WHAT IS TRUMP’S GAMBIT IN VENEZUELA?
His recent actions have their roots in Dick Cheney’s plans for the post-Cold War world
America and the world are trying to figure out what’s really been going on under the headlines and why President Donald Trump attacked Venezuela and apprehended—or kidnapped—its president and his wife on Saturday.
Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff and Homeland Security adviser, left his friendly Fox News perch on Monday to explain on CNN that what went down in Venezuela was all very appropriate and logical: “We’re a superpower,” he told Jake Tapper, “and under President Trump we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. It is absurd that we would allow a nation in our own backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries but not to us.
“We are in charge because we have the United States military stationed outside the country. We set the terms and conditions. We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce.”
US Ambassador to the United Nations Michael Waltz made the same point on Monday when he told the Security Council: “You cannot continue to have the largest energy reserves in the world under the control of adversaries of the United States.”
Their bluster and crude language transfixed the world’s media, but they also diverted attention from an opportunistic Trump plan whose goal was not only to unseat the corrupt President Nicolás Maduro, but also, crucially, to cut off China, America’s economic rival, from its ongoing purchases of Venezuela’s cheap heavy crude oil. The next target, I have been told, will be Iran, another purveyor to China whose crude oil reserves are the world’s fourth largest.
Iran’s religious leadership is already under political pressure, stemming from a shortage of water and the public’s lack of access to a variety of essential goods. The protests come months after the bombing raids conducted last June by the US and Israel. The primary targets of the raids were sites connected to Iran’s nuclear program but they also destroyed the core of Iran’s anti-aircraft ballistic missile defense system and struck vital government offices and housing in the capital Tehran.
Recently I’ve been reminded by a major player in the international oil community that the imperatives of the current American intervention in Venezuela were first set down by a secret task force that was put together soon after the 2000 election of George W. Bush. Vice President Dick Cheney, a former Republican congressman and the former CEO of Halliburton, one of the world’s largest energy-supply companies, quickly became known for his strong ideas about the need for American independence in oil and gas supply.
