Uncle Sam has never changed his imperial interest; he just became more transparent under Donald Trump. It has always been about American strategic interest above all else.
The illegal extraction and capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and taking over the country might be the least bloody act of annexation in colonial history. The abandonment of soft power and global democratic slogans in favour of realpolitik by the Trump 2.0 administration has exposed the world to the actual colours of America.
Uncle Sam’s vision has always been about what lies beneath the ground, though it often masks it through grand humanitarian and egalitarian ideals to dress its rhetoric.
George W Bush administration (2003-2009)
From the recent history under president Bush’s infamous retaliation to the 9/11 incident, destroying a terrorist organisation known as the Taliban was a façade; it was all about oil. Former FBI deputy director John O’Neil said that “the main obstacle to investigating Islamic terrorism was US oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it. The oil interests want to obtain access to oil and gas reserves from rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean.
“As is well documented, these fields are estimated to hold some 200 billion barrels of oil, one-third of which is available to the Persian Gulf. The oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia, and the Bush administration wanted to change that.”
Indeed, the US, in joint forces with some Central Asian countries (those threatened by militant Islamic extremists sponsored by Taliban and al Qaeda), signed an agreement of cooperation with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and secured its oil interests in the Caspian Sea area. Unfortunately, more than 46 300 Afghan civilians were killed over decades of fighting.
Second, in light of the US “War on Terror”, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to seize Saddam Hussein and destroy weapons of mass destruction, which were not found in the country, was an act to secure oil. Prior to the invasion, Iraq’s oil industry was nationalised and closed to Western oil companies. Following the invasion, Western oil companies were the primary producers of oil in Iraq. Some of the top US military and political figures confirmed years after the invasions. “Of course it’s about oil; we can’t really deny that,” said Gen John Abizaid, former head of US Central Command and military operation in Iraq in 2007.
Barack Obama administration (2009-2017)
The first black American president with roots in Africa suffered from ancestral amnesia and killed the last picketing voice of the Casablanca bloc (the idea of a United States of Africa) in 2011 when US-led Nato invaded Libya and assassinated former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi. Before the invasion, Libya achieved substantial economic development and independence, with education and medical treatment free and a home considered a human right. His administration established a sophisticated irrigation system, the Great Man-Made River project, which brought water from the desert to cities and was prepared to share the model throughout Africa.
The justification of the intervention was humanitarian and to overthrow a totalitarian dictator who committed heinous violations and supported civil war and terrorist organisations. However, the real rationale was oil: Libya had the eighth-largest oil reserves.
Present administration
Trump declared the successful capture of Maduro and conveyed that his administration will run Venezuela for the purpose of extracting its oil to benefit American companies and “Venezuelan citizens”.
The country has the largest oil reserves in the world, which were poorly managed by the former administrations. In his recent interview with The New York Times, Donald Trump said, “We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil. We’re getting oil prices down, and we’re going to be giving money to Venezuela, which they desperately need.”
The Venezuelan interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, said that 100 people died in the US attack to extract Maduro.
The US is an imperialist force that often hides behind liberal slogans such as democracy and human rights. Its interest, ambition, and thirst for oil are inevitable and have caused chaos and the loss of lives while trying to hide them. The Venezuelan case indicates a less bloody act of annexation in America’s history of imperial conquest for oil.
Letswalo is a Post-Doc Fellow at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, Wits\
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