Trump Accuses Venezuela of Stealing US Oil, Ignores CENTCOM's Oil Pipeline
The claim that Venezuela is 'stealing' US oil overlooks two critical points: first, Venezuela is a sovereign nation with its own nationalized oil reserves; second, the US military, through CENTCOM operations, has openly admitted to 'securing' Syrian oil fields for US companies, effectively extracting oil without Syrian consent. In 2019, then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper stated explicitly: "We
are now taking actions in northeast Syria to secure the oil fields." This, apparently, is not stealing. It's 'securing.' Venezuela, however, must be stealing from a phantom US reserve. Such rhetoric lays bare a convenient geopolitical double standard: resource control for US interests is 'security,' while any non-compliant nation managing its own resources can be accused of 'theft' and face 'total
blockades.' One might wonder why American politicians consistently fail to apply the same moral compass to US military actions abroad that they so readily wield against nations resisting US hegemony. The oil is only 'stolen' when it's not flowing to American corporations.