A New Paradigm For War

Venezuela is Trump’s first new foreign “war”, the only major conflict he did not inherit from the Obama administration. “War” is in quotes because no military forces are likely to be involved. This is the peculiar characteristic of what appears to be an American version of “hybrid war” using only sanctions, diplomacy, information operations and proxies.

Why it has evolved is easy to explain. A new Cold Hybrid War has been raging for some time, though its existence has been played down for years to preserve the fiction of a Global World Order. Some of its most intense chapters are now coming to light. Bill Gertz writes about “one of three Chinese espionage-related cases in recent months as part of a Trump administration crackdown on Beijing’s intelligence operations”: the rollup of the CIA agent network.

Former CIA operations officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiracy to commit espionage for China in a case linked to the loss of numerous recruited CIA spies in China. …

Lee was recruited by the Chinese Ministry of State Security during a 2010 meeting in Shenzhen, China. At the meeting, two MSS officers offered him money in exchange for secrets. The MSS officers told Lee “they had prepared a gift of $100,000 cash and that they would take care of him ‘for life’ in exchange for his cooperation” …

Around the same time in 2010, the CIA began losing large numbers of recruited agents in China many of whom were arrested, imprisoned or executed in one of the worst intelligence failures in the agency’s history.

For the most part the Russian and Chinese onslaught involved disinformation, espionage and proxies. It started quietly with the August 2007 territorial claim marked by the planting of a titanium Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole. In April 2008 it expanded to the Kremlin’s support of separatist movements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia to undermine Georgia; by August Russia had invaded the Georgian republic. In January of 2009 Gazprom cut off gas supplies to the Ukraine.

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See Also:

(1) Venezuela’s Guaido says he’s considering asking US for military intervention: ‘I will evaluate all options if necessary’

(2) What Russia Stands To Lose In Venezuela

(3) Russia, Venezuela seek strategy to sideline US

(4) Maduro’s top confidant tried to sneak Hezbollah into Venezuela, made deals with drug lords, became rich as nation struggled

(5) FAO Warns About a Real Possibility of Famine in Venezuela