Empires do not go quietly into the night. Any hope that Donald Trump would be an “antiwar” president went out the window almost as soon as he won the 2024 election, when he filled his administration with a merry band of neocons. I’ve come to realize that with our bi-partisan war party–No matter who you vote for, you always get Lindsey Graham.

Before kidnapping the Venezuelan president, Trump imposed a crippling blockade, seizing Venezuelan oil tankers in the Caribbean, under the flimsy justification that they had been “sanctioned.” Playing the Pirate of the Caribbean, Trump boasted at his press conference a couple of weeks ago that he planned to keep the oil or possibly sell it. Then at yesterday’s press conference announcing his triumphant seizure of President Nicolas Maduro, Trump declared that America will now control Venezuela and our country will “take back” the Venezuelan oil reserves, which he stated were rightfully ours.

Sounds totally legit to me.

All snark aside, Trump’s actions are unprecedented and signal that any adherence to a “rules based international order” has been deep-sixed. Unfortunately, the US looks less like a confident hegemon, maintaining order in the Western Hemisphere and more like an exhausted one, deploying the iron-fist of military force to maintain control after every other attempt has fallen embarrassingly flat.

If we are to suss out the reasons for the latest US attack on Venezuela and kidnap of their president, it’s probably a good idea to follow the money. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Trump is operating on behalf of financial capital. Wars, regime-change ops and sanctions are driven by the economic structure of the United States–oligarchy– and the role of multinational banks and corporations in the formulation of policy.

War is not just the health of the state, it’s the health of the power structures that control the state.

The attack on Venezuela that Trump laughably described as an effort to stop narco-terror belies the true objective of the kidnapping operation to remove Maduro, which is to secure the US control of Venezuelan oil. Remember kids, Venezuela has the world’s largest petroleum reserves. Although Trump’s boast that US oil companies would come in and invest billions to transform Venezuela’s petroleum industry seems suspect due to the immense costs involved, control of the oil is reason enough. The key is petrodollar-denominated oil. The US  simply could not allow Venezuela’s oil to be sold in yuan, ruble, rupee or a basket of currencies. Only in dollars.

But oil isn’t the only strategic resource lying under Venezuelan soil. The country is also home to the fourth largest gold reserves on the planet and eighth largest natural gas reserves, as well as a treasure trove of critical minerals such as bauxite, iron ore, copper, zinc, nickel and even rare earth materials.

Returning to the role of multinational banks and corporations in the formulation of US policy–all of Wall Street’s fictitious capital–derivatives stacked on top of derivatives–are seeking a physical backstop. Former British Diplomat and MI6 analyst, Alastair Crooke has argued that US national finances are in very bad shape and this is leading to Trump’s seizure of global resources to prevent the collapse of the US dollar. “Today, with the U.S. in an era of unsustainable structural budget deficits, Trump is laser-focused on America’s financial core: The Treasury bond market (America’s lifeline) and the stock market (America’s wallet). Both are fragile. And any external pressure could trigger a chain reaction. Which is why Trump threatens war on anyone seeking to supplant or bypass the U.S. dollar trading monopoly. China was purchasing Venezuela oil and paying for it in yuan rather than dollars.”

While oil is the most obvious motivation behind the kidnapping of Maduro, getting rid of one of the hostile countries to Israel and Zionism in Latin America and returning Venezuela to when it maintained good relations with Israel and even purchased security technologies from it has undoubtedly played a role as well. Maduro, like his predecessor Hugo Chavez, was one of the few world leaders who stood in solidarity with the Palestinians and called out Zionism as a hateful ideology of terror. His removal is a coup for Israel and the neocons. On a recent appearance on Newsmax, the American Christian Zionist ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, boasted that Trump’s recent kidnapping of Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, was good for Israel.

Then there’s a school-of-thought that believes that the US is seeking control over Venezuela oil in anticipation of a disruption of the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf when Israel, with US-backing, launches a new attack on Iran. I’m sure it was simply a happy accident that the attack on Venezuela happened days after Trump’s latest meeting with Netanyahu. And I’m sure that the protests that erupted in Iran following Trump’s Monday meeting with Netanyahu were a coincidence too.

What clear is that the attack on Venezuela is the first real manifestation of the so-called Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Trump, as his usual, makes everything obvious, and echoes Thucydides, where “The strong do what they will and the weak accept what they have to accept.” He does not even try to justify his illegal attack on Venezuela with any of the usual propaganda. There is no talk of imposing democracy or saving woman or any other moral justification. It’s simply thuggish. Grab the oil–it’s ours–and ignore international law and opinion. The indictment of Maduro is just laughable.

The Onion sums up the absurdity.

Update: No expose would be complete without acknowledging the bankruptcy of the corporate media. The story of the attack on Venezuela and kidnap of the president, as well as all of the “war on terror” reporting, is also a story of a corrupt and captured corporate media. A media which does not speak truth to power, but which amplifies the lies and propaganda of the powerful. A media which deliberately omits critical context and manufactures consent for violence. A media which professes concern for international law, democracy and for the downtrodden, and then cheers on the regime-change ops and ongoing violence of the US empire.

Update 2: This article provides more evidence that the attack on Venezuela was all about the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.

Here’s a taste: “In November 2025, something extraordinary happened in Hong Kong that most people missed entirely. China issued $4 billion worth of bonds denominated in US dollars; a routine financial transaction on its surface. But when the orders came in, they totaled $118 billion. Thirty times oversubscribed. Investors from around the world were practically trampling each other to buy Chinese government debt.

Here’s the part that should make everyone pay attention: these Chinese bonds began trading at “lower yields” than United States Treasury bonds. Read that again slowly. Global investors were accepting lower returns on Chinese debt than on American debt—despite China holding a lower credit rating (A+ versus America’s AA). In the hierarchy of global finance, this is roughly equivalent to a challenger brand outselling Coca-Cola at a higher price. It simply doesn’t happen. Until it did.

One month later, the United States began mobilizing for potential intervention in Venezuela. If you think these events are unrelated, you’re missing the most important geopolitical story of our generation. This is about the slow-motion collapse of the architecture that has supported American power for half a century: the dollar’s role as the world’s dominant reserve currency. And Venezuela, improbably, has become ground zero in the fight to preserve it.”