Washington didn’t abruptly discover Nicolás Maduro on 3 January. It didn’t suddenly open its eyes to Venezuela’s narcotics and corruption. It chose this opportunity to apprehend Maduro because of the nexus of four compelling forces: a reborn Monroe Doctrine mentality, the lust to control Venezuela’s oil, Trump’s plummeting approval rating, and the US Supreme Court’s decision ordering Trump’s accounting firm to disclose the required financial records.

Hours after the operation, President Trump announced that the US would be “very strongly involved” in Venezuela’s oil sector. “Narco-terrorism” is such an effective way of validating the use of brute force. The bigger question is what exactly America will do with a country that sits atop the world’s largest known oil reserves.

The Monroe Doctrine is not some antique curio in the national closet. It is the ideological bedrock of US power in the southern hemisphere: Latin America as “our” neighborhood, “our” sphere, “our” right to reorder. In 2019, the national security adviser of President Donald Trump, John Bolton, publicly stated the quiet part: “Today, we proudly proclaim for all to hear: the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well.” 

There is a reason for that history that explains the choreography: the buildup, strikes, capture, and then the oil’s involvement. In a series of stories carried through March, Reuters has documented “months of mounting pressure,” including a Venezuelan oil blockade and seizures that have led to a sharp cutback in........

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