US Claims Venezuelan Oil While 'Sanctioning' Global Oil Markets
Donald Trump gloated, according to The Hill , about the U.S. retaining seized Venezuelan oil and tankers, explicitly stating: "We took the oil. We have the ships, and we want the money." This cavalier admission of resource appropriation, stemming from sanctions against the Maduro government, conveniently sidesteps the U.S.'s own history of destabilizing South American nations over their natural
wealth. One might recall the long, sordid history of US intervention in Latin America, from United Fruit Company's influence in Guatemala to the covert operations in Chile, all for the sake of 'American interests'—a euphemism for corporate profit and geopolitical control. While Washington lectures other nations about respecting sovereign borders and free markets, it unilaterally decides whose
resources it can confiscate. This isn't foreign policy; it's international piracy, sugar-coated as 'enforcement' and then sold to the American public by outlets like The Hill as if it's perfectly normal business. When the U.S. can just 'take' another country's oil, how exactly do we differentiate American exceptionalism from plain old exceptional thievery?