President Donald Trump announced that he’s in the final stage of his military operation in Venezuela. The president has made no mystery about his intentions of a post Nicolas Maduro Venezuela — the predictable announcement revealed that his initial prognosis has found that his administration could sell 30 to 50 million barrels of oil from the nation.
The announcement came in Jan. 6, at the 5th anniversary of the insurrection at the Capitol. Trump, in part, wrote on Truth Social, “I am pleased to announce that the Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America. This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!”
The president informed the public that he has informed the Energy Secretary Chris Wright to execute this plan with immediate effect. But doubts have already risen questioning whether this is even possible. The Maduro abduction is already being called a gamble by figures like Kamala Harris, and it’s not just because the two are political adversaries. According to Newsweek, experts have dampened the hopes of a Trump led turbocharging of Venezuelan oil production.
Trump was believed to be following through on this plan at the behest of allies of his administration who are in the private sector of the oil industry. So his announcement that the money made from the oil will be controlled by him was somewhat a surprise to some. However, the fact remains that in the years of authoritarianism and sanctions, the Venezuelan oil sector is currently in a state of widespread neglect and if there’s any political unrest post Maduro — that will only get worse.
Even if the current administration figures out a way to effectively exploit Venezuelan oil, the fact remains that the oil is Venezuelan and not American. That in itself has blow backs that remain unaddressed by the administration. The US has a very strong army and that is an asset that Trump has that the rest of the field on the international scene lacks.
However, in the Gaza conflict, military might was shown to only be half of the story. Allies still matter. The concern has now since grown to what this means to all the regional leaders in Latin America who have had differences with Trump like Brazil and Colombia. The Colombian leader Gustavo Petro already announced that he now considers Trump a threat to democracy in the region.
Furthermore, it’s not just Latin America. Even European leaders have expressed concern about Trump making Greenland his next stop after his assumed Venezuelan heroics and potential spoils. This threatens the very fabric of how the Western world has been operating as a unified front post World War 2.
For Trump, however, the goal remains to secure financial interests above all else. The administration believes that even if the U.S. loses all its allies, as long as the financial interests of industry leaders grow, everything else can fall into the background.
