RE:More destabilization in Oil markets.. Bishop takes Knight!I am very curious to see what is going to happen with this. Venezuela has reportedly moved about 150-200k troops on the border with Guyana. Venezuela is certainly taking a very big gamble that nobody will get involved if they do a ground invasion.
There are quite a few variables. I disagree that the US is overextended since they haven't dequipped their troops to give to Ukraine, it was mostly surplus or older equipment and they aren't directly involved. But I do think that the war dragging on has made it less likely that USA can get public support to fend off Venezuela for two reasons. 1. The opposition is attaching additional strings to bills to continue giving support to Ukraine which the Biden administration can not get behind. This means that if they try to do this with Guyana they will likely face the same situation. 2. A lot of Biden supporters are opposed to American support of Israel in the Gaza conflict so if they help Guyana they will look hypocritical in their eyes.
The other thing is that the region that Venezuela claims is almost entirely jungle with little infrastucture. It would be a very difficult war to fight if the enemy is determined. Its not like they can just roll their tanks through, it would have to be very intense on the ground fighting.
I wonder if Venezuela will even go through with a ground invasion as the oil is being drilled off-shore. If Venezuela was to cause trouble in the sea would the US even have the authroity to get involved? It would be very difficult for the US to shore up public support for Exxon-Mobil's oil drilling if Venezuela is disrupting it. By doing that they might be able to gain more sympathy in the long run rather than attacking a much smaller country. It's hard to say.
It's possible that the US could defer to Brazil and/or Colombia to help as they don't want there to be conflict in their region. Brazil has already expressed support. Colombia doesn't want to deal with a ton of refugees. The rest of Latin America is unlikely to help though as it doesn't directly impact them. Argentina and Bolivia are likely sympathetic to Venezuela but are both weak and not really able to do much if USA or Brazil takes the helm.
Hopefully everything works out. This isn't the only flash point to watch. Look for Azerbaijani aggression against Armenia as they want to take Southern Armenia. Azerbaijan is a major oil and natural gas producer. Russia broke the seal on inter-state conflict it seems.