Back when the US invaded Iraq the first time at the behest of Kuwait, whose government launched an aggressive public relations campaign to lure us in to the conflict, a popular bumpersticker said “No blood for oil.”
The sentiment was repeated the second time after 9/11 when we used that terrorist attack to try our hand at regime change with the false pretext that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction.”
As far back as 2016, Donald Trump said we should have taken the oil while we were in Iraq. “You heard me, I would take the oil. I would not leave Iraq and let Iran take the oil.
“You’re not stealing anything,” Trump continued. “We’re reimbursing ourselves … at a minimum, and I say more. We’re taking back $1.5tn to reimburse ourselves.”
A decade later, visible older but visibly no wiser, President Trump, in the wake of a totally illegal invasion of Venezuela and the ouster of its President Nicolás Maduro and his wife that has been condemned by many of our allies, crowed about the real reason the US bombed that sovereign nation.
Not drugs. Not stopping a terrorist threat. Not halting the flood of immigrants from Venezuela to the US that, by the way, will now increase because of this invasion.
No, the real reason to commit troops and CIA spooks to this region is to grab the vast oil reserves of Venezuela.
Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976, tossing out Shell, Gulf, Mobil, Exxon, and other foreign oil companies. Chevron remained and is still operating in the country producing about a fifth of the country’s output. Venezuela holds the largest oil reserves in the world, some 303 billion barrels.
“We have the greatest oil companies in the world, the biggest, the greatest, and we’re going to be very much involved in it.”
The Trump administration claims that the oil under the ground in Venezuela belongs to the US. On December 17, unelected advisor Stephen Miller gave the rationale on X: “American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela. Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.”
For Chevron, and the previously banned US oil companies, the invasion of Venezuela should pay off handsomely. Remember Trump’s pledge to the oil baron during the presidential campaign to “drill, drill, drill.”
In April of 2024, at a dinner for oil tycoons at his Mar-a-Lago Club, Trump requested that oil executives contribute $1 billion to his reelection campaign. According to The Washington Post, Trump promised to slash the Biden administration’s tax credits for electric vehicles and spend less government money developing wind power.
While much of the world is transitioning to alternative sources of energy and away from fossil fuels, Trump is killing off research into greenhouse gases and all those pesky environmental regulations that are in place to protect the health of Americans.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” Trump signed into law last summer includes $18 billion in tax incentives for the fossil fuels industry. The oil industry was thrilled.
According to The New York Times, “’The final bill was positive for us across all of our top priorities,’ said Aaron Padilla, the vice president of corporate policy at the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s chief lobbying organization.”
The tycoons did not contribute that amount, but was it any wonder that those same executives poured $19 millions into Trump’s inaugural fund, Chevron contributing the most ($2 million) among the oil giants? Chevron spokesman defended the contribution: “Chevron has a long tradition of celebrating democracy by supporting the inaugural committees of both parties. We are proud to have done so again.”
“We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it,” Trump said during his inaugural address.
The invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president and his wife was done without Congressional approval or, it seems, even without informing them ahead of time. It is also illegal. But Trump has never been one to adhere to laws and he knows that Congress is weak and that the Supreme Court has granted him unlimited powers.
And now he says the US will run Venezuela, a country the size of Texas with many factions controlling various parts of that country.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. We don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in and have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years.”
If we are not in a declared war then occupying another country is also illegal.
History teaches nothing to those who ignore it. How did regime change in Vietnam, Libya, and Iraq work out? Or any of our past failed interventions in Central and South America?
And remember, we have just retreated from a 20-year venture in Afghanistan in which the Taliban, who we drove out following 9/11, are now back in power.
Think of all the lives — military and civilian — lost, traumatized, and displaced because our government feels it has the right to roam around the world inflicting our “warrior ethos” on any person or nation that stands in our way, or more, precisely, impedes our access to others’ resources.
It is not hard to discern the reason that Trump has decided to invade a country with potential riches to be plunder. One only has to look to the actions of his mentor Vladimir Putin whose invasion of resource-rich Ukraine — the bread basket of Europe — might just have been the inspiration Trump needed.
After all, he wants so desperately to be included on the Mount Rushmore of ruthless despots.
This from the “peace president,” who in just one year has bombed Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Yemen, Somalia, Venezuela, and a bunch of small motorboats whose occupants might or might not have been carrying drugs.
Five years ago, in a commencement address to West Point graduates, Trump said “We are ending the era of endless wars. It is not the job of American forces to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have not even heard of.”
Unless, of course, there is something in it for Trump and Big Oil.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Globe Post.
