….More recently, Trump trotted out a different rationale for action. He wrote on social media that he wanted Venezuela to return “to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.” This is a fiction — Venezuela nationalized its oil fields in 1976, but many other countries have done the same, including Saudi Arabia and Russia. (More contentious was Hugo Chávez’s 2007 decree that foreign oil companies in joint ventures would have to sell a majority stake to Venezuela’s state-owned oil company.) It does suggest, though, that Trump’s focus is not on bringing freedom to Venezuela but, rather, gaining access to its oil reserves — the world’s largest.
And, indeed, in Saturday’s news conference, Trump vowed that more U.S. oil companies would go back into Venezuela. (Chevron is already drilling for oil there.) The problem is that any new Venezuelan regime would rapidly lose its legitimacy if it allowed its natural resources to be looted by Yanquis.
Like George W. Bush after the invasion of Iraq, Trump enjoyed his “Mission Accomplished” moment on Saturday. But if there is one thing we have learned over the past quarter-century, it is much easier to topple tyrants than to build stable and secure societies afterward. History’s ultimate verdict on Trump’s military operation will be based on the fate of post-Maduro Venezuela, and the U.S., despite what Trump said about running the country, has only limited leverage to determine its fate.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.