The post-modern philosopher Jean Baudrillard infamously argued in 1991 that the Gulf War did not take place, by which he did not mean that no fighting had actually occurred, but that the real events were something entirely separate from the carefully choreographed presentation the world saw thanks to the novel phenomenon of 24-hour cable news.

It’s tempting to wonder what Baudrillard would have made of the current US military buildup targeting Venezuela, a campaign that often appears to be driven by narratives with only a tangential relationship to actual events taking place.

Take, for instance, President Donald Trump’s dramatic announcement on his Truth Social platform a little over a week ago: “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.”

As Reuters reported, US officials “were surprised by Trump’s announcement and unaware of any ongoing U.S. military operations to enforce a closure of Venezuelan airspace.” The US not only took no actions to affect the “closure” of Venezuelan airspace; a migrant repatriation flight from the US landed in Venezuela just a few days later.

Or take Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s invocation of the “fog of war” to........

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