Oliver Boyd-Barrett

OLIVER BOYD—BARRETT—I propose that Putin’s and Lavrov’s continuing “softness” on the matter of remaining open to talks with a congenitally agreement-incapable, murderous rogue state no longer comes from a place of naivety or weakness but, first of all, from a desire to be seen to be doing everything they can possibly do to project reasonableness to the world at large, so that, should Russia consider itself obliged or provoked enough to use its weapons, nobody can argue that fair warning was not given and with generous reaction time to boot

OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT —Axios reported on Saturday January 10, a week after the US abduction of Nicolas Maduro, President of Venezuela, that US President Trump had declared a national emergency “to shield Venezuelan oil revenue held by the US government from seizure by private creditors.” The US administration has recently declared its intention to manage Venezuelan oil sales and revenue indefinitely. In an order signed on Friday, Trump claims that the loss of control of Venezuelan oil revenue would be a threat to US national security (even though the head of Exxon has told Trump that Venezuela is “uninvestible,”) implying that it would involve a dangerous influx of illegal immigrants and illicit narcotics to the US, and that it would be a boon to “malign actors” like Iran and Hezbollah.

OLIVER BOYD—The seizure of Maduro represents something much more significant on the regional and global scale. First of all, while this may not spell the end of the Bolivarian revolution (commemorating, of course, the outstanding continental leadership and heroism of Simon Bolivar, so poorly understood in the US), this must be one of its blackest moments. Secondly this is about a return to the “Rosevelt corollary” to the original Monroe doctrine, a corollary introduced by Teddy Rosevelt which elevated the doctrine from simple opposition to European colonialism to a far more aggressive vision of the US as continental policeman, at liberty to remedy almost any conceivable threat to US influence or interest.

OLIVER BOYD-BARRETT—Obstacles identified in the Naval Review in 2018 are reviewed again in recent papers (dated November 2025) cited by Berletic that show that far from retreating to the Western Hemisphere US policy makers are talking about escalating their pressure on China by measures to encircle and contain China and wage proxy wars that will bring this about. US policies in Ukraine, Taiwan, the Philippines and Venezuela are all examples of the US war on the globe.

The intent is to prevent all those nations that are currently beyond US control from joining the multipolar project, exercising US power through its “alliance network” (i.e. client regimes) who are often suckered into working to achieve US foreign policy objectives at their own expense. Ukraine is an example, embracing its own destruction with a view to helping the US “extend” (i.e. destabilize) Russia.

OLIVER BOYD—I do remain worried about the Kremlin’s unproductive yearning to achieve a big buddy status with the wholly unworthy Trump Presidency and his army of unrefined neocons. At a time when Russia’s security interests more than ever suggest that Putin’s June 2024 demands are insufficient: that Russia needs Kharkiv, Sumy, Cherniviv, Dnipropretrovsk, Odessa and the Black Sea coastline.