The Trump-ordered attack on Venezuela and capture of its president is meant not only to be a distraction from the mounting Epstein scandal. It's also a power play consistent with the American president's backward-looking economic and geopolitical view of the world.
From a tactical perspective, President Donald Trump and his team appear to be following the well-known playbook outlined in the novel and subsequent movie "Wag the Dog." In them, a phony war is cooked up to divert the American public's attention from a president who's about to be engulfed by a sex scandal. In the real world, millions of pages of material related to sexual predator and one-time Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein have yet to be released. As that process unfolds, the incentives for diversion will only grow.
OK, that's a tentative explanation for the why behind military action now, but why directed against Venezuela? Critical to Trump's pipe dream of turning the calendar back to the 1950s is greater control of the world's oil production. Back then, hydrocarbons were the irreplaceable fuel that drove the industrial world's economy, so reliant on power plants and internal combustion engines. Trump turned his back on the future in January 2025 when he issued executive orders that froze renewable energy projects and axed electric vehicle tax credits.
During the last century, American troops invaded or occupied Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Grenada and Panama to bolster American economic and strategic dominance. In Trump's view, it's now Venezuela's turn under his self-branded "Donroe Doctrine."
Any assertion by the administration that its goal in Venezuela is cutting off drugs is belied by Trump's pardon of Honduras' former president who was sentenced to 45 years for importing cocaine and related weapons crimes. In other words, Trump issued a get-out-of-jail-free card to a convicted "narco-president" while invading another country to stop an alleged "narco-terrorist." The difference? Unlike Honduras, Venezuela has huge oil reserves, the world's largest. However, it ranks only 21st in oil production. As Trump said, "They were pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been." He intends to have "our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in" and get more oil flowing. Coercion plus U.S. corporate engagement would look like a big win to Trump. While the original Monroe Doctrine was meant to keep Europe out of other countries in the Western Hemisphere, the Donroe Doctrine seems designed to let American Big Oil in.
When he doubled the tariffs on imported steel in June of last year, Trump said: "A strong steel industry is not just a matter of dignity or prosperity and pride. It is above all a matter of national security." He has also issued an executive order stating "coal is essential to our national and economic security" and ordering the removal of "Federal regulatory barriers that undermine coal production." Of course, in the 2020s as contrasted to the 1950s, leading in steel and coal production matter less to American power than leading in solar panels or battery manufacturing. However, as the slogan "make America great again" implies, when it comes to technology, Trump is looking in the rearview mirror of a 1950-model Oldsmobile 88.
What other nations has Trump threatened? How about Canada, which Trump has suggested become the 51st state. Without evidence, he has accused our northern neighbor, too, of being a contributor to American drug problems. Guess what? Canada is estimated to have the second most petroleum reserves of any Western Hemisphere country after Venezuela. Neither is an enemy nation that threatens American security, but both do possess huge oil reserves. Trump has also revived threats of a U.S. military takeover of Greenland, another neighbor with potential wealth just waiting to be extracted — not oil this time, but rare earth elements.
Trump is trying to build a nation that would again stand triumphant in the 1950s world of gas guzzlers, bullying foreign countries and women who "let you... do anything." His problem is twofold: Seven decades have gone by, and the course of history runs forward, not backward.
A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started a successful internet software company, and had six books published including five novels and a collection of his columns. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. You can learn more about him at keithraffel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com
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