Venezuela attack could well revive 'Yankee, go home' in Latin America

Editor's note: William Jones, a special commentator for CGTN, is a former Washington bureau chief for Executive Intelligence Review News Service and a non-resident fellow of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The rather outrageous and dangerous kidnapping of the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, in a nighttime raid at his place of residence in Caracas on January 3, has caused tremendous turmoil in the world, and particularly in the countries of the southern hemisphere of America.

The United States, particularly during the "Gilded Age" at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, had intervened militarily in the continent of South America, primarily along the Mexican peninsula and in the Caribbean. This was the first major intervention into the heart of the continent.

While it has been billed as a "one-off" intervention to apprehend Maduro, who has been labeled a "criminal" by the Trump Administration, the operation has a much broader purpose, connected to Trump's failure to convince Americans that he is realizing the country's "golden age" which he has promised.

Trump stated at his press conference on January 3, that the U.S. government will "run" Venezuela and that he intends to return the rich oil fields of Venezuela to American control. In fact, U.S. capital moved into Venezuela as early as the beginning of the last century, with firms such as New York & Bermudez Company among the earliest foreign actors exploiting the country's asphalt and hydrocarbon resources. As foreign interests expanded, disputes over taxation, concessions and sovereignty quickly emerged. Since then, oil resources in Venezuela have been a contentious topic between the Venezuelan government and major Western powers.

Ironically, it was this Venezuelan crisis that led former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to upend the Monroe Doctrine with his "Roosevelt Corollary." The Monroe Doctrine, articulated by then U.S. President James Monroe in 1823, was framed as a policy to "defend" the new nations of South and Central America from the colonial powers, from which the U.S. had also freed itself.

The "Roosevelt Corollary" permitted U.S. intervention into those same nations on a variety of pretexts. This is what Trump now is trying to expand on in kidnapping the Venezuelan president and seizing the oil.

In 1976, former Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez finally nationalized the oil companies in an attempt to gain economic independence. Trump clearly views the matter as "robbery" and intends to regain control. There are indications that Trump had already consulted with the heads of a variety of U.S. oil companies regarding Venezuela's extensive oil resources, whose potential production is even greater than that of Saudi Arabia.

While the president claims that the subsequent improvement of the industry and its expansion under U.S. purview would come to benefit the "Venezuelan people," it is also clear that funds from such production would also go to his "Make America Great Again" movement by robbing those same people.

At the moment, the Acting President of Venezuela Delcy Rodriguez is in contact with the U.S. on the matter. Her position, however, is that Maduro is "the only legitimate president." Trump has also shown no indication of backing opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. It may well be the case that Trump is primarily interested in getting control of the oil industry rather than the entire country and would therefore work with anyone who would be willing to let him have it – though it's not sure that anyone will.

If, however, the U.S. "running the country" were to require boots on the ground, this could trigger all-out civil war and could become Trump's "Vietnam." Given the turmoil in the nation because of the U.S. strike, which has duly encouraged the anti-Madura opposition, civil war may even occur without a U.S. presence, making it veritably impossible to revive oil production at all.

The reverberations internationally were not long in coming, with many nations condemning the action. This includes Pope Leo XIV, who is calling for maintaining a sovereign and independent Venezuela. The reaction was most notable among Venezuela's neighbors, who realize that if Trump can do this to Venezuela, he could also do it to any nation in Latin America which does not go along with whatever demands he might place on them.

Memories on the continent are long. The many years of colonial oppression and the years in which the United States, which freed itself from colonial oppression and assumed the role of regional hegemon in Latin America, were a time that these countries have not easily forgotten.

As the London and New York banking firms began to loot the countries of the South, the level of development they had reached by the early 1970s was quickly turned around by the terms of trade dictated by the countries of the West. The era of the original Monroe Doctrine under Monroe and later U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Good Neighbor" policy, has dimmed in the face of increasing Western debt which continues to suck the blood from Latin American development.

The measures taken by the Trump Administration, echoing the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt, who was also a great friend of American business, will again prompt the cry of "Yankee, go home," a refrain that has repeatedly risen from the region when foreign policies threatened their very livelihood.

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