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The Trump administration has managed, in its proposed oil “accord” with Venezuela, to combine its love for state crony capitalism with a yearning for 19th-century imperialism. It is the capstone of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Weltanshauung. 

The oil agreement announced over the weekend between the United States and Venezuela is, from Washington’s point of view, meant to be the payoff for the January military operation and change of leaders (if not regime change) in Caracas. Trump proposed at the time to take Venezuela’s oil, as he had previously rued the United States’ failure to take Iraq’s oil. This is his effort to do so. And it has confused people across many continents.

The Trump administration has managed, in its proposed oil “accord” with Venezuela, to combine its love for state crony capitalism with a yearning for 19th-century imperialism. It is the capstone of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Weltanshauung. 

The oil agreement announced over the weekend between the United States and Venezuela is, from Washington’s point of view, meant to be the payoff for the January military operation and change of leaders (if not regime change) in Caracas. Trump proposed at the time to take Venezuela’s oil, as he had previously rued the United States’ failure to take Iraq’s oil. This is his effort to do so. And it has confused people across many continents.

As announced by the White House, the deal would give the United States “control” over some 65 billion barrels of Venezuela’s oil, with an eye to securing even more oil for feedstock for U.S. refineries, lowering U.S. fuel prices, and refilling the near-empty Strategic Petroleum Reserve that Trump and his predecessor drained. 

The Trump administration chose as its vehicle for this maneuver the second-largest operator in Venezuela, a Barbados-based company known as North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP). That company is run by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, a friend of the regimes in both Caracas and Washington who has faced investigations in Venezuela, Spain, and Switzerland on suspicion of corruption and........

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