Quote from: TDoS on Dec 13, 2025, 04:55 PMI once briefed the boss, when he was giving some analysis to some milspec CentComm general or another, that he could venture that with Venezuela you just drop in some special forces guys to cut any land routes between Caracas and the Orinoco and turn it all over to XOM. Those folks would turn it into a couple million barrels a day within a year I'll bet. He said they were quite serious and wouldn't take well to joshing around though.

Controlling Venezuela would be a bit more problematic than simply dropping down a few Special Ops teams to guard the Oil extraction and transport systems.

QuoteAbout a dozen American warships in the region — which were recently bolstered by the arrival of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford — are capable of launching nearly 200 Tomahawk missiles at targets on land in the region, according to a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis. But past campaigns suggest that at least 50,000 troops — including 20,000 soldiers — would be required for a mass attack.

"The United States does not have the ground forces needed for an invasion," said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and co-author of the analysis. The Venezuelan ground forces number some 90,000 including the army, marines and National Guard. The United States has only 2,200 Marines [nearby], and there's no movement to reinforce them."

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/10/trump-military-invasion-venezuela-00683836

Given the terrain and vegetation, you're looking at a guerrilla style war similar to Vietnam.  Getting public support for putting minimum say 10K boots on the ground to hold the Oil facilities and safely produce and ship it out would be very expensive in dollars and lives.  The oil is expensive to extract even without that.  I also suspect thee Chinese and/or Ruskies would supply the guerillas from Colombia, Peru or Chile.  It definitely would inspire the Chinese to take over Taiwan and the South China Sea if we had the military bogged down Vz.

Gotta think a few steps ahead here.

RE