Exploiting Venezuela and Stealing its Oil Likely to Backfire
It is great that Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s illegitimate President, has been arrested by the United States military. He was a horrible, evil tyrant who oppressed his people. Along with his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, he transformed this scenic, wealthy nation into a cesspool of destitution and desperation. The elimination of civil liberties, the mismanagement of the economy and crushing sanctions led millions of Venezuelans to flee their country.
Unfortunately, Trump is a bad actor, and his tainted administration is the last anyone would want to take over Venezuela. The president, and his bootlicking cronies, started their campaign by illegally blowing up fishing boats that were allegedly transporting narcotics. But we know America’s military intervention wasn’t about drugs. Trump just pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez who moved 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. That translates into a lot of lines that went up American noses, and Trump didn’t care.
We surely know this mission wasn’t about expanding democracy. Trump staged his violent January 6 coup to stay in office. When he was reelected, Trump quickly pardoned approximately 1600 unpatriotic thugs who stormed the U.S. Capitol building, including those who attacked police officers.
The president won’t support democratic Ukraine in its noble defense against totalitarian, police state Russia. Trump imposed punishing tariffs on Brazil for convicting its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, for his right-wing coup against democracy. Trump loves Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban, worship’s Russian mobster Vladimir Putin, praises El Salvador’s sociopathic leader Nayib Bukele and heaps praise on Argentina’s bizarre Javier Milei.
Last week, Trump finally came clean and revealed that his true motivation for deposing Maduro was seizing Venezuela’s oil, land and other natural resources. In today’s celebratory press conference, Trump failed to mention democracy but boasted, “the money coming out of the ground will be very substantial.”
Whether Maduro’s downfall turns out to be a positive development depends on what comes next. If Trump acts like a pirate and openly rapes Venezuela—brazenly stealing resources, eschewing the revitalization of democracy and miring its people in penury, a guerrilla movement or even a civil war are likely outcomes. The people celebrating Maduro’s demise today may turn on the U.S. tomorrow, realizing that we don’t have their best interests. America saw this movie before in our mishandling of our invasion of Iraq. Indeed, Trump won his first presidential election by harshly criticizing the Bush family’s foreign adventurism and vowing to keep the U.S. out of global entanglements.
Latin Americans are proud and well-versed in America’s shameful legacy of imperialism, exploitation, CIA-backed coups and gunboat diplomacy. They aren’t simply going to stand by idly while America robs them blind in broad daylight. If the United States doesn’t respect Venezuelans, fails to uphold their dignity and greedily profiteers at their expense, the overthrow of Maduro is likely to boomerang.
Mismanaging Venezuela could also destabilize the region by creating a fresh refugee crisis that overwhelms neighboring countries who don’t have the resources to handle an influx of desperate immigrants. After many years of supporting Venezuelans who fled the Chavez and Maduro regimes, the patience of these nations is already wearing thin.
In his press conference, Trump announced that the United States would temporarily run Venezuela. Ideally, this would lead to an orderly transition to democracy. But if the Trump administration instead sets up a pliant right-wing puppet, in the mold of strongmen like Bolsonaro or Bukele, is this really a better outcome than had Maduro stayed in place? Do we need a new Pinochet-like leader in Latin America to suppress the people while the U.S. loots resources?
Is the ouster of Maduro helpful if an emboldened Trump feels liberated to violate Mexico’s sovereignty by attacking Mexican cartels? What if he feels entitled to overthrow the democratically elected leaders of Latin American countries simply because they won’t take orders or they hurt his feelings? Trump has repeatedly threatened outspoken Colombian President Gustavo Petro. At today’s press conference, Trump menacingly warned Petro to “watch his ass”.
Most concerning is that Trump has already cut secret deals with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin to cynically divide the world into spheres of influence. A bitter, revanchist Putin has long agitated for a “New Yalta”, and as we know, Trump always dances to his Russian master’s tune.
The U.S. recently released its National Security Strategy, which when not obsessing over white supremacy, focused heavily on restoring the Monroe Doctrine to dominate Latin America. In his press conference, Trump reiterated America’s new focus on the “Western Hemisphere”. The New York Times reported:
In what the document called the “Trump Corollary,” the administration vowed to redeploy forces from around the world to the region, stop traffickers on the high seas, use lethal force against migrants and drug runners and potentially base more U.S. troops around the region.
If repositioning American troops, and the new focus on Latin America, encourages Xi to seize Taiwan or Putin to swallow NATO-member Estonia, did raiding Maduro’s compound truly serve the cause of advancing freedom, democracy and human rights? Did it not instead create more chaos, lawlessness and a pretext for strong nations to dominate weaker ones? A cruel, despotic world run by powerful dictators will only increase the likelihood for global strife, if not full-fledged world war.
Whether Maduro’s overthrow is a positive development or an unmitigated disaster depends on Trump’s next moves. An administration that chronically lies, mocks human rights, doesn’t support democracy and calls opponents at home “scum” hardly gives one cause for optimism.
In many ways, Trump has the aura of an old school Latin American caudillo. He attacks the media, weaponizes law enforcement to punish political opponents and seeks to use the military against civilians. His demeanor and actions are eerily reminiscent of past military dictatorships in Argentina—though, so far, more restrained.
For the sake of the beleaguered Venezuelan people, as well as American service members in harm’s way, let’s hope this mission ends well. But my genuine enthusiasm for the end of Maduro is tempered by the harsh reality that his demise was carried out by MAGA thugs in Washington who have more in common with Maduro than they do with the democratic leaders of the European Union or Asia.
More than any president in U.S. history, Trump practices the worst of South American politics. If Trump wasn’t intent on stealing Venezuela’s oil, Maduro and Trump would probably be best friends—now that Epstein is dead–and golf buddies sharing the greens at Mar-a-Lago.