The official rhetoric
Recent US military action against Venezuela, culminating in the kidnapping of its president, requires explanation that goes beyond the rhetoric of both the Trump regime and of those who maintain a supportive distance (the likes of Starmer, Macron and Von der Leyen).
The Trump administration has made various statements justifying the attack. Initially there was an accusation of drug trafficking, also used to justify the murders of fishermen and others on boats in the region. No evidence was presented, nor is any available, according to US security sources. Days before the attack, Trump pardoned a real US-convicted drug trafficker, a former right-wing president of Honduras. As the Library of Congress report notes,
“Hernández had been sentenced to 45 years in prison in June 2024 after a U.S. federal jury convicted him of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States and related firearms offenses. …Some Honduran legal analysts have characterized the Hernández pardon as a ‘mockery’ and a ‘slap in the face’ to the Honduran people and have expressed concerns that the pardon could send a message to Hondurans that those who engage in high-level corruption remain beyond the reach of justice.”
The drug issue is now also being used, so far only verbally, against Mexico and Colombia. Both are significant suppliers of drugs to the US population (where there is no significant public health function to address the issue). In both countries the government is working to address the supply problem, although against great odds.
Then came the claims that Venezuela had stolen US oil, and I’ll examine the oil economics and politics below. Bizarrely, in addition to narcoterrorism, Maduro has been charged with “possession of machine-guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine-guns and destructive devices“, by a country where assault weapons can be purchased with ease.
So far, Western governments have resorted to the ‘Maduro is a dictator who stole an election’ rhetoric. As I have discussed before, the Maduro government is problematic on a number of dimensions dimensions (including the erosion of democratic processes and independence of the judiciary, together with an ecologically damaging extractionist policy), and his incumbency represented a retreat from the achievements and values of his predecessor Hugo Chávez. Even those governments with a sympathetic ideological position, such as Colombia, Brazil and Mexico, did not recognise his most recent election. However, rhetoric, for example from Starmer and most EU countries, is both hypocritical and cynical: dictators and flawed democracy are tolerated in a number of countries that are considered friendly or useful to the Western liberal democracies. Much of the suppression of political opponents in Venezuela has been in response to the actions of internal propertied and Western interests, led by the USA’s government agencies interfering with Venezuela’s affairs, (via US government-funded NED, and directly by US-Aid, during both the Chávez and Maduro periods), including the funding of political opponents, some seemingly quite corrupt, something that would not be tolerated in the USA (under their law) nor in Western Europe. Others, including Maria Corina Machado, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025, have openly called for armed intervention by foreign powers, something that would be considered treason in most countries.
Better explanations
There are two possibilities that offer better explanations of the US’s criminal action: oil and power. Petroleum has been widely cited as the key reason, and Trump himself has acknowledged this. There seem to be two plausible aspects to this.
Heavy oil
Is diesel behind the US takeover of Venezuela? Diesel is the main fuel used in road transport, mining and quarrying, and agriculture. Fuel oil is used in shipping but with the regulations of 2020 on sulphur emissions, it is closer to diesel in character and this in turn impacts on the scarcity of diesel. World diesel production peaked between 2015 and 2017, at around 27 million barrels per day. It has not returned to that level, settling instead around 22 to 24 million barrels, 10 – 15 % below the peak. Given the key role of diesel in fuelling multiple sectors, and the great difficulty of replacing it, either with renewables or with other hydrocarbons, that passing of the peak presents a major challenge. Problems of diesel supply are already being experienced in many countries of the global South, i.e. those with less economic muscle to secure and purchase it.
The US imports crude oil to make diesel, as its own crude, chiefly from fracking, is far too light. Currently it uses Canadian heavy oil, mixing it with US light oil, to produce diesel and other products. That oil from the tar sands is apparently now already near peak production and an alternative is needed. Its production requires increasing inputs of natural gas to produce the steam needed for extraction, and hence costs will rise.
Venezuela’s enormous, and largely unexploited reserves are found mainly in the Orinoco basin. This oil is very heavy. It could be used as a substitute for, or an addition to, declining Canadian oil, despite requiring much more costly (and ecologically disastrous) extraction, given it is located underground in areas of tropical rainforest. It can’t be obtained with the open-cast mining used in Alberta. However, US companies would need to ship great quantities of US light oil to the Orinoco for the extraction – unlikely without US State subsidy to Chevron (& others). As an interim they could invest to improve extraction of lighter oil from Venezuela’s declining Maracaibo basin, the historical site of most of the Venezuelan petroleum industry, and the El Furrial fields to the north of the Orinoco belt. I have previously discussed the diesel problem in the context of the global energy crisis and the decarbonisation challenge. The points about the US, Canada and Venezuela draw chiefly on the work of Antonio Turiel (in Spanish). Exploitation of Venezuela’s oil would blow the global carbon budget, and it is a third more carbon intense than the global average.
The petrodollar
Another possibility has been suggested, again related to oil. The hypothesis is that the Venezuela adventure is to warn others not to export oil for currencies other than the US dollar. As Richard Werner described, in 1974, the USA signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia, providing military protection and arms sales to the Kingdom (one of those friendly, unproblematic dictatorships) in return for Saudi oil being exclusively sold for US dollars, investing the profits in US Treasury bonds. Later, the other OPEC States followed suit, thus establishing the petrodollar system. From that point, crude oil was bought and sold exclusively in dollars, creating and maintaining a huge demand for that currency. It meant that the US could have a large and continual fiscal deficit (the ability of the US to import more than it exported) of more than 6% of GDP, and a high debt to GDP ratio of more than 120%, without any loss of the value of the dollar.
A year ago, Venezuela began selling 80% of its oil production to China for renminbi, rather than for dollars. This established alternative payment channels, potentially threatening the dollar’s supremacy. Werner points to two precedents. Saddam Hussein tried to use the Euro instead of the dollar for Iraq’s oil sales, and Muamar Gaddafi tried the same, proposing a dinar backed by gold. We know what happened next in both cases.
Venezuela’s relatively small oil sales would not, on their own, amount to a threat to the dollar’s ascendancy. However, the US action could be seen as an attempt to discourage the growing de-dollarisation of the global economy, led by Russia, China, Iran and the BRICS. For Venezuela, the US will now be the channel for the sale of Venezuela’s oil, both ensuring that this is in dollars and also keeping a large proportion of both oil and proceeds for itself.
Is oil the key?
So, we have two possible oil-based explanations for the US action against Venezuela. I find the heavy oil / diesel one persuasive but don’t know enough to evaluate the petrodollar one, plausible as it certainly seems to be. It is likely that both explanations are part of the picture, along with the following one; the exertion and profiling of power.
I conquer, therefore I am
The second Trump administration has revamped the US National Security Strategy. It nakedly asserts that the US will be self-serving.
In everything we do, we are putting America (sic) first. … This document is a roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history, and the home of freedom on earth.
Gone are the pretensions that regime change is about protecting human rights and installing liberal democracy: at least it is honest. It emphasises the US sphere of influence, the Americas, the ‘back yard’.
Western Hemisphere: The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.
Non-Hemispheric competitors have made major inroads into our Hemisphere, both to disadvantage us economically in the present, and in ways that may harm us strategically in the future. Allowing these incursions without serious pushback is another great American strategic mistake of recent decades. The United States must be pre-eminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity – a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region.
The US apparently wants to be dominant, to enlist friendly forces and to exclude those it sees as hostile to its interests. Hence, already, Venezuela has been told to cut economic ties with China, Russia, Iran and Cuba. The current US administration will tolerate no dissent, no opposition, no competition. This is both economic and ideological, a combination of economic self-interest (or rather the protection of US capital) and the forceful imposition of unrestrained capitalism: hence the tearing up of treaties and regulations that might impede the relentless pursuit of profit.
The meaning of the Venezuela intervention, then, is to demonstrate, and enact, supreme dominance of the US regime and US capital. It shows that it can do whatever it wants, and anyone who opposes it will be flattened, by removal from office, by extrajudicial execution, by shock and awe. Collateral damage doesn’t matter to them, hence the over 100 lives said to have been callously extinguished to kidnap Maduro, and the fishermen obliterated to demonstrate potency. And that is likely just the start. Trump represents a return to an undisguised imperialism, captured in the aphorism I conquer, therefore I am, as Descartes should really have said.
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