It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, January 11, 2026
Trump thinks Venezuela now has an electorate of one: him – Steve Howell
“Our response has to be to expose and mobilise the maximum opposition to Trump’s oil grab.”
By Steve Howell
For what feels like half a lifetime, successive US leaders have claimed that their issue with Venezuela’s leaders was one of electoral legitimacy. Admittedly, Trump has recently introduced oil nationalisation and alleged drug-trafficking into the mix of claimed grievances, but the overarching problem – we have been told for years – was one of democracy.
On the strength of this, you might expect elections to be top of the list of US demands now that it has kidnapped President Maduro and is threatening his interim successor, Delcy Rodríguez, with paying, as Trump menacingly put it, “a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro” if she doesn’t toe the line. But an election is not even on the list.
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
When asked about this on NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday, Marco Rubio said elections would be “premature” and that the US priority was to secure “more compliance and co-operation than we saw under Nicholas Maduro.” The US Secretary of State continued:
“What we are focused on, right now, is all of the problems we had when Maduro was there… We’re going to give people an opportunity to address those challenges and those problems. Until they address it, they will continue to face this oil quarantine, they will continue to face pressure from the United States, we will continue to target drug boats…”
On ABC’s This Week, Rubio made clear that the primary US demand was for “changes to the governance in of the oil industry”, that “Western companies – not Russian, not Chinese companies – will be very interested” and that “our refineries on the Gulf coast are the best in terms of refining this heavy crude, and there’s actually a shortage of heavy crude around the world.”
If there were still any doubts about US priorities, they were eliminated by Trump when, a few hours later, he told journalists that the oil companies had been consulted before the attack and that “they want to go in and they’re going to do a great job.” Asked about opposition leaders returning to the country, he added: “We haven’t gotten to that. Right now, what we want to do is fix up the oil.”
This blatant grab for oil is all being done in the name of the Monroe Doctrine, as if using a high-brow title gives it legitimacy. But there has never been anything legally or ethically legitimate about the 5th US president declaring that “the American continents… are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” James Monroe’s doctrine was not anti-colonial: it was a declaration of imperial intent that would later that century be the pretext for a war with Spain that led to the colonisation of Puerto Rico and brought Cuba under Washington’s hegemony.
The so-called Trump “corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is not the first updating of the 1823 policy. In fact, paradoxically, it was in Caracas that one of Rubio’s predecessors as US secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, revamped it for Cold War purposes in 1954. At a conference of the Organization of American States in the Venezuelan capital, he secured support – with only Guatemala voting against and Mexico and Argentina abstaining – for “outlawing foreign ideologies in the American Republics.” On his return to Washington, he told the US National Security Council that this meant “Communist subversion and subsequent control of any of the American Republics” being deemed “external aggression” and that “efforts, therefore, to counter such Communist subversion could not rightfully be described as American intervention.”
The US acted on the new Monroe Doctrine three months later by overthrowing the government of the only country that had voted against it. Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán’s government in Guatemala, which had been in dispute with the US over compensation to the United Fruit Company for property confiscated as part of a land reform programme, was brought down by CIA-financed and trained rebels, forcing him into exile in Mexico.
Capitalist property rights – not democracy – are invariably at the heart of such matters. Land was the issue in Guatemala. Oil is blatantly the US motive in Venezuela. This is why giant global corporations need a state they can call their own. It is misleading to describe them as ‘multi-nationals’ or ‘transnationals’ because they are usually attached to a specific coercive apparatus and rely on it to enforce their interests. They may not be averse to hiring mercenaries from time to time, but even the largest of them could not afford to mount an operation like the one that captured Maduro, which we are told involved 150 aircraft launched “from 20 different bases on land and at sea across the Western Hemisphere.”
At same time, a state gives the interests that control it a semblance of legal cover. In the case of Venezuela, when the US seizes oil tankers in open seas, it refers to them as being “sanctioned” and justifies it by saying they have a “court order”. But this means only that a US court has upheld sanctions imposed by the US itself.
The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, published in November, makes clear that Latin American countries generally can expect more of this de facto piracy. In the section on the Western Hemisphere, it warns “we will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability…to own or control strategically vital assets in our Hemisphere” and says this will require “a readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere.” After bemoaning how previous administrations had allowed “non-Hemispheric competitors” to make “major inroads” that “disadvantage us economically in the present, and in ways that may harm us strategically in the future”, it adds:
“The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity… The terms of our alliances, and the terms on which we provide any kind of aid, must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence – from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined.”
A foretaste of this came a few weeks into Trump’s presidency when he made an issue of alleged “Chinese control” of the Panama Canal and threatened to take it over. Soon afterwards, the Hong Kong-based owner of the two ports at each end of the canal sold them to a group led by US investment firm BlackRock in what was claimed to be a “purely commercial” deal. Venezuela was clearly next on the US list.
It remains to be seen how Rodriguez deals with the extraordinary pressure she and her fellow ministers are under. Trump’s threat of a fate worse than abduction cannot be taken lightly. US forces killed more than forty people, including civilians, in their weekend attack on Caracas. They have also already executed more than 100 people in air strikes on small boats in the Caribbean. Rubio says the US will continue to seize oil tankers carrying Venezuelan oil and that this means the country will run out of storage capacity and will have to stop pumping oil.
In a statement published on Sunday evening, Rodriguez reaffirmed Venezuela’s commitment to peace and peaceful coexistence. She continued:
“Our country aspires to live without external threats, in an environment of respect and international cooperation… We prioritise moving towards balanced and respectful international relations between the United States and Venezuela, and between Venezuela and other countries in the region, premised on sovereign equality and non-interference.”
Inviting the US to collaborate “on an agenda of cooperation oriented towards shared development within the framework of international law”, she pointed out that “peace and dialogue, not war”, had also been Maduro’s message.
It is not for leftists in the West to pontificate about what Venezuelans should do or should not do. It is even less appropriate, in the heat of a battle, for us to engage in a blame game about what has happened. US intelligence agencies are experts in dividing and demoralising people by covertly spreading rumours and planting what we would now call ‘fake news’ in the media. In the hours immediately after the US attack, Reuters news agency posted a report saying it had been told by “four sources” that Rodriguez was in Moscow, prompting suggestions that she had fled. When that was shown to be untrue, claims surfaced about her having had dealings with the Americans behind Maduro’s back.
One progressive journalist covering the situation was right to express frustration at “betrayal and blame speculation” that diverts energy from “condemnation and action against the original U.S. terror.” She added: “Fixating over what cannot be verified, rather than what is and that which can be verified, is part of the enemy’s information operation. We’ve lived this playbook repeatedly. US terror is verifiable and requires a response.”
She’s right: it does. And our response has to be to expose and mobilise the maximum opposition to Trump’s oil grab and to demand the immediate release of Venezuela’s kidnapped president.
Steve Howell is a journalist, author and former political adviser to Jeremy Corbyn. You can follow him on Twitter/X and subscribe to The Rest is Bullshit for regular updates and analysis from Steve.
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