Alert readers immediately noticed the disconnect between Trump’s signature braggadocio and the more cautious remarks from the other members of Trump’s team after the kidnapping of Venezuela’s president Nicholas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Trump skipped the narco-terrorism pretext despite a US indictment being the pretext for the abduction; he instead talked up having US companies exploit Venezuela’s reserves: “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.”
But many observers quickly compared the Trump press conference to Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” moment as the Venezuela government not only remains in place but its acting president Delcy Rodriguez maintains that Maduro remains the country’s leader and that Venezuela will not cede to US colonialist demands. And perhaps being a smidge more realistic, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, by contrast, presented the US as having narrower aims, of simply removing Maduro, at the initial presser, and has been trying to square the circle of Trump being high on his show of force versus the fact that the US is not even remotely in control of Venezuela. From Politico:
In the wake of the U.S.’s capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday made it clear that it is somewhat unclear what’s next for the Latin American country.
His comments come as Democratic leaders continue to decry the administration’s actions in Venezuela and push for the White House to seek congressional approval for such military operations.
In multiple interviews, Rubio emphasized that the U.S. is not at war with Venezuela but stopped short of explaining exactly what the U.S. role in the country will look like as both nations reel from Maduro’s arrest — and in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s statement Saturday that the U.S. would “run” Venezuela for an indeterminate time.
“We are at war against drug trafficking organizations, not at war against Venezuela,” Rubio told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Rubio added that oil sanctions will remain in place, and the U.S. reserves the right to issue strikes against alleged drug boats heading toward America.
But while Rubio told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the U.S. is not occupying Venezuela, he did not reject the idea that it could be a future option from the Trump administration.
Trump, Rubio said, “does not feel like he is going to publicly rule out options that are available for the United States, even though that’s not what you’re seeing right now.”
“What you’re seeing right now is a quarantine that allows us to exert tremendous leverage over what happens next,” he added.
Many experts with knowledge of the region, such as Larry Johnson, have given repeated, long-form accounts of how much harder it would be to conquer Venezuela that Iraq, even before factoring in that our army is much smaller and weaker now than then. A short version of this line of argument from Modern War Monitor:
Venezuela is heavily armed. Years of political polarization, along with an expanded role for security forces and pro-government colectivos, mean that weapons and combat experience are not in short supply. The country’s borders are long, porous and already used by guerrillas, paramilitaries, and criminal networks.
To see what that might look like in practice, you don’t have to speculate; you can look next door. Colombia’s armed conflict, officially dating from 1964, pitted the state against FARC, ELN, and a web of paramilitary and criminal actors for decades. It persisted, in part, because armed groups could slip across borders, find safe havens, move contraband, and restock. Even with massive US funding under Plan Colombia and repeated “final” offensives, the state never achieved a clean victory; violence simply changed shape.
Translate that pattern into a post-Maduro Venezuela run in practice by US–backed figures, and you can sketch the basic dynamic. There will be bombings of police stations and government offices, high-profile assassinations, and attacks on oil infrastructure. Kidnapping Americans or US contractors will become a lucrative tactic. Armed groups will drift across the Colombian and Brazilian borders and into the jungle or mountains when pressure grows.
Even Sky News is reporting that men and women on the street are speaking out on behalf of the current regime:
🗣️ "The US is not interested in freedom or democracy, it is interested in our oil."
Venezuelans gathered in Caracas to express their solidarity with Nicolas Maduro, who was captured by the United States following a series of airstrikes.
Latest updates: https://t.co/4w875fZU8W pic.twitter.com/b5byRmj15m
— Sky News (@SkyNews) January 4, 2026
So oil theater is signature Trump, of acting like empty bags have value. He talked up his “raw earths” deal with Zelensky, which still proved to be a difficult negotiation even with the US theoretically holding all the card by providing Ukraine with critical intel and targeting along with weapons, particularly air defenses. And that’s before getting to the fact that as of when the agreement was inked, over one-half of the “Ukraine” reserves were in Russian hands, and how much of Ukraine eventually winds up being formally part of Russia and/or in a rump Ukraine that is a Russian vassal is up in the air. Similarly, in the 28 to 20 point piece plan floating about, Trump’s negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner claim that one of two really key US demands involves joint ownership of the Zaporzhizhia nuclear power plant and the disposition of its energy. This idea is delusional. Russia deems Zaprozhizhia to be part of Russia and is not going to hand part of the nuclear facility to the US to make nice to Trump.
We’ve already discussed that wringing more production out of Venezuela’s oil fields would require a long period of investment before any real payoff took place. And the precedent of Iraq, where we had occupied the country, bodes ill. Despite oil being seen as the most logical objective for the US invasion, it was years before oil producers started investing.
Admittedly, the embargo is increasing pressure on the Venezuela government.
Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA is cutting crude production because it is running out of storage capacity due to an ongoing US oil blockade that has halted exports, increasing pressure on the interim government https://t.co/eAelegFxHM pic.twitter.com/sIs9UqaQei
— Reuters Business (@ReutersBiz) January 5, 2026
So why not stick with Plan A? Was this yet another manifestation of Trump’s extreme need to be seen as dominating world events? To create a distraction from the Epstein files and increasing certainty that Russia will secure a military victory in Ukraine, which will mean Trump lost? IMHO the initial apparent success of the Trump “Raid not invade” in Caracas almost assures that he will take Greenland when Ukraine is clearly toast.
Not surprisingly, the mainstream media is raising eyebrows over Trump’s grandiose oil exploitation claims. It is true that the US has motive, in that our refineries are tuned so that 70% of the oil they process is heavier grades, despite the US producing light sweet crudes.1 And commentators have pointed out that after the US sanctioned Russia, cutting it off from its medium heavy crude. Even though Russian supplies purportedly represented only 3% of US imports and experts predicted that its loss would matter little to the US, Biden turned to Venezuela almost immediately after imposing the shock and awe sanctions, explicitly to replace Russian fuel.
However, heavy and sour (as in sulfur-ridden) crude of the Venezuela sort is expensive to process. The current low oil price environment, driven by less-than-robust growth in much of the world,2 is an unfavorable backdrop, even before getting to perfectly reasonable big corporate concerns about safety and expropriation risk. Do not be fooled by Trump likely succeeding in having a flurry of meetings with big oil execs. There was also a lot of dog-and-pony showing for a Ukraine reconstruction fund, starting under Biden, that continued with Trump. Many misread the involvement of giant fund manager BlackRock, which had signed up only as an adviser and had not committed any money.
We featured an OilPrice article in late 2025 that argued that it didn’t make economic sense for the US to try to seize Venezuela’s oil. First from our long intro:
This article explains why Venezuela’s oil is not of much strategic value to the US and its infrastructure would take a lot of investment over a long time to bring up to snuff. Yet Trump has shifted his justification from narco-terrorism to, erm, retaking the oil and other assets, in going to war with Venezuela (recall a blockade is an act of war)…
Recall that after the weapons of mass destruction justification for the Iraq war fell apart, the Administration then provided a series of pretexts, even as most observers argued that the oil was the reason. Iraq then had the world’s second largest proven reserves, and they were highly prized light sweet crude. And while the US still has substantial control over Iraq’s oil exports, the US were slow to invest in Iraq’s oil infrastructure. I cannot find the source, but I recall reading that the majors were not comfortable the US level of exploitation of the Iraqi resource….
A 2012 Aljazeera story intimated that the Western firms, even though they won the critical oil concessions after the war, had not done as well as they had hoped, confirming the idea that the exploitation of the Iraq resource was not handled in an expeditious manner….
But my impression is that the later theories, that Iraq was a stepping stone on the way to subjugating Iran, and the oil was at most a secondary objective, are on target.
From the OilPrice article proper:
- Despite accusations from Venezuelan and Colombian leaders, the immense growth in U.S. domestic oil production and reserves significantly diminishes the strategic need for Washington to seize Venezuela’s oil fields.
- The U.S. Gulf Coast refining industry has largely transitioned away from Venezuelan heavy crude due to facility closures and a shift toward alternative suppliers like Canada, Mexico, and domestic shale sources.
- Restoring Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure to major export levels would require over a decade of work and tens of billions in investment, making a military seizure economically impractical for the United States.
The Wall Street Journal story flagged in our headline comes to similar conclusions. From Trump Wants to Unlock Venezuela’s Oil Reserves. A Huge Challenge Awaits:
The Trump administration’s move to oust Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro…. will pave the way for U.S. oil companies to regain a foothold in the South American nation, President Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago press conference.
“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,” he said.
But getting foreign companies to flock back to Venezuela will be a massive challenge. Chevron is the only major U.S. oil company there…. Other oil executives will be forced to gauge the stability on the ground in a country where the industry has fallen into disarray…
The other obstacle facing Trump’s effort to put more of Venezuela’s viscous crude into the global market is that the world doesn’t have much of an appetite for more oil…
The U.S. hasn’t detailed the mechanics of how it would bring more American oil companies into Venezuela to boost production. Analysts say it could facilitate a process that would allow companies to bid for oil and gas blocks and question whether European companies could also bid for the right to enter the country.
As readers know, that assumes subjugation of Venezuela or cooperation that has yet to be in evidence. The article cited a statement by Chevron being “focused” on employee safety and “integrity” of its Venezuela operation. Not hard to read that as an expression of heightened concern. In passing, it also signaled doubt about whether the level of Venezuelan reserves are as large as claimed (supposedly the largest in the world). This is not crazy. Matthew Simmons of Peak Oil fame produced tables showing OPEC members posting sudden increases in claimed reserves, which he documented had no substantiation (as in no new discoveries or changes in production methods that could lead to bigger supplies from existing assets). He argued a big reason for these rises was that OPEC set production levels among its members based on their proven reserves.
Back to the Journal:
In the U.S., the shale boom unleashed record levels of oil production, but the kind of oil American frackers are pumping doesn’t work as well as heavy crude produced in Venezuela, Canada and Mexico. Venezuela’s government says its proved oil reserves top 300 billion barrels, which, if true, would make its bounty the world’s largest.
Other big oil companies that are potentially interested in re-entering Venezuela will almost certainly take time to evaluate the situation because the country has a track record of appropriating oil assets, as it did in the 1970s and the 2000s, analysts said.
ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil pulled out of Venezuela in 2007 after then-President Hugo Chávez nationalized their assets. Conoco later sued the Venezuelan government for more than $20 billion; Exxon sued for $12 billion. The companies were awarded fractions of their losses in protracted arbitration proceedings…
Orlando Ochoa, a Caracas-based economist and a visiting fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, described the Herculean task of jump-starting the moribund energy industry, which has seen tens of thousands of trained professionals flee the country under Maduro’s authoritarian rule.
He said that includes drafting a broad economic stabilization plan to attract the financing Venezuela badly needs from multilateral lenders to rebuild infrastructure and rusted oil-field installations. Local laws need to be modified to allow private energy firms to operate without state overreach, he added. And the government has to restructure some $160 billion in debt and settle pending arbitration cases with foreign companies to convince them to come back.
“What the U.S. needs to do is to implement a form of a Marshall Plan,” said Ochoa, referring to the economic program that helped rebuild Europe after World War II. “This is about much more than coming into the oil and gas sector just to extract crude from the ground.”
Good luck with that. This is from a bunch that is so seat-of-the-pants that it can’t even conduct negotiations with Russia on a disciplined basis.
Reuters echoes the Journal’s concerns:
Venezuela was a founding member of OPEC with Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Its struggles with electricity production have repeatedly hampered mining and oil operations.
The country was producing as much as 3.5 million barrels per day of crude in the 1970s, which at the time represented over 7% of global oil output. Production fell below 2 million bpd during the 2010s and averaged some 1.1 million bpd last year or just 1% of global production. That’s roughly the same production as the U.S. state of North Dakota.
“If developments ultimately lead to a genuine regime change, this could even result in more oil on the market over time. However, it will take time for production to recover fully,” said Arne Lohmann Rasmussen from Global Risk Management…
“History shows that forced regime change rarely stabilises oil supply quickly, with Libya and Iraq offering clear and sobering precedents,” said Jorge Leon, head of geopolitical analysis at Rystad Energy.
Reuters usefully presents 2019 and 2021 data from Venezuela on gold, coal and nickel reserves. It also includes this interesting factoid:
Venezuela owes about $10 billion to China after China became the largest lender under late President Hugo Chavez.
Venezuela repays loans with crude transported in three very large crude carriers previously co-owned by Venezuela and China.
But Reuters oddly does not mention the large gas field off the coast of Venezuela and Guyana, which relates to a long-standing territorial dispute.3
Finally from the New York Times:
The national oil company, known as PDVSA, lacks the capital and expertise to increase production. The country’s oil fields are run down and suffer from “years of insufficient drilling, dilapidated infrastructure, frequent power cuts and equipment theft,” according to a recent study by Energy Aspects, a research firm. The United States has placed sanctions on Venezuelan oil, which is now exported primarily to China…..
In theory, if U.S. oil companies were given greater access in Venezuela, they could help gradually turn the industry around. “But it’s not going to be a straightforward proposition,” said Richard Bronze, head of geopolitics at Energy Aspects.
Analysts say increasing Venezuelan production will not be cheap. Energy Aspects estimated that adding another half a million barrels a day of production would cost $10 billion and take about two years.
Major increases might require “tens of billions of dollars over multiple years,” the firm said.
Some experts are throwing even more cold water on the Trump hoped-for oil heist. Be sure to click through. The analysis is detailed and devastating.
I have spent a lot of time talking shit at people with opinions on Venezuela's oil production potential, and how it's going to "RePLaCe CanADa". So here's my contribution — how I see the cost of replacing Canadian crude with Venezuelan heavy.
I think it's a nearly $1 trillion… pic.twitter.com/XFlPVwPdew
— Michael Spyker (@ShaleTier7) January 4, 2026
To entice you to read the whole tweet, one paragraph from the middle:
The problem is they don’t have the power infrastructure to add the power needed for 3MMBbls/d of SAGD for steam generation, and even for primary recovery they don’t have the electricity they need. So you need to build 10-15 GW of new power infra, at gas-fired capital cost including transmission and the new midstream infra to move gas (including LNG import terminals), that’s another $40-75Bn just to get the power to the SAGD facilities. There are constant rolling blackouts in the country. You also need ~7-900MB/d of diluent looping on the Venezuela side, including DRUs for another ~$25Bn. Other local midstream refurb is at least $15Bn to replace ashphalted and corroded trunk lines. Any North American firm would also have to commit to cleaning up Lake Maracaibo which is a $10Bn commitment.
So this Trump romp in South America is sure to end badly. The big open question is whether Trump decides to break more china there or goes TACO and moves to other, seemingly easier, targets.
____
1 Thanks to the state of search, I have been unable to find estimates of how much it would cost to retune a refinery to process lighter grades, although I infer that newer refineries make this possible at lower cost than for older ones. Per the American Fuel & Petroleum Manufacturers website :
Long before the U.S. shale boom, when global production of light sweet crude oil was declining, we made significant investments in our refineries to process heavier, high-sulfur crude oils that were more widely available in the global market. These investments were made to ensure U.S. refineries would have access to the feedstocks needed to produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Heavier crude is now an essential feedstock for many U.S. refineries. Substituting it for U.S. light sweet crude oil would make these facilities less efficient and competitive, leading to a decline in fuel production and higher costs for consumers.
2 Trump tariffs and Chinese overinvestment and resulting deflation are big drivers. Neither looks set to change soon.
3 Among other things, Venezuela has credibly alleged that the long-ago arbitrator was bribed. I am skipping over this topic for now, but those interested, please see The Guyana-Venezuela dispute and UK involvement and Guyana’s Oil Wealth Drives Tensions With Venezuela. So one view is that the subjugation of Venezuela would also solve the Venezuela dispute with Guyana and facilitate development there.
This is reminiscent of Peter Cook’s World Domination League,,where you would knock on the door and politely ask to be allowed to dominate people.
Some Admiral in the US is looking at the budget for this killing present appropriations and the maintenance costs of keeping all these old ships on station longer than they should and shaking his head.
Not that I don’t think the fix is in but it can’t be done on the cheap like they are trying.
power peeps care not one whit about doing things on the cheap. Budgets and spending are matters of Political Will, and Political Won’t.
There will always be plenty of money to procure arms, siphon dough off to the MIC, to protect Oil resources that the US assumes and asserts are ‘hers’.
Same Old Sh*t, different Emperial action. I guess with Trump, it is Imperial?
I hope that Dulci and the Chavista movement stay strong in Venezuela but I’m uneasy about her 1-hour reported call with Narco Rubio and the fact there was no military opposition to the raid.
I also hope that Trump takes Greenland next. It will be delicious to see the craven EU twist itself into a pretzel to not sanction the US in anyway despite the latter waging a war against it. It will expose it to those who still don’t see how useless it is.
The handover from Rafael Correa to Lenin Moreno in Ecuador constitutes a sobering precedent: from a leftist government that implemented quite a number of reforms favouring the working class, sovereignty in the exploitation of resources, and autonomy from the USA to one doing a 180-turn (Baerbock-360) that privatized everything, abolished social reforms, exited ALBA, accepted the yoke of the IMF, and started a steady cooperation with the USA. The former basis of Correa protested heavily, and was crushed.
Moreno had been vice-president of Correa, and was member of the same party — just like Delcy Rodriguez wrt. Nicolas Maduro.
The Defense Minister’s house was bombed and he is alive only by virtue of having gotten to a shelter.
At least two of the ~10 helicopters were hit, which means shot at, and some soliders were injured as a result but I infer not badly. The US sent in over 150 planes. From Task & Purpose:
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/fighters-bombers-venezuela-attack-maduro/
And Vanessa Beeley speculated:
https://beeley.substack.com/p/14-points-on-trump-kidnap-of-venezuelan?
Listened to a few podcasts this morning and it was either Alastair Cook or Chas Freeman or both who said that 30 Cuban soldiers who comprised Maduro’s personal bodyguard were all killed.
Yesterday there was that report from the Russian pundit (Korbyko?) who claimed Russian forces went in to protect Maduro and were fired on by his bodyguard – that claim seems a little odd to me.
All that seems certain at this point was that there was some resistance to his capture.
thank you. I watched Max and Anya’s livestream about this yesterday and they didn’t have these details yet. And from today’s links, I learned that a military base repelled an attack as well so there was some resistance. Very clean operation by the US.
Greenland will be much easier:
1. Declare Greenland US territory
2. Send ICE in to round-up and deport the non-US citizens to willing Sub-Saharan hosts
There’s less than 60,000 of soon-to-be illegals in Greenland– Homeland Security can clean house in a week.
Wouldn’t this be the end of NATO? (I wouldn’t cry for this)
Urup would finally have to face up to its submerging reality and cut its increasingly threadbare cloth accordingly. South America could not supply enough coke to cope.
How does Trump even TACO from this mess? Release Maduro?
I guess he could hold Maduro in legal limbo a la Assange for years/decades.
A la Assange, a la Epstein, a la Milosevic, a la Hussein, a la carte. There’s a lot on the menu.
Perhaps the U.S. has learned from previous mistakes (Iraq, Libya) and realized that destroying an existing regime is not a good idea. The oil industry requires long-term investments, which depend on stability.
The process I am seeing reminds me of the “Transition” in Spain in 1978. In a smooth “Transition,” the current elites retain most of their power in exchange for: 1) providing stability, 2) accommodating U.S. interests, and 3) eventually moving to the background.
If the Spanish “Transition” is the template, we should see elections within 1-2 years, with the winner being a “centrist” candidate.
Someone clarify:
When in the last 60 years has the US learned from a mistake, whether or not that mistake was admitted?
I’m not coming up with a single one, except for multiple examples of the learning part being “keep it even more secret”.
“Words calculated to catch everyone may catch no one.”
“The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions. But there is also, it seems to me, a moment at which democracy must prove its capacity to act. Every man has a right to be heard; but no man has the right to strangle democracy with a single set of vocal cords.”
Adlai Stevenson
Trump’s goal is not to seize oil. Rather, he wants to avenge his humiliating loss in Ukraine by defeating Russia’s key allies, such as Syria and Venezuela.
Perhaps you’re right. But according to Mercouris at least, Russia is doing surprisingly well in Syria under the new regime, and this strike against Venezuela is most likely to result in the Russia/China relationship getting even stronger as China might look to Russia for even more oil…
https://youtu.be/5CrOrDheZ9s?si=yf3LZJyEGuJLDbjf
Perhaps Trump has achieved a key goal in cutting off a Petro supply line to China?
May be insignificant in the number of tankers going through Panana but will be seen as a win by Trump to attempt restricting Chinese economic growth.
*Sigh* Please consider uinsg a search engine, as I just did:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-oil-refiners-win-chinese-rivals-lose-trumps-venezuela-strike-2026-01-04/
https://archive.is/gRk9D#selection-1611.0-1647.341
Russia can provide China with heavy crude (Urals is medium heavy), increasing Chinese dependence on Russia, but filling any bitumen gap would take some doing. From an article explaining why Russia’s bitumen exports had fallen:
https://bitumenmag.com/News/global-repercussions-of-russias-declining-bitumen-output-in-2025
Thanks Yves, first time contributor so learning the ropes. Will get better.
Sorry to have seemed rough on you and appreciate you being a good sport.
And China can buy heavy crude from Canada…
I was half listening to Trump waffle on about taking Venezuela’s oil when he used a word that I had not heard him using before in talking about that oil and I think that it was the word recompense. He was saying that he would take the oil and profits would be used to help the Venezuelan people. That was what the government has been doing and I am sure that he only means certain parts of the population. Regardless, he slipped that word recompense in and what I think that he means is this. He will take that oil, sell it, deduct what the US has had to pay for this to happen (I would imagine that would also include the tens of billions of dollars spent on the blockade) and then they would take out recompense. By that I am sure that he means the decades worth of lost profits that the US never made on that oil so in the end, there will be very little left for the common people.
This plus the Michael Spyker thread prompts ”socialize the costs, privatize the profits”-dictum
How many and which billionaires do you need to off in order to stop this evil?
Sounds like trickle-down economics, with high viscosity fluid. :)
https://www.upworthy.com/pitch-drop-experiment-still-fascinates
After Saturday’s presser, with Trump talking about oil and identifying the colonial viceroys standing behind him while the others talked only of narco-gang-poison-crime and getting the kingpin in SDNY, I was thinking about my remark when we were discussing this Oil Price (quoted again above) that it might still be about the oil for Trump. I had opined that perhaps Trump doesn’t understand the obstacles, like he doesn’t understand about the effects of tariffs, and there may be neocons that find it useful for him to believe the oil story. Now Yves added a very interesting dimension to this: he’s doing sales theater like with the Ukraine minerals.
Trump the real estate developer has a long career of talking up things that don’t exist trying to raise the investment needed to make them, many of the things being completely pie-in-the-sky, and that’d often be fitting in projects’ early stages (compare selling Venezuelan oil production licenses to selling Theranos equity). With all that experience Trump may find it reflexive and/or natural-feeling to talk up the oil like he did.
Ultimately, the real motives for this whole Venezuelan adventure are most likely the usual 1) empire, in this case establishing the Donroe Doctrine (which the CW seems to accept, judging from early reactions), and 2) he needed a distraction from all the failing at home and some highly visible win.
The usual, indeed.
And there is no such thing as narco-terrorism. Adults willing to go on camera and say narco-terrorism out loud or claim “we are at war withbdrig traffickers” are so obviously lying. With this administration, don’t they even have a truth to hide?
Trump is a 1980s Reagan guy living in a 21st century world and that applies to much of the Repub party that supports him. Meanwhile the Dems try to coast on their own brand fumes. The only thing new in our not so brave new world is the rise of the computer industry and they too live in an imaginary bubble. I’ve been rewatching old episodes of the Mike Judge absurdist comedy Silicon Valley. The characters are all deeply weird comic types and it’s hilarious. He satirizes the way these nerds talk about “making the world a better place” when it’s really all about money even if the central character–the nerdiest of all–does seem sincere.
Trump apes all that “better place” lingo but nobody could possibly buy his pitch unless they are feeling trapped by TINA. When that last collapses maybe things will finally change.
Doing an imperialist takeover of some foreign country is not a good way to distract the population from your failures. Recent decades have given us plenty of examples of how these operations inevitably play out, which is more gigantic failures and usually the signature catastrophe of your administration.
When you think of Lyndon Johnson, what do you think of? Vietnam!
When you think of Ronald Reagan, what do you think of? Iran-Contra!
When you think of Bill Clinton, what do you think of? Iraq (part 1)!
When you think of GW bush, what do you think of? Afghanistan and Iraq (part 2).
When you think of Obama, what do you think of? Iraq and Afghanistan!
When you think of Biden, what do you think of? Ukraine and Afghanistan!
I will leave it as an exercise to the reader regarding what Trump’s historic legacy will be.
Bushco will always be remembered as the sawdust head Charlie McCarthy to Edgar Bergen Cheney.
It’s a long time between now and November, and today’s “win” could well turn into a significant political loss – particularly if Trump régime follows it up with Iran, or the Russians start deliberately taking out Americans in the Ukraine, or the Taiwanese decide that China has prepared an offer they can’t refuse, or that he makes a move on Greenland and steps on Russian and Chinese toes.
Great analysis, as usual, Yves. Especially in this, err, overly dynamic situation.
I’m curious about your views on the point Larry Johnson made recently that this is a step towards the US guaranteeing it’s supply of oil in the face of potential oil market upheavals if Israel (+US) attack Iran?
This could be simply getting a few pieces on the board in advance of a longer Iran play… What do you think?
its really reallty really worthwhile to read the Stryker X thread:
https://x.com/ShaleTier7/status/2007936384448024898
which assumes no resistance (in the new age of drones, where China and Russia have incentive to bog the US down in a new Vietnam).
There also is an assumption that China will provide the necessary rare earths and components to allow the US to retool the Venezuelan oil industry to prevent it from exporting oil to China!
If that is Johnson’s argument, I don’t understand it. Venezuela supplies to global markets are too small to have any impact on a closure-of-the-Strait-of-Hormuz scenario.
Thanks. From this article
https://larrycjohnson.substack.com/p/is-the-maduro-kidnapping-a-prelude
Larry says
I believe the true objective of the kidnapping operation to remove Maduro is to secure US control of Venezuelan oil in anticipation of a disruption of the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf when Israel, with US-backing, launches a new attack on Iran
Although having read through the long tweet by ShaleTier7 and the arguments you make above, I am also persuaded that if this *was* their thinking they have sorely miscalculated. What a shock.
Cheers
It may be that Larry Johnson assumes a lack of knowledge alongside frail intellectual abilities are the guiding stars of US policy. Or it could be that Trump is going to re-make all the roads in the US, re-build all the bridges and develop wonderful housing estates for the poor and generally make every white Amercan life great again. What a guy!
Thank you for this excellent analysis.
“Some Admiral in the US is looking at the budget for this killing present appropriations and the maintenance costs of keeping all these old ships on station longer than they should and shaking his head.”
I am curious what the cost of the whole Venezuela project has been to ‘arrest’ Maduro. The Pricer says around $60 million. https://www.thepricer.org/how-much-did-the-u-s-spend-to-capture-maduro/
That seems very low to me. Navy ships have continuous overhead, but I believe being on station must be more expensive. And then there is the strikes on the narco-terrorist boats, the DEA, the Coast Guard involvement. A lot of money for nothing in my book.
Same with the money spent ‘getting’ all the terrorists we have chased for 25 years. I guess the payoff must be the resulting militaristic rule in the USA.
That Pricer article attempted to define the incremental costs of the op. It states a major uncertainty is the ordnance expended. It doesn’t attempt to cost out the general presence mission cost. Keep in mind we have had an ongoing level of effort counter-drug op in the Caribbean for about as long as I’ve been around. Of course we have gone from a board-and-arrest model to attack-and-destroy. That’s separate from the cost of enforcing sanctions.
Trump is obviously high on his supposed perfect military abduction. Unfortunately, when his oil heist doesn’t go as planned, and it won’t, Trump will probably get uglier toward the Venezuelan people.
Trump basically sounds like a mob boss when he said if the new president Delcy Rodriguez “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”
Trump, according to the NYT, told reporters, “And don’t ask me who’s in charge, because I’ll give you an answer, and it’ll be very controversial.” “What does that mean?” a reporter asked. “It means we’re in charge,” the president said.
One might think of the Nazis and the annexation of Austria. Hitler visited Austria to meet with Austrian Nazis. This was Hitler’s home country. He spent time visiting his family home and the border crossing where his father worked. It seemed he cared about Austrians.
It didn’t work out well for Austrians or the Austrian Nazis who thought they were more or less partners. The Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg was arrested and spent the war in a concentration camp. Austrian ministers were replaced when Hitler sent his own ministers to Vienna to run the country. Austrian Nazis had little or no power. The Austrian Central bank was looted for its gold and foreign reserves. Austria’s iron ore deposits were seized immediately, as well as other mineral resources, oil, art works, etc. I hope the Venezuelans realize what Trump has in store for them.
Looks like the interm president got the message:
Venezuelan interim leader tones down criticism, ready to ‘work with the US’
Acting President Delcy Rodriguez calls for a ‘balanced and respectful’ relationship with Washington during transition.
“We extend an invitation to the US government to work together on an agenda for cooperation that is aimed towards shared development,” she continued.
The US does have Venezuela over the barrel, quite literally. A bit of lip-service at this point can be a step towards reducing the immediate heat without being tantamount to capitulation or surrender– pull a Ukraine: sign a few agreements, buy some time to more properly arm.
I don’t see how Venezuela can break out of the stranglehold that the US has it in. As economic conditions there worsen, the US remains out of reach, and civil unrest will turn inward to find targets close at hand.
The issue is not the regime change threat. It’s the blockade, But it costs the US to keep that going.
And someone in Russia might have clued Rodriguez in that it costs nothing to talk nicely to Trump, and he gets off on that.
Except Trump takes the soft soap seriously and wants revenge when he finds out it isn’t.
Crooke suggests the Russians may be changing their tactics and withdrawing from Trump engagement.
They probably can’t break out of it until enough other nations realize that they can either hang together now or hang separately later.
How many countries does the US need to destroy before other nations fight back? You would think that at the very least, the UN could impose massive sanctions on the US. Yes, I know, I did laugh a little as I typed that last sentence. The UN is about as useless as the US Congress
Aboard AF1, Trump told a reporter, “We need total access in Venezuela. We need access to the oil and to other things.” “Total Access”
Trump also accused Venezuela of stealing from the US. He said, “It was the greatest theft in the history of America. Nobody has ever stolen our property like they have. They took our oil away from us.”
I can’t find an accurate figure but it seems Venezuela has roughly $5 billion in gold at its central bank and another $2 billion in the UK which the UK has refused to return. There are other valuable minerals available to be extracted. And, of course, lots of water front property.
I can imagine Trump stealing what he can as payback while waiting for the oil business to recover.
https://apnews.com/video/trump-says-he-wants-total-access-from-venezuela-comments-on-cubans-killed-c08d04e0f1d7467e87fdb3f66c3eac77
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/05/business/oil-venezuela-trump
The Iraq tragedy is being repeated as farce in Venezuela. Trump lacks the means to extract anything other than cheap spectacle from Venezuela. The downward spiral of the U.S. into idiocracy continues.
Adam Tooze has put together a Chartbook on Venezuelan oil. Which likely won’t start to flow anytime soon: https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-423-some-topical-material
Same as natural resources from Greenland… Which will need ports, airports, roads, powerplants, housing and amenities for the workforce, etc. All in a harsh climate. Greenland already has US military there since WWII, can’t they properly insure the US national security?