Venezuela: It’s the oil, stupid!

United States President Donald Trump has for long fantasised about annexing northern neighbour, Canada, as his country’s 51st state. Now, he’s struck a better deal in the larger hemisphere with Venezuela. The Latino nation with vast oil reserves, estimated to be the world’s largest, is a conquered colony and its natural wealth is pledged to America’s pleasure. It is effectively the rule of might in a world presumed to run on international law espousing respect for mutual sovereignty.

President Trump tore up the global rulebook with his country’s attack recently on Venezuela and the capture of its strongman, Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife, Cilia Flores, and their extradition to the US for trial. Maduro is accused by Trump of running “state sponsored gangs” and facilitating drug trafficking from his country into the US. The 63-year-old was early last week arraigned before a Manhattan judge on charges including “narco-terrorism” conspiracy, cocaine importation and weapons trafficking – allegations that he has long denied. But neither did Trump disguise his interest in taking control of Venezuela’s oil, and he has since the bombing of Caracas leveraged every occasion to claim that country’s oil resource. And he offers no apology for the brazen appropriation.

It was not the first time the US was taking out another country’s leader for differences – genuine or orchestrated. But it was a first in flaunting might to take over other people’s natural wealth. Maduro’s capture came nearly four decades after US forces seized another indicted Latin American leader and one-time ally, Manuel Noriega of Panama. Noriega rose to power in 1983 on the heels of a plane crash that killed then junta leader, Omar Torrijos, and he was propped up by Washington with hundreds of thousands of dollars avowedly to fight drug trafficking. He was even said to be on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) payroll as an informant and he promoted US interest in Latin America – at some point acting as Washington’s liaison with Fidel Castro of Cuba.

Noriega fell out of favor with Washington when he asserted his independence, and following allegations he was accepting bribes to allow drugs into the US in the late 1980s. Former President George H.W. Bush ordered US troops to invade Panama in late 1989, sending 24,000 troops to topple Noriega’s government. That operation resulted in the death of 23 American soldiers and left hundreds more injured. Noriega hid out in the Vatican embassy before surrendering to US authorities on 3rd January, 1990, upon which he was taken to the US to face drug trafficking charges. His fall marked the end of military dictatorship in Panama. He was convicted on drug trafficking charges and spent 20 years in American jail before being extradited to France in 2010 to serve a seven-year sentence for money laundering. Noriega was returned to Panama in 2011 to complete a 60-year sentence for offences imputed to the military’s three-decade rule in that country. He died of complications from a surgery to remove a benign brain tumor in 2017 at 83 years.

Trump must have a sardonic sense of history, in that he ordered the capture of Maduro on 3rd January, 2026 – exactly 36 years from when Noriega surrendered to US forces. The Venezuela operation was reportedly delayed for many days owing to inclement weather conditions, though. Unlike the casualty-incurring Panama invasion, the Venezuela mission was clinical. In the two-hour-and-twenty-minute mission by air, land and sea that maximised the element of surprise, Maduro was seized from his safehouse and squirrelled off with his wife before Venezuelan authorities could make sense of decoy explosions and multiple US strikes that targeted the country’s air defence systems and other military targets.

“Maduro wasn’t by any stretch a good leader of his country. But Trump was the quintessential aggressor in a world system handicapped from holding him in check”

The American leader praised the operation as one of the “most stunning, effective and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history.” According to him, only “a couple of guys” got injured on the US side with no service member killed. Meanwhile, Venezuela cited a heavy toll on its part. Venezuelan Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino said many in Maduro’s security team as well as “soldiers and innocent civilians” were killed in the US operation. Washington had previously offered a $50million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest. But by 04:20 local time on 3rd January, helicopters were leaving Venezuelan territory with Maduro and his wife in custody of the US Department of Justice en route to New York to face criminal charges. About an hour later, Trump broke the news to the world: “Maduro and his wife will soon face the full might of American justice,” he said.

Only it’s not all about Maduro’s misdeeds, but rather about taking control of Venezuela’s oil reserves. And Trump didn’t even mask the intention. At one of his early press parleys following the invasion, he said the US would “run the country” until a leadership transition could take place, and that US oil firms would go into Venezuela. On the same day that Maduro was seized, Venezuelan supreme court ordered Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez to assume office as interim president during Maduro’s “temporary absence.” But Trump insisted the US will decide the country’s fate. He later said Rodríguez had offered her support to Washington, adding cryptically: “She really doesn’t have a choice.”

In subsequent statements, the American leader said Venezuela would soon be turning over some 50million barrels of oil to the US. In a social media post, he stated that the oil being expected from Venezuela would be sold and the proceeds used for the benefit the people of Venezuela and the US. “I am pleased to announce that the interim authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50million barrels of high quality, sanctioned oil to the United States of America,” he said. “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,” he added. On the heels of Rodríguez taking the oath as Venezuela’s interim president, he had warned: “If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”

Venezuela has millions of barrels of oil loaded on tankers and in storage tanks that it’s been unable to ship owing to a US blockade on exports imposed late last year. Now, Washington and Caracas have reached a deal to export up to $2billion worth of Venezuelan crude to the US – an indication that the Venezuelan government was responding to Trump’s demand that authorities there open up to US oil companies or risk expanded military action. The Trump administration, mid-last week, laid out bare-bones plan to take control of selling Venezuelan oil. “We are in the midst right now and in fact about to execute a deal to take all the oil,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday in Washington. Earlier in the day, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the US intended to maintain significant control over Venezuela’s oil industry, including overseeing the sale of the country’s production “indefinitely.” Venezuela’s state oil firm issued a statement same day confirming that negotiations were underway with the US, but stopped short of saying a deal was in place.

Maduro wasn’t by any stretch a good leader of his country. But Trump was the quintessential aggressor in a world system handicapped from holding him in check. And so, it sucks to moralise the US military action the way United Kingdom Conservative Party leader with Nigerian roots, Kemi Badenoch, sought to do. Speaking on BBC Radio 4 Today programme last week, Badenoch described the American raid as morally justified and equated Maduro’s misrule to her own experience of military dictatorship while growing up in Nigeria.

“Morally, yes,” the Tory leader responded when asked whether sending special forces to seize Maduro was right. “While the legal certainty is not yet clear, morally I do think it was the right thing to do,” she said. “Venezuela was a brutal regime. We didn’t even recognise it as a legitimate government. I think that what’s happened is quite extraordinary. But I understand why America has done it,” Badenoch explained. She linked her stance to her background, saying her views were shaped by lived experience. “I grew up under a military dictatorship [in Nigeria], so I know what it’s like to have someone like Maduro in charge. I know what it’s like to have people celebrating in the street. So I’m not condemning the US,” she said.

Badenoch never tires of belittling the country of her ancestry, but she was wrong as ever. The attack on Venezuela had nothing to do with morality. It’s the oil, stupid!