Trump Corrolary to the Monroe Doctrine: Why can't we just take the oil?

"Venezuela is Latin America's biggest exporter of crude oil and has the world's largest petroleum reserves." - Brian Ellsworth and Andrew Cawthorne, Venezuela death toll rises to 13 as protests flare Reuters 02/24/2014

"Venezuela claims the world’s largest proven reserves of petroleum, an estimated 298 billion barrels of oil." - Michael Klare, The Desperate Plight of Petro-States TomDispatch 05/26/2016

The Trump Corrolary to the Monroe Doctrine: Why can't we just take the oil?

Pilar Marrero flags this relevant item on Tiwtter:

In Venezuela, Russia pockets key energy assets in exchange for cash bailouts (Putin owns Venezuela´s oil AND Trump, there goes your theory about the US wanting the oil) https://t.co/egLW2c5wy5

— Pilar Marrero (@PilarMarrero) January 29, 2019

I don't interpret this as evidence that the US doesn't "want the oil." There's good reason to believe that Trump turned Venezuela policy over to Mike Pence and the neocons and Trump's not driving it. She may be suggesting that Putin is pressuring Trump to be tough on Venezuela so Russia can get more control of the oil. As weird as it feels to write out the sentence, that's unfortunately not outside the realm of plausibility.

This looks like a good occasion to quote one of my favorite observations from John Kenneth Galbraith (The Age of Uncertainty, 1977), discussing the origins of the First World War:

There was a final consideration, one that it is always thought a trifle pretentious to stress. Rulers in Germany and Eastern Europe, generals in all countries, held their jobs by right of family and tradition. If inheritance qualifies one for office, intelligence cannot be a requirement. Nor is its absence likely to be a disqualification. On the contrary, intelligence is a threat to those who do not possess it, and there is a strong case, therefore, for excluding those who do possess it. This was the tendency in 1914. In consequence, both the rulers and the generals in World War I were singularly brainless men.

None was capable of thought on what war would mean for his class - for the social order that was so greatly in his favor. There bad always been wars. Rulers had been obliterated. The ruling classes had always survived. To the extent that there was thought on the social consequences of war, this was what was believed.

That two-paragraph section in the book is titled, "The Stupidity Factor." The role played by factors like arrogant impulsiveness, lack of knowledge, and believing that the way one wants things to be is the way things really are can be decisive factors, even with leaders that actually are intelligent. More recent examples from America include the decision-making on the Vietnam War and the invastion of Iraq in 2003.

It seems pretty obvious that neocon wishful thinking around their grand political schemes and the current President's lack of knowledge and understand of anything beyond self-promotion are playing a major role in the current iteration of Venezuela policy.

But that doesn't exclude either Russian scheming and nor the importance of oil. But "oil" means more in this context than the greed of energy corporations, although that most certainly does exist. Venezuela's oil wealth can give it an important role in influencing international alignments. Venezuela's financial support for Cuba has played an important role in Latin American international politics. So "oil" also means political potentcy for Venezuela which is not always comfortable for Washington.

More broadly, US policy really still does operate under the Monroe Doctrine. Even though it operates in very difference conditions than those in 1817-1825, the actual time of James Monroe's Presidency. That's a larger geopolitical scheme than simply access and control of natural resources in Latin America. In the current Venezuela coup attempt, oil is definitely the driving consideration in US policy. But "oil" has to be understand in its broader Latin American, Monroe Doctrine context.

The US also has a neoliberal ideological agenda more broadly, known variously as the Washington Consensus, IMF/World Bank standard policy, or "free-market" liberalism. There are very material interests supporting it. But ideology itself does become a factor in policymakers' understanding of the world. The Obama Administration's distinctly conservative Monroe Doctrine policy toward Latin America was heavily defined by that consideration.