Patrick Lawrence: Oil and Venezuela

 https://x.com/MaryKostakidis/status/1998520214271701063

Mary Kostakidis

@MaryKostakidis

Patrick Lawrence: Oil and Venezuela ‘Roughly a quarter of the U.S. Navy’s fleet now floats in the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela, including the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in American history. Alongside the Ford, numerous destroyers, amphibious vessels, and submarines are also patrolling just outside Venezuela’s territorial waters. In the air, the Pentagon has deployed F–35 jets, heavy bombers, MQ–9 Reaper drones (large, long-range, lethal), and some 15,000 uniformed personnel. This is America’s largest deployment in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. In mid–October Trump acknowledged that he has authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert operations in Venezuela and that he may order ground troops to invade the country… Venezuela, of course, possesses the largest oil reserves in the world. The question here is one that goes back at least as far as the 1953 coup the C.I.A. and M.I.6 conducted against the Mossadegh government in Iran: While controlling resources so that they serve the citizens of the nation possessing them is an obvious and obviously just principle, the informal empire and its trans–Atlantic allies have never respected this. In the Venezuelan case there is little question its petroleum reserves have long been the object of American avarice. Indeed, the United States is now in the process of stealing Citgo, the retailing operation owned by Petróleos de Venezuela, the state-owned oil monopoly, which nationalized Venezuela’s reserves in 1990. The United States seized Citgo’s assets during Trump’s first term. Last week a U.S. judge ordered the formal sale of the company to a group of American investors for $5.9 billion, an indefensibly low price. Caracas has denounced this as a forced takeover—legalized theft by any other name… During the Cold War decades and ever since, there has been one thing Washington’s ideologues have feared as much as communism, and I sometimes wonder if it has not been the greater consideration. Under no circumstance can these people abide a working social democracy in the Western Hemisphere—or anywhere in the non–West for that matter. It would stand as too compelling an inspiration to other nations otherwise under American dominance. This was Árbenz’s sin: He proposed to make Guatemala work for Guatemalans. It was, of course, Castro’s sin. In the Venezuelan case this has been a motivating force since Chávez launched his Bolivarian revolution on coming to power in 1999…’ https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=112164&post_id=181160486&utm_source=post-email-title&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=b88mv&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxODg2MDIxNSwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTgxMTYwNDg2LCJpYXQiOjE3NjUzMTUyMTcsImV4cCI6MTc2NzkwNzIxNywiaXNzIjoicHViLTExMjE2NCIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.kKbyhDmNZna4I4N-FMoBaZh3wRjEp68KHrfkjqwLuC4

9:28 AM · Dec 10, 2025

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