LOS ANGELES (OC).–Scratching their heads over Trump harsh policy in Venezuela, Democrats and the fake news accused Trump of warmongering, especially striking Venezuelan drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and East Atlantic. Reputed to have the largest oil supply on the planet, the Nicolas Maduro Venezuelan government is under heavy U.S. sanctions, forced to sell its petroleum largely to China through a fleet of stealth tankers, greatly hampering the Venezuelan economy. Venezuela’s oil is a state owned company Petroleos de Venezuela SA [PDVSA]. Petroleum expert Francisco Monaldi at Rice University in Houston says the Maduro manages to sell most on the state pumped oil to China, a small amount going to U.S.-based Chevron. Maduro promised Trump he would increase the amount of oil sold to U.S. companies, something that never happened.
Venezuela turned socialist when the late Hugo Chavez came to power in 2002. Once a free market democracy, Venezuela turned socialist under Chavez, eventually confiscating all assets of U.S. oil companies responsible for starting and building Venezuela’s oil industry. Chavez seized all oil assets in 2007, costing U.S. companies billions, especially Chevron Oil. Trump thinks Maduro has a stake in Venezuela’s national oil company, regardless of whether he’s also involved in drug trafficking. Only two months ago, Maduro offered the U.S. a stake in the oil industry, something that hasn’t happened. “He’s offered everything,” Trump said in October. “You know why? Because he doesn’t want to f—- around with the United States,” Trump said. Trump ordered a “TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into and out of Venezuela.”
Trump has ordered the largest military buildup in the history of Latin America, far bigger than Soviet involvement in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Trump has a variety of air assets in the Caribbean, including helicopters, and V-22 Ospreys plus P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft off Venezuelan coast. Democrats and the fake news don’t want to see the big picture of how Venezuela owes the U.S. billions in oil assets after Chavez confiscated U.S. property in 2007. Trump’s Chief-of-Staff Susie Wiles just finished a series of interviews with Vanity Faire, all making Trump look bad, taking her words out of context. Wiles was asked a loaded question about Trump true intent in Venezuela, implying that he sought regime change. But the Venezuelan situation is far more nuanced, more connected to confiscated U.S. assets when Chavez took over the oil industry.
Maduro finds himself squeezed by Trump because he promised in a call with Trump to allow U.S. oil companies access to Venezuela’s prodigious oil industry. When Trumps tagged Maduro as a narco-terrorists and started shooting at drug-smuggling boats last September, Trump took the war on drugs literally, when it’s been a symbolic U.S. war since the 1960s. Attacking boats on the high seas, whatever their cargo, doesn’t sit well with legal authorities that say that the use of military force must be against armed groups, not just drug-traffickers. Now Trump says Maduro is head of a drug Cartel de los Soles, a drug gang smuggling narcotics into the United States. But there’s no real evidence that Maduro is directly involved in Venezuela’s drug trade largely dealing with cocaine obtained from Colombia and Bolivia. Most fentanyl production comes from Mexico with Chinese imported chemicals.
Looking at the big picture, Trump wants Maduro to make good on his promise to return a substantial part of Venezuela oil industry. When Chavez confiscated U.S. oil industry assets in 2007, Venezuela made a pact with Cuba and other socialist countries, including Russia. Maduro hopes the Putin would confront Trump in Caracas, something that hasn’t happened while he works to resolve the Ukraine War, facing his own economic sanctions. Yet with all this history, Democrats and the fake news blame Trump for war mongering, when, in fact, he wants to return U.S. oil assets back to their rightful owners. When it comes to attacks on drug trafficking boats, Trump is on shaky legal ground, knowing that he uses the Pentagon with a non-combatant industry. Trump’s designation of Venezuela as a Foreign Terrorist Organization [FTO] doesn’t follow the usual protocol.
Trump’s mission in Venezuela is clearly to return seized U.S. oil assets back to their rightful owners, using the drug trade as an excuse for taking extraordinary actions in the Caribbean and East Pacific. Whether Maduro gets anything from Venezuela’s drug trade or not, is pure conjecture at this point. What’s far more likely is that he gets a percentage of oil assets from Venezuelan’s state-owned oil industry. All the speculation about Trump coercing Maduro to step seems consistent with a socialist running the South American government against the Truman Doctrine of keeping communist out of the Western hemisphere. Whether Maduro is socialist or not, he aligns himself with Cuba, Russia and Communist China, all rivals of the United States. If Maduro wants Trump to back off, he needs to cut the U.S. oil industry back into Venezuela’s state-owned oil markets.
About ht Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
