Martin_B wrote: Tue Dec 05, 2023 12:39 am
lpm wrote: Mon Dec 04, 2023 8:22 pm
There can be no invasion through jungle. This is nothing but posturing.
Singapore wants a word from 1942. Burma and India are standing just behind.
The Malay peninsular had roads in 1942, all the way from the Thai border to Singapore. They weren't very good roads, but they were enough. The factor that resulted in a much earlier arrival of Japanese troops in Singapore than expected was that much of the army travelled on bicycles, which facilitated mass troop movements with relatively small numbers of suitable motorised vehicles. Myanmar was more difficult, because of a lack of infrastructure. That is why both sides expended effort constructing transport infrastructure through the jungle. In the Japanese case, this was notoriously done with PoW labour.
The road through NW Myanmar to the Indian border, which was built by the allies in the war, was pretty much disused from the 1960s or so, when Myanmar closed in on itself, and the India/Myanmar border was closed. But it was recently reopened, rebuilt and sufficiently guarded to make travel along it sufficiently safe - for travel in Myanmar's borderlands is often dangerous. And there was briefly substantial traffic along it, before the latest conflicts restarted.
There are no roads in western Guyana, and practically none in the adjacent parts of Venezuela. And I'm talking about an area mostly at least 100km or so across both sides of the border. On the Venezuelan side is the vast wilderness of the Orinoco delta. On the Guyanese side, aside from the deep interior, all of the land west of the Essequibo river is roadless - and most of the country lies west of this river. The exception is where the country approaches the Brazilian border, where there is a road to Brazil and some development west of the river. There is a large salient of Brazil protruding into an area between Venezuela and Guyana, and this area is served by roads and towns, providing border crossings to both neighbours, less than 50km from the 3-country point in the case of Venezuela, rather further away on the other side of the salient in Guyana's case. The few scattered villages, across most of this roadless land area that spans most of the Guyana/Venezuela border are served by boats and light aircraft. There is no road crossing of the border between Guyana and Venezuela, you have to travel via Brazil and those mentioned crossings. But there is a major road through SE Venezuela to Brazil, which runs within about 20km of the Guyana border for a distance of 100km or so, and at one point runs practically right up to the border. It crosses into Brazil at the point I mentioned. It will be noted that the northern end of this road is the Venezuelan town of Ciudad Guayana, a port city on the Orinoco river near the head of the Orinoco delta. These are the usual artificial colonial boundaries, which is why Venezuela can argue that such lands should be united.
But plainly, such rumblings are an attempt at distraction from the difficulties arising from the appalling mismanagement of Venezuela's economy, the impoverishment and departure of large parts of its population, and general heavy-handed repression. Though there has been a bit of relief of late as a little more common sense - just a little - has arrived in economic management. Since 2020, gdp did recover a little, after several years over which it fell by over 70%.
