USA vs Venezuela Votes on

Analysis: Wants the oil – and not just any kind

The most important conclusion from Donald Trump's press conference on Venezuela is that the US intends to "steer" the country before a transfer of power and that there was a lack of details about how this will happen. This is what the New York Times' Tyler Pager writes.

Pager, like his colleague Zolan Kanno-Youngs, finds it remarkable how much the president talked about oil.

"Trump made one thing clear: This operation was not just about removing a leader accused of drug trafficking, but also about expanding US access to Venezuela's oil reserves".

DN's Michael Winiarski reacts to the same thing, writing:

"It revealed that his driving force for the attack was Venezuela's oil wealth, which is considered the world's largest."

Sky News's economics editor Ed Conway believes that the accusations of drug trafficking are secondary, and that it is about the US looking for more oil. He points out that it may seem strange that the world's largest oil producer wants the oil that the world's 21st largest producer is sitting on.

The explanation, according to Conway, is about different types of crude oil. American refineries are built to handle high-density oil, while the one the US is drilling for has a lower density. In that area, only Canada and Russia can compete with Venezuela.

"Although the US theoretically pumps up more crude oil than the country ever needs, they are completely dependent on trade to get the heavy oil they need."

Expert: "Governance" can go wrong in all sorts of ways

That Donald Trump says that the US will "govern" Venezuela before a transfer of power may turn out to be a "giant foreign policy blunder" from the president. This is what Norwegian US expert Hilmar Mjelde writes in an email to the NTB news agency.

Mjelde believes that Trump is abandoning his “America first” promise and doing what he has accused his predecessors of. He wonders how the US will govern the Latin American country and is not at all sure that it would work even with ground forces. And ground forces are also not something he was elected to do or has prepared the Americans for.

“It could go wrong in all sorts of ways.”

Legality questioned – consequences unlikely

The US attacks in Venezuela and the arrest of the country’s President Nicolás Maduro are likely a violation of the UN Charter from 1945. This is the assessment made by experts in international law in interviews with The Guardian.

Geoffrey Robertson, an Australian human rights lawyer and former judge in a war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone, is convinced that the White House will claim self-defense against what it believes are “narco-terrorists”. But the arguments do not hold up legally, he believes.

– If you are going to invoke self-defense, there must be a real belief that you are about to be attacked with violence.

However, it is considered unlikely that there would be any kind of penalty for the Americans. Robertson says that the UN Security Council can impose sanctions but that it would be easily stopped by an American veto.