US Discovering Venezuela Has Oil, Yet Again
Al Jazeera explores the profound mystery of why Donald Trump (and by extension, the US) might 'want' Venezuela's oil, highlighting the US as the world's largest oil producer. This framing ignores a rather long — and well-documented — US tradition of attempting to control global oil supplies, regardless of domestic production. From the 1953 Iranian coup (Operation Ajax) to interventions across the
Middle East, the US playbook has consistently treated foreign oil as a resource to be managed, often through regime change or destabilization, to serve its strategic and economic interests, not just to fill a domestic deficit. We're told the US 'needs' Venezuela’s low-grade crude for refining, which is true, but that’s just the technical spin. The real 'want' is geopolitical leverage and control
over a major competitor's assets, ensuring US dollar hegemony in oil markets. One might wonder if the US approach to nations with vast natural resources ever truly changes, or if only the faces in the White House rotate.