Donald Trump has said the quiet stuff out loud. His Tuesday evening social media post on Venezuela feels like an offload, a dump of thoughts. But it is nonetheless very revealing.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America,” the US president says.
“It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before…”
That’s a reference to the massive US naval and Air Force presence in the Caribbean off Venezuela. It is indeed an armada, and it’s been there for months now.
On the face of it, it’s all part of an anti-drug mission, to counter the drug trade from Venezuela into America. At least that’s the public messaging. And the missile and drone attacks on suspected drug boats in the region are all part of the play.
And that’s why the second part of his post is particularly interesting, because he now appears to be saying out loud what plenty have suspected all along – that this is actually about regime change, and it is about oil far more than it is about drugs.
He says that the military will remain in place “until such time as they [Venezuela] return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us”.
He continues: “The illegitimate Maduro Regime is using Oil from these stolen Oil Fields to finance themselves, Drug Terrorism, Human Trafficking, Murder, and Kidnapping.”
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This is a reference to the fact that the US was once a huge importer of Venezuelan oil. American companies based in the country extracted the oil and refineries on the Texan coast processed it. The refineries were adapted over decades to refine the thick, heavy crude that is typical of Venezuela.
The process was big business for American firms until Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez in the 2000s, nationalised the foreign oil assets.
Read more:
The US-Venezuela crisis explained
Trump wants all that back – the oil, the revenue, the influence. So all this, it seems clear now, is about oil, and it is about spheres of influence – hemispheres. Trump is determined to assert American control over the western hemisphere.
The ultimate ambition it seems is threefold:
• To remove the Maduro regime and support a friendly, compliant government;
• To seize control of the oil, through commercial partnerships, not force;
• And to stop any drug and people smuggling into the US.
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With this latest social post, Trump has now said all that out loud. Interesting days ahead are certain.
