"Thou shalt not steal.”
Exodus 20:15
Are we really OK with taking Venezuela’s oil?
We are strong. They are weak. They cannot stop us.
But is expropriating oil from poor countries because we can -- is that the kind of country we understand ourselves to be?
We took over Venezuela very successfully. And they’ve sent me as a gift a boatload of a million barrels of oil, and I’m giving that to the United States of America. We’re going to accept a million barrels of oil, and I’m going to give it to you people to use it the way you want.
In January the U.S. invaded Venezuela and arrested its president, Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. did not then install María Corina Machado, leader of the popular opposition and winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for that work. It installed Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, as interim leader, keeping the same corrupt regime in place. The U.S. got a compliant Venezuelan leader.
Trump makes a cursory effort to put a veneer of justice or mutual benefit on our taking control of Venezuelan oil. The deal gives the U.S. the right to buy a fifth of the output “at cost,” from fields the White House says are concessioned for 100 years. At the United Nations in September he called it an oil “deal.” Then he proudly described it as plunder:
Last month, we signed the largest oil deal in history, covering 65 billion barrels of oil, which will benefit both Venezuela and the United States enormously and helped drive down the cost of energy all over the world. And that is starting to perk right now. It’s coming out. The biggest oil companies in the world are going in, and the numbers are absolutely incredible. When you add the United States and Venezuela together, we have more than 60 percent of the oil in the world. So it’s perhaps the biggest deal. It was a war, but it’s perhaps the biggest deal ever made. To the victor belongs the spoils, you’ve all heard that.
Some of Trump’s wealth-seeking is private. He made some $600 million from selling a crypto coin with no intrinsic value. Individual investors lost some $3.8 billion as the coin fell from a peak of about $75, days after launch, to about $1.58 today. He simply cheated his loyal supporters: a private matter, not a matter of state. The large buyers are different. Their purchases were bribes in disguise. They were buying influence or “protection” for themselves and their businesses, a corruption of the public interest for private gain. Americans can observe this open corruption and be disgusted by it. I am. Trump is selling the public trust.
This oil “deal” is different. It directly involves every American citizen, and it changes the polarity of benefit. Trump is plundering Venezuela for us. In his telling, Venezuela is “giving” him oil, a personal gift, and he is re-gifting it to Americans.
Americans need to sit with this and decide if we are OK with it. The U.S. has been openly exploitive of smaller countries throughout our history, most openly in Latin America -- the Banana Republics, as we called them. But the way that history is taught in school, and framed today, says that is the past. Yes, the CIA or the U.S. Army did bad things, but we have learned our lesson. We are good and well-disciplined now. We are the good guys. There is enormous hypocrisy and self-delusion built into that framing, but at least it was hypocrisy. Plunder wasn’t the stated norm.
Now it is. Trump identifies the U.S. as a predator. We are the danger that the rest of the world protects against. We are the smash-and-grab criminal.
I am not OK with that. It makes me feel ashamed of my country, and I don’t want to feel ashamed of it.
And if it seems naive to cite morality in matters of state, I will cite practicality. I have enough experience in business to trust the childhood chant when a player cheats on the playground: “Cheaters never prosper.”
At least not for long. Bad behavior and a bad reputation catch up to them.
[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]
This oil “deal” is different. It directly involves every American citizen, and it changes the polarity of benefit. Trump is plundering Venezuela for us. In his telling, Venezuela is “giving” him oil, a personal gift, and he is re-gifting it to Americans.
Americans need to sit with this and decide if we are OK with it. The U.S. has been openly exploitive of smaller countries throughout our history, most openly in Latin America -- the Banana Republics, as we called them. But the way that history is taught in school, and framed today, says that is the past. Yes, the CIA or the U.S. Army did bad things, but we have learned our lesson. We are good and well-disciplined now. We are the good guys. There is enormous hypocrisy and self-delusion built into that framing, but at least it was hypocrisy. Plunder wasn’t the stated norm.
Now it is. Trump identifies the U.S. as a predator. We are the danger that the rest of the world protects against. We are the smash-and-grab criminal.
I am not OK with that. It makes me feel ashamed of my country, and I don’t want to feel ashamed of it.
And if it seems naive to cite morality in matters of state, I will cite practicality. I have enough experience in business to trust the childhood chant when a player cheats on the playground: “Cheaters never prosper.”
At least not for long. Bad behavior and a bad reputation catch up to them.
[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]
1 comment:
Being morally corrupt as a country or as a person will eventually lead to downfall is a belief I choose to have and attempt to live by. Will good triumph over evil? Eventually it will.
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