The VENEZUELA AFFAIR

For several months in late 2025, on the direct orders of President Trump, the US Navy began massing a fleet in the Caribbean Sea the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. An entire carrier battle group, along with a Marine assault ship plus escorts, whose target was clearly stated as Venezuela.

Nobody seemed to really understand why. America has long had grievances with the dictatorial hard line old school socialist regime that was first elected in 1999. Its incompetence and corruption progressively reduced Venezuela’s oil industry for the second time, (it had happened in the 1970’s but nothing like on the scale of the past 15 years), to near extinction.

Drug running may have been the surface problem, but Venezuela was at one time exporting more oil than Saudi Arabia, it has the world’s largest known oil reserves. 303 billion barrels of crude oil exist under its northern coastline. The extraordinary wealth under there inspired films like the 1958 movie Maracaibo, where a Texas oil man is asked to put out a major oil field fire. There was always for Americans, some kind of tropical allure, oil, exoticism, the Spanish heritage. For many its had a strange almost romanticised appeal.

It also harks back to what Trump and his acolytes see as the Golden Age of American Oil Imperialism. Venezuela was the backstop, the place they could always rely on if the Middle East was overrun by communist forces – which in the 1950-1960’s was a constant worry and permanent theme of the Cold War. And its this desire to restore a source of oil energy close to American shores, that combined with Canada and the US with its own reserves (unknown of in the Cold War period), that is driving what has happened.

There’s no detaching this from the recently published National Security Strategy, which reestablishes a new version of the old Monroe Doctrine. Established on 2nd December 1823, President Monroe outline a three cornerstones policy that:

•   The Western Hemisphere was closed to future colonization by European powers; the American continents were not to be considered subjects for new European colonies.
•   Any attempt by European powers to interfere with or control newly independent nations in the Americas would be viewed as an unfriendly or hostile act toward the United States.
•   The United States would not interfere in the internal affairs or wars of European powers and would not disturb existing European colonies in the Americas

The new version, many are calling the ‘Don-roe’ Doctrine is less formally stated. But follows similar lines. However the view seems to be that it doesn’t matter who you are, if America wants it America is having it – Greenland being a prime example and of course even that is in breach of an existing agreement with Denmark over sovereignty. The US recognized Danish sovereignty over Greenland in exchange for what are now the US Virgin Islands in 1917. Agreements such as this are to apparently no longer considered to have any meaning. Nor it seems is the fact that the US has had almost unfettered military access to Greenland since WW2. The Don-roe doctrine seems all encompassing.

Yet the target for its first operational action is an odd one in so many ways, and yet makes perfect sense if you delve into the depths of the war in Ukraine, Russian behavior towards the peace process, and a bizarre but well understood unofficial agreement that if Russia got Ukraine, Russia would acquiesce in the US ‘getting Venezuela’.

That odd deal in Russian minds was never really valid because they had never ‘gotten back Ukraine’. They still have not and they’re not going to, even Trump sees that. But in his mind he went out of the way to get Putin Ukraine by offering an extraordinary peace deal Russia refused. And has done so again and they’re still refusing. For him that’s enough and he wanted to impress upon all of the Americas, north, south & central that the US was back like it or not, and everybody else – China, Russia, India and Iran, can mind their own business.

The choice of taking Maduro seems an oddly Phyrric victory. All they have for a $600 million bill and 80 people killed – mostly Cubans who fought back while everyone else was sleeping – is a large, well fed man with a mustache who was once President of Venezuela. The irony that they’re charging him with drug running and operating a cartel, while the former President of Honduras, tried and convicted and in prison in the US – who ran one of the biggest drug smuggling operations into the US ever uncovered, was given a full pardon and released just before Christmas because his right wing party is likely to win the next elections there, seems to have been quietly brushed under the table.

Trump’s statements that America was now ‘running’ Venezuela seems fanciful and were shot down by Marco Rubio. His threat to ‘attack harder’ unless the new acting President did what was right, ie. obeyed the instructions the US was giving, seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Her first act was to embrace the Chinese, Russian, Indian and Iranian Ambassadors very noticeably and very publicly and in that order. Not that any one of them is going to lift a finger to help, because they’re not capable of doing so even if they wanted to.

Russia is fuming over what has happened. In October 2025 Putin and Maduro signed a Strategic Defence Pact. Russia in the past has kept the country afloat with cheap loans – now largely regarded as never going to be repaid. The FSB & GRU trained the Caracas security and police services. The Iranian secret police that emerged out of the Shah’s Israeli trained and organized SAVAK, now the MOIS spent a lot of time helping Maduro establish his own system.

Russia sent arms and frequently sent ships and Tu-160 bombers in 2008, 2013 and 2018 to demonstrate its solidarity with the dictatorship in Venezuela. Russia regarded having such a foothold as a warning to America that it could still have serious influence in the region. All that is seen as having been blown away with one kidnapping. Russia is powerless and even China isn’t in the mood to rattle Trumps cage in his own back yard.

The oddest part about all this is that the American oil majors don’t seem to be overly keen on going back to Venezuela. The world is awash with oil. Russia has 200 million barrels at sea, and while it pumps a huge amount it has relatively low reserves – well under a third of those of Venezuela. The rest of OPEC is pumping more than the world can absorb, in what I believe is a deliberate effort to undermine Russia further. The estimate for the restoration of Venezuela’s oil exports to their maximum and to restore it to being the richest country in South America by a long mile, is $61 billion. And it would take ‘at least ten years’. Ten years in which the demand for oil is expected to continue to fall because alternative energy and electric cars globally are taking over, like it or not. To many the mere idea of pumping another 303 billion and the environmental consequences, is horrific.

Yet Trump lives in another time frame, a world gone by that he and his policy buddies are trying to restore – and yet they don’t seem to understand you can never go back. The world just doesn’t work that way.

There is short term gain to be had over the Venezuela Affair, politically its given Trump a ton of cover as the Epstein files go largely ignored, and talking up the Greenland scare does the same thing – though that’s as much about leverage over the Europeans over Ukraine and getting the US out of any long term responsibilities while gaining the maximum economic benefits.

If Trump was going in to Venezuela to achieve democratization and a real effort to improve the populations lives he would probably have mass support. But he isn’t. Telling the US oil majors just today that if they want any compensation for their prior losses to nationalization, they will have to fund the restoration of the oil industry, doesn’t wear well. If it was a stable democracy with functioning courts, a reliable legal system and general economy, they might. None of that is true right now. Trump’s idea that he would subsidize them doing so? None of them believe it and Congress would never vote for it.

So what has this achieved? So far the regime hasn’t changed and doesn’t look as though it will. Its certainly annoyed the Russians who actually see it as yet another stark warning over how weak they are – that’s how its being seen across the board – military bloggers are saying its the last straw and they need to understand the war must end and Russia needs to save itself before its too late.

China sees it as another example of what they should be allowed to do with Taiwan. If America can get away with it why can’t they? And they see their claim to Taiwan as vastly more fundamental than America and its relationship to Venezuela.

Europe sees it as a warning and Denmark is clear that in its view if America acts against Greenland when it has zero need to do so – the lies about Russian and Chinese ships being everywhere are total nonsense. – it will be the effective end of NATO as we know it.

The whole saga seems to be unplanned, whimsical and emotionally driven. There’s no plan. Covering up the Epstein files has been a huge part of it, because it has successfully driven them off the front pages.

The whole thing is so un-MAGA – even the loathsome Marjorie Taylor Greene – now an ex-congresswoman, she resigned effective yesterday, has actually had more to say that makes more sense than anything Trump has said. MAGA is against endless wars and regime change yet that’s what Trump is doing.

The person who summed it up best is his Chief of Staff Susie Willes in her Vanity Fair Interviews in early December; that Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality,” meaning he behaves as if there is nothing he cannot do, even though he does not drink. She portrayed him as intensely confident, focused on big-picture goals rather than details, and driven in part by a desire to settle scores against perceived enemies, while insisting his presidency should not be seen purely as a “retribution tour.” Wiles also emphasized that her role is to facilitate his vision rather than restrain him, casting herself as someone who helps turn his impulses and ambitions into governing actions.

That to me sums up this whole operation. No detail, no plan, a decision to get Maduro – who it must be said tempted Trump in a speech last year where he dared him loudly and passionately to ‘come and get him’. The old adage that you should be careful what you wish for, you might get it, comes to mind.

I don’t think anyone knows what’s next. Trump is so childish that his option to install the exiled Mercado as President – which might have been possible eventually can’t even be considered because she won ‘his’ peace prize last year. She’s been so ludicrous in my mind that she’s offered to share it with Trump and has dedicated it to him. She doesn’t deserve to be President on those grounds alone, and besides Trump doesn’t share anything (except according to Epstein, Melania, but I digress).

The other country on America’s doorstep that must be clenching its cheeks and holding onto its pearls is Cuba. If only it had anything America needed, yet it seems not to have. Vast numbers of Cubans who vote live in Florida and Marco Rubio’s life-long ambition, is to turn out the marxist government who made his parents flee to the US. I believe it’s this that has him pinned to Trump’s banner. He thinks he will get his way.

Russia long ago gave up on Cuba, it was a waste of effort and cost them a fortune – Russia has no idealogical reason to be interested in it and it has zero wealth potential except possibly tourism. China seems similarly disinterested. Besides they know after 1962 the Americans will never let either of them seriously turn it into a base of operations.

Trump did what he did, if the oil companies push back and won’t engage he’ll have egg on his face. Constitutionally he violated every rule in the book. Congressional leaders were never even informed about what was happening and none of them have barely said a word about it.

This is what happens when you have no checks and balances, enablers like Willes, extremists like Miller, historically retarded fools like the Heritage Foundation and a President who understands nothing much about anything but has the worlds largest military toyshop to play with and the mindset of a bully.

It’s not over but the way it plays out is going to be confused and incoherent. Who would have thought it?

And if that wasn’t enough Special Operations aircraft and helicopters have been arriving in the UK and Germany heading it seems for the Middle East – in large numbers. Irans leadership had best watch out, because Trumps boast that he will support the uprising if the authorities gun down their own people? And they have been, may not be so hollow.

The Analyst

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