On January 3, the United States launched a “large-scale strike” on Venezuela, captured President Nicolás Maduro, and flew him to a military base in New York. The American President says his country now runs Venezuela.

In 2023, Presidential aide and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller suggested that all of Venezuela’s oil belongs to Washington. That country’s proven reserves are the largest in the world.

The day before, Trump had imposed a “total and complete blockade” of oil shipments from Venezuela. He rationalizes the 2026 raids by saying the South American country’s oil industry was underperforming:

As everyone knows, the oil business in Venezuela has been a bust, a total bust, for a long period of time. They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping, and what could have taken place. We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, then start making money…

The U.S. administration said its military attacks on Venezuelan assets were part of a crackdown on drug trafficking and criminality. What we are really observing is another application of the Monroe Doctrine. President James Monroe’s 1823 assertion opposed European intervention in the Americas, but evolved to justify U.S. intervention against threats to its commercial interests.

The United Fruit Company, later known as Chiquita Brands International, owned vast Latin American land and economic holdings. It was the prime beneficiary of the Monroe Doctrine.

Today, the American government cares less about bananas and more about oil.

Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter states:

4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.