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For weeks now, Donald Trump has been playing a game of will he/won’t he with a regime change war against Nicolás Maduro. He’s blown up civilian boats, alleging they are carrying drugs; moved in the U.S. Navy’s largest aircraft carrier and its strike group; and announced the closure of Venezuelan airspace. He’s also deploying surrogates across U.S. media to drum up consent for a war in an almost shot-for-shot replay of the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, with one crucial difference: this time, the Republicans are being open about this indeed being a prospective war for oil.
Yesterday, that got even more real. The NYT reports:
The United States seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on Wednesday, a dramatic escalation in President Trump’s pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela.
Speaking at the White House before an event on a new luxury visa program, Mr. Trump announced the operation and said it was “a large tanker, very large,” adding, without elaboration, that “other things are happening.”
When asked about the ship’s oil, Mr. Trump said, “Well, we keep it, I guess.” He declined to say who owned the tanker. “It was seized for a very good reason,” he added.
I’m already hearing the stirrings of whataboutism in reference to a 2023 incident in which the Biden administration seized 800,000 barrels worth of Iranian oil that they alleged was being smuggled, likely to China, in defiance of U.S. sanctions.1 That was a messy case that triggered Iranian reprisals. But in that one, the Greece-based, Marshall Islands-flagged charter company that owned the ship, the Suez Rajan, agreed to cooperate and voluntarily sail it to Galveston, Texas, so that the contraband could be offloaded.
In yesterday’s case … well, just watch this video:
Military helicopters (they look like U.S. Navy SH-60B Seahawks or a repainted Coast Guard variant), commandos rappelling onto the ship’s deck, seizing the bridge at gunpoint — these are visuals straight out of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. (Which is, undoubtedly, the point.) The question is which one: Capt. Frank Ramsey or Cap’n Jack Sparrow?
Trump is, as I’ve written, likely of two or three minds about a war with Venezuela. Inflation, the cost of living, and unemployment are all rising. His approval rating is in the toilet. The most politically damaging scandal of his presidency so far is likely to get worse whether the promised Epstein files are released this month or not. War is sometimes a panacea for all of that. War with Venezuela, however, is deeply unpopular — even 42% of Republicans oppose it, according to a recent CBS poll. (Though they are delighted with the murder campaign against suspected drug boats.)
On the more goal-oriented front, Trump is openly salivating over Venezuela’s oil, and keeping it out of Iranian, Chinese, and possibly even Russian hands. He’s eager for progress in the revived War on Drugs (which blowing up Venezuela won’t accomplish, but it’s unclear if he knows that). He and his embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth both love to (briefly) play war. His attorney general, Pam Bondi, may be eager for an Actual War to justify the implementation of putatively wartime measures such as the Alien and/or Insurrection Acts, or whatever she has planned against anyone she deems “antifa.” His more ideological Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, wants to embark on a hemispheric Global War on Terror 2.0 in which, according to a dusted off version of Domino Theory, the insertion of a María Machado or Edmundo González regime in Caracas would inevitably be followed by similar regime changes in Nicaragua and, por la gracia de vuestro Dios y Señor Trump, Cuba. A U.S.-ruled Venezuela could also be a nice companion piece to a partially Russian-ruled Ukraine, for when the homies get together to compare Spheres of Influence.
The hard part would be getting to that point without a costly military campaign, a dangerous Venezuelan insurgency, or the final bottoming out of his poll numbers. So, for the moment, it seems he’s doing the Trump Thing: posturing, threatening, making scary videos set to music, all while quietly negotiating and hoping his problem decides to resolve itself, or everyone else decides to start paying attention to something else.
This is how I read the seizure of the oil tanker, The Skipper. It is a bullying move. (“When people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard,” Trump’s ghostwriter wrote in The Art of the Deal). It’s a psyop (“My leverage came from confirming an impression they were already predisposed to believe” — in this case, Venezuela’s impression that Trump is a belligerent madman and the U.S. a remorseless imperial power.) It looks impressive to the base. (“A little hyperbole never hurts.”) It’s theft — or perhaps leverage for the next phone call.
The problem is that, at some point, he’s got to produce a result — either Maduro leaves power, he strikes a deal he can hype, or the war begins. As he said in that 1987 book: “You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”
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1 The U.S. claimed the charterer’s use of the U.S. financial system gave it jurisdiction in that case. I’d expect something similar here, if they even bother to provide a legal justification.