New Orleans        This whole Trump colonization effort in Venezuela was already unsettling based on the administration’s chortling about the real mission being to expropriate oil for the US.  Usually, the public at least gets some kind of thin rationalization for military action, like saving democracy or protecting human rights.  Slapping dollar signs and delivery instructions on oil reserves is blatant to say the least.  Rationalizing the need to increase production from the current one million barrels from the vast Venezuelan reserves is also a bit disingenuous since US sanctions over many years had crippled oil production and the rest of the country’s economy.

All of that should be a bit controversial, and in some ways it is.  Despite all of Trump’s jawboning about US oil companies increasing their operations and investment in Venezuelan oil fields, he’s gotten nowhere.  All of them, including giants like Chevron and Exxon, have shied away given the instability of the government and the US’s tenuous position there, including the recognition that Trump’s time is leaking out quickly now, leaving the future US stance on all things Venezuelan also unclear.

Now, Trump has heralded a deal with the acting Venezuelan government to secure the rights to 65 billion barrels of the Venezuelan oil reserves.  The US is taking a 35% stake in a company close to the old regime in exchange for 20% of its production.  Why, once again, the US government is taking a stake in a private company is problematic in and of itself, but this deal is worse, because the real investor is the Pentagon, which according to the Wall Street Journal is using “penny warrants that will gain the equity stake without taxpayer cash.”  I don’t even know what that is, but I know what it means.

The US is imposing sanctions on Cuba for any company dealing with any enterprise whether owned or controlled by the military.  We have sanctions on Myanmar based on all of their business investments and operations.  In Pakistan, the military controls business from banking to bakeries estimated to be worth $20 billion.  In Egypt the military controls a significant part of the national economy, including in construction.  In China, the Peoples Liberation Army is involved in raw material sourcing, heavy manufacturing logistics, and civilian infrastructure integration alongside national defense production.  The Turkish military also controls business through a centralized subsidiary worth at least $20 billion.

Is this the model Trump in now embracing out side of democratic control and supervision?  Is this even legal under American law and the Constitution?  It is always hard to agree with anything coming out of the Wall Street Journal editorial department, but when they say that “this all looks like an example of the Trump Administration extending its creeping crony statism beyond US shores,” it’s hard to disagree that in this instance, they have hit the nail squarely on its head.