Venezuela special: Maduro, oil, and Trump’s next target

Welcome back to the Econoclasts and Happy New Year and Happy New Year to you, Janice. Happy New Year to you from Greece. I believe you're in Italy, Balkan. Are you loving 2026 yet? Oh, I love the orthodoxies that we're going to debunk, for sure. It certainly started with a bang. Well, absolutely. I mean, Venezuela itself is a bundle of orthodoxies that are waiting for us to push a stake through them. What do you think should be the first one we begin with? The first orthodoxy should be the idea that Putin and Shia are going to be really scared as a result of what happened. And we saw a lot of commentators, especially in Europe, where we live, come to that conclusion that this is really bad for dictators everywhere in the world. That is an orthodoxy, and it is completely wrong. This was a breach of international law. Irrespective of the fact that Maduro was a dictator, that has nothing to do with it. International law does not make no distinction between whether the, you know, the person who runs the country is democratically elected or not. It's not our choice to make. It validates Putin's invasion of Ukraine, which was done by the same, with the same argument. We need Ukraine, just as Trump needs Venezuela. And we will talk later about why Trump may need Venezuela. But the argument that you capture a country just because you need it or because you think you have an historic claim on it as in the case of Russia or in the case of China. So I don't think it will impact, say, the Taiwan situation in the short run. But it will certainly legitimize it in terms of the public discourse. It will make it possible for Putin and Shia to say with some credibility that look, you know, what we're doing is what you're doing. It will be harder for anybody to condemn it, except for Europeans, to condemn it morally. Because it's at a precedent. But what is really important now that we are returning to this sort of 1950s, 60s, 70s era, Cold War era of spheres of influence, you know, the old Henry Kissinger view of foreign policy. He was no friend of the Soviet Union, but he respected the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, just as the Soviet Union respected the United States' sphere of influence. The sphere of influence of the United States is the Western Hemisphere, as it was clearly stated in the U.S. National Security Strategy, which was published just before Christmas. That was the priority for the United States. And when people say Trump isn't strategic about this, I'm not so sure. You know, there may be a lot of transactional opportunistic moments involved. But there's a certainly in line with that strategy that he wants to take control of the Western Hemisphere politically. Canada, especially Greenland, are probably next. It does not mean that Trump will engage in Ukraine or step up the aid of Ukraine. It does not mean that China were to invade Taiwan that Trump would necessarily push back against that. This is why I think it is ultimately good news for those, for the dictators of the East, because it strengthens their position, it strengthens the argument. But more importantly, it signals to them that the sphere of influence era is back and that they are there, stand there to exploit it. You know, welcome. When I heard of Maduro's abduction, I tweeted something lying along the lines of, "What a great day for Vladimir Putin. I can imagine him in the Kremlin, sipping a bit of vodka and smoking a cigar, watching Ursula from the Leon, the European Union, and Kistama, the United Kingdom playing dumb, while Trump is strashing what is left of international law, which isn't much. The Western media reporting Maduro's abduction as an arrest. And I can imagine Putin, that's what I tweeted, saying, "Wow, I have put in eyes to the United States and the West. They do not even pretend to respect international law, not that the West ever respected international, but they pretended to do so. They tried to find excuses for whatever interventions they made. Now, I'll take your point about the strategic alignment that is occurring these days in the first few days of 2026 very seriously. Now, let us remind our audience that I think it was the 14th of October 2019, when Fiona Hill, who used to be an official in the National Security Council, was testifying to Congress. And at some point she mentioned something, and I think that verbatim, she said, that during the negotiations with discussions with Russian officials, the Russian officials had suggested a very strange swap. Their Monroe doctrine for hours, that's how she put it. And what she meant was that the Russian officials, Putin's officials, were suggesting to Trump, Trump 1.0, that you can have your Monroe doctrine that is complete hegemony over the Western, the Americas, the Western hemisphere of the Americas. So effectively, you take Venezuela and you let us do whatever we want in our backyard, which is Ukraine. And I think that this is exactly what Putin is looking forward to. And I think with good cause, he thinks that Trump is going to go for something like that. Maybe he didn't have what he took to do it in 2017, 2018, but Putin has every reason to rejoice. And what really upsets me is the European loyalists and the nationalist Ukrainians, who, in the fog of war, I understand them. But what I don't understand is the manner in which they become ballistic. When you hear you or me saying these things and say, "Oh, but are you telling us that Putin never cares about international law?" No, we're not telling you that. You never give a damn about international law. You violate it by invading Ukraine. What we're saying is that now he's exceptionally happy that the West has stopped talking about international law and demonizing him. And this is his way of Putinizing the West. And the European reaction was absolutely appalling. At Aya Kalas, the representative, the high representative for foreign security policy, she said the EU was closely monitoring the situation. I heard the German Foreign Minister saying the situation in Venezuela is complex as he put it. They're just all over the place, these people. They haven't got a strategy. And, you know, if and when, I believe the Greenland thing will happen. If and when this happens, they will not have a strategy. They will still, they are dependent on the United States. The reason they co-towing to them over military, they gave in on trade. The EU is a week. You know, it shows at one point in its past during the Eurozone crisis. When you were, you know, during the period when you were in government, it shows in that period not to form a political union. There was a choice. All the people who met at the time, this was the smart choice to make. But this is the price to be paid. If you don't have a political union, the decentralized EU can't keep up with the Putin's of this world. And with the Trumps of this world, it's being, you know, it's being played. The relationship is one of total, total dependency. And yet nobody likes to acknowledge this. This is when you get sort of statements that we're monitoring the situation. That means, you know, we read about it in the newspapers. This is all in the, you know, we saw it on television. They were not even consulted on this until, you know, they had their only conversations with the United States after the event occurred. The Europeans are non-entities of this. And you saw it also with Kyastama who waited for his reaction until Washington told him what his reaction was. It's pathetic. And everybody is mincing their words, finding some wiggle explanation like Macron, trying to give two messages in one statement. Yeah, this is the modern, modern EU. It is ineffective. And, you know, this can have some very, very serious outcomes for the EU. It's not just the way that the EU is seen to be ineffective. Of course, more people see it. We've been, you know, we've been saying that for a longer time. The situation is bloody dangerous for the EU. It could lead to some severe disruption, possibly even to members leaving at some point. Well, and it's not only the global geopolitical scene, it's also at the peripheral level. So let me give you an example. You mentioned Ursula von Leyen, you mentioned Kyastama, we could mention Friedrich Merz. I mean, these, these, the soriest of ramps of apologists of the lack of a strategic plan. But take the Greek Prime Minister who came up with an utterly self-defeating statement. He comes up with the argument that Maduro had to be taken out. So this is not the time, this is the bottom, but the Greek Prime Minister said, this is not the time to think of international law. Immediately of rank. Turkish politicians and Turkish media and large media organizations came out. So yes, the Greek Prime Minister, the Prime Minister of a country that has been shielding himself behind the notion of international law, you know, supporting the claims of Greece and the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean and so on, has just said that, you know, we can just set aside international law. So it, you know, there is a domino effect of what's happening in Venezuela. But look, let's, let's disagree because we, you know, there's been too much agreement between us. So I know we disagree on one thing, oil. Now, there's no doubt, we agree on that, that American corporations like Chevron and Exxon really want to get their hands on the huge oil reserves of Venezuela. And that Trump has already said that he has been playing along with that, but, you know, I wonder, and I want your reaction, and he said this agreement on that. His political base is in Texas, it is in New Mexico, it is in the Permian Basin, it is amongst the frackers, who see what's happening in Venezuela now with very, very great discontent. Because let's face it, if all this Venezuelan oil is made available by Chevron and ExxonMobil to the international market, the price of oil is going to come down significant because there is a lot of it. Supply is going to go through the roof. And price was going to fall below $65, but barrel permanently or for a very long time. And that would be catastrophic for the sale industry in the United States, which is an important part of the power base of Donald Trump. Why am I saying that? Because I'm not so sure that he's going to let Chevron and ExxonMobil run right with Venezuela oil. And that, for me, is one reason why I don't think he wants Machado to come back to Venezuela. Machado, let us remind ourselves, it's the Nobel Peace Laureate who was inviting Trump to invade her country. And he said, no, no, no, no, no, you're good, but you're not presidential material. And he's playing ball now with, does he Rodriguez, the vice president of Venezuela, who is well-known lefty. And I think that this may be related to the dilemma that he has on the one hand, he has to keep Chevron and ExxonMobil happy by promising Venezuela oil, but on the other hand, the fracking industry, which is his power base. What's a landman? I actually enjoy very much a landman with Billy Bob Thornton acting as a typical example of one of those people who are struggling to keep those fracking oil businesses profitable. I would agree with a lot of this. Obviously there's complexity in his power base, but we have to remember the United States does not have a strategy for renewables. Unlike China, China's big expansion and energy supply, Israel renewables. Energy is going to play the absolutely most important role in geopolitics going forward in the long run. China's expansion is massive. They're already a large oil producer in the United States, but they want to basically dominate the oil market and make it viable for another half century. And Venezuela is part of that long-term strategy. I fully understand that the oil reserves that are like dormant in Venezuela, they cannot be easily recouped and recovered. They will require significant investment. I take your point on the fracking industry. We have to remember, he doesn't have to get elected anymore. So the power base argument is more complex for him. He is more likely to lose power from inside the MAGA movement, which is generally not in favor of global intervention. In my view, it explains that he's done his stunt, he's done it briefly and quickly, and it looked good. And people always support a quick war, but after day two or three things get wary and support drops rapidly, and after a few years the electrodes become extremely critical. So for him, the fact that he's now doing a deal with the old government is completely consistent, rather than imposing a new candidate and becoming responsible for the governance of this country, which would be a complete mess if they tried. Dying for a short break will be back to talk more about Venezuela, so don't go anywhere. Welcome back to the Conoclast Special on Venezuela. A related orthodoxy, which I think we should take a show now, is the one that claims that this is not Iraq. It's not Afghanistan. This is Panama. That the abduction of Maduro is reminiscent of the abduction of Noriega in Panama. In the same way that Bush senior just got him out and then let his vice president take over the country that this is something similar happening here. Do you see that? I don't see this. Let's not forget that Noriega was a CIA asset who went rogue. And he simply needed to rein him in very much unlike Maduro. Also, the vice president of Noriega, who in the end courtesy of the United States intervention took over Panama, was also an asset of the United States. Now, the zero triggers, who is clearly trying to find some accommodation with Trump, is a very different kind of political animal. She's a committed left-winger. She is a committed Bolivarian. She has a tradition, her father, who was an activist, a political activist in the United States. I believe I'm not sure about that, but he was a political activist. He was tortured to death in Venezuela and prison by Noriega-like American CIA assets. And I find it very difficult to believe that she's going to simply rollover and let Exxon and Chevron take over the oil as Machado would. Maybe she's playing a delaying game now. But to go back to the conversation about oil, if Chevron and Exxon model wants to get their hands on the oil reserves, Trump is going to have to deliver an Iraq-style occupation. Because, you know, this is a country of 30 million people with a very well-developed anti-imperialist anti-American movement. It's full of guns and weaponry. If they want to get their hands on the oil, they will have to be prepared for an insurgency. An Iraq-style insurgency, not maybe a copycat of Iraq, but something similar. And that will require boots on the ground. So, as you said, the United States has a long tradition of very successful interventions. The region of Iraq was very successful at first. This is what's going to affect Trump in the next year or two. The question of renewables and oil, that's a much longer term thing, which, as you said, maybe he's not that keen to worry about since he's not going to be elected. So, what do you think about that? Do you believe that this is closer to Iraq or closer to Panama? I think this is neither, to be honest. I don't think Noah Yega was on Trump's mind at all, nor was Iraq. He's caught an easy victory. He got the guy. A lot of people applauded him for this. It was a very short operation, or American's life lost. It was not particularly expensive operation, either for which he needed congressional approval. So, it was a simple and opportunistic hit. It will be difficult for him to exploit the oil. The government will not let him. I don't think there's any appetite in the Trump administration for an Iraq-style occupation. I do, however, think that the bullying will continue and that they will try to seek some accommodation. I don't think it's necessarily binary that the United States will control the entire oil industry of Venezuela. I think they might, however, do what they're planning with the Russians. Do business deals there. And to open it up to US business interests is very much in the Trump playbook. So, it's very much, in that sense, neither Panama nor Iraq, but more like what he's trying to do in Ukraine and Russia. Get American companies in, cut deals. What he's saying about Colombia is already threatening military action there. It will be very similar. It won't be war. It won't be boots on the ground. It will be that quick and dirty victory that he's sort of a strike that we may get. Maybe another abduction arrest, as people call it. I fear much more for Greenland and Canada, where two places. It would be significantly more consequential. I don't think the EU would do anything if he actually occupied Greenland. Canada could become a very serious conflict. So, he may stay away from this, but Greenland is probably something he may wish to take. And from a security perspective, not from the way I define security, but from the way the Trump people define security, it sort of makes sense what he did. This is not stupid. He got elected by campaigning against the previous strategy of boots on the ground in foreign countries. That's not what he will do. And we saw already what kind of internal, what his support for Israel did to his own movement. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of his strongest supporters became one of his strongest enemy. There is a revolt going on in the MAGA movement against his sort of foreign policy involvement. His movement will break up if he were to revert to neo-constyle politics. So, he can do the quick victory thing, the strike, the bullying. He can continue that. The Greenland thing, because there wouldn't be any defense. So, stuff that's cheap and easy, low-hanging fruit, he'll go for that. I do not think he will go for a long-drawn out war, which is why I think ultimately Canada is probably safe, because Canada will not be able to capture Canada that quickly. But Greenland is different. Greenland doesn't have much, many defenses. It's pretty much an undefended territory, mostly not inhabited. So, to capture Greenland is feasible. And the Europeans clearly are not going to put up any resistance against the United States. So, that's an easy victory, and that's what I can, what I see happening will obviously hugely damage the credibility of the United States in Europe. It will probably destroy the transatlantic alliance. That's more of the situation that I see in terms of why he's doing this. In this vein, Wolfgang, there's another orthodoxy that portrays Trump as somebody who is insufficiently interested in the domestic situation, political situation in the United States. And that he's somehow consumed by geopolitics, because he wants to win a Nobel Prize, a big prize as well, that he wants to project his power internationally. Well, I just don't buy that. From where I'm standing, everything he's doing is all about the management of MAGA expectations and the MAGA movement of keeping his base solid, a base which is very, very severely dissected, bifurcated, divided, as you were saying. What he's doing abroad, this domino that he's trying to create, you know, on the one hand he's going all guns blazing in order to end the world in Ukraine, in cahoots with Putin and totally against the cabal of European hapless leaders. But then, of course, remember Gaza, he stepped in there to take it over personally, to create a private company that he was going to be the president of the chair of, supposedly to create livable conditions for the Gaza, this is not happening. He goes in there, he makes his big splash, and then he leaves the place in smithereens, the genocide of the Palestinians is continuing, they are simply being killed through starvation and lack of medicines and lack of shelter. And then he moves on to another thing, and he goes to Venezuela. I think, like you are intimating, he's going to then move on to something else, without having sorted out anything, you know, having left a mess everywhere. And from there, he's going to go somewhere else. But that, I think, is, remember the Steve Bannon strategy of flooding the zone domestically? Well, he's flooding the zone domestically by making sure that he controls the narrative. I mean, Mabdani was inaugurated in New York mayor, and nobody talked about it because he was taking, you know, Trump was taking over Venezuela and abducting Maduro. I think this is part of his management of his domestic politics, when we're talking about the potential invasion of Greenland, or even Canada, Mexico. Don't forget Mexico, you know, with Claudia Shainbaum, he supposedly has a pretty good relationship, and he says he's a fine woman. But I'm going to go in there and take, I'm going to take out the cartels, this isn't, he doesn't care about the cartels, he simply wants to keep the narrative going. And keep people guessing about what he's going to use the American military for next day or the next week. This is his style of managing the domestic political agenda. And, you know, of course, this is immensely precautions geopolitically, globally, peripherally, and so on. But this is him flooding the zone at the domestic level. Well, I agree completely, this is a domestic policy. The way I see Trump and, you know, foreign policy people tend to over complicate things. Trump is a business person, a transactional business guy, a property guy. So Trump is not the guy who tries to be, you know, have a coherent policy. There are people behind him, you know, I think Rubio is one of them who does care about some coherence through the foreign policy agenda. But Trump himself is not. And for Trump, you know, he makes deals with the Russians. There are security issues and the, you know, the state department and the National Security Council will alert the president to Russian, you know, to potential security issues with Russia. One of the reasons he goes after he grabs Greenland is to have, you know, it's for national security reasons. It's not for the, for the deposits, as he says. What kind of national security are we talking about in the Arctic sea? It's Russia, of course. There isn't, there aren't any other powers on the Arctic sea other than the United States and Russia. So that's the security issue. So, and yet he wants, he does deals with the Russians. This kind of duality is something that, you know, foreign policy folk have great difficulty understanding. That's how I, I think about it. And, you know, I don't think he's serving his base. I don't think that is the case anymore. He's been elected. Second term won't be re-elected. He doesn't depend on Congress very much. It's a very much an executive agenda. So if he loses the midterms this year, it's a blow, but not a really big deal. Presidents tend to lose the midterms. I don't think he cares greatly about it. I also don't think he cares about his legacy. I don't think he cares about. He wants to install, you know, JD Vance or Rubio as a successor. I don't think he, you know, he, he, he minds greatly. He's the, he's more like a, you know, the head of a family, the head of a, you know, a mafia, the head of a commercial company, more like succession than anything else. Where the old patriarch, you know, let everyone fight each other, but he, in the end, didn't get what he died. But he didn't, in the end, didn't care much about who really succeeded him because it was all about him. And that's, that's, that's how I see Trump. I have a slightly different view to this. I think he cares. He doesn't want to see the establishment, you know, the bushes and the Clintons and the Obama's come back. He would like to see the continuation of the Trumpian, you know, sort of new century as he sees it. And that is why, to a very large extent, he's keen to overthrow the government of Cuba, of Colombia, clearly Maduro. Because let's face it, you know, at the beginning of this year, a large part of his base lost access to insurance, health insurance, because of his big, beautiful bill, which effectively transferred huge resources from the, have nots to the haves. And stole health insurance from millions of Americans. It wasn't just about Israel, that this content was also about the cost of living crisis, the health insurance crisis, that his own base is facing. And thing of it, of Miami, as a central piece in the jigsaw puzzle, it's full of people that are hailed from Cuba, from Venezuela, from Colombia, that, you know, are very right-wing and want nothing more than to see the left-wing regimes in those countries being overthrown. So by doing what he did in Venezuela, he is bringing together back that, you know, the band again, the band of the MAGA movement. And that is important to him, I do believe, but allow me to go in a different direction, as we are reaching our conclusion for today, because I'm sure again, to be coming back, not just to Trump, but to Venezuela as well. The events of the last few days reminds me of criticism that I have received, because remember, I like you, I'm still an active politician. So my political opponents here in Greece have dug out of the archives, statements have made in the last presidential election campaign that, you know, at least Trump is going to be less likely to go to a major war. And they, you know, they use this archival material to attack me to say, "Oh, but you see what he's done in Venezuela well." There's no doubt that he's acted as a gangster in Venezuela, I have no doubt about that. But I'm going to insist that that original estimation that I put forward when he was elected, that he's less likely to cause a major war globally than Kamala Harris would have been. I still stand by that, because, you know, let's face it, what he did in Venezuela was an act of gangsterism in his own backyard. But at the same time, he's very unlikely to emulate what the Neocons within the Democratic Party would have done in the last year, and in my estimation, had they won. They would have flared up, they would have incited greater tensions in the South China seas in Taiwan. And my great worry was that Kamala Harris not have self, because she had no clue what she was doing. But the Neocons in her potential administration that by her would probably shift ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads to Taiwan, supposed to preserve Taiwan's independence. And that would have been a clear and present danger for world peace, and he's not doing that so far. He is not also going confrontational with Russia. This is another thing that the Biden administration would have done, you know, one of the assistant secretary of states was quoted saying that the Biden administration knew that had Ukraine committed not to enter NATO, Russia would not have invaded the administration encouraged Ukraine to push in the other direction. In order not to give Russia a quick victory. Now, that was a misjudgment. One of many, many misjudgments that Biden administration had about Russia, they also had many misjudgments about China, and they had massive misjudgments about China's support for Russia after the Ukraine war started. And massive misjudgments about the effect of economic sanctions on Russia. So this was a litany of misjudgments that were made by that administration, and it could have led to war. I'm very concerned, I wrote a column about this for Unheard, but I'm really concerned about war, not because Russia is going to start a war, but because we're all talking each other into sort of military action. This is a very, very dangerous situation. We've had this before in European history several times. The danger is that the United States and its sort of European acolytes massively underestimate the adversary, and that is a situation that's very conducive to war. And we see already a lot of leaders and the worst of the think tankers and academics who are really warm-ungering. And in that sense, I agree. It makes it less likely under Trump. He has sort of, as you call it, gangster moments, his sort of transactional opportunistic invasions, and that will probably continue. And Greenland will be a heist. He will get it. The capture of Greenland will almost surely be a relatively bloodless affair. That's why I think that we are relatively safe under him, because he's not going after Russia, he's not going after China, is the world war scenario that is far far more dangerous to us than his transactional adventures. Walking I was just reminded many decades ago, when I used to teach at Cambridge, I remember an upper-class English academic colleague, Adolf, as the British would call him. One's that made it that the great advantage of being a gentleman is that you don't need to behave like one. Now it seems to me that the great advantage of being Trump, unlike Clinton, Obama, Biden, and so on, is that he doesn't feel that he needs to behave like a gentleman in the international geopolitical sphere. He behaves like a gang gangster. He glairs that he doesn't give a damn about international law, he trashes it. The difference between him and Bush, Clinton, Obama, and so on is not substance. I mean, they trashed international law. They invaded Iraq. They think of Clinton bombarding Yugoslavia and carrying the whole lot of the NATO allies to do this in order to change the borders within Europe. I mean, could there have been a greater gift to someone like Putin, when I hear European politicians say, "Oh, it's impossible to accept the notion that international borders will be changed by violence." Well, you did it. You created Kosovo. It doesn't matter whether they were good, they were made it to the case or not. But the very notion that you did not change borders to war and through bombardment, you know, that was trashed by the Americans. By Clinton, you go to Kosovo to Pristina and there is a big having, they are called Bill and Hillary Clinton having. Bush totally violated the Geneva Convention with Guantanamo. The difference is that these people try to cover it up and Trump doesn't want to be a gentleman. He doesn't want to cover it up. And he will continue, as we said before, he's going to go on to Grindel and Sohn, flooding the zone constantly. This is what I expect over the next six, 12 months, especially until the midterms. So this is all for this week. We'll be back next week to debunk more orthodoxies. And don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe, they conglusts.