Plus: Beer of the day
IN TODAY’S EDITION
1️⃣ A false flag in the Caribbean? |
2️⃣ A spicy ambassadorial Op-ed |
3️⃣ Beer of the day |
Hi Intriguer. Not gonna lie, there are definitely days here in DC (especially of late) when everything feels overwhelming. But then there are days like today when I feel so chuffed to be in amidst all the foreign policy action.
Why’s that? It’s because Intrigue will be hosting an exclusive soiree with best-selling author (and ex-foreign service pal) Dmitry Grozoubinski, who’s in town to discuss his hit book, Why Politicians Lie About Trade.
Our Intrigue event will obviously be the grand finale in Dim’s book tour, following other lesser known hosts like… Princeton. Anyway, onto today’s briefing on Venezuela’s false flag attack claims that read like a John Le Carré novel.
Market jitters despite tariff reprieve.
Asian and US stocks slumped again on Thursday, notwithstanding President Trump’s partial tariff reprieve. Trump’s supporters argue it’s just a reversion to the mean, while others fear he’s broken something. The total US tariff rate on China is now 145%, while Beijing has just lifted its own rate to 125%. With trade between them already effectively non-viable, these increases are just performative at this point.
Xi fires top general.
President Xi has fired another general in recent weeks — this time it was He Weidong, the People’s Liberation Army's number-two. It’s the first firing of a general in that role in six decades, and reportedly related to corruption allegations.
US troops to return to Panama Canal under new deal.
The deal, not yet announced, allows the US to deploy troops to Panama-controlled facilities along the Canal, though it stops short of granting the US its own bases.
UK pledges further military aid to Ukraine.
London has (with Norway) earmarked another $590M for radar systems, anti-tank mines, and drones, a day before the UK and Germany host the next meeting of the 50-nation Ukraine Defence Contact Group. Meanwhile, the head of the British military has visited China for the first time in a decade, in a meeting publicised only by Beijing.
EU to negotiate FTA with UAE.
The EU has launched free trade talks with the United Arab Emirates, as Brussels tries to hedge against greater trade uncertainty under Trump 2.0.
Supreme Court upholds wrongful deportation ruling.
The ruling requires DC to facilitate the return of a Salvadoran migrant wrongly deported to El Salvador as part of President Trump’s crackdown on irregular immigration. While the government acknowledges the man’s deportation was an error, it argues a repatriation order encroaches on the president’s authority on foreign relations.
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TOP STORY
A false flag operation in the Caribbean?
In a normal week, Venezuela’s military going on high alert over claims of an enemy false flag operation might’ve made global headlines.
But much like episodes of Twin Peaks, each week now feels less normal than the last.
So join us on this wild journey.
It all started last Saturday, when Venezuela’s VP Delcy Rodríguez appeared on state TV:
“They thought and planned to attack this ExxonMobil platform in order to justify some kind of retaliation and action against Venezuela”, she alleged (her defence minister concurred).
Who’s they? “New evidence of this operation by ExxonMobil, Erik Prince, Machado, and Marco Rubio has reached our hands”, she claimed. For those in the back:
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Marco Rubio is of course the US secretary of state
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Erik Prince is the infamous founder of the ‘Blackwater’ mercenary group
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ExxonMobil is the US oil and gas giant drilling in waters administered by Guyana but claimed by Venezuela, and
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María Corina Machado is the popular opposition figure who should now be president of Venezuela, but President Maduro disqualified her then stole last year’s election from her successor.
So what’s Maduro’s allegation here? That they all plotted to send some Jack Reacher-esque hired guns to blow up the ExxonMobil rig as a way to trigger a war with Venezuela.
The broader context involves the classic toxic cocktail of contested turf and oil.
On the contested turf front, we’re talking about a jungle area the size of Florida known as Essequibo, which now makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s de-facto territory.
The centuries-old dispute had plodded along until a) Venezuela collapsed from 2013, and b) ExxonMobil announced historic oil and gas discoveries off Essequibo’s coast from 2015.
As Maduro’s approval ratings then tanked in Venezuela (and eight million folks fled), he started revving his claims back up over Essequibo, holding a 2023 referendum, then naming the region his 24th state last year, while beefing up his nearby military presence.
And now in 2025, Maduro has:
And that all leads us to two questions. First, are Maduro’s latest false flag claims plausible?
He’s offered no evidence, and has no credibility after years of repression and fraud. But given his full media control back home, it’s enough to just cite the shady histories of Erik Prince, Big Oil, and US intervention to distract his weary people from his own record.
But then the second question… who cares?
Beyond the humanitarian implications of Maduro’s continued reign, there’s also:
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11 billion barrels of reasons to care courtesy of Essequibo’s oil and gas
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Those historic finds have been transformative for Guyana, one of the poorest countries in the Americas (its GDP has tripled since 2019), and there’s also…
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The prospect of a miscalculation between these two neighbours, risking the kind of direct cross-border conflict we haven’t seen in the region since the 1990s
So yeah, as wild as all this might appear, it’s worthy of our radar.
INTRIGUE’S TAKE
Venezuela’s military dwarfs the tiny Guyanese armed forces, but there are a couple of reasons why an actual military move still seems improbable: i) most of Essequibo is impenetrable (though less-so the offshore rigs), and ii) Maduro is deeply isolated in ways that reveal two things about diplomacy.
First, China has been relatively supportive of the Maduro regime, though has stayed notably quiet on this specific Essequibo issue. Why? Beijing owns a quarter of the vast ExxonMobil project.
Second, even Maduro’s long-time ally Cuba has stayed out of this, for equally intriguing reasons. Back in 1981, Fidel Castro himself openly sided with Guyana, which had its own sympathetic strongman at the time. And Castro then went on to provide decades of support in sectors like healthcare, even when Guyana changed directions.
So it’s a reminder that, sure, money talks (China), but so does history (Cuba).
Also worth noting:
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Venezuela and Guyana signed the Argyle Agreement in 2023, pledging a peaceful resolution to the territorial dispute.
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Guyana asked the International Court of Justice to intervene in March — it’s unlikely we’ll see a decision until next year at the earliest.
MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE…
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🇮🇳 India: Apple has airlifted 600 tons of iPhones from India to the US in an effort to beat Donald Trump’s tariff deadline. India, courting more Apple manufacturing, apparently helped speed the 1.5 million smartphones through customs and out on chartered flights.
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🇩🇪 Germany: A China-based firm is buying iconic German outdoor brand Jack Wolfskin for $290M, well below the $470M its current US owner paid in 2019. The buyer (Anta) already owns brands like Wilson and Salomon.
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🇳🇿 New Zealand: Lawmakers have broken into song after defeating a bill that would’ve redefined a pact signed between the British Crown and local Māori leaders in the 1840s. It’s the same bill that gained international attention after a Māori parliamentarian went viral for tearing up the draft and leading a haka.
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🇺🇸 US: The career diplomat serving as US ambassador to Ukraine is stepping down after three years in the role, though it’s unclear if she was fired or is resigning. She’s been a staunch supporter of Ukraine’s self-defence, a position made tricky under Trump 2.0.
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🇿🇼 Zimbabwe: Harare is paying out an initial $3M to white farmers for the seizure of their farms under a 2000s-era government program. The payments are for land improvements rather than the actual land, which the government says was unfairly seized by colonialists.
EXTRA INTRIGUE
Three stories we couldn’t shoehorn in this week 🗞️
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Qatar’s emir is embroiled in an investment dispute with an Hermès heir who, according to a lawsuit filed and later sealed, agreed to sell the emir a multibillion-dollar stake in the luxury brand only to then back out.
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Tibor Nagy, the US career ambassador who briefly served as acting under-secretary of state under Trump 2.0, has dropped an op-ed calling the Trump-Musk cost-cutting reforms at State “a stage production which combined elements of a tragicomedy with the Twilight Zone,” adding it could’ve been done without treating folks “so badly.”
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And Panama is now casting doubts on the vaunted sale of two Hong Kong-owned ports on the Panama Canal to a US-led consortium, citing unpaid taxes — Beijing has shown opposition to the sale, and is reportedly scouting other buyers.
BEER OF THE DAY
Credits: Google Reviews.
Just up the street from the United Nations building in New York, we heard word of a new establishment called ‘The UN of Beers’. Naturally, Intrigue chased this critical lead and, according to the employee who answered our call, they’re indeed selling beers from over 40 countries across South America, Europe, and beyond.
The idea is that, when a UN Security Council meeting goes south (and let’s be honest, that feels almost daily), beleaguered diplomats can go ease their sorrows by crushing some suds up the street. Though that’s if they don’t stop at the more established competitor just a few feet closer, known as UN Wine (you’ll never guess what it sells).
FRIDAY QUIZ
On Saturday the world celebrates International Day of Human Space Flight
1) When did Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin orbit the Earth, becoming the first person in space? |
2) The word 'astronaut' derives from two Greek words meaning? |
3) What's the most number of people ever in space at one time?(per the internationally recognised Kármán line)
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