Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Beijing cannot accept any country acting as the “world’s judge” after the United States captured Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.
The world’s second-largest economy has provided Venezuela with an economic lifeline since the U.S. and its allies ramped up sanctions in 2017, purchasing roughly $1.6 billion worth of goods in 2024, the most recent full-year data available.
Almost half of China’s purchases were crude oil, customs data shows, while its state-owned oil giants had invested around $4.6 billion in Venezuela by 2018, according to data from the American Enterprise Institute think tank, which tracks Chinese overseas corporate investment.
This also gives justification to North Korea. They’ve been arguing for ages that they should be allowed nuclear weapons because otherwise the US would come in and force a regime change, and now Trumpsky has just handed them the evidence.
All that NK artillery was the real deterrent. Before NK developed Nukes, after the cold war the US could have relatively easily crushed them except for the incredible amount of collateral damage they could have done to SK. However, in the post Ukraine/Trump presidency age, securing a stock of nukes or joining a defense coalition that includes at least one member with nukes seems like the wise decision. Heart breaking really.
The US could also have easily crushed the Vietnamese./s
The key difference, for those unfamiliar with Asia or history, is that South Korea is a cohesive modern nation with a competent military and a strong sense of national identity that feel genuine friendship with the US (for now at least). All things that weren’t true about South Vietnam.
South Korea was essentially invented by the US in 1947, it took trillions in investment, and decades of propaganda+imprisoning/killing everyone left of Sygmon Rhee to create the nation of South Korea…
How is that pertinent to whether or not the US had the capacity to best NK militarily in the 90s?