An explainer on Venezuela, Iraq, and how a drug war quietly became something else
This fight didn’t start as an argument about oil.
It started, at least officially, as a war on drugs.
For years, U.S. policy toward Venezuela was framed around narcotics trafficking, corruption, and criminal networks tied to the Maduro regime. Indictments. Sanctions. Seizures. Maritime interdictions. Destruction of alleged drug boats with their crews. The language was familiar, legally tidy, and politically safe. Nobody runs for office defending drug cartels.
But over time, the rhetoric shifted.
Now the talk is about “our oil.”
About “our land.”
About who should control Venezuela’s resources.
That change matters — because it reveals what this conflict has always been drifting toward, even when it wasn’t being said out loud.
Start with the rule everyone used to agree on
Oil belongs to the country under whose soil it sits. That’s not ideology. It’s international law, long-standing global practice, and a framework the United States itself helped build after World War II.
American companies do not “own” foreign oil fields. They lease the right to extract oil under contracts approved by sovereign governments. When those contracts expire or are renegotiated, the oil doesn’t revert to Washington.
Leases are temporary. Sovereignty is not.
Venezuela: leased, then bought back
In the early 20th century, European and American companies — Shell, Gulf, Exxon’s predecessors — built Venezuela’s oil industry. They brought capital, rigs, pipelines, refineries, and expertise. Venezuela provided the land and the crude.
By the 1940s and ’50s, Venezuelan governments began demanding higher royalties and taxes, including the famous 50/50 profit-sharing model that later shaped OPEC. This wasn’t radical. It was arithmetic.
In 1976, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry and created PDVSA. And here’s the part often skipped: the foreign companies were compensated. Paid for their physical assets. Internationally recognized. No chaos. No mobs.
The U.S. accepted it. Markets accepted it. PDVSA went on to become one of the most respected national oil companies in the world — run by engineers, not ideologues.
Venezuela’s oil collapse came decades later, when Hugo Chávez politicized PDVSA, purged experienced staff, underinvested in maintenance, and turned the company into a political piggy bank. Nationalization wasn’t the sin. Mismanagement was.
Iraq: secured, not seized
After the Iraq War, Donald Trump repeatedly said the United States should take Iraqi oil as compensation. The response from the military was swift and blunt.
Then–Defense Secretary Gen. Jim Mattis said:
“We’re not taking anyone’s oil.”
That wasn’t sentiment. It was strategy.
U.S. forces protected Iraqi oil fields to prevent sabotage and economic collapse — not to siphon profits. Iraqi oil revenues went into Iraqi accounts. Poorly managed later? Yes. Corruptly looted by Iraqi elites? Absolutely. But not shipped out as American spoils of war.
Had the U.S. tried to seize Iraqi oil, the occupation would have collapsed overnight. Every pipeline would have become a battlefield. Every soldier would have been seen as a thief.
Mattis understood something armies relearn the hard way: once you’re perceived as there to take resources, legitimacy evaporates and insurgencies multiply.
Why the shift in language matters
Calling foreign oil “ours” isn’t just inaccurate — it’s revealing.
It marks a move away from:
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Law enforcement language
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Sanctions-based pressure
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Rules-based legitimacy
And toward something older:
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Resource entitlement
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Regime coercion
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Imperial logic
That shift weakens everything the U.S. claims to be enforcing.
Sanctions look less like law and more like theft.
Interdictions look less like enforcement and more like piracy.
Allies grow uneasy.
Adversaries gain propaganda.
The U.S. can enforce sanctions.
It can seize illicit cargo.
It can pressure regimes that violate international norms.
What it cannot do — without corroding its credibility — is pretend other nations’ land and resources belong to it by default.
So what is this really about?
Despite the drug-war framing, the standoff with Caracas is not primarily about narcotics.
Drugs are the legal hook — useful for indictments, seizures, and domestic messaging. Venezuela does sit astride trafficking routes, and elements of the regime have been credibly accused of profiting from that trade.
But if drugs were the core issue, Venezuela wouldn’t loom this large on the U.S. strategic map.
The real drivers are heavier.
Oil comes first.
Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves on the planet. Who controls their development, where those barrels go, and whether they bypass U.S.-led markets matters — especially when much of that oil flows to China through sanctions-evading shadow fleets.
Regime change comes second.
Washington has been unusually explicit about wanting Nicolás Maduro gone. Recognition of Juan Guaidó wasn’t symbolic — it was an open attempt to fracture the regime. That effort failed, leaving pressure without a clean exit strategy.
Geopolitics binds it together.
Venezuela is embedded in a network that includes China, Russia, and Iran — a sanctioned energy node operating inside the Western Hemisphere. From Washington’s perspective, this isn’t just about Caracas. It’s about precedent.
That’s why the language keeps drifting from drugs to oil.
That’s why “blockade” slips into the vocabulary.
That’s why sovereignty starts sounding negotiable.
The old rule still holds
America’s postwar strength didn’t come from taking oil. It came from writing the rules, building markets, and enforcing norms that others eventually followed.
That system replaced empire with law for a reason.
When leaders forget that — or pretend the old imperial logic never died — they weaken the very order that once worked in America’s favor.
Which is why, whether the framing is drugs, oil, or regime change, the answer remains the same:
It was never our oil.