What, the curious are asking, is Trump up to with Venezuela. He has positioned an armada of warships in the Caribbean Sea, including an aircraft carrier strike force. He has commanded his warriors to murder boatloads of alleged drug smugglers and more recently to pirate a tanker. His justification for the belligerence is that he is waging a war against narco-terrorists who are killing Americans with their pernicious cargo. He has labelled fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.
As is commonly the case with Trump’s explanations, it doesn’t stand up to fact. To begin with, Venezuela is not in itself a drug producer and drugs that transit the country are likely heading for Europe. And they are likely cocaine. Zero per cent of the fentanyl that arrives in the U.S. comes from Venezuela. Most is made in Mexico from precursor chemicals largely obtained from China, and Trump is not bombing boatloads of Mexicans or Chinese.
One suspects another motive. And the obvious choice is an old and familiar one—oil. Venezuela has the world’t largest reserves and Trump would like a bigger piece of the action.
Apparently American officials have been negotiating secretly with Venezuela’s president, but he hasn’t yet offered them a deal to their liking. Furthermore, the country with the biggest foothold in Venezuela’s oil industry at the moment is China, and that conflicts with Trump’s intention to restore the Monroe Doctrine.
While Venezuelan President Maduro is tough to deal with Americans have the perfect alternative waiting in the wings. María Machado, Venezuela’s main opposition leader and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for challenging Maduro, is highly amenable to American oil interests. In a presentation to American executives and politicians, including Trump, she emphasized her country’s enormous oil and gas reserves: “We will open all, upstream, midstream, downstream, to all companies.” Maria sounds like a girl after Trump’s own heart.
In seeking to exploit Latin American resources for American interests, Trump is simply carrying on a long tradition. We might have thought that particular imperialist era was over but apparently not.
Its sordid history was famously described by Smedley D. Butler, a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps, who saw the light upon his retirement and became a prominent critic of the American military-industrial complex. He summarized his career as follows:
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time … a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico … safe for American oil interests. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys .… I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers .… I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests .… I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies.”
It would be nice to see resistance within the American military earlier in the current aggression rather than after as in Butler’s case. We may have seen at least one honourable moment. Admiral Alvin Holsey, head of U.S. Southern Command, which is responsible for forces in the Caribbean, resigned, apparently concerned about the legality of the operations he was asked to perform. The Pentagon denies that he expressed reservations about the mission, so maybe he just couldn’t stomach the Trump White House and wanted to escape the politics of narcissism.
What is really needed is some honour from Congress, or at least a little show of self-respect. That has, unfortunately, been in very short supply lately.