Days after the U.S. invaded Venezuela, snatched away Nicolás Maduro, and President Donald Trump claimed the U.S. was going to run Venezuela and take over its oil, a lot of people continue to scratch their heads. The president and top administration officials are still offering somewhat contradictory explanations about their aims and how they hope to achieve them, while Venezuelans wonder what has really changed and what will happen next. Below is some collected commentary and analysis highlighting some of the more befuddling aspects of Trump’s big, new intervention.

New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg notes that Trump seems perfectly happy to grab Maduro but leave the regime intact, probably because this is really just a shakedown:

[T]he preservation of something close to the status quo makes sense, given that his goal is extortion, not political transformation. Rather than the moralistic imperialism of George W. Bush, Trump’s foreign policy is imperialistic gangsterism. As one administration official put it to me, there’s “something refreshing about Trump just saying, ‘Yeah, we are taking the oil.’” …

John Feeley, a career diplomat and former ambassador to Panama who resigned in protest during Trump’s first term, said that to understand what’s unfolding in Venezuela, look to the mob, not traditional foreign policy doctrines. “When Donald Trump says, ‘We’re going to run the place,’ I want you to think of the Gambino family taking over the Colombo family’s business out in Queens,” he said. “They don’t actually go out and run it. They just get an envelope.”

Caracas Chronicles founder Quico Toro adds at Persuasion:

[Leaving vice president Delcy Rodríguez] in charge of Venezuela is not regime change, because she’s an emblem of the regime. It’s not even a relaxation of dictatorial conditions, because the hundreds of Venezuelans who have been languishing in Maduro’s prisons and torture chambers will just keep languishing in Delcy’s.

Three weeks ago, I mused that the emergence of a democratic state following U.S. military action is unlikely. A more realistic outcome would see Venezuela “in the hands of a right-wing dictator who pushes out Maduro and his clique, inherits the chavista state, and changes only the slogans.” In the event, what we’re going to be stuck with is even more absurd: a left-wing dictator drawn from Maduro’s own clique who won’t even change the slogans, just cut some energy deals to make Donald Trump’s cronies in the oil industry rich.

The prospect of Delcy Rodríguez teaming up with Trump to loot Venezuela’s fossil fuel resources makes me sick to my stomach. I’ve known all along the outcome would be bad. I didn’t think it would be this bad.

At Vox, our old friend Eric Levitz points out how opening up Venezuela’s oil industry would likely hurt America’s fossil-fuel companies:

Today, America’s oil and gas sector isn’t hankering for more reserves so much as for higher prices. Since this time last year, oil prices have dropped........

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