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US (So Far) Fails to Capture Third Venezuela Tanker. What Does the US Do to Restore Its Manhood? Allow Privateers via Letters of Marque?

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If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If a much-ballyhooed US show of force, here the seizing of a tanker as part of a purported Venezuela blockade, was reported as having happened when it has not yet and may not come off, is US military machismo still intact? And if not, what does the US do next?

Mind you, the facts may change after this post goes live, but as of now, the last major media news report on the status of Bella-1, the third of three “sanctioned” Venezuela-serving oil tankers targeted for US seizure is still free. It is currently under Chinese ownership, apparently intended to carry a cargo from Venezuela to China. Bloomberg and perhaps other outlets had reported this third targeted tanker as boarded (the US had just captured another tanker over the weekend). But searches now show headlines (perhaps including corrected ones?) depicting the third vessel as still under pursuit. From the BBC in Trump says US is pursuing third oil tanker linked to Venezuela as of 9 hours ago; there are slightly older reports along these lines and nothing more current from big outlets:

The US Coast Guard is still pursuing a vessel in international waters near Venezuela as tensions in the region escalate, President Donald Trump has confirmed.

“We’re actually pursuing” the tanker, Trump said on Monday….

The current chase is related to a “sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela’s illegal sanctions evasion”, a US official told the BBC’s partner CBS News.

Late on Saturday the US Coast Guard approached an oil tanker, which US officials said was not flying a valid national flag, the New York Times reported.

Confirming the chase on Monday, President Trump said: “It’s moving along. We’ll end up getting it.”

The president said that the US would hold onto the seized oil and the vessels carrying it.

“We’re going to keep it… maybe we’ll sell it, maybe we’ll keep it”, he said.

“Maybe we’ll use it in the strategic reserves. We’re keeping it, we’re keeping the ships also.”

Trump has repeatedly had the bad habit of declaring victory when it has not been secured, witness a peace deal in Ukraine, between Thailand and Cambodia, obliteration of Iran’s nuclear program, a ceasefire in Gaza, victory versus the Houthis….the list goes on. So I will believe it when I see it.

Additional detail from Twitter:

A colleague here who has very extensive contacts across the Global South diplomatic community told me last evening that the Bella, as he put it “ran away” and has held off the US helicopters using the booms on the ship. The BBC story linked above happens to have a clip of the US seizing the second tanker and it shows helicopters being used to effect the capture, so that does offer corroboration of sorts. This contact also said about half the UK’s navy had been deployed to the Caribbean.

I am not even remotely a commercial maritime or a naval operations expert. However, it seems likely that if the Bella has evaded capture so far, it could get away. Helicopters do not have huge ranges. The US is not going to move whatever carrier it came from all that much to effect one seizure, since it still needs to maintain the blockade.

Now if the Bella-1 does indeed get away, what does the US do next? Presumably other bold captains, seeing that the US can simply be outrun, would similarly try ignoring US boarding efforts. After all, they too might succeed in escaping and the worst is that they are seized a bit later.

Experts are encouraged to weigh in. Might helicopter crews attempt small arms fire on ship personnel the next time? It was none other than Pete Hegseth who bragged about not being bound by tiresome rules and using “maximum lethality”. But if we were to try that, would that not justify a response by the ship’s crew? I have to imagine they do have some arms on board because pirates. How hard would it be to get off a shot that would take out a helicopter’s fragile rotors? But might the US actually welcome an incident like that because it could then justify deploying fighter jets? This sounds dangerously stoopid but that is this Administration’s hallmark.

But at least one account says the US abandoned pursuit even after media outlets were reporting the chase as still on:

The ship being empty is consistent with the claims that it was coming from Iran to Venezuela (which would otherwise seem nonsensical). Readers can advise if a tanker going that long distance a to pick up a cargo is unusual:

More nuggets:

Mind you, China has already complained about the US capture of Chinese ships transporting Venezuelan oil, but that was triggered by the grabbing of the second tanker, the Centuries, and not Bella-1.

But if you read a story from Reuters, republished on qCaptain, carefully, the US embargo is even more limited than it seems. The Administration did say it was limited only to “sanctioned” tankers and that does seem not to mean all tankers plying the Venezuela trade. From Reuters in Venezuela Sends Two Supertankers to China Despite U.S. Blockade Threat:

Venezuela on Thursday authorized two very large crude carriers (VLCC) to set sail for China, according to two sources familiar with Venezuela’s oil export operations, which would be only the second and third supertankers to depart the country since the U.S. seized a ship carrying Venezuelan oil last week.

The U.S. has said it would not allow vessels under sanction to leave Venezuelan waters. The departing tankers, each carrying around 1.9 million barrels of Venezuelan Merey heavy crude according to internal documents from state company PDVSA, are not on the U.S. current sanctions list…..

Of 75 oil tankers currently in Venezuela that are part of a “shadow fleet” of ships that typically navigate with transponders off to disguise their locations, around 38 have been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury, according to data from TankerTrackers.com, updated this week. Of those, at least 15 are loaded with crude and fuel, it added.

So was this blockade intended to be leaky, and more intended for optics and face preservation as opposed to real strangulation? Or alternatively, that a partial choking of oil traffic would be enough to do real damage to the already weak Venezuela economy?

And on the Russia front:

Some in the US are pursuing another bright idea, of encouraging piracy by authoring letters of marque, supposedly to go after cartel-related ships. Since Trump designated Venezuela’s president Maduro to be a narco-terrorist, could that notion be stretched to include having privateers assist in the blockade?

The official scheme so far, courtesy the Washington Post:

As President Donald Trump ramps up tensions with Venezuela, U.S. lawmakers have introduced legislation to bring back a scourge of the high seas banished from Atlantic and Pacific waters since the age of sail: privateers, authorized by government-issued letters of marque to ply the trade of piracy in service of their country by targeting enemy ships.

These modern-day privateers, under a bill introduced Thursday by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), would receive authorization from Trump as private individuals to seize foreign vessels from anyone who “is a member of a cartel, a member of a cartel-linked organization, or a conspirator associated with a cartel or a cartel-linked organization.”

“Cartels have replaced corsairs in the modern era, but we can still give private American citizens and their businesses a stake in the fight against these murderous foreign criminals,” Lee, who is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement announcing the bill. “The Cartel Marque and Reprisal Reauthorization Act will revive this historic practice to defend our shores and seize cartel assets.”

And as we surmised, the intent does seem to enlist the help of dull normals in the Venezuela embargo effort:

The U.S. has amassed a vast array of warships, surveillance craft and aircraft in the Caribbean, including the USS Gerald R. Ford — the Pentagon’s largest aircraft carrier. Thousands of soldiers, including elite Special Forces units, have also been deployed to the region.

Under Lee’s “Cartel Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act of 2025,” ordinary American citizens could join them in plying the seas for vessels to intercept.

There is mainly unseemly enthusiasm for this plan on Twitter:

But also a few cautionary views:

It really is too bad that the Administration is in a hissy with Somalis right now, since they seem to be world leaders in piracy and could probably lend a hand. But then again, we had designated not just ISIS but even specifically the then-named Al-Jolani as a terrorist until we decided we really really needed him and kissed and made up.

We’ve embedded the draft text of the bill at the end of the post.

After encouraging AI theft of intellectual property and money laundering and tax evasion via crypto, this new turn to lawlessness should come as no surprise. But it’s still depressing to see what the US has become.

00 Letters of Marque and Reprisal - Text
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54 comments

        1. Michaelmas

          Quite.

          As far back as WW2, Admiral Doernitz used to interview each new U-boat captain and in the course of it gesture to the picture of the open sea hung on his wall and say, “This is the future of naval warfare.”

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          1. scott s.

            So about a dozen US destroyers sunk by U-boats; about half of those transferred to the Brits for escort duty.

            Only significant loss was USS Block Island CVE-21. As in WWI good for commerce raiding; not decisive as a naval force.

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  2. The Rev Kev

    NC had a link a coupla years ago where someone was suggesting government-issued letters of marque and this appeared in a US Navy publication. Problem is where are those pirates going to get ships from to pursue oil tankers? You can hardly pick up a second-hand destroyer or a corvette on eBay. But there is another aspect. If the US is going to resort to using privateers, then I would expect security companies to deploy squads of troops on each tanker to repel them. They would have the legal right to fight off attacks by privateers including using things like ATGMs to take out the privateers. And what rights do privateers have on the open sea? I would imagine that they have the right to be hanged from the yard-arm as pirates. Those “letters of marque” technically say that they have the right to be treated as prisoners of war but perhaps they might adopt how the Trump regime has treated sailors of disabled boats at sea. And dead privateers, after all, tell no tales.

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    1. vao

      I suggest that those who consider becoming a privateer under a letter of marque from the USA get some advice from a legal counsel well-versed in international law first.

      Because privateering has been deemed illegal under an international convention called the “Declaration of Paris” since 1856. The USA is one of the few countries that never signed the treaty. Interestingly, neither did China, Venezuela, and Persia/Iran — so capturing ships from those nations under a letter of marque might be admissible, but I would be exceedingly wary of trying to do the same with a Russian vessel, since Russia is one of the founding members of the Declaration of Paris…

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    2. Yves Smith Post author

      If your memory of timing is correct, this was already in the works as of that link. Senator Lee bill published on the 19th or perhaps the 18th. The Post article was on the 19th. So this was an amplification perhaps pretending not to be.

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        1. Al

          I remember this article about targeting Chinese ships with the assumption that the Chinese would just roll over and not fight back. Basically giving the Chinese an open invitation to fully militarize their maritime militia.

          Russia has already started escorting some of their ships and have armed mercenaries posted on the others.

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    3. Adam1

      It seems totally nuts. It’s like giving Venezuela a license to arm it’s fleet and shot back. A few dead American privateers is going to be bad optics unless it’s supposed to be so that Trump gets his own Gulf of Tonkin to wide US Naval activity.

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    4. DJG, Reality Czar

      The Rev Kev: Let’s also bring back keelhauling. Pete Hegseth can show off his mighty beta-male-ness with a dip.

      As others comment: First, the letters of marque are not legal in the sense that they violate too many treaties. Second, it will be all fun and games for USonians till some ship fires back in self-defense and a bunch of obese USonians find their ends floating big-bellies-up in the bounding main like some harpooned sea creature.

      It also occurs to me that so much of this Venezuela posturing would end with the U.S. of A. getting a punch in the nose. I’m so old I recall Nancy Pelosi restoring her manhood by dragging Juan Guaidó around Congress and trying to legitimate him — so the imperialism is bipartisan and omnisexual. The problem is that the U.S. of A. is terrorizing the world — so that sinking an aircraft carrier brings in the risk of Venezuela being “shocked and awed” into Iraq.

      Yet: What goes around comes around.

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      1. Nat Wilson Turner

        Presumably our privateers would want boats that can actually float which disqualifies these British hulks.

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  3. JohnA

    Apropos the Russian cargo ship off the Swedish Baltic coast, it is seemingly very much a case of much ado about nothing. Swedish mainstream media went overboard at the weekend, with lurid tales of sanctioned vessels and that it ‘had’ (ie some point in the past) allegedy freighted North Korean weapons to Russia.
    The truth is more prosaic. The ship suffered an engine breakdown, dropped anchor and sent an emergency call to the Swedish coastguards. The coastguards, together with Swedish customs personnel boarded the ship (no protests from the crew) to perform a search. Swedish security services and Swedish Intelligence were also kept updated apparently.
    The Swedish prosecutor has now resolved not to pursue any further legal action and the ship has sailed away from Swedish waters. Another reds under the bed scare that turned out to be toothless.

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  4. Wukchumni

    What if the Buckaneers were to recruit rap star Drake as their internet spokesperson, get the youts on board…

    Shades of Sir Francis, ya know.

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  5. Valiant Johnson

    Goes right along with the idea I’ve been hearing and reading about bounty hunters assisting ICE and Border Patrol.

    Reply ↓
  6. TomDority

    Guess ol’ Pete has been hitting the sauce with his buddies in the basement
    “constitutional weapon sharper than any tariff, more direct than diplomacy, and truer to the frontier spirit than endless entanglements” Sounds like the lead in to the old Superman
    “Every seized ton of drugs, every reclaimed container of counterfeit currency, every repelled caravan becomes profit for the privateer.”
    Yea, so these privateers get to sell drugs on the same streets for profit.
    “coder in the basement become privateers in a great recommissioning” yea, great… but they will stay in the basement while AI does the work.
    “loyal Heritage Americans sworn to the covenant of blood and soil” what the F??? crazy pants.
    “spilling the blood of conscripted sons in foreign sand” I guess the draft is back on?
    “wage economic and kinetic warfare” – Did not know Kinetic Warfare was a term back in the day – snarc

    It’s got to be a joke – if not….

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  7. Carolinian

    Search says nothing about the tanker being captured so apparently it escaped? Latest BBC story on the pursuit is from 12 hours ago.

    And I laughed out loud at the Trump battleship story. Why would you need a battleship to carry lightweight missiles?

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    1. Yves Smith Post author

      Yes, and nothing more current save on Twitter, where as indicated above, at least one account said the pursuit was abandoned.

      You can be sure the press would be told in an hour max if the tanker were caught.

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  8. Henry Moon Pie

    My take on the Letters of Marque is somewhat different. For some reason, the TechBros, who wanted wide open trade so they could build their iPhones and Teslas in China, now want a return to WW I where convoys of merchant ships went around escorted by warships. Whatever. But if they want to play those games now for some crazy reason, let them build their own damn navy.

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    1. lyman alpha blob

      Be careful what you ask for HMP – some of those TechBros have enough money to create their own military already. Those Anduril drones give me the willies.

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    2. B24S

      Some years back my wife and I were attending a wedding reception for one of her coworkers (NICU RNs) in Sausalito, at a bayside restaurant. At one point, I looked up (and I mean UP) from the conversation to see what looked to me like a Destroyer Escort sailing past us down to SF Bay.

      To say I was perturbed would be an understatement. Turned out to be Larry Ellison’s “yacht” of the moment…

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  9. MicaT

    I’m a bit confused as these statements don’t make any sense.
    The ship ran away from the help at a speed of 11 knots vs a helicopter that can do say 150? And has I would imagine quite a long range for anything flying over the ocean

    And what booms is this person talking about? Big tankers have no cranes or things that move like that. They offload and unload via large flexible pipes from the level of the deck. That equipment is from the loading or unloading dock.
    And the pictures of the ship show a standard huge tanker without any such equipment sticking up above deck.

    And large tanker ships often have a specific landing zone for helicopters, most pictures I e checked out seem to be in the middle of the ship which are specifically located to be very far away from anything that sticks up high that could damage the aircraft.

    Regardless more Trump chaos that will backfire

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    1. chuck roast

      Indeed. And this lumbering giant goes best in a straight line. A trillion dollars for a military and they can’t capture a defenseless blob. Pathetic. Somali pirates in open boat can do better.

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    2. Yves Smith Post author

      “Ran away” in the sense it refused to be boarded. If the helicopters can’t land, they keep burning fuel circling and eventually have to go back to refuel and try again. Even a ship at 11 knots the vessel will eventually get too far from where ever the helicopters came from.

      The “booms” was from diplos who are not buzzword compatible. Tankers do appear to have some sort of moving arms on decks that could impede a helicopter landing:

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      1. Grebo

        I believe the usual approach is for marines to rappel down to the deck from a hovering copter. You can’t expect most ships to have a handy open landing spot after all.

        I imagine a marine would want to see his way clear before getting on that rope so it may not be all that difficult to put them off if you see them coming.

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        1. Yves Smith Post author

          BWAHAHA. From Reuters in 12/24 Links by Conor. The US is trying to execute a blockade without the guys who know how to board, as in rappel down. They presumed that if they showed up, the tanker would agree to being herded into port:

          The ship, which maritime groups have identified as the Bella 1, has refused to be boarded by the Coast Guard. That means that the task will likely fall to one of just two teams of specialists – known as Maritime Security Response Teams – who can board vessels under these circumstances, including by rappelling from helicopters…..

          The days-long pursuit highlights the mismatch between the Trump administration’s desire to seize sanctioned oil tankers near Venezuela and the limited resources of the agency that is mainly carrying out operations, the Coast Guard.

          Unlike the U.S. Navy, the Coast Guard can carry out law enforcement actions, including boarding and seizing vessels that are under U.S. sanctions….

          A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Coast Guard officials on the Ford were from a Maritime Security Response Team and at the time too far from Bella 1 to carry out a boarding operation.

          “There are limited teams who are trained for these types of boardings,” said Corey Ranslem, chief executive of maritime security group Dryad Global and previously with the U.S. Coast Guard….

          “The Coast Guard is in a severe readiness crisis that is decades in the making,” Admiral Kevin Lunday, who leads the Coast Guard, told lawmakers in June….

          “Our Coast Guard is less ready than in any other time in the past 80 years since the end of World War Two. The downward readiness spiral we are on is not sustainable,” Lunday said earlier this year.

          https://gcaptain.com/coast-guard-pursuing-defiant-bella-1-tanker-as-u-s-blockade-of-venezuela-runs-into-reality/

          Apparently the tanker that was boarded by rappelers, the Centuries, was close enough to the team.

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          1. The Rev Kev

            Should note that that tanker that was seized and was owned by the Chinese was not a sanctioned tanker at all. But they grabbed it anyway and with it China’s oil that was on the way to Venezuela. China won’t take that laying down.

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      2. ibaien

        option one: the juice of seizing an empty tanker wasn’t worth the squeeze

        option two: the US was told by RUS/CHI backchannels that this wasn’t a good one to seize and they laid off

        either way, i don’t think tankers are getting into or out of VEN terminals without prior knowledge and consent at this point. left as an exercise to the readers as to why

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  10. JohnnyGL

    NC Community,

    I’m wondering if this dumb story is more of a cover story for something else more nefarious. Recall the story of the junky Pentagon program to train Syrian rebels that only trained like 5-10 guys. Sy Hersh told the story with more context, that it was a bureaucratic fight between the Pentagon and the CIA and the ‘meant to fail’ program that the Pentagon was running was supposed to be a REPLACEMENT for the CIA program that was linked to Al Qaeda, which, to everyone’s chagrin, was far more successful in training up ISIS/Al Qaeda. But, the CIA knew it was an attempt to ruin their pet project and the end result was BOTH programs got funded.

    Is this really an attempt to get the Mexcian drug cartels to go get into the business of trying to hijack Venezuelan oil shipping?

    1) we know there’s CIA and DEA links to the Sinaloa Cartel, at the very least, plus a long history of the intel agencies trying to control/manage the drug trade.

    2) US loves to outsource the heavy lifting of wrecking countries to either other countries, or to groups of armed, trained mercs.

    Will the plan work? Well, if it sows a little chaos…then, Mission Accomplished!!!

    Reply ↓
      1. JohnnyGL

        Sorry, I meant specifically around the “Letters of Marque” idea. That sounded like a way of getting out of the blockade business by paying pirates to do the disruption that the US Navy is struggling to do, itself.

        Obviously, pirates can’t do a full-on blockade. But, if it still causes disruption to Venezuelan-Chinese shipping, then it would serve the purposes of the Empire.

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  11. gf

    I though that the UK was not providing any intel on this caper.

    Now we hear that:
    “This contact also said about half the UK’s navy had been deployed to the Caribbean.”

    Seems weird to say the least. Not disputing, sounds like Starmer move.

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    1. Yves Smith Post author

      My contact is a Brit and is awfully spooky (has worked in too many WTF places like Ukraine and Israel…and then was the ONLY foreigner ever hired by the Thai Foreign Ministry when he does not speak Thai??!!) and has been reliable on other topics. I am sure he is reporting accurately what he heard, but there is the risk of Telephone (as in too many previous people in the gossip chain introducing noise into the signal).

      The UK is an interested party by virtue of there being a huge offshore oilfield, Stabroek, mainly off once British colony Guyana. See for background and details:

      https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/the-guyana-venezuela-dispute-and-uk-involvement/

      Reply ↓
      1. Michaelmas

        Thanks for that. We have what looks like an Inciting Incident in this story —

        ‘In 2013, a vessel conducting exploration for oil on behalf of the Guyanese Government was detained by Venezuela, triggering a minor diplomatic crisis. Three years later, Guyana granted a license to drill for oil in an area offshore the Essequibo to the American multinational ExxonMobil … Georgetown authorized further drillings. Significant discoveries started to happen in 2017.

        ‘Within four years, the offshore area of the Essequibo – known as the Stabroek block – propelled Guyana to become one of the largest crude oil producers, only behind the United States and Brazil in the Americas….

        ‘…the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) experienced unparalleled growth, with a 49% increase in 2020. By 2022, the GDP grew an additional 62.3%, making Guyana, by some metrics, the fastest-growing country in the world. In 2024, the IMF expected Guyana to remain the fastest-growing country worldwide, with growth above 30% due to its oil and gas boom.

        ‘The 2023 crisis would only erupt on 23 October 2023 – one month after Guyana granted new offshore drilling licenses – with the Venezuelan Government increasing the hostility of its rhetoric with the proposal of a referendum to oppose “by all means” Guyana’s use of the Economic Exclusive Zone off Essequibo and give Venezuelan citizenship to the population of Essequibo ….

        ‘…the Brazilian Army reported that it had detected an increase in Venezuelan troops near the border with Guyana … Shortly after, Brazil issued a statement renewing its support for Guyana’s territorial integrity and a peaceful solution to the dispute ….

        ‘By mid-2024, Venezuela continued to expand its military infrastructure near the border with Guyana. Meanwhile, the United States has pledged to assist Guyana …(with)… new military equipment, including aircraft, helicopters, drones, and radar technology ….’

        ‘

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      2. a w

        then was the ONLY foreigner ever hired by the Thai Foreign Ministry

        Careful, this is almost certainly enough to identify your contact, if that’s not something you want.

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        1. Yves Smith Post author

          I am quite aware of what I am doing and nothing he has told me is confidential. He has also provided information on this site multiple times under his name and so could already have been identified had anyone been interested.

          In fact, that is the key point, he is well connected to certain Global South communities and is passing on information that is openly discussed in these circles.

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    3. Polar Socialist

      Half of the British Overseas Territories are in the Caribbean, so there’s always a ship or two from the Royal Navy. And a ship or two probably is nowadays about half of the ships the Royal Navy can deploy at any given moment.

      HMS Victory is probably one of the best vessels available to the RN at the moment.

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  12. ChalkLine

    The USA seems to be trying to get the international community (if there is such a thing) to react. Many years ago Erik Prince was caught making his own private ground attack air force and chased out of Europe. Being from that political class he of course suffered nothing and had no accountability but it does show that there are things that are not tolerated internationally.

    They seem to want a war but don’t want to start one so are goading everyone and their dog to get one going. I’m not sure this is wise as there has been a paradigm shift recently in warfare and the USA, like France in the Interwar, is stuck with a large legacy force that might or might not be up to snuff in the current age of warfare. The much-vaunted ability of the USA to perform economic warfare has dropped a grade and to be frank I don’t think the US citizens would tolerate conscription for a class of insane oligarchs who would sacrifice them all in Somme-style assaults for ten bucks.

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  13. Es s Ce Tera

    I have an app called Marine Traffic and I see a Guyana flagged Bella 1 oil tanker, last reporting en route to Willemstad, Curacao from Rajaei, Iran, and last reported position on Dec 17 being NE of Antigua and Barbuda at about 3 knots. No tracks and no history.

    Between the firehose of falsehood, epistemic chaos, manufactured uncertainty, Trump and the US government flip flopping on literally everything, the media not knowing up from down, and in this case without satellites or data to check anything at all, no way to geolocate or track at-sea marine activity via OSI techniques, and without human witnesses to attest, confirm or deny anything, no actual eyes on the ships or boats, with the only visuals provided by highly laundered US military sources, the media has effectively bupkis, everything is speculation and unknown. And this is how it is with all US adjacent stories, it seems.

    There’s a pattern here. The US government is at war with us.

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  14. Alex Cox

    Venezuela, like Russia, faces a very serious escalation problem.
    The US and its European lackeys are co-belligerents in a war against Russia. US, British, and French missiles have landed in Russia, targeting information provided by the US.
    The US and its Caribbean lackeys are co-belligerents in a war against Venezuela.
    Given the fact of war (sanctions and a blockade are acts of war), Russia and Venezuela would be justified to respond in kind.

    But what if Russia drops an Oreshnik on Ramstein or Weisbaden, where the NATO war is planned? What if Venezuela fires off a missile or a drone swarm and manages to sink the USS Gravely, or severely damage the USS Gerald R. Ford?

    The US/NATO will be shocked, embarrassed and enraged beyond belief. But, given that they are already engaged in acts of war, how can they escalate? Their immediate response at this point is likely to be a nuclear one.

    So, even though they are the victims of an undeclared war, Venezuela and Russia must be extremely judicious in their responses.

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    1. hk

      I half seriously raised this point before, but supposing that the Russians flatten Rammstein in response to something crazy, what can we possibly do about it that leaves meaningful probability that we survive as a society? I honestly think the likes of Graham and Kean are continuing the project of their countryman Jefferson Davis to destroy United States.

      Reply ↓
  16. scott s.

    As far as helo ranges, all the USN platforms there are helo-capable, so I don’t see that as an issue. Same with USCG NSC but I don’t see that USCG has deployed one, so I assume this is a USCG LEDET embarked on one or more USN platforms. I never operated with the counter-drug force out of SOUTHCOM so don’t know what the SOP is, but using USCG to board foreign flag vessels in international waters is not something new or unique.

    IANAL but to my understanding “blockade” refers to preventing shipping under neutral flag from delivering cargo deemed contraband to a belligerent. Not exporting cargo.

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    1. hk

      “Belligerent” presumes a state of war, legally. Without a declaration of war, and all that up implies, a “blockade” is illegal, afaik, under all relevant laws.

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    2. Yves Smith Post author

      Regarding USN platforms: The US says it has a blockade on. There are presumably limits as to how far it can let ships move and still feel it has a good cordon. The Bella-1 now looks to be headed to Africa. A US vessel is unlikely to keep up pursuit (via its helicopters) beyond a certain distance.

      Trump called it a blockade. Per ABC:

      President Donald Trump last week announced a “complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into and out of Venezuela” …

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  17. Anthony Martin

    Is Trump greenlighting China to blockade Taiwan to reclaim its property? Will Trump hold the Bank of England hostage as it appropriated Venezuela gold which now belongs to the US as colleteral. Is Trump giving the OK for Russia to reclaim lands, say Alaska, whee once its flag flew? Trying to take out drug boats with an air craft carrier is like swatting at a mosquito with a sledge hammer. Wonder if the sale of illegal drugs in the US has been diminished? Don’t expect any relkiable statistics. The only way the US can make any money is to print it, inflate it, or steal it since manufacturing is basically kaput.

    Reply ↓
  19. ChrisPacific

    I did a search on this and found that the idea has come up a few times before (including in connection with Ukraine). This Lawfare article (from March of this year) does a good job of summarizing the problems with the model based on historical examples.

    Reply ↓
    1. Yves Smith Post author

      Great! I was remiss in not looking for a a proper analysis (I must confess to seeing the idea as nutty but nutty is not an obstacle), so thanks for that contribution.

      Reply ↓

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