The United States just waged a very quick regime-change war without congressional authorization after consulting the oil companies on the operation. We will run the country for the time being, and getting those oil companies in to pump the oil was the central objective of the attack.
That’s what you would believe if you listened to President Donald Trump describe our military operation in Venezuela.
None of that makes sense. A regime-change war requires congressional authorization. Consulting with the oil companies ahead of time about military operations, and waging a war to get oil flowing, are the sort of things said by the fictional villain in a novel by Naomi Klein or a TikTok from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
Further, the U.S. does not have the expertise to run Venezuela.
Finally, the U.S. oil industry is looking at a major oversupply of oil in 2026, and so getting Venezuela’s production back online doesn’t really help Big Oil.
But there’s a totally different story from the one above, and it’s the story you’ll get if you listen to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Rubio explained on ABC News on Sunday morning that the closest we will come to “running” Venezuela is leaning on the interim government to behave well, using the leverage of an oil blockade or quarantine. “What we are running is the direction that this is going to move moving forward. And that is we have leverage,” Rubio said.
Leaving Nicolas Maduro’s vice president in charge is consistent with this being a law-enforcement operation where we arrested Maduro based on federal indictments, rather than a regime-change war.
And Rubio cited another justification for the war that Trump never mentioned: countering the influence of China, Russia, and Iran in our hemisphere. “You can’t turn Venezuela into the operating hub for Iran, for Russia, for Hezbollah, for China, for the Cuban intelligence agents that control that country,” Rubio said on Meet the Press.
Here’s a good (though long) explanation of the real strategic interest the U.S. has in Venezuela. It has to do with natural resources, but not really with oil. It’s about metals and minerals we need for our weaponry, but which China basically controls now.
VENEZUELA: IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE MEANING OF THE WORD ‘RUN’
The importance of the oil is that our oil blockade/quarantine is our current tool for telling Venezuela what to do. We don’t really need or want that oil. We need and want those rare earths. Watch Rubio’s Sunday morning appearances. Read that essay on the minerals versus the oil. Ignore what the president of the United States is saying. Soon, this little invasion will make more sense.