It Was Never About Drugs

America launched a military operation to attack Venezuela’s capital and abduct its president to face trial in the United States.

This isn’t about drugs or saving American lives. It isn’t about sham elections or upholding democracy. It is about the control of natural resources, a common theme in Trump’s global bullying.

It Was Never About Drugs

Contrary to the ongoing narrative by the Trump administration as they excuse away the murder of over 115 people on boats off the coast of Venezuela, this isn’t about drugs. Venezuela does not traffic in fentanyl, the leading cause of overdose deaths in the US.

Fentanyl is manufactured by Mexican drug cartels using chemicals from China and is smuggled across the border primarily by US citizens. Yet the US didn’t launch attacks against Mexican cartels or the Chinese factories producing precursor chemicals; it attacked Venezuela.

An investigation conducted by New York Times journalists of the wreckage of one of the earliest strikes against boats near Venezuela found no trace of fentanyl, only what appeared to be marijuana, a drug legal in 40 of the 50 US states.

It also doesn’t take a dozen warships, amphibious assault vehicles, spy planes, bombers, F-35 fighter jets, Osprey transport aircraft, helicopters, and 15,000 troops to fight drug smugglers. Those are the forces used to run blockades, conduct tactical strikes, or invade.

It Isn’t About Democracy

Last night, those forces conducted a military operation around Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, with at least seven blasts reported. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife had been living on a military base where US forces descended in a rapid assault to capture the leader and whisk him away to the USS Iwo Jima, which is now on its way back to the US.

While the US government is still putting out messages about Maduro being a narco-terrorist, one of the supporting arguments is that Maduro is the illegitimate President due to corruption during the last election. Much of the world has long agreed that the previous Venezuelan election was a sham and that Maduro should not hold power, but that doesn’t create justification for a military operation into a sovereign nation to abduct its leader, without congressional or UN approval.

If a sham election is enough justification for an attack, why hasn’t the United States launched an operation into Moscow to apprehend Vladimir Putin, who has rigged numerous elections and committed atrocious war crimes? Instead, Trump invited Putin to US soil and had US military forces down on their knees to roll out a red carpet for the tyrant. Kim Jong Un is another brutal authoritarian leader who violently cracks down on any dissent in North Korea and does not allow his people to freely vote for new leaders. America hasn’t sent forces into Pyongyang to dispose of North Korea’s regime. Instead, Trump has praised Kim for ruling with an iron fist.

It Is About Natural Resources

When you wash away the lies about America’s attacks on Venezuela, you’re left with the fact that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on the planet, and Trump wants the US to control them. That is also why the US began seizing oil tankers near Venezuela, with Trump’s excuse that Venezuela somehow stole its own oil from America.

US oil companies used to dominate Venezuela's oil reserves until the mid-1970s, when then-President Perez nationalized its oil industry, pushing many companies out. Some US companies remained, although more were pushed out in the early 2000s, leaving only Chevron, which had agreed to renegotiations that left it with a minority stake in a few projects.

Trump has been focused on securing US control of natural resources around the globe since he returned to office. Soon after taking office, Trump began pushing Ukraine toward a joint venture with the US to mine its vast rare-earth elements, including one of the world’s largest lithium deposits, an element used in modern batteries, if Ukraine wanted to continue to receive US support to fight off the Russian invasion.

After increasing tensions with Saudi Arabia, including threats to impose tariffs or block oil imports from the nation, Trump walked away with a deal under which the American company MP Materials, whose largest shareholder is the US government, will control half of Saudi Arabia's rare-earth refineries.

Trump has routinely talked about taking over Greenland, even though the nation has no interest in being American and is a territory of Denmark, a NATO ally. There are two reasons Trump wants control of Greenland. The first is that its location provides a key strategic position for ships traveling through the Arctic, a standard shipping and military transportation route. America has had a strategic agreement with Greenland since 1951, allowing the US to maintain bases in the country and to travel freely between them. The other reason is that Greenland has several large deposits of critical rare-earth minerals.

Why Focus on Natural Resources

While the world is shifting to renewable energy sources, oil is still king. America is already the largest producer of oil and one of the largest exporters, along with Saudi Arabia and Russia, but OPEC+ remains a significant influencer of world oil prices. Controlling Venezuela’s vast oil reserves will tilt the balance of power more toward the US.

China controls 70% of the world’s rare-earth mineral mining and 90% of refining and production. That means all countries that produce high-tech products rely heavily on China. There is now a scramble to develop new sources of rare-earth minerals and establish production outside China. America wants control of those supplies.

America has its own large reserves of rare earth minerals, but they remain largely untouched, and we lack the facilities to process what we do mine, meaning that we ship what we dig up to other countries. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that China undercut processing prices for decades, which drove US companies out of the market. The second is that opening a new mine in the US takes decades. The permitting process alone can take up to 10 years compared to 2 years in peer nations like Canada and Australia.

The US is looking to close this gap on rare earth mineral mining, refining, and production by utilizing the Defense Production Act to spur American development, and, as has become clear with Venezuela, by returning to imperialism to take what we want by using our massive military and economic power to bully or even attack smaller countries.

A far cry from the inward turn of isolationism that Trump had campaigned on.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/world/americas/trump-boat-strikes-gulf-of-venezuela-wreckage.html

https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-us-explosions-caracas-ca712a67aaefc30b1831f5bf0b50665e

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-and-mbs-unveil-u-s-saudi-ventures-on-rare-earth-minerals-and-nuclear-energy

https://www.cfr.org/article/us-critical-minerals-dilemma-what-know