Why, really, is Trump going after Venezuela?

The United States under President Donald Trump appears to be readying for war in Venezuela or at least is seeking to depose leader Nicolás Maduro. But it remains unclear why, exactly, the White House has decided to take aim at the regime in Caracas.

Trump has “repeatedly” shifted the public rationale for targeting Venezuela, said The Wall Street Journal. Drugs have been offered as a reason but so has ownership of oil fields formerly owned by U.S. companies. American officials say that “multiple rationales” have been discussed during internal administration discussions, but Congress has largely been left out of the loop. Some GOP members are concerned about “defending the prospects of U.S. military action” to anti-war MAGA voters in November. “I want to know what’s going to happen next,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said after a meeting with national security officials.

Minerals? Oil? Putin?

Trump’s focus on Venezuela is “about oil, not drugs,” Chris Brennan said at USA Today. Venezuela must “return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land and other Assets that they previously stole from us” during the nationalization of that country’s oil industry, Trump said in a Truth Social post. But a war in pursuit of oil profits would be the kind of “American military adventurism” that Trump once decried.

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“It is minerals, not drugs,” Krystal Kauffman said at The Hill. Rare minerals used in high technology and advanced manufacturing are “emerging as geopolitical currency” in the race to shape the next century, and Venezuela claims more than a trillion dollars in reserves. If that is the objective, the Trump administration should “negotiate agreements” instead of wage war. “Venezuelans deserve more than to become collateral in a global resource race.”

Venezuela is a “client state of Russia,” David Marcus said at Fox News. Action against Venezuela would be proof that Vladimir Putin “cannot keep his sketchy global friends safe.” The Russian leader is already “stretched” by the Ukraine war and U.S. sanctions. Trump’s target in Venezuela “isn’t really Maduro, it’s Putin.”

Maduro’s regime is “both an importer and exporter of instability,” Bret Stephens said at The New York Times. His government’s ties to China, Russia and Iran give those countries a “significant foothold in the Americas,” while Venezuela’s chaos has produced a “mass exodus of refugees and migrants.” Maduro should be given a chance to leave the country, but “any morally serious person should want this to end.”

A nation-building trap

The Trump administration has asked American oil companies if they want to return to Venezuela but is “getting no takers,” said Politico. Oil markets are already “glutted with supply,” and prices are at “nearly five-year lows,” giving oil companies little incentive to risk “pouring huge investments” into the country’s oil infrastructure. Forcing Maduro out of power would probably be the “easy part,” Gregory J. Wallance said at The Hill. It is the governing afterward that would be difficult. Trump could become the latest American president to “fall into the nation-building trap.”