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Anonymous Trump advisors revealed to Axios on Saturday that the president-elect, who spent much of his first term trying to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, hasn’t lost his obsession with the Latin American nation. Here’s what’s at stake in the looming showdown.
Venezuela has oil: a lot of it. In fact, with over 300 billion barrels of proven reserves, the country has the largest untapped oil stockpile on Earth.
Some US and European energy companies are allowed to operate in Venezuela, but Washington would like to deregulate their activities, reduce taxes on earnings, and expand production.
Besides oil, Venezuela has vast untapped mineral and rare earths wealth, from iron ore, gold and bauxite to diamonds and the tech metal coltan, which late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez dubbed ‘blue gold’.
Besides resources, Trump’s Venezuela fever may be related to his obsession with Washington’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ and a 21st century version of the Monroe Doctrine. Each are fraught with risks for nations in the Western Hemisphere seeking to escape US hegemony.
Venezuela has been outside of US orbit since the late 1990s, and has forged close economic and security partnerships with China, Iran and Russia.
The Bush administration tried to coup Chavez in 2002. In 2018, disgraced former Trump advisor John Bolton labeled Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua the ‘Troika of Tyranny’, signaling Washington’s plans to push for regime change.
In 2019, the US slapped crushing sanctions on Venezuelan oil giant PDVSA, seizing billions in assets abroad and trying to smother exports.
In 2020, a bizarre attempt by a group of mercs to kidnap Maduro dubbed the ‘Bay of Piglets’ went comically wrong, leaving 6 mercs dead and 91 captured, including 2 Americans.
With Trump surrounding himself with Venezuela hawks like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, storm clouds are gathering for a new round of confrontation between Washington and Caracas.
