Adam Tooze:<\/strong> The fact that we are asking this question is itself astonishing, that theories of imperialism from 120 years ago, from the age of Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, might be relevant. And I think they undeniably are. There is at least a basic plausibility to the Leninist resource-imperialist kind of theory. I mean, is the United States interested in oil? Well, of course it is, like everyone else.<\/p>\nBut there\u2019s also a basic implausibility, which is that the business case just isn\u2019t there. And it\u2019s very difficult to point to specific business interests lobbying hard for this to happen. There\u2019ve been moments in American history where you could say, American business interests lobbied hard for American interventions on the part of the U.S. state. And it\u2019s true that Exxon, for instance, and ConocoPhillips have rulings outstanding against Venezuela. But there just doesn\u2019t seem to be any smoking gun. There just doesn\u2019t seem to be any clear evidence that their interests were powerfully involved in shaping this policy. In fact, they seem to be scrambling in a rather embarrassed and shame-faced way to find ways of concerting their strategy with the administration.<\/p>\n
And those who track the Trump administration very carefully suggest that there really was a kind of ex-post rationalization and that the early case was really driven by the whole narcoterrorism-type allegations, much of which have just sort of evaporated in thin air. And they thought maybe they could get some media traction on that side, apart from the spectacular hit. And then when that failed, well then, the last resort is always some sort of resource imperialist claim.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not the same as actual resource imperialists banging on the doors of the State Department and the Pentagon and saying, \u201cHey, can we take over Venezuela? We really need to, this is why.\u201d That\u2019s obviously not our situation. It seems almost as though they do the action and then figure out why it might have made sense to. And they\u2019re not very imaginative, so they come up with these bad answers.<\/p>\n
CA:<\/strong> Even if Venezuela\u2019s oil resources are made available to the United States, how would that play out for the U.S. economy?<\/p>\nAT:<\/strong> We have to start with this thing called the Orinoco formation [in Venezuela], which clearly is an absolutely remarkable geological feature of the planet. It appears to be the largest reservoir of oily stuff that there is anywhere in the world. But as everyone\u2019s now seen on TV or video, presumably, the oil there is viscous. It\u2019s tar, right? It\u2019s like somewhere between chewing gum and oil. It\u2019s not as you imagine oil, sweet and free-flowing.<\/p>\nAnd so why would an American oil major like Exxon, which is an intensely bottom-line, highly efficient corporation, even consider\u2014setting aside the politics and the engineering difficulties of doing this, and the fact that they would need to reboot a derelict, broken-down oil infrastructure that has been ruined by mismanagement and politics and sanctions. Why would they spend money there? Life is short, resources are scarce. Why would you pump them into rehabilitating Venezuela when right next door you have one of the most promising oil finds in recent memory in Guyana, which you\u2019re deeply involved in? And there isn\u2019t any evidence that somehow in the back room they\u2019ve been cooking up this plan, and it\u2019s not even clear what the plan is, if there is one.<\/p>\n
CA:<\/strong> It does seem like Trump is interested in lowering oil prices for the sake of consumers.<\/p>\nAT:<\/strong> This is the dilemma, right? America has this incredible boon of really sweet, light oil from fracking. But America is not your average oil power, because it has the world\u2019s largest oil industry, but it also has one of the largest markets. And so it\u2019s structurally betwixt and between, because an oil producer basically wants the highest prices that don\u2019t kill demand. And an American politician wants the lowest prices that don\u2019t kill production. And that doesn\u2019t work with a high-cost marginal supplier like Venezuela, which isn\u2019t even in the game at prices which are attractive for American consumers.<\/p>\nThe question is, would anyone in their right mind sink $100 billion into expanding this production, which is always going to be high-cost? And then struggling to somehow make a profit out of that, why would anyone do that when you could put $100 billion into Guyana?<\/p>\n
CA:<\/strong> Some have suggested the Venezuelan intervention is more simply a product of sphere-of-influence grand strategizing. Is that a more useful way to understand what\u2019s going on here?<\/p>\nAT:<\/strong> Maybe. I mean, if you\u2019re looking for rationalizations. Javier Blas from Bloomberg<\/em>, their commodities guy, who\u2019s often really great, did this piece I\u2019ve been thinking about a lot in the past couple of days where he\u2019s pointed out that if you credit the United States with a degree of political sway over the Western Hemisphere, which the United States would clearly like to claim\u2014but the Brazilians would, of course, hotly contest; the Mexicans, too\u2014but if you did, then you would say that the United States has political sway over about 40 percent of global oil production. And at the very least, what they can then do is harden themselves against other big blocs\u2019 efforts to, in some ways, strangle the United States. So there will be a kind of basic defensive logic. And Blas goes on to say that what we\u2019ve seen with Trump in Venezuela, in Iran, these sort of light-handed strikes are the geopolitics of an unconstrained United States. So it gives sovereignty, it gives you the power to act, because you aren\u2019t worried about pressure from the outside.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s an interesting argument. The number is striking\u201440 percent of the world\u2019s oil production. Much of that is coming from Canada, Mexico, and Brazil, but you are crediting America with some degree of influence. So it\u2019s a stretch, but still, let\u2019s go there.<\/p>\n
So then I think another question would be: The Biden administration implored the U.S. oil industry in 2022 to expand the output, and they just didn\u2019t, and they just let prices go up. So I don\u2019t know the extent to which this actually translates. The sphere of influence may be a space you can mark on a map, but do you actually have any degree of control or integration over it? If you look at trade patterns, the United States is by a long stretch no longer the major trading partner of many countries in Latin America, because China is. And taking out the head of government in Venezuela isn\u2019t going to change that.<\/p>\n
There are different factions in the Trump administration. And if you could usefully distinguish between them, you might say that there\u2019s [White House deputy chief of staff] Stephen Miller\u2014with an utterly Darwinian kind of vision of the world, which also just happens to serve his boss. And then you\u2019d have to choose between what people are calling the [Vice President] J.D. Vance and the [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio kind of factions within the administration. And they\u2019re different because Rubio is a more kind of conventional neocon. And Vance is really an American-first isolationist. The kind of sphere-of-influence vision, a souped-up 21st-century Monroe Doctrine, feels more like a Rubio kind of vision, where a lot of us were speculating about whether Cuba is the next domino to fall, or is it Colombia that really is being put under pressure here? And I think we don\u2019t know, and we don\u2019t understand, and I don\u2019t think even the people in Washington understand. And one way of modeling this is, this is a kind of power play between these different groups.<\/p>\n
CA:<\/strong> Does that leave a more postmodern logic of empire\u2014imperial violence, of the sort at work in Venezuela, as a spectacle for shaping domestic narratives and international perceptions? Is that a coherent way to think about empire in the age of Trump as well?<\/p>\nAT:<\/strong> I mean, it\u2019s the one that\u2019s staring us in the face. The efforts to find some sort of logic in the oil industry, the efforts to superimpose some philosophy of history and politics are all ways of avoiding the far more obvious fact that this is almost entirely driven by that logic of spectacle, of drama. And what\u2019s really astonishing are these opinion polls, because my initial response is like, no one in America is calling for this. Like, there isn\u2019t some big jingoistic mob calling for an invasion of Venezuela.<\/p>\nAnd I have to say that at some level, I find that more compelling than asking myself, how does this fit in the balance sheet of Exxon? Because I\u2019m pretty certain it doesn\u2019t fit in the balance sheet of Exxon. And then there\u2019s a spectacular element of the violence, but then there is also something absolutely real about it. Real people are actually being killed. Real force is being asserted, real dominance. It\u2019s genuinely American ships off the Venezuelan coastline. Real crews in real boats, running drugs or not, who knows, people are literally just being struck from the air and annihilated. They went in, they grabbed Maduro and his wife, and they killed 80 people on the way in and the way out. Sure, it\u2019s a spectacle. But unlike wrestling, people are actually dying.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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