American mercenaries arrested by fishermen following a beach invasion, Venezuela

Lmao I totally forgot they tried this in his first term

First as farce, then As Farce

As I recall, the US found these guys in case Guaidó wanted to try to do a coup. Guaidó was like "thanks guys but nah," so the US politely thanked Silvercorp and told them to go home. Silvercorp's reaction was to attempt a coup as a private venture with a vanguard of 60 and a reserve of ~300.

The head of Silvercorp had been a battalion officer or something in the GWOT, so of course he concluded that he was a military genius who was capable of personally taking on a whole country. (He wasn't)

very reminiscent of William Walker tbh

Oh no, it’s way dumber than that. First of all, the Silvercorp guys were nobodies. Until Goudreau, who was just an E-7 in 10th SFG, got involved with Venezuelan figures, it basically was just him in an office subcontracting.

As far as I understand, the U.S. government didn’t back shit, but since Goudreau knew Trump’s head of security after being subcontracted as security for a few events, they managed to introduce him to a few opposition guys.

The thing that spooked the opposition was that Goudreau kept claiming that he was some hot shot with CIA backing, which they realized he wasn’t when he kept asking for payment + they ran this through the NID and the CIA, which were mildly confused to say the least.

The CIA allegedly warned him not to go through with any of this, but Goudreau met up with Alcalá, who promised him 300 men all equipped with rifles and NVGs. The thing is that he only had 60 and a lot of the guns got caught by the Colombian National Police.

So they launched an invasion of Venezuela with 60 guys, of which a not insignificant number were armed with airsoft guns.

Do they have something Trump/GOP wants? Yes? Then we're going in. And they won't even bother with WMDs somewhere north/south/east/west of Caracas this time. Damnit, I hate this timeline.

Wait, WHAT!? WHERE THE FUCK DID THIS COME FROM?!?!? WHY VENEZUELA?!?!? WHY NOW?!?! WTF!?!

The Venezuelan government is pretty unpopular since they rigged that election, so it *might* work in an alternate universe where we had a smart democratic expansion government and foreign policy, but without that it's doomed.

I don't think they will, if only because we're getting none of the "will I, won't I" or any such drama from Trump and I don't see an American invasion likely from three destroyers and 2200 Marines. But that we're even having this conversation is fucked

I think they're gonna do "Clear and Present Danger" but stupider

If we keep bringing up the epstein files, trump will have no choice left to start a war.

It seems like the main cause of wars in the modern world is shitty leaders looking to shore up their power, and in this case, we have two of them, so... feels likely.

Didn't the collapse of the old U.S. in Cyberpunk occur as a result of military adventurism in South America?

According to a quick glance at the wiki, 'The Collapse' started with the VP and the heads of several agencies doing unauthorized operations in South America, and also opposing a European attempt at detente with the USSR, which was considerably more successful with the glasnost thing than in otl.

This led to a global market crash in '94, then a presidential assassination in '96 meant that VP and his buddies didn't have to sneak around anymore, who set off a period of widespread insurrection including the effective secession of numerous states, which the military refused to put down.

And finally, an outright invasion of South America in 2003 undertaken in an attempt to reassert control (...somehow) was so disastrous that when the public found out who was responsible they all had to flee the country or die trying.

By then the megacorps were powerful enough to undertake private wars, which gets us to a setting sufficiently lawless to be suitable for a TTRPG. Of course, it also says the page needs to be rewritten with the retcons from the most recent edition, so who knows what else they came up with.

But he’s angling for the Nobel Peace Prize. (Give me a break)

"Peace through strength", would be my guess. If he bullies literally everyone into submission, then "he’s a peacemaker"… because being a fuckstick bully is all he knows 😒

Genuinely curious if he even knows

I’m not convinced he’s in charge anymore

Como soy dice “Black Hawk Down”

“maybe THIS will make the average american like me again!”