Why the US wants to steal Venezuela's oil& resources?

[zazen]

I think it’s mostly empire logic (domination) with capital (profit) as a bonus - what BlueOak mentioned about BRICS basically if we zoom out.

They can’t have a nation be outside their system and survive that easily - especially if it’s in their own hemisphere. A defiant nation cracks their legitimacy - Venezuela has survived despite nationalising oil, sanctions and is doing so via a parallel non dollar system.

So maybe they want to make an example of Venezuela - to discipline them so other Latin American countries don’t think of trading outside that system in their local currencies etc. China’s the largest trading partner among South American countries.

Venezuelan oil is perfect for US refineries that are set up to refine it - only Canada and Russia have that type of heavy crude. But US already gets most from Canada so it’s not like they need Venezuelan oil so bad - maybe as an insurance as a country should never rely on a single source.

US oil companies aren’t too enthusiastic about it either due to risk: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/17/trump-oil-venezuela-return-00695292

Venezuela only provides 4% of China energy so cutting off China can’t be the main reason either. Maduro even offered Trump access: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/world/americas/maduro-venezuela-us-oil.html

From Sky news: 

In October, Mr Trump appeared to confirm reports that Mr Maduro had offered a stake in Venezuela's oil and other mineral wealth to ease mounting pressure from the United States.

"He's offered everything," Mr Trump said at the time. "You know why? Because he doesn't want to f*** around with the United States."

So if the oils not needed, they can’t blockade China in any meaningful way (only 4%), and Maduro’s open to working with the US then why still be aggressive? Has to be empire logic to protect the US led, Western world order from any defectors and defiant examples showing others that it’s possible to exist outside it.

lol 

Some interesting related vids:

 

[Schizophonia]

1 hour ago, Daniel Balan said:

@Schizophonia Ok, I'm openminded, but I still believe USSR was a textbook example of empire. They collonized the people of eastern Europe ideologically

 

It was a dictature yes.

I don't promote Staline 

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 they collonized the people who had capital and property and redistributed the land and the resources of the bourgeoisie to the lazy and unproductive.

 

No it is precisely the bourgeois who can have the privilege to be "lazy and unproductive"; the characteristic of being a bourgeois is precisely to earn excessively compared to others simply through the right to private property; because you were in the right place at the right time.

And if there are people who earn a lot because they own the capital, it means that on the other side there are people who earn less even if they are productive.

And it's natural for people to be productive if they're in good physical and mental health and not high on alcohol or heroin, lol; and even under any socialist system, even a lax one, you can't live on welfare alone—that's the bare minimum.
There are 5% of people in France who don't work and receive welfare and France is particularly lax; the French are also still one of the most productive populations in the world in terms of wealth generated per hour on average.

So you're fixated on this but it's just not true.

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They collonized eastern Europe with north Korea style secret police, ineffective central planning and a total backward dictatorship.

 

Ceaușescu was one of many communist leaders with their own vision of communism, and he was a rather foolish dictator.

Colonization means that you directly control a territory through colonists; this is not colonization.

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Furthermore, the industrialization was planned catastrophically, thus freezing eastern Europe for 50 years, after the collapse of the ussr, eastern Europe was after collonialism, the industry was bankrupt, people were starving, queueing for bread and clothes etc. 

 

I've already explained all of this elsewhere, I'm not going to repeat myself.

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Only after a colonialist empire there are such economic outcomes, easter Europe was in the same state as was a conquered city state after the retreat of the Roman empire back in ancient times, while Western Europe advanced industrially, economically, politically during the second half of the 20th century, after 1990, 

Western Europe was much less affected by the war and benefited greatly from the Marshall Plan particularly West Germany.
After the war France implemented a semi-planned economic policy due to the Communist Party's victory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_French_legislative_election)in the parliamentary elections, and this coincided with the greatest period of growth in its history. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trente_Glorieuses)

 

You're comparing Western Europe, where there were relatively few conflicts and deaths, and which ultimately received generous aid from the United States, with Eastern Europe which was devastated, undergone tens of millions of deaths, and had to rebuild itself on its own

And once again you're lying; it depends on the country. Ukraine has always been poor, but East Germany industrialized well despite the dictatorship and lack of aid. France and East Germany did recover in the west, but Spain remained quite poor.

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eastern Europe had to go back to square one to rebuild and create efficient industry, agriculture, manufacturing etc and the process is still a lot behind compared to western Europe. All of that because communism created only inefficient and without any economical fundation industrialization. When the communism collapsed, the local population had no capital whatsoever to start rebuilding, thanks to the communist "non imperialism" political framework. 

Of course they do; all factories and infrastructure in general are capital.
Russia's transition to a market economy went badly and increased poverty, corruption, violence, and inequality; a large portion of that capital was simply stolen by a handful of oligarchs.
Poland's transition went very well, the best transition of all ex USSR's satellite states; it's a matter of organization, and here you're admitting that the shift to a market economy tends to jeopardize living standards and institutions more than the other way around ahah; perhaps you don't realize it but that's your own deduction.

Today the vast majority of poor and very poor countries are capitalist countries; capitalism doesn't systematically increase wealth it doesn't work that way; the causality is reversed, because a state industrializes it becomes more liberal by developing a bourgeois class that will in fine strive to increase its rights.
The French Revolution for example was bourgeois; among the first measures taken by the Jacobins were liberal ones such as the abolition of guilds.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Chapelier_Law_1791)

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If freezing in place half a continent for almost 50 years is not the highest form of collonialism, I think I will give up.

 

No that's not it; words have a definition.

Edited 3 hours ago by Schizophonia

[Daniel Balan]

@SchizophoniaBro, Russia and eastern Europe had no choice but to transition to a market economy, even if they wanted to remain communist they couldn't, the whole structure of the planned economy was falling down on itself, without the painful transition to the market economy, USSR and its Eastern Europe satellites would have had the same fate as The Weimar Republic in the late 1920's and early 1930's. The whole economy was in such dire straits that it could no longer bear its own weight. Some countries like Poland and Czechia had much more well thought transition phases, others like Russia, Ukraine, Romania had much more brutal outcomes. Why? Because Poland applied shock therapy, rapid well thought privatization, the population was educated on state television about free market, stock market and capitalism, whereas in Russia, Romania and Ukraine either the new private owners stole everything from the system or the state refused to privatize all together, for example in Romania it wasn't until 1996 until the state began privatization, here there was still this backward mentality of "Not selling the country to imperialist capitalists", this ended up destroying even the quasi profitable factories, the lack of proper serious privatization and the fact that the state continued to waste money on unprivatized, unmodernized factories, made the situation even worse, sky high inflation and a total destruction of even the factories that could have been saved with proper privatization by serious investors and modernisation. The fact that you don't see that communism was the very reason why people struggled massively in the 1990's is staggering. In the 1990's Russia and eastern Europe had to suffer precisely because of the effects of the disastrous communist management not  because of the transition to a free market. The transition to a market was the medicine. Blaming the transition to the market economy It is like you are blaming your doctor for giving you treatment for a deadly disease. 

Edited 3 hours ago by Daniel Balan

[Daniel Balan]

@zazen When China will invade Taiwan, what will you say, Eastern Imperialism? Or the word imperialist is solely attributed to the corrupt decadent west?
If Trump invades Venezuela is because he is a devil and a monster, not because of "WESTERN IMPERIALISM", the world is not a Soviet conspiracy theory.

[Daniel Balan]

1 hour ago, zazen said:

I think it’s mostly empire logic (domination) with capital (profit) as a bonus - what BlueOak mentioned about BRICS basically if we zoom out.

They can’t have a nation be outside their system and survive that easily - especially if it’s in their own hemisphere. A defiant nation cracks their legitimacy - Venezuela has survived despite nationalising oil, sanctions and is doing so via a parallel non dollar system.

The projection is off the charts here and laughable. This is exactly why China wants to invade Taiwan and why both China and North Korea hate South Korea and Japan. 

I can't believe how laughable these "Anti-Western, BRICS " naratives are, they are basically projecting their own devilry and wicked intentions on to the west. 

[Ulax]

Seems reasonable for US to take these ships over.

The Venuzvelans are selling  oil illegally. And to my understanding those are the oil tankers being targeted.

[Schizophonia]

41 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

@SchizophoniaBro, Russia and eastern Europe had no choice but to transition to a market economy, even if they wanted to remain communist they couldn't, the whole structure of the planned economy was falling down on itself, without the painful transition to the market economy, USSR and its Eastern Europe satellites would have had the same fate as The Weimar Republic in the late 1920's and early 1930's. The whole economy was in such dire straits that it could no longer bear its own weight. Some countries like Poland and Czechia had much more well thought transition phases, others like Russia, Ukraine, Romania had much more brutal outcomes.

 

No; the USSR collapsed and liberalized because Boris Yeltsin basically staged a coup.

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Why? Because Poland applied shock therapy, rapid well thought privatization, the population was educated on state television about free market, stock market and capitalism, whereas in Russia, Romania and Ukraine either the new private owners stole everything from the system or the state refused to privatize all together, for example in Romania it wasn't until 1996 until the state began privatization, here there was still this backward mentality of "Not selling the country to imperialist capitalists", this ended up destroying even the quasi profitable factories, the lack of proper serious privatization and the fact that the state continued to waste money on unprivatized, unmodernized factories, made the situation even worse, sky high inflation and a total destruction of even the factories that could have been saved with proper privatization by serious investors and modernisation.

 

That's what I said; you're paraphrasing me.

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The fact that you don't see that communism was the very reason why people struggled massively in the 1990's is staggering. In the 1990's Russia and eastern Europe had to suffer precisely because of the effects of the disastrous communist management not  because of the transition to a free market. The transition to a market was the medicine. Blaming the transition to the market economy It is like you are blaming your doctor for giving you treatment for a deadly disease. 

If the transition to a free market is a medicine why did Ukraine have a lower GDP per capita than even Algeria just before the Russian invasion; most of the former Soviet bloc countries are still poor including Russia; Russia is overall a very poor country.

The USSR had a GDP almost equal to that of the United States, and now Russia, with 50% of the USSR's population, despite the opening to the global market that the end of the USSR allowed, isn't even worth a quarter of it.

There has only been regression.

Edited 2 hours ago by Schizophonia

[Daniel Balan]

@SchizophoniaI can't believe you take the soviet numbers as accurate, they lied from top to bottom about their economy, you can't trust anything number related from the USSR, the truth is that in the 90's people lived worse than in the 70's but without transition to a market economy the 90's would have been double or triple worse if they kept doubling down on communism. 

And the reason Ukraine, Belarus and Russia have a very low GDP per capita is because of corruption, no rule of law, no independent courts, no nothing, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are some of the most corrupt countries in the world, You westerners have no idea what corruption even is until you step foot in the ex-Soviet space, literally you guys in the west are living in a corrupt free paradise, Ex-Soviet countries have unimaginable levels of corruption.

[Elliott]

2 hours ago, Ulax said:

Seems reasonable for US to take these ships over.

The Venuzvelans are selling  oil illegally. And to my understanding those are the oil tankers being targeted.

The u.s. doesn't make international law.... Venezuela is a sovereign nation.

[Elliott]

One upside to Trump defunding stuff, a Democrat president can now defund the department of 'war', sell off a bunch of military equipment and fire all the nazis!!!!