On Wednesday, December 10, Donald Trump announced that the United States had seized a tanker in the Caribbean carrying more than 1.6 million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil. “Large tanker, very large, largest one ever, actually, and other things are happening,” Trump told the press. The seizure is only the latest move in a long build-up of U.S. military action in the Caribbean and…
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troops seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on Wednesday, a major escalation that the Venezuelan government called “international piracy.” We speak with New York University professor Alejandro Velasco about the Trump administration’s intentions in the country, which has the world’s largest known oil reserves. Though the Pentagon has claimed the conflict is aimed at combating…
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The Venezuelan government has condemned the U.S.’s seizure of an oil tanker off its coast as “piracy,” as President Donald Trump says that the U.S. is keeping the oil. In a statement, the Venezuelan government said the seizure “constitutes a blatant theft and an act of international piracy.” It added that the move shows that the U.S.’s recent aggression “has always been about our natural…
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President Donald Trump has threatened Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, saying in an interview on Tuesday that Maduro’s “days are numbered” and refusing to rule out a ground invasion of the country. Speaking to Politico, Trump said “I don’t comment on that” when asked if the U.S. would soon strike Venezuela, or if the U.S. would send troops on the ground. He went on to repeat…
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A leading human rights organization on Tuesday pushed allies of the United States to more forcefully condemn and take steps to stop President Donald Trump’s deadly boat strikes in international waters, attacks that experts have characterized as extrajudicial killings. “The UK, Canada, and other allied nations who partner with the United States on counternarcotics efforts have ample evidence…
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In recent months, the Trump administration has escalated a decades-long campaign against the Venezuelan government and people. The renewed, intensifying threats of regime change, justified through false or inflated claims that Nicolás Maduro, its president, is directing narco-terrorism against the United States, serve as a convenient pretext for deeper and more direct intervention.
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