Venezuela is swiftly becoming ground zero of President Trump’s America First reshaping of US foreign policy.
The United States seized the oil tanker Skipper off the country’s coast Wednesday, capping off months of heightened tensions. The sanctioned vessel has carried crude for Iran and had an estimated 1.1 million barrels on board.
On the surface, the pressure’s been over ridding Caracas of illegitimate President Nicolás Maduro.
Ditto ending government-sponsored narco-terrorists using Venezuela as a transit hub and safe haven to smuggle Colombian cocaine and other illicit drugs to North America and the Caribbean.
But confronting Maduro is far more about Team Trump reasserting US dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
Trump’s intended recipients?
Beijing, Tehran and Moscow.
His message?
Hands off.
Trump signaled his reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine was coming just days before taking office in January. While the mainstream media obsessed about his comments about Greenland and the Panama Canal, they missed his point.
He was warning about China’s short- and long-term intentions to create economic and military strangleholds on the Americas.
This includes President Xi Jinping’s designs to dominate the Northern Sea Route by declaring China a “Near-Arctic State” in 2018. Nominally, the declaration was about “developing shipping, carrying out scientific research and exploiting the region’s oil, gas, minerals, fisheries and other resources,” as the Wall Street Journal reported.
But it’s really about Beijing boxing the United States out of the Arctic, especially as its sea lanes open up due to polar warming. Hence Trump’s emphasis on the importance of Greenland in defending the NSR and his welcomed October announcement that the Coast Guard is purchasing 11 new icebreakers.
Xi is playing the same strategic game in the Panama Canal. Chinese companies control the key Pacific and Atlantic ports of Balboa and Cristóbal. Under the Trump administration’s aegis, a memorandum of understanding was signed in March for US-based BlackRock to acquire the ports.
Beijing, however, has delayed the closing, citing national security interests. And at the end of the world in South America, Xi is seeking to acquire port facilities in Punta Arenas, Chile, to dominate the Drake Passage.
Team Trump essentially seeks to end any great-power competition in the Americas — particularly China’s efforts to militarily dominate sea passages in the Arctic, Panama Canal Zone and Antarctica.
Given the National Security Strategy’s proclamation of the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, we now know how America intends to check and eventually end Chinese, Russian and Iranian malevolent activities in the Western Hemisphere.
It aims to preserve freedom of navigation in the Americas; eject crippling Chinese Belt and Road Initiative investment in Latin America and the Caribbean and replace it with American capital; and marginalize malign actors such as Maduro in Venezuela while rewarding US allies. --->READ MORE HERE
President Trump ordered a “total and complete blockade” of all oil tankers heading to and leaving Venezuela while labeling the country a “foreign terrorist organization” and demanding the regime return “all of the oil, land, and other assets that they previously stole from us.”
“Today, I am ordering A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela,” Trump declared on Truth Social Tuesday.
“America will not allow Criminals, Terrorists, or other Countries, to rob, threaten, or harm our Nation and, likewise, will not allow a Hostile Regime to take our Oil, Land, or any other Assets, all of which must be returned to the United States, IMMEDIATELY.”
While it’s not fully clear what stolen oil and land the president is referencing, Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, nationalized some oil fields and essentially took over stakes from foreign companies like ExxonMobil.
Venezuela has the largest known oil reserves on the planet, producing roughly 1 million barrels a day, though the regime has been largely cut off from global markets due to US sanctions.
As a result, the country has sold much of its oil through the black market in China at a deep discount.
Trump’s directive Tuesday comes about a week after his administration seized a sanctioned oil tanker near Venezuela’s coast.
For weeks, the president has been tightening the screws on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, ordering strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and deploying military assets in the region. --->READ MORE HEREFollow link below to a relevant story:
+++++Venezuelan opposition leader ‘absolutely’ backs Trump’s oil boat seizure, pressure on Maduro+++++
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