There's Something Different Here
Trump's Venezuelan Adventure is not exactly like other American interventions
Donald Trump is hardly the first and won’t be the last President to commit American forces to a nation-building escapade absent Congressionally granted authority.
In October 1983, Ronald Reagan ordered the invasion of Grenada to overthrow the Communist government of Grenada. That invasion was done under the pretext of rescuing American medical students there. That invasion was also done in conjunction with a slew of allies, including Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. That ultimately restored the Governor-General of Grenada as the head of government until new elections could be held.
In December 1989, George Bush ordered the invasion of Panama to topple the regime of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and his arrest on racketeering and drug trafficking charges.1 The pretext of that invasion was protection of American interests in the Canal Zone shooting of a Colombia-born U.S. Marine at a Panamanian roadblock. While unilateral in nature, the operation quickly restored civilian authority.
Trump’s new Venezuelan adventure does not really fit nearly into either of these categories even if, ultimately, we know what this really is.
So far, American intervention in Venezuela consists of only the bombing of military targets in Venezuela and the Delta Force capture of now former Venezuelan Strongman Nicolas Maduro on drug and narcoterrorism charges.
What seems like might be coming next is what makes this Venezuelan adventure so different from previous American interventions. Because Trump has made clear that he plans for the United States to “run the country” and that some of this operation was in fact related to oil:
Hours after the U.S. military captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, President Trump made it clear that the U.S. operation is about — at least in part — control of Venezuela’s oil.
“We’re going to have our very large U.S. oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said during a press conference Saturday.
Trump claims that the oil belongs to Americans in the first place:
Before Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976, American companies like Exxon, Mobil and Gulf Oil were major players. The country reopened its oil industry to foreign drillers in the 1990s, but Hugo Chávez, Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, began another phase of nationalization in 2007. U.S. oil giants like Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips claimed they were owed billions of dollars in compensation because their operations were seized.
That history feeds the Trump administration’s contention that Venezuela stole oil from the United States — an argument that the White House increasingly made in the weeks leading up to Saturday’s attack. Stephen Miller, the senior Trump adviser central to the president’s immigration crackdown, posted on social media last month that “American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela.”
“If you remember, they took all of our energy rights; they took all of our oil from not that long ago,” Mr. Trump said last month. “We want it back.”
The open discussion of oil is what makes this military action different than others. Even in Iraq there was no discussion of the U.S. government or U.S. companies taking over Iraqi oil fields and oil claims. One of the stated objectives of the Iraq invasion was “to secure Iraq's oil fields and resources, which belong to the Iraqi people.”
Not since the Guano Islands claims has the United States made this bold of a military move to seize natural resources abroad.
But what is also different is how the Venezuelan intervention is being portrayed by the Trump Administration as the first in a long list of military interventions to come. And judging by their words, Greenland might be next.
The United States of course, does NOT need to seize Greenland for our national security purposes. Administered by Denmark, Greenland is already part of the NATO alliance and the U.S. by treaty can station as many troops there as we wish, far in excess of the 200 or so active duty forces stationed at Pituffik Space Base. And once again, Denmark and by extension Greenland are ALLIES of the United States. Why are we talking about seizing land from our allies? I’ll grant you that Maduro was bad guy, an illegitimate leader, and a thread to South American security. I’ll grant you that it is a good thing that he is no longer in power. But Venezuela has been a regional menace for years. While Greenland is an American ally.
And Greenland isn’t the only one.
President of peace, amirite?
The dangerous change is the change in the world order. The Venezuela operation gives credence to the theory that Trump is working with Russia and China to develop a tripolar world, where each country has its own sphere of influence. It is a concept that has serious consequences for American aid to Ukraine and our NATO allies in the face of Russian aggression, as well as to our allies in Taiwan at the prospect of Chinese aggression. If we are to believe that America can unilaterally act the way that we did in Venezuela, on what grounds would this administration oppose Russian or Chinese aggression toward their neighbors?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, incidentally, had an amusing take on this:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy weighed in Saturday on the U.S. capture of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, telling reporters that Washington “knows what to do next.”
Zelenskyy was speaking to reporters in Kyiv after meeting with national security advisors from member states of the Coalition of the Willing when he was asked about the stunning U.S. military operation that unfolded in the early morning hours in Caracas.
“Regarding Venezuela? How should we respond to this?” Zelenskyy asked in Ukrainian. “Well, what can I say is, if you can do that with dictators, then the United States knows what to do next," he said with a smile.
It is a sly, tongue in cheek response from Zelenskyy who knows damn well that the Trump regime will not raise a finger toward Trump’s ideological lodestar, Vladimir Putin.
No, Donald Trump is not the first and won’t be the last President to commit American troops to interventions abroad without Congressional approval. But there’s something different here, and it could have disastrous effects on international stability, US military policy, and the future of American influence abroad.
Sound familiar?