Yes Trump attacking Venezuela is about the oil – but the oil is about the dollar

Political TikToker @unlearn16 has published a history-based analysis of Donald Trump’s grossly illegal attack on Venezuela. And she concludes, astutely, that while the attack and the abduction of Nicolas Maduro is about the oil, that’s primarily because the oil is about the US dollar.

Trump and Venezuela: it’s all about the dollar

Unlearn16’s conclusions are better than her historical analysis. She rejects the US language of late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s renationalisation of its oil as ‘stealing’. So far so good. But she buys far too much into US narratives of Chavez and his successor Maduro as ‘dictators’ and ‘authoritarian regimes’. Dictators do not arm the people; people who have democratic support arm the people. That’s what Maduro did as soon as Trump started threatening Venezuela again.

That aside, her take on Maria Machado as Trump’s puppet, and on US ‘liberation’ usually meaning theft, is spot on. And so is her final point.

The late, great Oscar Wilde is famously said to have warned that “everything is about sex; except sex – sex is about power”. Something similar applies to Trump’s attack on Venezuela. That aggression is about oil – Trump has said it, his generals have said it.

But the oil isn’t just about oil, of which Venezuela has the world’s largest known reserves. It’s about shoring up the US dollar – and the whole US economy, both of which would quickly decline or even collapse if oil began to be traded in anything else.

And the biggest threat to the US petrodollar is the BRICS group of nations that has grown up around Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa. Venezuela under Maduro was trying hard to join BRICS. Venezuela under US puppet Machado never will.

Watch below:

@unlearn16 It’s always about the money, honey. #rant #teacher #teachersoftiktok #money ♬ original sound – Unlearn16

Featured image via the Canary