In a significant escalation of Caribbean tensions, President Nicolas Maduro has ordered Venezuela’s navy to escort oil tankers departing the country’s eastern coast for the high seas. The maneuver serves as a direct challenge to the maritime blockade announced earlier this week by United States President Donald Trump, who has vowed to intercept sanctioned vessels trading with Venezuela.
The decision to deploy military escorts follows a week of rising hostilities, sparked when U.S. special forces neutralized a Venezuelan tanker in the Caribbean. Describing the seized vessel as “big, very big,” President Trump justified the measure on Wednesday, stating, “They took our rights. We had a lot of oil there. They kicked out our companies, and we want it back.”
Every nation has the right to protect its citizens at sea from piracy or acts of war.
If a Ukrainian cargo ship was attacked by the Russian navy then Ukraine could protect it and no one would question those actions.
Surely every U.S. Navy admiral and ship captains would know that if they got an order to attack Venezuelan Navy vessels.
Now is the time we are going to see if US military personnel are too cowardly to refuse illegal orders or not. I suspect there is a good chance the answer will be disappointing but resistance is still possible.
More likely I think the US military is going to lose a major asset like a ship from topdown orders to do utterly braindead shit during a strike and conforming to them even though the orders are horribly stupid and ill-advised tactically. This is nearly an inveitable eventuality if this escalation continues as people like Pete Hegseth are literally incapable of looking at a fancy military map with ships on it and not needing to pointlessly order them around to feel powerful when surrounded by actual military brass who know how to do their job, even if it will obviously kill US military personnel for no good reason, the brain of Pete Hegseth has been conditioned and rotted out from playing the part of a powerful fascist and is physically incapable of listening in that type of situation.
Think about it, imagine a situation where Navy brass are telling Pete Hegseth his idea is an extremely stupid thing to do with a guided missile destroyer and will get it blown up resulting in the deaths of all the crew members and replay it 1000 times with the Navy brass bringing up the point in a 1000 different ways and find one where you can credibly argue Pete Hegseth would listen. You can’t, it is a futile exercise, this is categorically an impossible eventuality in the real world.
Unfortunately I think if the Trump administration has truly decided on war with Venezuela the only thing that can stop it is a tidal wave of shear embarrassment and humiliation that shatters the resolve of US bigots by underlining how their fascism makes them completely unfit to lead a military rationally, which is really the only place Centrists will actually break with Conservatives on military foreign policy despite the superficial claims Centrists make about caring about what is right and wrong.
Exhibit A see the Palestinian Genocide and complete lack of giving a shit by the leadership of the political center of the US and how it nearly perfectly aligns with the brutal cruelty of Conservative world views.
[EDIT: did some research]
You’re 100% right:
Even though these are finally military ships, the Trump administration has managed to make attacking them a violation of US law.
The fascists in power will not be happy with only attacking military targets, for evidence of that see literally every step that has been taken until now by them.
On the other hand, if the US can seize Venezuelan vessels on the high seas, why can’t Europe stop Russia’s shadow fleet?