Experts say Trump’s abduction of Maduro is about oil, not drugs

Cracks are emerging inside the Republican Party over the Trump administration’s military action in Venezuela, with Vice-President JD Vance doubling down on claims the attack was aimed at curbing fentanyl trafficking.

Allan Behm, advisor to the International & Security Affairs Program at The Australia Institute, said “it has nothing to do with narco-terrorism.”

“It is the same as Colin Powell back in George W Bush’s time saying they went to war with Iraq because they had nuclear weapons plans and chemical weapons.

“None of that was true. It was a pretext.”

International political experts argue the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife was primarily a strategic manoeuvre.

“Donald Trump always campaigned on being the anti-war candidate, and that was never true,”  Director of International & Security Affairs at The Australia Institute Dr Emma Shortis said.

“Trump is not anti-war. He is just anti losing wars, and he’s convinced that he can win them.”

Mr Behm said the strategic objective of the move to control Venezuela and its oil reserves was to deny China and Russia freedom of manoeuvre in central America and the Americas more generally. 

“The United States has decided it does not like Maduro and it is going to deal with it, principally to keep China and Russia out.

“It is making sure Russia doesn’t get any form of a toe hold and China doesn’t get any more influence than it’s already got.

“The strategic reason for this is a constant in US foreign policy in the western hemisphere, which is to keep foreign powers out.”

There’s also the fact Venezuela holds the world’s largest oil reserves which US President Trump has previously said were “stolen” from the US.

“Again, he said the quiet part out loud,” Dr Shortis said.

“I don’t think Trump particularly cares about any of it.

“To be frank, I think that Trump has been convinced by people around him, particularly Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller, that this was an easy win for him; that Venezuela was a threat to US interests, and that they needed to make a show of dominance, that this would be an easy, made for TV victory for Trump.”

While President Trump declared the US will “run” Venezuela until there’s a “safe, proper and judicious transition”, Secretary of State Marco Rubio later indicated Washington wouldn’t manage the country day to day, beyond enforcing an existing “oil quarantine”.

“You can see what is going to happen next already,” Mr Behm said.

“It’s called catastrophe. Disaster. Mayhem. Fiasco.

“Because the United States has such a huge sledgehammer in its military force, it thinks everything is a nail. So anytime the United States doesn’t like something, it goes and hammers it, militarily. And it’s got a long history of doing that.”

“Everything’s so volatile but this seems to be entirely consistent with the history of us interventionism, in that there’s no plan beyond military action,” Dr Shortis said.

“There’s obviously no interest in the stability in Venezuela or the safety of the Venezuelan people.”

Mr Behm said America “is not going to go and repair all the damage that it did in Iraq”.

“It’s not going to go and repair all the damage it did in Afghanistan and it certainly won’t repair any damage it inflicted on Caracas,” he said.