Oil, flags and the illusions of control by Emma Schneider

If Donald Trump truly wants to “run” Venezuela and its oil, there is no clever shortcut, no artful deal, no strongman handshake that gets him there. He would have to put troops on the ground. A lot of them. And once that first boot hits Venezuelan soil, the fantasy collapses into a familiar, grinding reality: a war without clean edges, without gratitude, and without an exit strategy. It would not be a quick intervention. It would be Iraq, Afghanistan, and Korea fused into a single geopolitical nightmare, replayed in a country that has every reason to resist.

Oil makes men reckless. It has always done so. It creates the illusion that control of a resource equals control of a nation. Venezuela’s oil reserves are vast, tantalizing, and politically radioactive. But oil does not flow just because a foreign power wants it to. Pipelines need security. Refineries need workers. Ports need stability. All of that requires something far more difficult than rhetoric: legitimacy. And legitimacy cannot be airlifted in.

Venezuela is not an empty chessboard waiting for an outside player to impose order. It is a traumatized, polarized, fiercely nationalistic society that has already suffered through sanctions, economic collapse, corruption, and authoritarianism. Add foreign troops to that mix and you don’t get liberation; you get unification against you. Nothing consolidates fractured political camps faster than a foreign army claiming to know what’s best.

The idea that Venezuelans would welcome American troops as saviours is a comforting myth, mostly told by people who will never hear gunfire. Even those who despise their current leadership do not necessarily want a foreign flag flying over their infrastructure. History is unforgiving on this point. Populations can hate their rulers and still fight invaders with relentless determination. Pride survives poverty. Sovereignty matters, especially when it has been violated before.

And make no mistake: this would be an occupation, not a police action. To “run” oil means guarding wells, roads, workers, and exports across a country with jungles, mountains, sprawling cities, and porous borders. It means constant exposure to sabotage, ambushes, and insurgency. It means militias, criminal networks, and political factions all discovering that armed resistance suddenly pays very well. Every pipeline becomes a target. Every convoy becomes a headline.

Trump’s brand of foreign policy thrives on spectacle and pressure, not patience. But occupations demand patience in obscene quantities. They devour budgets, attention spans, and political capital. They require an American public willing to watch casualties mount for goals that grow murkier by the month. They require allies who are willing to be hated alongside you. And they require a commander-in-chief who can explain, year after year, why staying is better than leaving.

Iraq should have cured Washington of the belief that oil can finance its own conquest. Afghanistan should have ended the fantasy that superior firepower equals political control. Korea should remind anyone paying attention that even decades later, foreign troops can still be frozen in time, guarding unresolved wars. Venezuela would borrow the worst elements of all three: resource temptation, insurgent resilience, and long-term entanglement.

There is also the inconvenient matter of precedent. If the United States openly invades a country to control its oil, it forfeits the moral language it relies on everywhere else. Every future condemnation of aggression becomes hollow. Every lecture about sovereignty sounds transactional. Rivals would not miss the opportunity to mirror the logic elsewhere, citing America’s own actions as justification.

Domestically, such a war would rot institutions from the inside. Emergency powers expand. Dissent gets framed as disloyalty. Oversight weakens under the weight of “national security.” Wars fought for abstraction, oil markets, leverage, prestige, have a way of bleeding into civil life long after the shooting stops.

The cruel irony is that Venezuela’s collapse is real, and its people do need relief. But relief delivered at gunpoint is indistinguishable from domination. True recovery would require diplomacy, regional cooperation, economic restructuring, and time tools that are slow, frustrating, and unsatisfying to leaders addicted to decisive gestures.

Trump’s rhetoric thrives on dominance, on the idea that nations can be “run” like properties. Venezuela exposes the fatal flaw in that thinking. Countries are not assets. Oil is not obedience. And power, when applied without consent, does not stabilize, it ignites.

If troops go in, they will not be greeted by gratitude. They will inherit a war that cannot be won on television or declared over at a podium. And once it begins, no slogan will be loud enough to drown out the echo of history repeating itself yet again.