There are good reasons to celebrate the downfall of the tyrant Nicolás Maduro, as so many Venezuelan exiles did when they heard the news Saturday morning. Not among those reasons: an America that seizes Venezuela's oil assets while keeping what's left of Maduro's odious regime in place.

That seems to be President Donald Trump's rationale, but who knows? He says one thing; his secretary of state says another.

Maybe it's incoherence: Trump didn't really know what he wanted in his face-off with Maduro, other than not to be seen to lose it. Or maybe it's misdirection: MAGA isn't keen on the words "regime change," so Trump is talking up the mercenary angle of his policy while trying to see if he can engage or strong-arm Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela's interim leader, into steering the country toward an orderly transition of power via new--and, hopefully this time, fair--elections.

What's certain is that it's fantasy.

Fantasy first, because Venezuela's crude oil reserves, thought to be the world's largest, come with a badly degraded energy infrastructure that would require billions of dollars in upfront investment for a questionable payoff amid a global oil glut. The world doesn't particularly need Venezuelan oil, and Venezuelans would be better off in the long term trying to free themselves from their........

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