Comment by Ray20

> 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.