforce the deal, and the US has no incentive to fulfill this deal.
> We can see that nobody was going to resist the operation in Venezuela, so it doesn't really matter that Venezuela doesn't have nukes.
To use it, no resistance is matter. One person must do their job to launch a nuclear weapon. That's all.
> it involves a lot of people and processes
It doesn't matter. Nuclear deterrence exercises are conducted regularly. And their peculiarity is that no one except the person with the red button knows whether it's an exercise or whether the missiles will actually be launched this time.
So when the order to launch comes, many people will be performing a large number of complex processes which will result in the use of nuclear weapons. Because they regularly receive such orders and carry out these processes.