The US isn’t attacking Venezuela because of drugs — it’s because of minerals

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5642398-venezuela-minerals-us-strategy/

Posted by Gloomy_Nebula_5138

10 comments

  1. Starter:
    I was surprised like many people, that the Trump administration suddenly started targeting Venezuela. If drugs were the biggest problem facing America, then Trump would not have [pardoned the former president of Honduras, who was at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world](https://www.npr.org/2025/12/02/nx-s1-5628382/trump-pardons-honduran-ex-president-juan-orlando-hernandez). But also, I think he would have gone after China, who has long been known to supply fentanyl ingredients to Mexico, from where it comes into the US.

    Something seems off. Maybe it is because Trump is somehow corrupted/compromised by China and doesn’t want to go after them, which is what avoiding the TikTok ban and having low tariffs on China suggests – maybe his family has business deals happening in China. Or maybe he thinks there is no way to win a conflict with China when the American economy depends on them. But it could also be simply that he wants to steal what resources Venezuela has, like with Greenland.

    I thought this was about oil because Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, but this article mentions that Venezuela has big deposits of bauxite, coltan, gold and rare-earth minerals, which are now central to national security and global supply chains. So maybe this is actually an alternative to Greenland, since Trump realizes his “diplomacy” around Greenland has failed. But I am surprised the world could let this happen. Maduro is illegitimate in my opinion, but seizing tankers like a pirate and threatening a country like a colonial imperialist is not appropriate.

    What do others think? Are minerals the real motivation around the Trump administration’s bizarre turn towards a war with Venezuela?

  2. If they knew the boats had drugs on them why not just wait until they arrived to arrest them.

    Bombing them was the worst way to go about it, did they even know for sure if there was any or where they were headed? And what kind of boats? Fishing boats?

    It really may border on war crimes, especially if it’s about petty disputes between oil and minerals.

  4. People/bots are going to parrot oil and resources as the main reason but they are either wrong or being purposefully misleading. What is happening is ordinance expenditure to empty the militaries store of missiles against worthless targets while providing a demonstration so our adversaries can train their AI against our missiles.

  5. It’s also a distraction from the Epstein files.
    You know Trumps best friend the child rapist?

  6. It’s a solid play. We depose a dictator and get a good trade deal stamped out.

  7. Just commenting to point out that Trump pardoning the Honduras ex president that was jailed on drug charges, was most likely left in freedom because he snitched on Maduro and gave them plenty of intel that was useful.

  8. Did anybody really believe the drugs narrative? If so, that’s extremely naive and delusional of them. Even after all of the American past history of warfare and false pretexts. It was always about the oil and rare earth minerals, and in the end always about Dollar domination. And also stamping out any ‘foreign influence’ in their hemisphere (China). This would have happened to any country in the Americas, whether Venezuela now or some other in future.

  9. Its not because of minerals it’s because of their cooperation and deepening ties with china and they want to send a message

    Venezuela already offered america 50% ownership of its oil and it refused, should be a telling sign its not about resources, rather they consider this their backyard and want to send a message to any country in the american continents this is what happens when you turn your back to china and away from us

  10. I think there’s definitely an element of ‘ulterior motive’ but I’d not be surprised if it wasn’t to send the oil markets into turmoil and boost the russian economy as a result, in an effort to put more pressure on Europe. Both the discourse coming out of the Trump regime and the new NSS suggests that the EU is the biggest enemy of the authoritarian-in-chief.

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