News broke of an audacious operation on Jan 3 where US forces flew into Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, captured dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and flew them out to stand trial in federal court in New York City.
For days, Americans were glued to the news media wondering, “Where the hell is Venezuela?” Such geographic challenges have a long history, more recently including “Where the hell is Iraq?” and “Where the hell is Afghanistan?” but going back to “Where the hell is Vietnam?” and “Where the hell is Korea?”
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)
This first wave of questions soon gave way to “Why the hell are we doing this?” A few hours later, President Donald Trump provided answers at a press conference. After saying for months that the goal was to combat the flow of the illegal drug fentanyl, which does not come from Venezuela, Trump said it was all about oil.
“We’re going to have our very large United States 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.
American press dutifully reported Trump’s claim that Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, about 304 billion barrels, outpacing second-place Saudi Arabia with 267 billion barrels. What no one seems to have told Trump is that this number is totally made-up, sourced to the state-run oil company in Venezuela and repeated uncritically by others: The real number is probably close to one-third of that, about 100 billion barrels.
In overthrowing a Marxist dictator whose regime led what was a relatively prosperous democratic country in the 1980s into economic and political collapse since the 1990s, Trump seems to have forgotten the most basic fact about Marxist dictators – they lie.
Amazingly, Trump may actually have confused political asylum with insane asylums, asserting that foreign countries like Venezuela are emptying out their mental hospitals and sending these people to the US border.
Anxious to avoid the mistakes made in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, where detailed plans to occupy the country completely deteriorated into chaos, Trump eliminates that possibility by having no plan whatsoever. Much like his prior approach to solve the COVID-19 pandemic by slowing down testing, there will simply be no plan to cope with failure. Fortunately for Venezuela, which is about twice the size of Ukraine and slightly more populous than Australia, it would be infeasible to inject it with bleach.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was reportedly sidelined by Trump because she accepted her Nobel Peace Prize, described as the “ultimate sin.” One White House insider was quoted saying, “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who as recently as November denied to Congress that plans for the Venezuela operation were taking place, explained that it was not a military operation at all, despite involving a blockade of oil shipments. “Our military is helping the Coast Guard conduct a law enforcement function, which is not just the capture of Maduro, but the enforcement of our sanctions, and we think that’s just tremendous leverage, incredible crippling leverage, which we intend to continue to use until we see the changes that we need to see.”
Maybe no one told Trump that Venezuelan oil is “heavy crude,” which is more expensive to extract and much more difficult to refine, so it is only attractive when the market price rises high enough to support increased costs. China has been buying a negligible amount of oil from Venezuela, not because it is needed for fuel, but to maintain a hand in propping up the country and thereby gain influence. More regionally, without subsidized Venezuelan oil, the Cuban economy could collapse in a matter of weeks which, despite Rubio cheerleading for this, would be harmful to the interests of the US.
Law enforcement operations do not typically require more than 150 military aircraft and a large naval flotilla, including an aircraft carrier. Imagine if the Feds had come after Patriarca with that back in the day? They would have filled not only Federal Hill, but the whole state. However, pretending this is a “law enforcement operation” allows them to claim cover under a 1989, originally secret, legal opinion that justified “forcible abductions” that could “override” international law protections against invading a sovereign state. This eerily parallels the Russian lie that the invasion of Ukraine is not a “war” but merely a “special military operation.”
Trump, whose favorite movie is reported not to be Wag the Dog, remains committed to getting on with the normal business of his administration, including not releasing the Epstein files, setting quotas for deporting immigrants and denaturalizing citizens, threatening to invade Greenland, reducing recommendations for childhood vaccines, and taking the time to personally choose white and pink marble for the new White House ballroom.