Yesterday, people in the United States woke up to learn that our country had taken direct action against Venezuela and captured its leader, Nicolas Maduro. We were later told that Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were being transported to New York to face drug trafficking charges.
Almost immediately after the announcement, the public conversation shifted. Not toward drugs – the stated justification for the operation – but toward oil, the real prize sought by the Trump administration. Forget the speculation that this was a distraction from Epstein headlines. It never was. This was always about control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, plain and simple.
“We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground, and that wealth is going to the people of Venezuela, and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela, and it goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country” – Donald Trump
The Trump administration considered this mission accomplished. But the public – at least those not under Trump’s spell – should be demanding answers. Not from Trump, but from the Republican-led Congress, which once again shrank from its responsibility as a co-equal branch of government.
Wasn’t This About Drugs?
No.
Venezuela is not a major source country for fentanyl or cocaine. Mexico dominates fentanyl production and trafficking. Colombia and Bolivia remain the primary cocaine producers. Venezuela has long lagged far behind all three and has had no reason to “catch up,” given the immense oil wealth it already possesses.
That alone makes the drug-war rationale difficult to take seriously, especially in light of recent history.
Trump’s Use Pardons To Free Traffickers
One of Donald Trump’s first acts after returning to office was issuing a full pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the creator of Silk Road, a marketplace alleged to have facilitated more than $180 million in illegal drug sales. A key associate, Roger Thomas Clark, was recently imprisoned (and is still there) for his role in those same operations.
On December 1, 2025, Trump also pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, who had been convicted in U.S. court of conspiring to import roughly 400 tons of cocaine. Trump claimed Hernández was treated “unfairly.” Honduras’s current government strongly disagrees and has sought international assistance for his arrest.
Against that backdrop, it is impossible to accept claims that the sudden focus on Venezuela was driven by concern over drug trafficking. Military strikes, naval blockades, and casualties at sea do not transform a weak premise into a true one.
Trump made this crystal clear when he spoke to the press after news of Maduro’s capture was made public, saying that he intends for the United States to “run” (occupy) Venezuela and that while deploying U.S. oil companies to rebuild infrastructure in order to extract and sell Venezuela’s oil.
It’s All About Oil
This conclusion was clear months ago. I wrote about it myself in a post dated October 25, 2025 entitled Here We Go… More Blood Will Be Spilled for Oil, Again.
When the Trump administration announced a military blockade of Venezuela on December 17, the pretense finally collapsed. Trump stated plainly that Venezuela had “taken all of our oil” and that the United States wanted it back.
Stephen Miller echoed the same claim, arguing that American companies had built Venezuela’s oil industry and that its expropriation amounted to theft from the United States.
These statements were not slips. They were the point.
With the real motivation now openly stated, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth began directing the U.S. military to seize oil tankers loaded with Venezuelan crude and divert them to the United States.
A Very Brief History of Venezuela’s Oil Nationalization
Trump and Miller have portrayed Venezuela’s nationalization of its oil industry as a recent act under Maduro. That is false, it occurred in 1976 – nearly fifty years ago. Nicolas Maduro was a teenager at the time.
U.S. companies – including Exxon – continued operating in Venezuela for decades afterward. Exxon ultimately exited in 2007, when President Hugo Chavez required at least 60 percent state ownership in major oil projects. Exxon refused those terms and withdrew, walking away from approximately $750 million in investments.
Arbitration later ruled that Venezuela owed Exxon compensation. Initial claims exceeded $1.6 billion, but subsequent rulings sharply reduced that amount. Exxon ultimately agreed to a $260 million settlement, which Venezuela paid in 2023.
Claims that U.S. assets were simply “stolen” erase decades of history, arbitration rulings, and the fact that Exxon accepted payment and cashed the check.
Iraq Should Have Taught Us This
The parallels to Iraq are impossible to ignore.
In the early 2000s, the Bush administration sold the Iraq War on claims about weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. Those claims collapsed, yet no one responsible was held accountable.
That failure set the stage for repetition. Today, exaggerated or false claims about drugs and “narcoterrorism” are being used to prevent the public from understanding – and debating – the true goal of confrontation with Venezuela.
When the United States embarks on war or regime change, the public deserves an honest explanation. Congress is supposed to debate and authorize those actions. Only with congressional approval should the executive branch be permitted to launch aggression against another country.
That is how our system of government is supposed to work.
In reality, Congress has spent decades surrendering its authority. Today’s Republican Congress does not even bother to rubber-stamp Trump’s wishes. Instead, it allows him to rule by executive order, lie to the public with impunity, and continue the decades-old tradition of presidential warfare without congressional approval.
The result is a familiar cycle: Different country. Different excuse. Same outcome.
Until the public demands that Congress act as a co-equal branch of government rather than a subservient one, it will continue.
Mark these words: China has long eyed Taiwan, and Trump has delivered to them exactly the justification they needed to do so. Whatever we may “gain” from seizing Venezuela will be lost in droves if China takes over Taiwan.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.