Years ago, there was a movie called “Wag the Dog,” featuring Al Pacino as a corrupt American president who mounted a whole, fictitious military operation as a ploy to deflect attention from a scandal that threatened his presidency.
Looking at the character and the actual US President, the parallels come to mind unbidden. Entertainer, accused of corruption, with a history of scandals haunting him, and willing to do anything to get out from the deep underwater his approval has gotten into.
I mention “Wag the Dog” because there is no motivation whatsoever to be doing a strike like the one that came to pass in Venezuela yesterday. Yes, he was a dictator; yes, he committed electoral fraud; yes, he had many political prisoners locked up at the notorious “Helicoide,” a former sports and event arena turned into a prison.
But that is not a US problem — it is a Venezuela problem.
He was our President, for us to deal with, in accordance with our laws and by our own devices. Not an easy task when his government controlled all the levers of state violence, but it was not a fight the US should have gotten itself involved into. They did, and technically that means the US is at war with Venezuela.
These actions — for which I am thankful, because I detest Maduro, and what he represents — were nonetheless illegal. Some would say I am being ungrateful, but I am not. Like I said, Nicolás Maduro was a dictator and an illegitimate ruler, and he needed to go. The US, however, never cared about it, nor did it ever intervene in Venezuela before — up to now. So as an economist I have to ask myself, what is the economic rationale for this US occupation of Venezuela now? Why bother to intervene when they never have before? It makes no sense — until you start following the money.
The US is going to occupy Venezuela because of mineral wealth. In a well-known power play that South America has seen several other times before, the US is going to turn Venezuela into a puppet state to plunder resources while parroting the false narrative that the Venezuelan crude — which under Venezuelan law belongs to the Venezuelan people — belongs to the US. This is a narrative that both Stephen Miller and the President have been feeding to the MAGA base for weeks.
It is a fallacious narrative, against international law, and it validates the point made by many South American intellectuals since the 1950s that the United States is a predatory bad actor.
the invasion of Venezuela is not about freedom, democracy, or anything like that. It is about resource control.
With the world’s largest proven reserves of petroleum — albeit low-API grade and in need of extensive upgrades before being refined — the attractiveness of Venezuela for a predator nation interested in it is obvious. But that’s not all. Venezuela has gold, lithium, uranium and other minerals within its geology. Interest in controlling these minerals is obvious.
Follow the money, and you will find the truth.
This invasion is about Venezuelan resources.
It is not about freedom, democracy, or even legitimacy.
It is all about the money.