What can Switzerland learn from Venezuela?
Lesson 1: Resistance is futile
The lesson Switzerland can learn from the attack on Venezuela is that it can just stop investing in the military because its military is useless in this day and age.
It’s wasted money.
While there are theories that Caracas didn’t use any of its anti-aircraft missile batteries because they were paid off, it’s also just as likely that they realized that they can’t use them without dying.
What are you gonna do when those Chinooks drop into your national skies? Are you going to shoot American helicopters out of the sky?
Really?
You know what’s coming for you if you do that, right? 400 more helicopters with B2 bombers making sure that they don’t get shot down. If you so much as touch a hair onthe head of an American soldier, you will get 1000 more soldiers up your ass. Unless you’re prepared for a protracted engagement and you don’t have that much to lose, you’re stuck.
Ansar Allah (the Houthis in Yemen) were able to resist but they did get the shit bombed out of them. Caracas was not willing to risk it. Neither would Switzerland. The only option would be to roll over.
Even though the American helicopters would be attacking them, the promise of what would follow were they to shoot any of them down prevents them from using any of their weapons.
You can’t realistically do anything against a more overwhelmingly more powerful military like that. You just have to sit there and take it.
That is how it is to live with the mafia in your midst. Do what we say or we kill you. Resist and we will burn your fields and salt the earth.
So you might as well stop buying fighter jets and invest in education and social programs, instead.
Lesson 2: Deals are useless
The other lesson that Switzerland can learn is that making deals with a country that does not consider them to be an equal is useless. The U.S. doesn’t have to honor any deals with Switzerland because it is too tiny for its complaints to matter. Switzerland has no leverage.
Switzerland only gets what it wants as long as what it wants overlaps in any way with what the US wants. As soon as it doesn’t, Switzerland is going to get some serious backlash.
The message is: “the law is what we say it is, and you have to follow it, and we don’t.” That isn’t very different from the statement that, “the law binds some people and does not protect them while it protects others and does not bind them.”[1]
Lesson 3: You’re not in the club
The only difference in 2026 so far is that more and more people are being pushed into the world that 80 to 90% of the planet has been in for the last 100 years, at least. Switzerland may not have shared in the wealth equally, but they’ve definitely been under under the wing of those stealing all the wealth. But now? Now Switzerland is no longer so securely under the wing. Switzerland is starting to feel the raindrops.
This is, yet again, another one of those moments where you can say that we’ve always known it was like this, but now we really know. Now, the arrogance with which the messages are being delivered can no longer be ignored, can no longer be ensconced within the battening of comforting lies we tell ourselves to pretend that this isn’t the way it is.
Lesson 4: The U.S. is weaker
Paradoxically, the show of arrogance—the bluster—is actually the sign of a weak state. Powerful states don’t have to make such overt demonstrations of their power. Everyone just understands the situation without being reminded. That’s how it was for a long time with the US. Now, the US has to make very strong statements about how powerful it is, which paradoxically shows how ostracized it actually is on the world stage.
The difference now, though, is that the expressions of power are much more regional that before. Donald Trump tried to express his power in the rest of the world—as in Ukraine, Yemen, or Iran—but he returned with his tail between his legs. His peace process in Ukraine is pathetic and has nearly completely fallen apart. His handling of Israel has let out the leash even more on a country that is stomping a mud hole in a powerless opponent.
Just like Israel, the US. likes to take on enemies that are far weaker that it. That’s why it’s now they’re beating up on Venezuela, which is much closer to home and has basically no military power. Trump is also beating up on American citizens at home. They’re beating up Americans inside of America and that damned frog just hasn’t gotten hot enough yet.
This is cold comfort, of course. The U.S. has a lot of military hardware, and it has a giant pile of stupid assholes in charge, so it’s gonna be a painful descent.
Lesson 5: Arguing is unproductive
There is no way to “debunk” this criminal organization because it lies about everything all the time. It doesn’t believe in anything it’s saying. You should stop wasting your time debunking it.
That includes not wasting any time debunking the weird charges against Maduro. It doesn’t matter what they charge him with.
I’m not even sure why they bother with a court and sentencing. Just throw him in a hole. Just shoot him on live TV.
Lesson 6: Trump likes gold
And everything that’s happening to Venezuela? There is no reason that it couldn’t happen to Switzerland. All you have to do is whisper in Trump’s ear that Switzerland could be the “Israel of Europe” and “that’s where all the gold is.”
