US Finds Venezuela's Oil 'Key,' Not Its People
When Axios reports that Trump and officials like Senator Marco Rubio aren't subtle about Venezuela's 'massive oil reserves' being 'a key reason for toppling President Nicolás Maduro,' they're describing US foreign policy in its purest, most colonial form. Rubio, who took over $100,000 from oil & gas PACs and individuals in 2022 according to OpenSecrets, helpfully clarified that having Venezuela's
oil 'under the control of adversaries of the United States' was the problem, not that it wasn't 'benefiting the people.' The 'benevolent' concern for the Venezuelan people appears to conveniently align with US oil interests, a historical coincidence as reliable as a dictator finding weapons of mass destruction right before an invasion. This isn't a 'test of tolerance for risk' as Axios frames it;
it's a rerun. One might wonder about the timing of such humanitarian concerns, which seem to intensify precisely when a regime refuses to hand over its resources to US corporations. How many times must a nation's 'freedom' be tied to its subterranean assets before we call it what it is?