The image of Nicolás Maduro in US custody has inevitably resurrected the ghosts of foreign policy past. For the reflexively cynical observer, the narrative writes itself: a Republican White House, a Latin American strongman, and the world’s largest proven oil reserves. As with Iraq in 2003, the slogan of American imperialism and its ‘blood for oil’ foreign policy circulated on social media before the dust had even settled over Caracas. ‘The overnight strikes on Venezuela,’ declared the Guardian, and Trump’s neo-imperial ‘declaration that the US would run the country and sell its oil, have driven another truck through international law and global norms’. This is a comfortable, nostalgic critique, harking back to the heady days of 2003. It is also dangerously wrong.

Maduro was not merely a socialist pariah; he was a strategic landlord

To view the dramatic defenestration of the Venezuelan regime as a resource raid is to misunderstand the fundamental shift in American grand strategy. Washington did not decapitate the Venezuelan state because it needs more oil; it did so because it is preparing itself for a possible war with China.

The ‘oil imperialism’ theory collapses under the weight of basic data. The United States is no longer the energy-starved giant of the late 20th century. Texas alone now accounts for approximately 43 per cent of US crude oil production and 31 per cent of........

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