Fernando Rugitsky in Phenomenal World:
After giving the order for Nicolás Maduro’s kidnapping, Donald Trump declared that the United States was now planning to ‘‘run’’ Venezuela. “It won’t cost us anything,” Trump said,
because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial . . . The oil companies are going to go in. They’re going to spend money. We’re going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago. A lot of money is coming out of the ground.
In the past, when Washington claimed to act in the name of humanitarianism, democracy, or freedom, it was up to us—political economists—to reveal its ulterior motives, the material interests beneath the media spin. Now, as TJ Clark has written, political hypocrisy itself seems to be under threat. If imperial resource-grabbing is openly acknowledged, what is left for us to analyze?
Over the last week, much of the debate on the US attack has questioned whether oil is really the determinant factor. Some argue that Venezuela’s heavy crude is too expensive to extract, and that—given the current state of the market and the unlikelihood of price increases in the near future—this would be an irrational investment for US corporations. Others, meanwhile, note that about half of Venezuela’s oil reserves are not of the heavy kind found in the Orinoco Belt, and claim that in oil fields in the Maracaibo and Monagas basins there is still the potential for “quick wins” for big oil companies and oil-service firms.
More here.
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