It’s been quite a busy few days for U.S. foreign policy. First was President Donald Trump’s brazenly illegal abduction of Venezuela’s head of state. Then Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened to make good on his longtime dream of retaking Cuba, warning that the Cuban government is “in a lot of trouble.” And on Tuesday, Trump’s senior adviser on fascism (or whatever his title is), Stephen Miller, declared that Greenland belongs to the United States and that Trump could take the territory if he wanted. This “Donroe Doctrine,” as they’ve termed it, is based on a single principle: that, as Miller ranted Tuesday, the United States will henceforth “conduct ourselves as a superpower” by using our military “to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere.”

Here’s the rub: When the Trump administration says “our interests,” they’re not talking about your or my interests, and they’re not talking about the nation’s interests. They’re talking about the interests of corporate elites. The Donroe Doctrine is a racket—nothing more and nothing less—designed to make the U.S. taxpayer underwrite resource imperialism for Trump’s billionaire buddies.

They don’t appear to be trying very hard to hide this reality. Trump has been pretty explicit that the Venezuelan takeover is not about freedom for Venezuelans. Asked whether he would demand the acting Venezuelan president offer amnesty to opposition figures or release political prisoners, Trump responded, “We haven’t gotten to that. Right now, what we want to do is fix up the oil.” The Venezuelan takeover is not about democracy. Asked about plans for “free and fair elections,” he responded, “Well, it depends.… We’re going to have to have big investments by the oil companies.” According to Trump, kidnapping Maduro wasn’t even about regime change. The new acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, was vice president under Maduro, so the regime running Venezuela today is identical minus one person. When Trump was

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