Blood for oil

Simple but Not Easy

Belligerence against Venezuela is not about drugs, it’s about oil. As in Iraq two decades ago, an American president is nodding towards security and democracy while pursuing blood for oil. As with Bush Junior obsessed with the unfinished business of his father’s war, this president regrets a regime unchanged. In 2023, Donald Trump said: “When I left [office], Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil, it would have been right next door.”

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, exceeding Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials, through diplomacy, selective licensing, and tariffs, have expressly homed in on that reserve for American oil majors, particularly Chevron. As the Colombian president said recently: “Oil is at the heart of the matter.”

Blood for oil was wrong in Iraq and it’s wrong in Venezuela. History and public opinion will favor Democrats in our emphatic rejection of the administration’s illegal actions. We must also counter with strategy that addresses the three challenges tied up in this affair.

---

The first is Nicolás Maduro. He is a tyrant and no Democrat should claim otherwise. The Democratic Socialists of America were rightfully condemned for embracing him in 2016 and 2021 and then congratulating him on a stolen election in 2024. The Venezuelan people deserve freedom, self determination, and prosperity. Maduro delivers brutality and immiseration. U.S. policy should promote María Corina Machado through all means short of war. The carrots and sticks are plentiful, from defection incentives for military and political leaders to espionage, cyber attacks, and individual sanctions.

---

The second is oil. 300 billion barrels of proven oil is 20% of the world’s reserve. Preventing Chinese access to this resource makes sense. What’s not acceptable, though, is crony capitalism that privileges U.S. oil majors over the people of Venezuela. Exploitation breeds resentment. America is at its best in foreign policy when we help build up new allies, not seize advantage from the weak. The United States should quarterback a Venezuelan oil agreement with Mercosur countries that accounts for energy security, climate, and economic development.

---

Finally, narco-trafficking. Ten years ago, I led a drug interdiction training mission in Panama, working with Colombian special operations. Two years ago, I co-led the Fentanyl Working Group and produced three bipartisan bills. The clear and present chemical threat to Americans is coming from China, which accounts for almost all fentanyl trafficking to America and Mexico, killing tens of thousands of Americans every year with the most addictive substance ever widely circulated. Through targeted sanctions of the two dozen Chinese chemical manufacturers that run illegal fentanyl side businesses, tighter ship inspections at West Coast ports, and upgraded money laundering enforcement, Congress can meaningfully reduce fentanyl inflow. The tougher approach has broad support in Congress, but the president has gone soft on China.

Congress has been sidelined because House and Senate Republicans are too weak to take on Trump. Critical to a Democratic approach to foreign policy, whether in Venezuela or elsewhere, must be an insistence that Congress take back its authorizing and oversight powers for warmaking. Otherwise, the Pete Hegseths of the world act with impunity.