Donald Trump, the head climate denier in charge, wants Venezuela’s oil.

National Security Advisor John Bolton spilled the beans on Fox News on January 24 when he said in response to a question about the seizing the U.S. assets of Citgo, a subsidiary of the Venezuela state-owned oil company, PDVSA, “We’re in conversation with major American companies now…. It will make a big difference to the US economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”

Trump had his eye on Venezuela’s oil long before Bolton splurted his war-for-oil confession. “That’s the country we should be going to war with,” Trump said about Venezuela during an intelligence briefing on July 2017, “They have all that oil and they’re right on our back door.” That is what the Deputy Director of the FBI at the time, Andrew McCabe, reported in his book released in February, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump. With his pathological propensity to punch down, Trump had McCabe fired in March 2018 just 26 hours before his planned retirement and his pension would have begun.

About the only thing Trump doesn’t lie about is his support for wars for oil. In 2013 he tweeted, “I still can’t believe we left Iraq without the oil.” Referring to the Iraq War in NBC’s “commander in chief” military forum with Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump said, “To the victor belong the spoils…. I always said: take the oil.” In his first year as president, Trump twice blurted out to Iraq’s Prime Minister that he wanted Iraq’s oil for the US.

All Trump talk about restoring human rights and democracy in Venezuela are just more lies. Trump doesn’t support them in the US. He orders the violation of human rights against asylum seekers at the US border. He constantly spouts racist tropes and incites violence against minorities and political opponents. He supports voter suppression and opposes verifiable vote-counting laws. 

The Venezuela oil grab did not start with Trump. The US has been trying to recapture Venezuela as a compliant neocolony ever since Hugo Chavez won the presidential election of 1998 on a platform of egalitarian social and economic reforms that won him the support of most poor and working class voters. The George W. Bush administration had advanced knowledge of and refused to condemn the attempted military coup in 2002 that was was repelled by a popular uprising.

President Obama preposterously called Venezuela an “extraordinary threat to the national security” in March 2015 as he imposed sanctions. Ostensibly directed seven Venezuelan law enforcement and military officials for alleged human rights violations, the enforcement surveillance and reporting requirements on bank accounts and transactions any Venezuelan had in the US prevented the use of the U.S. financial system by the Venezuelan state to import food and medicine.

Since taking office, Trump has repeatedly escalated the sanctions on Venezuela, cutting off US credit to Venezuela, blocking oil sales to the U.S., freezing $8 billion in PDVSA/Citgo assets in the U.S., urging allies to freeze Venezuelan bank accounts and gold reserves held abroad, and this week cutting off the Central Bank of Venezuela’s access to US currency and international financial transactions. Acting like a US colony, the UK’s Bank of England refused last month to return $700 million worth of gold used as collateral for a loan when Venezuela paid it off. Citibank is selling of $1.4 billion worth of Venezuelan gold that collateralized a loan that Venezuela defaulted on due to the economic blows and transaction complications imposed by sanctions. The US-dominated International Monetary Fund suspended Venezuela’s access to its $400 million in Special Drawing Rights earlier this month.

The sanctions are economic warfare against Venezuela, whose economy is dependent on selling oil abroad for the foreign exchange needed to import most goods, notably food and medicine. Its economy was already reeling under the lower oil prices and declining oil production since 2014 before Obama started economic sanctions. Alfred de Zayas, the special rapporteur on Venezuela for the UN Human Rights Council, reported last September that sanctions are killing Venezuelans and likened them to a medieval siege. He recommended that the International Criminal Court investigate the sanctions against Venezuela as crimes against humanity.

On January 23, Trump recognized the self-declared would-be president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, and openly called for the overthrow of the elected president, Nicolas Maduro. Trump has the support of the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and their lieutenants in the Democratic congressional leadership. The overwhelming majority of Democrats and every Republican except Rand Paul (R-KY) supports the Trump’s attempted coup in Venezuela.
The administration’s warhawks and their Venezuelan minions have been hoping the economic squeeze would provoke a military coup. But the Venezuelan military remains committed to constitutional order.

Recent polls of Venezuelans show that strong majorities of Venezuelans oppose to US military intervention, ranging from 54-35% to 86-12% depending on the poll. Nevertheless, Trump, Bolton, and Elliot Abrams—the convicted perjurer and war criminal from the Iran-Contra scandal who is now the US Special Representative to Venezuela—are threatening military intervention.

Some opposition exists in Congress. A bill for “Prohibiting Unauthorized Military Action in Venezuela Resolution” (H.R. 1004/S.J.Res. 11) was introduced on February 28. But to date, the House bill has only 64 co-sponsors and the Senate bill has only 3 co-sponsors. Trump has the green light from Congress at this point if he wants attempt regime change in Venezuela by military force.

It is therefore up to us to build an opposition that can stop this economic and possibly military war. We need to urge our members of Congress to support the bill against US military intervention and to speak out against the deadly economic sanctions. We need to organize public protests against US policy toward Venezuela.

And immediately, we need to support the Embassy Protection Collective nonviolently protecting the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington DC from a US-backed takeover by Guaidó’s supporters.