Yves here. The Steve Miller remarks in the clips below are indeed so extreme as to merit highlighting. And they demonstrate the degree to which the Trump entourage includes deranged ideologues as well as garden variety toadies.
The irony here is that the last splashy presumed US oil grab did not work out. From a recent interview at Neutrality Studies, at 11:30:
Pascal Lottaz: A lot of people say the Iraq war was a huge blunder and failure and and whatnot, but the matter of the fact is that thanks to the 2003 invasion, the United States for the last 22 years, 23 years has been controlling Iraq’s oil successfully. So, it also did so in Syria. So there is a history of of of successfully getting oil out of countries with war.
Former Amb. Chas Freeman: I think the case of Syria is um a pretty egregious one. It it is clearly motivated largely by control of the limited oil production uh in in Syria.
But I have to correct you with respect to Iraq. The primary production is all Chinese companies. So we fought the war and somebody else reaped the benefits economically and of course Iraq is still very unsettled as a society and a nation and divided and trying to get rid of the American troop presence and continuously failing. So that is not a success.
By Julia Conley, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
“Belligerent” was how one Democratic lawmaker described a diatribe given by top White House adviser Stephen Miller on CNN Monday evening regarding the Trump administration’s right to take over Venezuela—or any other country—if doing so is in the supposed interest of the US.
To Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), however, Miller was simply providing viewers with “a very good definition of imperialism” as he described the worldview the administration is operating under as it takes control of Venezuela and eyes other countries, including Greenland, that it believes it can and should invade.
“This is what imperialism is all about,” Sanders told CNN‘s Jake Tapper. “And I suspect that people all over the world are saying, ‘Wow, we’re going back to where we were 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, where the big, powerful countries were exploiting poorer countries for their natural resources.’”
The senator spoke to Tapper shortly after Miller’s interview, in which the news anchor asked whether President Donald Trump would support holding an election in Venezuela days after the US military bombed the country and abductedPresident Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
Miller refused to directly engage with the question, saying only that it would be “absurd and preposterous” for the US to install Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado as the leader of the country, before asking Tapper to “give [him] the floor” and allow him to explain the White House’s view on foreign policy.
“The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere,” said Miller. “We’re a superpower and under President Trump we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. It is absurd that we would allow a nation in our backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries but not to us.”
Instead of “demanding that elections be held” in Venezuela, he added, “the future of the free world depends on America to be able to assert ourselves and our interests without an apology.”
MILLER: The US is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower and under President Trump we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. It’s absurd that we would allow a nation in our backyard to become the supplier of… pic.twitter.com/wXK2UxnqUj
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 5, 2026
The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that Venezuela “stole” oil from the United States. The country is believed to have the largest oil reserves in the world, and the government nationalized its petroleum industry in 1976, including projects that had been run by US-based ExxonMobil. The last privately run oil operations were nationalized in 2007 by then-President Hugo Chavez.
Miller offered one of the most explicit explanations of the White House’s view yet: that “sovereign countries don’t get sovereignty if the US wants their resources,” as Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) translated in a social media post.
Moulton called Miller’s tirade “genuinely unhinged” and “a disturbing window into how this administration thinks about the world.”
Miller’s remarks followed a similarly blunt statement at a UN Security Council emergency meeting by US Ambassador Michael Waltz.
“You cannot continue to have the largest energy reserves in the world under the control of adversaries of the United States,” said Waltz.
Miller’s description of the White House’s current view on foreign policy followed threats from Trump against countries including Colombia, Mexico, and Greenland, and further comments suggested that the administration could soon move to take control of the latter country—even though it is part of the kingdom of Denmark, which along with the US is a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
“Greenland should be part of the United States,” said Miller. “The president has been very clear about that, that is the formal position of the US government.”
Miller: “Greenland has a population of 30,000 people. By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? The United States is the power of NATO. Greenland should be part of the United States.”
“Nobody is going to fight the US militarily over the future of Greenland.” pic.twitter.com/d7i2kMXFMD
— Dori Toribio (@DoriToribio) January 5, 2026
He dismissed the idea that the takeover of Greenland, home to about 56,000 people, would involve a military operation—though Trump has said he would not rule out using force—and said that “nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland.”
The vast island is strategically located in the Arctic Circle and has largely untapped reserves of rare-earth minerals.
Danish and Greenlandic officials have condemned Trump’s latest threats this week, with Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, warning that, in accordance with the NATO treaty, “everything would come to an end” if the US attacks another NATO country.
“The international community as we know it, democratic rules of the game, NATO, the world’s strongest defensive alliance—all of that would collapse if one NATO country chose to attack another,” she told Danish news channel Live News on Monday.
The Danish government called an emergency meeting of its Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday to discuss “the kingdom’s relationship with the United States.”
On CNN, Sanders noted that as Trump sets his sights on controlling oil reserves in Venezuela and resources in Greenland, people across the president’s own country are struggling under rising costs and financial insecurity.
“Maybe instead of trying to run Venezuela,” said Sanders, “the president might try to do a better job running the United States of America.”
And thus the frog boils.
But will the domestication of the dog continue unabated?
I can only laugh at the whole thing.
Yes, at this stage it’s hard to see how Denmark holds on to Greenland.
European vassals are so used to marching to US orders that when Trump orders the consumption of one of their own, they’re confused as to how to respond.
While you are laughing, should we not consider those who live there
Truthfully, I cannot say that I have an opinion since I don’t know how they live and what they live on. Furthermore, if Greenland was a US territory, what difference would it make to them?
After today’s killing by ICE, a whole family blog lot, I would think
Quite a lot. People in Greenland can go to the high quality Danish universities, for one. But this is also a difficult issue: in Greenland many see Danish as the language of the colonizer. I don’t know if English would be any better, if all education would be in English – the USA does not have a great track record with indigenous people.
Believensraum
whoa!
That one should be officially introduced into lingual practice.
ps. Last night you made me rewatch Jim Carrey´s spoof of Vanilla Ice…
Waiting with bated breath for the administration to somehow link the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks to Greenland!
The 9/11 Perps infiltrated through Greenland in their white robes. It didn’t take long to figure that one out.
Arnaud Bertrand had a post on, which Mercouris cited in his programme, about how Trump has shed all pretenses and that this loss of hypocrisy means that the US no longer has any ideals and will die from within. Maybe. But Caitlin Johnstone has another, seemingly unrelated, post about how the US empire needs men like Trump to be bad-cop presidents to get away with things that good-cop presidents can’t. Aside from the fact that, actually, good-cop presidents like Obama can get away with an awful lot of violence and still increase their soft power that a bad-cop president like Dubya might not be able to, there may be something there. After Trump, the next president may be a good-cop who declares the return of international law, because it might then suit them, but without reversing any of the villainous gains made by Trump or punishing any of the destroyers of international law over these last few years. In any case, the ashes of international law lay are scattered in the ruins of Gaza and Trump, ever the opportunist, wants to see how much he can get away with.
vidimi: After Trump, the next president may be a good-cop who declares the return of international law, because it might then suit them, but without reversing any of the villainous gains made by Trump
And at the first whiff of that happening, count on comprador EU elites to happily rush back to their Washington masters for the payoffs that come from being ‘Atlanticists.’
It’s likely that the european atlanticists are unable and unwilling to change (or learn anything).
But don’t underestimate what the current US politic will do to the estrangement between the atlanticists and others. The greenland shock wasn’t superficial.
“US no longer has any ideals and will die from within”
Ideals matter to ideologues and moralists, but he is right in that, the US will die from within if it stays the course without drastic internal political and economic reforms.
“return of international law”
still hoping for the continuation of long peace I see.
“punishing any of the destroyers of international law over these last few years. In any case, the ashes of international law lay are scattered in the ruins of Gaza ”
I am sorry you cannot possibly be this naive. International Law doesnt work the same as domestic Law
There is no sovereign enforcer, certainly no monopoly on coercion and a seemingly neutral judiciary alone is woefully inadequate. What is called “international law” operates only when power relations between states allow it to operate. But when core interests collide, international laws yield, every single time. The ounce of relevance International laws did possess was predicated on American/Soviet/Chinese largesse.
You make a very astute observation as did Thucydides 2500 years ago or Machiavelli 500 years ago. Nothing new here. We have seen the enemy and sadly it is we humans. To those with grace many blessings.
tremendous comment 🫡
As the Finster liked to say, “What are you going to do about it?”.
It’s not ‘good cop/bad cop’ it’s bad cop/psycho cop.
The dems of course being the bad cops.
At least, the Donkey Show has free admission.
Obama did say he was good at killing people.
The Nobel committee will preemptively award the “peace prize” to any Dem that comes to power after Trump – unless it’s a fricking irl socialist.
You cannot incite a war in a region thats surrounded by political actors who have their own strategic designs, while operating on contiguous landmasses that allows cheap, resilient logistics and expect success all while relying on expensive sealift and airlift capabilites, You can win wars with it, but whats comes after is harder still, esp, if you resort to recreating western style political institutions in a society that is not equipped to handle them. In Iraq and Afghanistan’s case geography and regional agency on their own were already enough to guarantee a bad outcome.
In contrast, the only serious objection to Trump’s plans for annexing Greenland is a moral one. And morality, in interstate politics has roughly the same strategic value of a used tissue paper.
No other country can challenge America if it decides to go through with it. The only ones with the theoretical capability are the French and the Chinese. One of whom is located half way around on the other side of the planet.
People are struggling under rising costs and financial insecurity.
Because no political actor in the United States is institutionally or ideologically equipped to deliver the kind of long term solution teh country needs, electing people like Zohran Mamdani is at best a half measure, siince they still patronize the ideological values that brought country to the situation its currently in.
The American public will very likely have to endure significantly more pain before it becomes receptive to the policies that are actually required to improve the material conditions of the people. The New Deal wasnt born out of elite foresight, it was made necessary by economic catastrophe that left the demos with no alternative but to cast its individualist delusions aside.
degaulle’s long dead in the cold ground. the french are lapdogs at best and mosquitos at worst – just watch as they get thrown out of africa. why in the world would they go to bat against the US? they can’t even fend off wagner auxiliaries!
I tend to the view that the most serious objections to the US taking over Greenland are the sheer raw facts of Russian and Chinese power. US control of Greenland is not in their interests whereas Greenland as a Russian and Chinese Protectorate is; equally, an independant Greenland or Greenland as an autonomous entity of Denmark is also in their interests, particularly if the US base is turned over to be used by Russia, China and some of the European powers after the people of Europe turf out their current crop of incompetent, weak-kneed, woollyback, Daddy-loving arselickers and replace them with leaders who have a more than a basic understanding of realpolitik.
At risk of pointing out the obvious, a takeover of Greenland by the US is our way of getting closer to the Arctic. As the Arctic melts, the NW passage becomes increasingly important for transport, and Greenland and the Arctic more accessible for resource extraction. Owning Greenland also gives the US surefire access to a transport choke point. Russia already has access and choke point(s). And China has its ally Russia.
Granted that the US under Trump has the capability to inflict much more damage and misery before it’s done. But on the level of the ‘life is a tragedy to those who feel and a comedy for those who think’ the current moment is comedy gold for the Ages.
I’m over here in the UK/Europe and the outraged squawking and wailing from elites here, their MSM outlets and the brainwashed masses is off the charts. So, simultaneously, is the pathetic wailing about, “but what can we do against the US and its all-powerful military”?
They could very obviously do what Russia did about it, of course, and China in its different way.
And yet of course EU comprador elites were all in with the US when the plan was to do to Russia what Trump is currently doing to Venezuela and threatening to do to Greenland, and by extension Europe.
Now that Ukraine’s obviously failed and the US under Trump has moved on, however, those comprador EU elites are:
[1] stuck holding the bag for the failure of the Ukraine proxy war on Russia;
[2] not going to get the payoff from the hegemon for being comprador elites that they expected;
[3] outraged that the same strategy they were all in on when Russia was the target is being aimed at them;
[4] and nevertheless still so stupidly locked into their Atlanticist ideology that they can’t figure out that the US
military hasn’t won a real war that it’s actually had to fight since WW2 and except for IT it’s a hollowed-out husk in terms of actual industrial capability.
Poor European elites! Not just sc*m, but stupid sc*m.
Couldnt agree more.
Please list and define what are the “democratic rules of the game.”
The word has lost all meaning in its’ use as a catchall utterance.
Chas Freeman said that the US is operating like a dictatorship. No checks and balances on executive power, rampant lawlessness at home and abroad. But the DoubleThink persists: the US has freedom and democracy. Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, etc. are brutal “autocracies”. The tragic humor just keeps coming.
i wouldn’t call it double thinking. It just takes a very, very long time for societies to adjust their world view.
Societies change slowly, in any direction. But they do change.
Expect the change to continue for a long time even after the US policy changes.
Freeman is wrong: Trump rampages on the world stage but so far tends to obey the diktats of unelected lawyers that are obviously acting from partisan political considerations. What sort of a dictatorship is that?
Being driven by parties working from behind the throne is typical for weak dictators. Most dictators start that way.
Yesterday, a legal analysis of the situation in Venezuela was linked to. People who write legal analyses are generally insulated from radical critique, it being something they got out of their system during their second semester of their undergraduate degree, when they dated that graffiti-spraying punk who turned out to be a two-timer. So it’s been a frustrating experience to pay attention to writers and commentators who, in good times, are good liberals, but whose eyes are now open to injustice, so long as its been done by Trump. In the case of this legal analysis, the writer begins his piece by quite literally pining for the days of the TV show West Wing, which I suppose he imagines was a documentary on the Clinton years, when he was at an Ivy-plus, and not propaganda meant to produce a comforting association with the imperial presidency. Then, he says “there’s something deeply thuggish about this entire affair, and fundamentally contrary to what I’d always understood the United States’ position in the world to be.”, a sentiment which, no matter how often I hear it out of the mouths or from the keyboards of the well-educated, never ceases to astound and irk me. It’s a profoundly parochial perspective: you’d have to have never once asked someone outside of your social class or your country what they experience or think, and that’s pretty much what this reflects.
It may be an essential feature in the American Empire portions of future history books, if we have them, that many American elites did not consider their empire to be one, and bought, wholesale, the propaganda meant to keep them thinking highly of their own work.
It would be interesting and valuable to see a truly honest and careful look at the development of the practices of the American empire at the level of constitutional officers counterposed with their, well, constitutional offices, but we’re not there yet, and I have other things to do (I’m in the middle of reading Don Quixote). Instead, we have people who believe the official stories because they’re official taking offense at violations of the law by the executive. Per the constitution, Congress has the sole authority to declare war, it is true. But, since that body hasn’t gone to the gym to exercise that authority since 1942, the complaint rings hollow, echoes, and dies, and the complainant loses credibility immediately as a whiner; the U.S. has been at war constantly since then.
Here’s my own inexpert legal analysis of the events in question: there are competing schools of thought in the discourse. One holds that the supremacy clause of the U.S. constitution means that the U.N. Charter is U.S. law, and so the “threat or use of force” is prohibited in international affairs expect in very narrow circumstances. The other school holds that, fuck you, we can, and, in fact, we just did, so there. We can call this latter one the Thucydides school, after the famous passage in his history of the Pelopponesian war in which the Athenians kill or enslave everyone on the island of Melos because they could.
Thank you to my friends in the commentariat and to Yves et. al. for bringing some scope and perspective to the subject.
The very same people who will now tell you this is all fundamentally contrary to what they’d understood the US to be about were, if they’re old enough, laughing hysterically sixty years ago at Tom Lehrer’s Send the Marines.
It’s not even a question of speaking to someone outside your social class or your country. Sometimes it’s just a matter of listening carefully to yourself.
It’s a common problem of privilege. People can go decades and never encounter a situation that forces them to question their assumptions and believe truly insane things. Bruce Bettelheim was in a Nazi concentration camp and described meeting middle class Germans even in the late 1930s who still believed whole-cloth that the government was fair and right, and literally couldn’t imagine what was going on – their presence in their hellhole prison had to be a mistake that a bureaucrat was rectifying promptly. When they finally realized their plight, they emotionally collapsed and became sniveling cowards as they had no integrity of their own.
Uncurious people need a severe event to force them to face reality, especially when the news would be unwelcome. This is common in any society with a ruling class – societies without a ruling class don’t have privilege.
Even 2000 years ago when Jesus Christ was being persecuted for defying religious and financial authorities, he said “forgive them lord, for they know not what they do.” He was surrounded by profoundly foolish, privileged people then just like we have now. Same problem, different place and time.
Once Trump gives the Warner Brothers takeover to the Ellisons rather than Netflix there will be no more pesky rebuttal from Sanders and Tapper. The Ellisons want to keep CNN.
But then the Wolf Blitzer network has never been very appalled by imperialism or CBS either.
On a related note, I saw a headline earlier today that the new CBS news spokeshole signed off not with “And that’s the way it is” a la Cronkite, but with a personal tongue bath “salute” to Marco Rubio.
That was a guy named Tony Dokoupil. So happens his spouse is Katy Tur of MS NOW. Funny how this works…
Tony is the guy who “made the cut” at CBS. H/T Max Blumenthal
Anecdote:
A comment overheard on the street while walking the dog yesterday:
“He’s (Trump I presume) not playing and he’s going to come for the Democrats too!”
This was said approvingly.
> Miller’s remarks followed a similarly blunt statement at a UN Security Council emergency meeting by US Ambassador Michael Waltz.
>
> “You cannot continue to have the largest energy reserves in the world under the control of adversaries of the United States,” said Waltz.
‘Reserves’. Most of it isn’t economic, at least at current oil prices. And the US isn’t going to cough up the 10/100s billions needed, as that money is needed for the AI boondoggle. People see the word ‘reserves’ and they lose their minds, I swear to god.
Similar with Greenland. If the resources are so valuable, then why aren’t any US companies developing it. Nothing’s stopping them.
re: “US isn’t going to cough up the 10/100s billions needed, as that money is needed for the AI boondoggle.”
But, but, that AI boondoggle is supposed to support increasing, absolute surveillance of the US population, panopticon style. The Dream of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program envisioned by Adm. Poindexter back in the day.
US public was outraged, Congress shelved it, so plans and tech were ‘outsourced’ to private companies like Goog, FB, etc.
See, not the govt collected the data, private companies (started by the military originally in the case of Good and FB, for examples) are collecting the data. So it’s all good. / ;)
TIA never went away. It rebranded as consortium of public company DARPA “subsidiaries”, imo. / ;)
Total Information Awareness per Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness
Venezuela also has plenty of other resources that the imperialists want, gold, rare earth metals etc. Not only oil.
So does Greenland, which is why I think both are under the US’s thumb.
Does anyone else get the sense that Miller is in charge, not Trump?
Took me a bit, but got there during the shut down. His almost gleeful embrace of it helped make sense of the Administration’s response.
I am wondering, with Miller in charge, if there will actually be an election in 2028.
That’s an equal sign between the President and the US Government.
It’s the Eric Cartman Economy
We do what we want!
Shorter: Miller declares US eminent domain over the entire planet. / ;)
Eminent domain per Wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain_in_the_United_States
Does the EU know about this? / ;)
Traitor for sale or rent
Brooms to sweep out the ill content
Your resources, monetary pool & easy gets
He ain’t got no regrets
Ah, but two hours of pushing ICE broom
Put 20 undocumented in an 8 by 12 room
He’s a man whose mean, by no means
King of the rogues
Making enemies faster than we can kill them.
All this nonsense because these dolts don’t understand the distortion of a Mercator projection.
Wouldn’t surprise me.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark and American relations.
Aye, and who will be Fortinbras? Will there even be a Fortinbras?
And we just captured a Russian flagged oil tanker in (checks notes)…..the north sea?!
First, what the hell is our Coast Guard doing in the North Sea.
Second, are we really trying to start an open conflict with Russia AND Europe at the same time?!
North Sea.
That’s the point of Greennland and later Icelanf
Let’s you and him fight.
This sophisticated alternative view of the events in Venezuela claims the US claims about taking the oil are mostly propaganda, and it is the international “owners and controllers of global financial capital” and Gulf Cooperation Council that are being served. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSXd1FuUujA
Miller’s statements were completely off the wall.
But give him credit. He was being honest.
I am an old man. I have been watching wars justified by false pretexts all my life. So give credit to Miller. At least, Miller is being honest. He is saying that we murder and steal because we can get away with it.
Imagine is the gulf war had been advertised in that fashion. It might never have happened.
Talk about giving the devil his due. I understand what you’re saying, but don’t agree. I recall reading something that the german writer Boll wrote in one of his novels. He was writing about a german character, circa 1945, talking about love, and he wrote that the character could just as well be talking about s**t. That’s stephen miller. He has as much fealty to truth, as a commode does to its contents.
You are right. There’s no particular part of the reality we all share that matters to Miller, or Trumo, or Thiel, or Musk, or many of these gangsters.
The problem with US is not enough people are revolted by him saying that. I am. But a sizable part of our population cheers him on.
If the US intends to take Greenland and the Europeons (except Denmark) all fall into line behind the hegemon, many Danes will rightly ask: what is the point of Denmark remaining a NATO member, and why should we continue to pay for this?
Faced with this betrayal and inevitable loss of Greenland, what if Denmark were to get out in front of events and announce that they have inked a deal to give the whole island to Russia?
Basically, exiting NATO but turning to give a double middle-finger salute on the way out.
Nah, Denmark would rather sell the island to US so they can give proceeds to Ukraine. (someone actually said this, according to one of the podcasts–I think Col Davis? I think the guy who said that was a comedian, but comedians tell the truest things esp these days.)
There’s plenty of historical evidence of regimes who start to believe their own propaganda. But in the case of the US media-security-political complex, we can perhaps say “getting high on your own supply”. This ridiculous obsession with Greenland, indeed with ‘seizing’ Greenland, can only be understood as the lurid manias of a drug addict.
Lebensraum is the American Way in case it hasn’t been noted.
“Der Vaterland braucht mehr Lebensraum!” — William Burroughs
This has eerie similarities to the fall of the Athenian Empire.
Athens converted its allies into vassals and when a hostile coalition arose to stop Athens’s depredations the vassals stood back and watched as Athens was pulled down.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad …
Come warm yourself by the bonfire of the global liberal pieties.
I’ve just seen for the first time a term that perfectly describes the situation the world is currently experiencing. A quick search reveals that this expression has been known online for at least a couple of years but it was new to me.
It is the fuckening.