What’s Behind the U.S. Interest in Venezuela? Oil, Minerals, and Politics

Since September, the United States has increasingly targeted the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro, blockading oil tankers from the country and using military strikes against boats it said were related to drug trafficking coming from Venezuela, while building up military forces in the Caribbean. On Jan. 3, U.S. armed forces struck Venezuela and captured Maduro and his wife and took them to the U.S. 

The U.S. has had a strained relationship with Venezuela since Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999 as a left-leaning populist allied with Cuba and Russia. He died in 2013 and his handpicked successor, Maduro, ascended to the presidency, and has remained in power under allegations of rigged elections and suppression of dissent.

Asked in late December if the U.S. wants Maduro to step down, Trump told reporters: “I think it’d be smart for him to do that.”

To find out why the U.S. is targeting Venezuela now, Tufts Now talked with Consuelo Cruz, associate professor of political science.

What caused the sudden interest in Venezuela on the part of the United States?

History and politics are coming together to generate multiple, interrelated incentives for the Trump administration to apply extreme pressure on Maduro and overthrow him through military action.

On the economic front, Venezuela has the largest proven petroleum reserves in the world, about 18% of global reserves, which is undeniably important. But perhaps just as important is that it has significant deposits of gold, rare earth elements and other critical minerals.

Tensions with China have made clear the huge importance of all these minerals, which are needed for leading-edge technological manufacturing, including defense systems and weapons. The United States is lagging China on this front, especially in processing capacity.

What’s the political interest in Venezuela?

Pushing Maduro out is a way for Trump to regain support from disaffected Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, and other segments of the Hispanic vote. These voters supported him enthusiastically in the past but have begun to recoil from his economic and deportation policies. 

Venezuelans who are U.S. citizens or who have legal status had a clear understanding that Venezuelans who had fled their country to the U.S. would not be deported—and the same with the Nicaraguans and to a lesser extent Cubans. Now they feel betrayed and angry. Trump has been bleeding Hispanic support, which matters to him and to the GOP.

But with a Maduro exit, the Venezuelans, the Nicaraguans and other groups likely will come back into the fold, consolidating their support for Trump and the GOP in areas like Georgia, Florida, New Jersey, and Texas. It would also firm up and enhance Cubans’ traditional support, in good part because regime change in Caracas might ultimately lead to a similar outcome in Havana.

Since the early 1800s, the U.S. has declared that the Americas are under its sphere of influence. Is the current focus on Venezuela an example of that? Is it any different from the past? 

The Monroe Doctrine, first enunciated in 1823, declared the whole of the Americas—the Northern and Southern hemispheres, the Central American isthmus that connects the two halves, and the islands off the mainland—to be the United States’ exclusive zone of influence. 

In its initial version, the doctrine was specifically aimed at imperial European powers. For instance, when Venezuela defaulted on its debt with European creditors in 1902, the British and the Germans imposed a naval blockade. 

This was the kind of action that led to the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, which said basically that the U.S. could intervene in the internal affairs of other countries in the Americas to preclude the Europeans from doing the same. 

Trump is now saying to everybody, stay away from Latin America. His is the most ambitious reworking of the Monroe Doctrine. And the message is particularly focused on China and to a lesser extent Russia. Both have been increasingly involved financially and commercially in Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, as well as militarily in the latter three countries. 

One of the reasons why Maduro was able to make the transition to president after Chávez’s death of cancer in 2013 is because the Russians and the Cubans had military and intelligence personnel in Venezuela. 

If Venezuela has so much in the way of oil reserves, why is it a poor country? 

Deepening oil dependence has been a hallmark of the Venezuelan political economy since the 1920s. The country’s oil industry was nationalized in the 1970s, many years before Chavez’s ascent to power. However, a series of pre-Chavez governments also entered into service contracts and joint ventures with majors like ExxonMobil, BP, Gulf, and Chevron, in this way securing their much-needed technical assistance.

But when Hugo Chávez came to power, he began expanding the control of the state oil company and eventually pushed out the foreign companies. He also took an extractionary approach, squeezing revenue out of the sector without making the requisite investments. 

This proved catastrophic because the production of oil, gas, and petrochemicals is highly capital intensive.  And to make matter worse, Chavez purged the state oil company of the technical experts and seasoned employees that knew how to make it productive.

So oil production levels began declining even before Chavez’s handpicked successor Maduro took over in 2013.

What does the country look like now and going forward?

In general, the economic and political story of Venezuela under Chávez and Maduro has been a tragedy. Their regime degraded a once credible electoral system, virtually ruined the energy sector, and made the lives of most people miserable,

There’s a sense of futility and despair in Venezuela—poverty is a massive problem and corruption is out of control. It’s a lost country and it’s affecting its neighbors in South America, which are now facing an influx of Venezuelan refugees. 

Many questions arise in the wake of the U.S. intervention. Two stand out. Will the Bolivarian armed forces, the paramilitary colectivos, and the militias resist further American military action? And what will be of the deep rot that pervades the country, including the military, the state apparatus, the web of pro-regime governors, mayors, and other “elected” officials, the private business sector, and organized popular groups?