/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2544735
進撃のマルクス主義者

>>2544899
im sorry but this is cope lol. maduro is just not built like that and unfortunately boliviaranism relies a lot on the guy in charge. i do think it would be a hell rapidly accelerating the actual collapse of even the domestic US to a within a decade timeline, i dont think venezuela will come out better for it

>>2545003
Yeah, according to an analyst from the Princeton university the US is trying to induce internal defection from Venezuelan army through maximum pressure sanctions. If the fails the hope is for dissenters to start rioting so the US can just bomb the country and let oppositionists take over at the head of a frenzied mob.

The first prong is going to fail miserably. If we accept the US claim that the Venezuelan army is involved in drug trafficking why the fuck would they defect to the US? Their main source of income isnt with the legal economy which is afflicted by sanctions, and if the US wins Trump will clamp down on the drug trade which will destroy the Venezuelan army corps. If the US seriously considers this option either they are lying about the Venezuelan state smuggling drugs or they are genuinely retarded.
The second plan is more realistic on paper but the problem is that there is little proof that it will work in practice. Same strategy used for Syria, Iran and Russia all failed miserably

>>2545032
>they are lying about the Venezuelan state smuggling drugs
duh

>>2544947
>supposedly they only have s-300 no 400s yet
The S-300V line is very different from the S-300P line. I would say, that the S-300VM system that Venezuela has, is great, although the VM, like BUK-M2 is kind of old now (both were basically developed in the USSR and tested at Emba in late 1980s early 1990s (I believe, BUK-M2 is 1989, S-300VM is 1990)), but still, they are capable. The problem with the S-300V could be the lack of modularity with missiles. Unlike the later S-300Ps and S-400, the S-300V only has two missiles: the smaller 9M83 (and it's modifications), the purpose of which is to shoot down planes, cruise missiles and tactical ballistic missiles (like Lance, or R-17s, or Tochkas, maybe ATACMS), and the bigger 9M82, which is a very capable missile, that mostly targets ballistics (like Pershings).
The problem with Venezuelan air defences - the lack of quantity of systems. I don't know, if Venezuela has air defence command/control systems, like the soviets had (ASU Almaz would be an example), but it would be better, if they had it. And, in my opinion, the lack of quantity (which would change into quality) is the main problem with the Venezuelan forces - what areas would they defend from the missile strikes? How to position the air defences?
Although, another plus for the Venezuelan AD comes from the soviet unions designs - both BUK-M2 and S-300VM TELs have their own radars - it would be harder to knock them completely out.
>>2544949
Ah, the Kh-31! The most capable missile of the late 80s. I believe americans even bought some in the 1990s and converted them into target drones. I may be wrong, but the fact that soviets had sea-skimming capable supersonic missiles (Kh-31, the P-270 Moskit, sort of P-700 and P-500, plus, the developing P-800) led to development of SM-6. SM-6 was basically targeted against these types of missile targets, although, I may be wrong and if I am, please correct me.
Also, Venezuelans have the Kh-35 subsonic sea-skimming missile in the form of Bal coastal defence complex.
But, the main problem would be the lack of planes that are able to carry the Kh-31. The Su-30 can carry six of these in A or P variants. I don't have the data about how many Su-30s Venezuela has, but I believe it's around 20-ish. 21 or 23?
So, in the PERFECT conditions, the "salvo capability" would be around 120-140 missiles. Which is kind of a lot, and could sink the escort ships, and coulddamage, but I don't think outright sink, a US carrier. The warhead is HE for the Kh-31P, and is kind of..light. Around 100 kilograms, maybe less. The K-31A is sort of the same, but it's a piercing warhead, I believe.

isn't it amazing how there were protests against the iraq war during a time when msm was much more trusted and blindly believed meanwhile now everyone knows trump's reasons are bullshit and there's no push back whatsoever?

>>2545187
Trumpism is not transitory, or Republican, it is the full replacement of politics with the culture war. And that means, if nobody in the MSM makes a stink about something, it will literally not register a single independent thought in the masses. With the advent and successful integration tinto the security state of social media, that also removes the market incentives for media businesses to have adversarial coverage. Since the consumption of information from "legacy media" is now downstream from techbro skinnerboxes and so they decide what is popular or not.

And finally, everyone is dumber and more sectarian for it. Especially because for all the dumb shit going around, the GWOT was sold on the premise of the USA facing the impossible, the inconceivable, the final taboo in the exceptionalist mindset of the average American retard… that they too could face the violence, that war could come to them on their land. This is no longer the case. What Trump (and the Dems as well) promises is a return to the 2000s, WITHOUT 9/11.

>>2545214 (me)
This also implies that, of course, since the US has powerful opponents nowadays important geopolitical issues must have a controlled opposition in the culture war. But only because the media cattle they have created is not only prone to *their own* propaganda.

>>2545187
I mean look at how the pro-Palestine movement has gone even though by most accounts it is now a majority. Even well-intentioned Americans are utterly impotent. I don't say this to exculpate them entirely but I do think they've just been defeated more or less.

>>2545187
it's harder to organize now.

>>2545226
how so

>bloomberg
>presented in english
>cuba ignored
>no breaking up poll respondents by class/income, just country
>map color coded so that majority opposition still looks blue (support) on the map
>probably only asked bougie fucks
>america made to look like reluctant world police (Uncle Sam don't like to use violence but the peoples of latin america demand he use it)
oh yeah, it's manufacturing consent time

>>2545249
link to the poll in spanish
https://www.atlasintel.org/poll/latam-wide-poll-la-crisis-de-venezuela-es-2025-11-01

btw MEXICO not the us was the only country in which those opposing intervention were larger than those supporting it yet they were still colored blue.

>>2545233
There’s more empty avenues to vent, like this space and the rest of the internet

>>2545233
just some casual observations, no proof I'll admit:
>more apathy, more doomerism, more defeated attitude in general, people just want to desperately hold onto what little they have left rather than risk it in opposition to the state
>more alienation, more atomization, more isolation
>people have their head more up their ass with their personal obsession and don't care about society at large
>more paranoia (anyone asking me to get organized with them must be a psy op or an agent)
>more skepticism towards the value of doing anything (getting organized didn't do anything for iraq war why would it work now)
>more surveillance (people had cell phones but not smart phones during iraq war protests, there was not yet social media as we know it, which attention whores use to break opsec regularly), police have drones over protests, there is facial recognition software, biometrics, people use social media to organize in advance of the protest which then feeds the info of who is likely to attend to law enforcement etc.
>just like during the iraq war, more effective illegal forms of resistance are a non-starter because people just want to "spread awareness" and do legal permitted nonviolent protests still, except even fewer people now are willing to do even that because of the above.

>>2545255
>There’s more empty avenues to vent
Shouldnt this facilitate communication and therefor organization?

>>2545260
>thinking communication translates to organization
People have to come to realize organization the same way drug addicts have to eventually get sober, they run out of other options.

From Venezuela,still didn't get your point leftypol residents,why you like old fart Maduro so much,he's pretty much everything bad about Venezuela : cultural conformism,reactionaryism,authoritarianism,corruption.

>>2545358
Because the other option is Guado (or whatever his name is) 2.0, that desperately wants to be a US's bitch, which is way worse than current one.
I will never understand why liberals (and gusanos) want other countries to be under US control, despite bitching about not being independent enough and when will you fuckers ever gonna learn?

>>2545358
Trump-backed Venezuelan coup leader promises to give oil to US corporations

2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado, a US government-funded far-right coup leader, vowed to privatize Venezuela's oil and give it to US corporations. "We are going to privatize all our industry", she told Donald Trump Jr. "American companies … are going to make a lot of money", she promised. Ben Norton exposes the neocolonial US war on Venezuela.

Topics
0:00 (CLIP) "We are going to privatize all our industry"
0:54 Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado
1:41 (CLIP) María Corina Machado supports Israel
2:07 Nobel "Peace" Prize for warmonger
2:28 Venezuela's oil & US coup attempts
3:31 (CLIP) Machado vows to sell off Venezuelan oil
3:46 Machado: Far-right opposition leader
4:23 Machado wants US invasion
5:19 CIA-linked NED funds Machado
6:00 Machado interview with Donald Trump Jr.
6:53 (CLIP) Donald Trump Jr. & Machado
8:23 Venezuela's Pinochet + Margaret Thatcher
8:46 (CLIP) US companies will "make a lot of money"
9:05 Selling their countries to USA: vendepatrias
9:23 Machado's meeting with George W Bush
9:59 Trump's war on Venezuela
11:04 (CLIP) Regime change plans
11:24 Targeting US empire's adversaries
11:56 (CLIP) Machado's US first foreign policy
12:12 Donald Trump
12:25 (CLIP) Machado praises Donald Trump
12:45 Trump's coup attempts
14:06 (CLIP) "Biggest opportunity" for regime change
14:34 Marco Rubio: chief coup-plotter
15:06 Targeting Cuba & Nicaragua as well
15:57 (CLIP) US officials supporting Machado
17:03 Rubio lied about Cuban parents
17:54 Miami, Florida: coup capital
18:24 Elon Musk
19:15 (CLIP) Musk gave Starlink to Venezuelan opposition
19:33 Starlink: tool of US imperialism
20:08 Bitcoin & Trump's corrupt crypto schemes
21:39 BlackRock: world's biggest Bitcoin holder
23:11 (CLIP) Machado loves Bitcoin
23:40 Machado: US coup puppet
23:57 Outro

>>2545358
It's not about liking Maduro so much as recognizing the alternative is worse.

>>2545358
>why you like old fart Maduro

Anyone fighting against America is good

The amerikkkans said one of the boats was an ELN boat.
Why have ELN refused all ceasefire/demobilisation?
Will ELN guerrillas go to Venezuela proper to fight, or will they fight the yankee where they are?

>>2545722
Cool af

>>2545358
Even if Maduro sucks, it's not like America bombing the place will fix it, name one country that got better with us intervention, the people doing this don't care about you in the slightest, that Machado can't is a malinche and a judas who will sell out your interested if the USA makes her a puppet president.
The people doing this don't care about starving people in their own country why would you think they care about you?

>>2545722 (me)
What's ELN's deal anyway? nobody ever really speaks about them, they are sometimes called narcos, although they always deny it in a relatively convincing manner. In the media i've seen of them in the past what always stood out to me was that they always seem to have a good age-range, as in both young and old people, and that they seem far more disciplined/articulate/organised than any actual narco milita you would see in similar such news segments.

>>2545358
I just *hope* the US gets a black eye out of this. It is also the best outcome for me personally, I think.

And lets be honest, If the USA took over, Venezuelans would probably feel a marked improvements on their conditions, simply because of the immediate sanction relief and the free flow of oil revenue, which can be the carrot for China/RF to let it happen, for example. Venezuela doesn't need to be another Chile, it's oil could be a carrot, the fuel if you will, for another blue wave in south america.

>>2545840
what makes you think burgers intend to pay for the oil? They want to bomb venezuela and take the oil. not pay for it. stupid fuck.

Hamas has officially been spotted in Venezuela. This is why the US military needs to go to war there, in order to support our allies against the jihadist terrorist threat

A few different media outfits have started doing ELN pieces recently (Channel 4 (UK) & Al Jazeera just today), is this consent manufacturing?
I watched the C4 one (vidrel), same format as usual, a lot of talk by presenter about being drug gangs and forcible recruiting before an interview which the ELN sound completely reasonable and a bit based.
>>2546476
But wouldn't that break the ceasefire mr trump? won't get a peace price that way.

Why you lefties hate democracy so much?

>>2545966
>>2545970
Venezuela isn't throwing missiles at Israel or imperiling the petrodollar, an existential threat for the USA. PSUV is either willing to play ball with a surprising amount of US interference, or powerless to stop it. Which enables a softer stance. NATO also have a lot of leverage with the humongous amount of Venezuelan migrants whose material interest now firmly aligns with NATO, where they live, but would be willing to lend legitimacy and even move back (chumps that they are) to Venezuela to prove it. And the remittances those migrants feed into the Venezuelan economy also being significant.

It was just an example though. I think the USA would not go through all this trouble if they just wanted to tear a bloody hole in the region like with Iraq and Libya. IMHO the US expects *some* "shock and awe" but then a swift collapse of the government and probably has a lot of allies ready to do the regime change.

PSUV foes not seem willing to go further than class collaborationism and Maduro probably feels that, if this crisis is surmounted, it would be license to do nothing further left again. Cementing the "frenemies" relationship with the USA at the same time that the latter becomes his forever excuse to remain in power, it's me or the gringos. IMO the last election proved how fraught control over the masses can be, not that I think the opinion of anyone who wants the USA to takeover (or their very own Milei) should be considered anyway. And that most of South America's state heads were willing to throw Maduro under the bus wrt the pretenses of liberal democracy.

Are we actually going to invade Vuvuzuela or will this be another China-Taiwan situation. Fucking insane that we will invade without a casus belli; they're not even bothering to give us some giant lie to justify the invasion

lol. love news-media.
Trump says ‘days numbered’ for Venezuela’s Maduro
President Donald Trump has sent mixed signals over the potential for a United States military intervention in Venezuela, as he dismissed talk of “war” but threatened the South American country’s leader.
During a CBS interview, released on Sunday, the president warned that President Nicholas Maduro’s days are numbered. The comment came amid a build-up of US military units in the Caribbean, where the US has conducted multiple strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels that UN officials and scholars say are in clear violation of US and international law.
Asked if the US was going to war against Venezuela, Trump replied: “I doubt it. I don’t think so.”
However, when asked if Maduro’s days as president were numbered, the president replied: “I would say yeah. I think so.”

Trump says he doubts US will go to war with Venezuela
Donald Trump has played down the possibility of a US war with Venezuela, but suggested Nicolás Maduro's days as the country's president were numbered.
Asked if the US was going to war against Venezuela, the US president told CBS' 60 Minutes: "I doubt it. I don't think so. But they've been treating us very badly."
For two months, the US military has been building up a force of warships, fighter jets, bombers, marines, drones and spy planes in the Caribbean Sea. It is the largest deployment there for decades.
The US continues to launch strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. The Trump administration says the strikes are necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the US.
Trump rejected suggestions that the US action was not about stopping narcotics, but aimed at ousting Maduro, a long-time Trump opponent, saying it was about "many things".
At least 64 people have been killed by US strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since early September, CBS News - the BBC's US news partner - reports.
Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump said: "Every single boat that you see that's shot down kills 25,000 on drugs and destroys families all over our country."
Pushed on whether the US was planning any strikes on land, Trump refused to rule it out, saying: "I wouldn't be inclined to say that I would do that… I'm not gonna tell you what I'm gonna do with Venezuela, if I was gonna do it or if I wasn't going to do it."

>>2547595
Special Military Operation, anyone?

>>2547374
Was Pinochet democratic?

>>2547529
> Fucking insane that we will invade without a casus belli; they're not even bothering to give us some giant lie to justify the invasion
they've been pretending Maduro is Pablo Escobar for like the last 8 weeks. Been living under a rock?

>>2545529
They sincerely believe in metrics where wages are presented in exchange rate USD: they believe that Americans are actually, in real life, without a shred of doubt thousands of times richer than any person living in the Third World, based solely on wages adjusted by the currency exchange rates. All those "living under 15 USD a day" metrics are representative of their worldview, and those are the same people who sincerely believed USSR to has been "Upper Volta with missiles". Also, those are the same people who believe that China is a country of cheap labor and that China is weak, submissive and breedable, and therefore they sincerely do not understand how Trump can be losing trade wars, he must be a Chinese spy; or how Trump doesn't help Ukraine as much as Biden, how is Russia outproducing the collective West militarily, therefore Trump must be a Russian spy

>>2545252
Is Latin America getting this fascist or did they just poll the areas most likely to support the US?

>>2547632
Venezuela will be a rich,free country(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

>>2547529
they have labelled maduro the leader of a drug cartel and these operations as against narco-trafficking and terrorism. maybe it is some of the flimsiest excuse we've seen in a long time. we haven't seen trump pull out bags on fentanyl on TV in the white house saying this stuff came on a venezuelan boat. or any other type of stunts like colin powell going to the UN.

>>2548409
Honestly, how hard would it be to seize some random Venezuelan fishing boat and plant a bunch of coke on it? They aren't even putting in the bare minimum of effort.

>>2548403
It will be neither under us rule and you know it

It will be,Chile became so much wealthy after the coup,why you prefer Allende?(USER ALREADY BANNED)

>>2548607
>that lack of space after using commas
you are the same person that tried to derail the sudan thread and defend israel and the uae. mods get rid of this troll

Trump Weighs Options, and Risks, for Attacks on Venezuela
The Trump administration has developed a range of options for military action in Venezuela, including direct attacks on military units that protect President Nicolás Maduro and moves to seize control of the country’s oil fields, according to multiple U.S. officials.

President Trump has yet to make a decision about how or even whether to proceed. Officials said he was reluctant to approve operations that may place American troops at risk or could turn into an embarrassing failure. But many of his senior advisers are pressing for one of the most aggressive options: ousting Mr. Maduro from power.

Mr. Trump’s aides have asked the Justice Department for additional guidance that could provide a legal basis for any military action beyond the current campaign of striking boats that the administration says are trafficking narcotics, without providing evidence. Such guidance could include a legal rationale for targeting Mr. Maduro without creating the need for congressional authorization for the use of military force, much less a declaration of war.

While the guidance is still being drafted, some administration officials expect it will argue that Mr. Maduro and his top security officials are central figures in the Cartel de los Soles, which the administration has designated as a narco-terrorist group. The Justice Department is expected to contend that designation makes Mr. Maduro a legitimate target despite long standing American legal prohibitions on assassinating national leaders.

The Justice Department declined to comment. But the move to justify targeting Mr. Maduro would constitute another effort by the administration to stretch its legal authorities. It has already engaged in targeted killings of suspected drug smugglers who, until September, were pursued and arrested at sea rather than killed in drone strikes. Any effort to remove Mr. Maduro would place the administration under further scrutiny over whatever legal rationale it does offer, given the hazy mix of reasons it has presented so far for confronting Mr. Maduro. Among them are drug trafficking, the need for American access to oil and Mr. Trump’s claims that the Venezuelan government released prisoners into the United States.

Mr. Trump has issued a series of contradictory public messages about his intentions, and the goals and justification for any future military action. He has said in recent weeks that the attacks on speedboats in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific that have killed at least 65 people would be expanded to land attacks. But that has not happened yet.

When asked by CBS News whether the United States is headed to war with Venezuela, Mr. Trump said on Sunday: “I doubt it. I don’t think so, but they’ve been treating us very badly, not only on drugs.” He repeated his unsupported allegation that Mr. Maduro opened his prisons and mental institutions, and sent Tren de Aragua gang members to the United States, a charge Mr. Trump has made since his campaign for the presidency last year.

Asked whether Mr. Maduro’s days as president of Venezuela were numbered, he added, “I think so, yeah.”

The support for the more aggressive options is coming from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also the acting national security adviser, and Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser. According to several U.S. officials, they have privately said they believe Mr. Maduro should be forced out.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed reservations, aides say, in part because of a fear that the operation could fail. Mr. Trump is in no rush to make a decision, and has repeatedly asked about what the United States could get in return, with a specific focus on extracting some of the value of Venezuela’s oil for the United States.

“President Trump has been clear in his message to Maduro: Stop sending drugs and criminals to our country,” Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement. “The president has made clear that he will continue to strike narcoterrorists trafficking illicit narcotics — anything else is speculation and should be treated as such.”

Mr. Trump will most likely not be forced to decide at least until the Gerald R. Ford, the United States’ largest and newest aircraft carrier, arrives in the Caribbean sometime in the middle of this month. The Ford carries about 5,000 sailors and has more than 75 attack, surveillance and support aircraft, including F/A-18 fighters.

There has been a steady buildup of U.S. troops in the region since late August. Even before the carrier arrives, there are about 10,000 American military personnel in the Caribbean, roughly half on warships and half on bases in Puerto Rico.

The Pentagon has in recent weeks also dispatched B-52 and B-1 bombers from bases in Louisiana and Texas to fly missions off the coast of Venezuela in what military officials call a show of force. B-52s can carry dozens of precision-guided bombs, and B-1s can carry up to 75,000 pounds of guided and unguided munitions, the largest nonnuclear payload of any aircraft in the Air Force arsenal.

And the Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, which conducted extensive counterterrorism helicopter operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, recently carried out what the Pentagon said were training exercises off the Venezuelan coast.

The military buildup has been so rapid, and so public, that it appears to be part of a psychological pressure campaign on Mr. Maduro. In fact, Mr. Trump has talked openly about his decision to issue a “finding” that permits the C.I.A. to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela — the kind of operation presidents almost never discuss in advance.

Should Mr. Trump elect to order the action inside Venezuela, it would amount to a considerable military, legal and political risk. For all the risks Mr. Trump took in authorizing the American bombing of three nuclear-related sites in Iran in June, it did not involve an effort to overthrow or replace the Iranian government.

If Mr. Trump goes that route, there is no assurance that he would succeed or that he could guarantee that a new government would arise friendlier to the United States. Aides say that far more planning has gone into striking at the Maduro government than on what it would take to govern Venezuela should the operation succeed.

And some of Mr. Trump’s most loyal political backers have been warning against striking at Mr. Maduro, reminding the president he was elected to end “forever wars,” not incite new ones.

<A Military Plan in Three Parts
Mr. Trump’s authorization for the C.I.A. to operate inside Venezuela’s borders could enable the agency to conduct a variety of activities, from information operations to building opposition to Mr. Maduro to actively sabotaging his government — and even seizing the leader himself. But national security officials say that if such operations could really pry Mr. Maduro from power, he would have been gone years ago. That is why the White House is considering military action, and the proposals on the table come in three broad varieties.

The first option would involve airstrikes against military facilities, some of which might be involved in facilitating drug trafficking, with the aim of collapsing Venezuelan military support for Mr. Maduro. If Mr. Maduro believed he was no longer protected, he might seek to flee — or, in moving around the country, make himself more vulnerable to capture, officials say. Critics of such an approach warn that it could have the opposite effect, of rallying support around the embattled leader.

A second approach envisions the United States sending Special Operations forces, such as the Army’s Delta Force or the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, to try to capture or kill Mr. Maduro. Under this option, the Trump administration would seek to sidestep prohibitions against assassinating foreign leaders by arguing that Mr. Maduro is, first and foremost, the head of a narcoterrorist gang, an extension of the arguments used to justify the U.S. airstrikes on boats the administration says are smuggling drugs.

The State Department has a $50 million reward for Mr. Maduro’s arrest or conviction — up from the $25 million offered in the last days of the Biden administration. The Trump administration may also argue that because Mr. Maduro suppressed opposition and worked to rig elections, he is not the legitimate leader of the country. The Biden administration refused to recognize him as Venezuela’s president after he declared victory last year.

A third option involves a much more complicated plan to send U.S. counterterrorism forces to seize control of airfields and at least some of Venezuela’s oil fields and infrastructure.

These last two options carry much greater risks to American commandos on the ground — not to mention civilians — especially if they were targeting Mr. Maduro in an urban setting like Caracas, the country’s capital.

Mr. Trump has been reluctant to consider attacks that could put American troops at risk. As a result, many of the plans under development employ naval drones and long-range weapons, options that may prove more viable once the Ford and other ships are in place.

<For Trump, an Oil Conundrum
Mr. Trump is deeply focused on Venezuela’s enormous oil reserves, the largest in the world. But how to deal with them — whether to cut off exports to the United States or keep them going in hopes of retaining a foothold should Mr. Maduro be ousted — is a problem that has vexed administration officials for the past 10 months.

Even as Mr. Trump doubled the bounty on Mr. Maduro and called him a narcoterrorist, he canceled, then renewed, a license for Chevron, an American oil company that is a pillar of Venezuela’s economy, to keep operating there.

Chevron’s existing license was killed in March under pressure from Mr. Rubio, and over the summer Venezuelan exports to the United States plummeted. But a new license — the details of which have been kept confidential — apparently prevents the company from sending hard currency into Venezuela’s banking system. Still, Chevron’s oil exports are providing Mr. Maduro’s economy with real support.

Chevron is a rare survivor; most American oil companies operating in the country had their assets seized or transferred to state-owned firms years ago. The company is one of the few that have figured out how to deal with both Mr. Trump and Mr. Maduro, who declared that “I want Chevron here for another 100 years.” It has hired as its lobbyist in Washington a top fund-raiser for Mr. Trump.

Mr. Maduro made a last-ditch effort over the past few months to offer Mr. Trump oil concessions, including a dominant stake in Venezuela’s oil and other mineral wealth. He dangled the possibility of opening up existing and future oil and gold projects to American companies, which would receive preferential contracts. And he said he would redirect exports that are now headed to China, and limit mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian and Russian firms.

But Mr. Trump rejected the offer in early October, and the U.S. military buildup accelerated.

Should Mr. Maduro’s government fall and be replaced by a stable leadership open to improved relations with the United States, Chevron would be best positioned for what the Trump administration believes would be a boom in investment in the country’s huge oil reserves. It is a topic that fascinates Mr. Trump, much as it did when he urged the seizing of oil fields in Syria, whose reserves are a tiny fraction of Venezuela’s.

The company is keeping its head down.

“We believe our presence continues to be a stabilizing force for the local economy, the region and U.S. energy security,” said Bill Turenne, a Chevron spokesman.

<Seeking a Legal Rationale
As Mr. Trump’s aides push for the most aggressive military option, lawyers at the Justice Department are working to develop a legal analysis to justify the full range of military options that are being developed.

White House officials have said they want an updated legal analysis before taking any additional steps, and administration lawyers told Congress last week that the president did not need congressional approval for his lethal military strikes on boats.

T. Elliot Gaiser, who leads the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, told Congress that the administration did not think the boat-strike operation rose to the kind of “hostilities” covered by a 1973 law called the War Powers Resolution, which limits the president from conducting military operations for longer than 60 days without congressional approval. But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have raised concerns about the strikes and have demanded more information from the administration.

Perhaps the closest recent parallel to a legal justification for killing a head of state would be a legal opinion produced by the Office of Legal Counsel during Mr. Trump’s first term. It concluded that the president had authority to conduct a missile strike to kill Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.

General Suleimani was Iran’s top intelligence and security commander when he was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2020, and Mr. Trump has long viewed that killing as one of the signature successes of his first term.

In that instance, the Office of Legal Counsel concluded that the drone strike could be carried out because General Suleimani was “actively developing plans for further attacks against U.S. military personnel and diplomats,” according to a heavily redacted memo released after the strike.

“Military leaders who organize and oversee attacks against U.S. persons and interests may be legitimate military targets,” the memo said, adding that the strike was intended “to avoid civilian casualties or substantial collateral damage” and was not aimed “at imposing through military means a change in the character of a political regime.”

The memo concluded that “given the targeted scope of the mission, the available intelligence and the efforts to avoid escalation,” a drone strike against him “would not rise to the level of a war for constitutional purposes.”