Oil pirate Donald Trump wants to get US elites back in control of Venezuela’s massive oil reserves. But his push for intervention in Venezuela isn’t just echoing what the US said before it decimated Iraq to get its oil. It’s actually ramping up the smash and grab policy that is the hallmark of the US.

Trump has serious Iraq 2.0 energy, but with a twist

Trump has said he’s been ordering illegal executions off the Venezuelan coast because the victims are “narco-terrorists”. This is an echo of George W Bush’s attempts to link Saddam Hussein with terrorism in 2003. As is Trump regime’s talk of dictators, imminent threats and, now, ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (WMDs).

Trump has long sought to link his country’s problem with the drug fentanyl to Venezuela. And now, he has officially labelled fentanyl a WMD. The sticking point, though, is that Venezuela has pretty much nothing to do with the US fentanyl crisis.

Even loyal imperialist mouthpiece the New York Times, which would very much like regime change in Venezuela, has said:

Venezuela plays virtually no role in the fentanyl trade

And:

Venezuela Doesn’t Produce Fentanyl

US government sources know this, too, having consistently highlighted the role of more powerful nations China, India, and Mexico in the fentanyl supply chain:

The US government itself previously identified the main countries involved in fentanyl flow as China, India and Mexico. It didn’t even bother showing Venezuela on the map.https://t.co/Q31IlibmQN pic.twitter.com/fvZEfan3YR

— Ed Sykes (@OsoSabioUK) December 16, 2025

The US undeniably has a big problem with fentanyl. But regime-changing Venezuela wouldn’t solve that. That’s because:

Mexican transnational criminal organizations—principally the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel—serve as the main producers and traffickers of finished illicit fentanyl.

The vast majority of fentanyl seizures, however, have been on the US-Mexican border.https://t.co/qjoob6oWy3 pic.twitter.com/JaAxSoMQhL

— Ed Sykes (@OsoSabioUK) December 16, 2025

The US would absolutely like to regime-change Mexico. Because it currently has a less servile government than in previous decades. But it would be a harder sell due to the volatility surrounding extremely violent drug cartels and the potential refugee crisis on the border that might result from military action. That’s why quieter US efforts alongside Mexico’s business class seem to be the current strategy.

The real solution to the fentanyl crisis

The fentanyl crisis is not only a US problem. But thanks to vast economic inequality and a private healthcare system that loves drugs, it’s particularly bad in the US.

Producers mixing fentanyl with other drugs is what’s killing so many people. But as the Scientific American says:

The problem is bigger than fentanyl and its derivatives. There is something more deeply wrong with the U.S. that makes so many people, often ones living in poverty with mental illness or with histories of abuse, turn to illicit drug use. “[W]e are frankly unwilling to fix the economic cruelty that drives and keeps people locked in dangerous drug use,” as drug policy writer Zachary Siegel wrote last year in Scientific American.

No amount of guns can fix drug abuse. Wars on drugs fail because they don’t deal with demand. And as the article above stresses:

Our nation’s long-running inequity spawns this demand.

To end people’s suffering, physical and mental health support needs to increase, and people’s economic situation needs to improve. Decriminalisation can also have a positive impact. Deal with why people are taking drugs, and everything else will follow.

Ending the vast inequalities at home – resulting from a past of colonialism, labour exploitation and slavery and from the current economic system that empowers the wealthy and disempowers everyone else – is the key.

So Venezuela is just another oil grab, then?

It’s pretty obvious to most sensible commentators that Trump and the warhawks surrounding him are basically copying the Iraq playbook for Venezuela. The threat of WMDs was the fake argument back in 2003. The invasion of Iraq was an unmitigated horror show that ignited a flame in western Asia that still hasn’t gone out. And it’s the same story now.

The Trump regime is barely even trying to make reasonable arguments in favour of its unprovoked hostility against Venezuela. And that’s partly because Trump has never hidden his interest in stealing oil. He has long insisted that the US should have paid for its destruction of places like Iraq and Libya with the oil it took from them.

For many years, elites have been trying to re-establish US control in Venezuela. And corrupt international institutions like the Nobel Peace Prize have done their best to help.

The problem is Venezuela is not the world’s fentanyl capital. And installing in power a neoliberal elitist (who has called for a “massive privatisation programme” and hyped up “a $1.7tn opportunity” for companies to plunder her country’s resources) is not a good deal for Venezuelan people.

Venezuela has the world largest oil reserves, at 20%. It’s oil is heavy thick crude.

The U.S. needs heavy crude.

This detailed video explains why the U.S. is stealing Venezuela crude. It’s not about drugs. It’s about oil pic.twitter.com/amm5s87TTp

— mmatigari (@matigary) December 12, 2025

The US must be stopped

The wealth of US arms dealers continues to rise. Half of all the world’s arms money went to the US in 2024. And you don’t get into a position like that without decades of terrorising the world – and Latin America in particular.

US isolation in the international community is already growing starker amid its participation in Israel’s genocide.  But Trump’s increasingly absurd justifications for US terror abroad should only isolate it further. And the era of impunity must finally come to an end.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

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