Trump wages into a new war with the same mistakes that led the US into Iraq.

The US attack on Venezuela relies on the same deception that justified the war in Iraq: the idea of self-financing wars with oil.

President Trump said Saturday that the US will run Venezuela following the capture of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. “It won’t cost us anything because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial,” he said at a Saturday press conference at Mar-a-Lago following news of the US attack. But we’ve been down this road before.

“There’s a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn’t have to be US taxpayer money,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz claimed about Iraq in March 2003, the same month as the US invasion. “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” He said oil revenues could bring $50-100 billion over the first years of the invasion.

That wasn’t the case, and just like what would happen in Iraq, the military campaign in Venezuela is likely to have steep costs.

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
    45·
    9 days ago

    It’s not exactly a lie.

    The value of the US dollar, in part, comes from selling oil in USD. Every oil source that exists outside of the dollar market hurts the value of the dollar, and sanctions on Venezuela have been encouraging oil investment and sales in yuan instead of dollars. That’s partially where the inflation came from, demand for dollars by oil traders has fallen, which means stopping this leak.

    Although electrification continues, which also weakens demand for oil traded in dollars, and obviously there’s Russia and the other sanctioned countries who don’t trade in dollars. The age of oil wars paying for themselves is probably ending.