On Saturday morning, Trump bombed Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, and forcibly captured President Maduro in an illegal military operation conducted without congressional authorization. The U.S. military killed dozens of civilians, military personnel, and officials in the strikes.¹
Trump isn’t even hiding why he bombed Venezuela. At his press conference, he said the U.S. would “run” Venezuela, “rebuild the oil infrastructure,” and “take out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”² He openly discussed U.S. oil companies going into Venezuela to extract and sell the country’s oil—the largest proven reserves in the world.³
This war is about seizing Venezuela’s wealth and handing it to Big Oil corporations like Chevron, which are already being enriched by rising stock prices after Trump’s attack.⁴ All in the interest of U.S. imperialism.
Chevron is first in line to profit from Trump’s oil grab. The same corporations that donated millions to Trump’s campaign.⁵ The same corporations that have been lobbying for access to Venezuela’s oil for decades. Trump’s aide Stephen Miller explicitly framed Venezuela’s nationalization of its oil industry in the 1970s as “the largest recorded theft of American wealth,” revealing this administration’s true goal: corporate plunder.⁶
I wrote this in a different thread, but there’s something vaguely slimy about framing Chevron as the first beneficiary of Trump’s actions when it has been operating for profit in Venezuela for decades with the agreement of Venezuelas government under Maduro. Neither of them are really pro-Palestine if the line being drawn is anti-Chevron.
Obviously Palestinians deserve way better than the hand dealt to them, no question there.
Edit; and to spell out why this felt kinda slimy to me at first: if:
(1) Chevron was operating in Venezuela with Maduro in charge for years without any real issue with Maduro,
(2) Chevron supports Israel, and
(3) the fight is against those enabling Chevron,
it follows that fighting for Maduro is not directly fighting for Palestine.
Fighting for Maduro would qualify as fighting US imperialism for sure, and therein lies that pesky question about the utility of fighting for someone who had every opportunity to shutdown the imperialist problem (Chevron) on his own by virtue of his political power, and did not.
I fall on the side that it’s fine after thinking it through, but I’m also someone who thinks Democrats are broadly good even if they mostly make for small victories for left-liberal ideologies. Ymmv.
You don’t have to support Maduro (I sure as fuck don’t) to know that the Trump administration is definitely in the wrong to play world police, invade Venezuela, and kidnap a foreign leader. Originally they claimed operations in Venezuela were in defense of democracy, and now some vague accusation about drugs are supposed to explain why all of this is necessary. Both excuses are complete bullshit, but it’s especially hypocritical (although not surprising in the least) for Trump to threaten to cancel U.S. midterms days after kidnapping Maduro and pretending to be protecting the U.S. or some kind of global defender of free speech and the democratic process.
Also, regarding Chevron and their specific role in all of this:
December 21st: Chevron continues operations in Venezuela despite war threat
Chevron is, I think, the largest single producer of oil and gas in Venezuela at this time. They apparently have what we call a specific license from the Department of Treasury to continue operations there, whereas a lot of other companies don’t have that privilege. There used to be a general license that enabled a lot of companies to operate there. Those were revoked by the Trump administration during summertime. And again, those specific licenses aren’t public, so we don’t know the details. But we can surmise that Chevron does have one of those undisclosed specific licenses because we see in the numbers production from Chevron, and we see barrels flowing each week to the United State
It’s a bit odd that Chevron was the only company allowed to continue operations in Venezuela after Trump revoked the license of other oil companies over the summer.
It’s also a bit odd that the current director of the CIA under Trump was previously a TX congressman who tried to pass a law which would put an end to the Chevron deference. Luckily for him, the supreme court overturned the Chevron deference in 2024.
You don’t have to support Maduro (I sure as fuck don’t) to know that the Trump administration is definitely in the wrong to play world police, invade Venezuela, and kidnap a foreign leader. Originally they claimed operations in Venezuela were in defense of democracy, and now some vague accusation about drugs are supposed to explain why all of this is necessary. Both excuses are complete bullshit, but it’s especially hypocritical (although not surprising in the least) for Trump to threaten to cancel U.S. midterms days after kidnapping Maduro and pretending to be protecting the U.S. or some kind of global defender of free speech and the democratic process.
Yeah most of that is right I think. I’d caveat that the attack was more about the naked imperialism in Trump’s publicly articulated “Donroe Doctrine” than drugs or oil specifically.
I don’t really think the Chevron stuff Trump did is odd. Chevron has a longer history operating in Venezuela than any of the other companies. Bad, certainly. I have no love for Trump or Chevron. but not odd.
I kinda miss Chevron deference. As an aside, it is ironic that the namesake for a legal theory providing more administrative authority to the federal government was a private oil company, instead of, like, “administrative deference.”
