>"Russia and China did not have the means to help Venezuela"

Of course they have the means. Nothing technical prohibits them from blowing couple of carriers. But the price they would have to pay is way too high.

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the_af 19 hours ago | parent [-]

Did you mean Venezuela or Iran?

Because there are actual technical impediments why neither China nor the Russians could have blown a US carrier in the Caribbean.

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FpUser 19 hours ago | parent [-]

>"actual technical impediments"

I do not believe so. Not unsurmountable at least. The consequences are however far from pleasant for each side

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the_af 12 hours ago | parent [-]

I do believe there are major technical impediments; other than a modern attack sub reaching that far undetected I can't think of how they would do it. The US is the only nation that can effectively project power so far away from its borders, almost anywhere in the world.

Furthermore, you mentioned this in response to "helping Venezuela", but even damaging a carrier (something technically very, very difficult for Russia or China) would not have helped Venezuela one bit.

It'd be more technically feasible for them to help Iran than Venezuela, and even that is not particularly feasible now, other than very indirectly.

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FpUser 9 hours ago | parent [-]

>"would not have helped Venezuela one bit"

I think it would, meaning that right from that exact minute the US and Russia will be very busy and Venezuela left to it's own devices. Does not mean Venezuela would feel any better of course.

	▲	the_af 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is entering fantasy land. There's no effective way of Russia to militarily help Venezuela and strike any US carrier. Same with China. You haven't proposed any because there is no feasible way. Even if they could, such action would have been followed by the US knocking Venezuela out and taking them out of the equation. A neighboring ally of an actively engaged hostile power wouldn't be "left to its own devices".