Russia’s Venezuela motives: It’s about the US, not Maduro.

Many of the hallmarks of a classic great power rivalry between Russia and the United States are on display in Venezuela’s ongoing crisis: competing proxy forces on the ground, diplomatic finger-pointing, and starkly divergent visions of world order.

But while it may look and sound like a Cold War standoff, for Russia it is really about the simpler issue of establishing rules for competing big powers in a post-Cold War world.

In Venezuela, and between the U.S. and Russia generally, there is no sharp ideological divide over world-shaping doctrines like communism