Trump’s Venezuelan-Tanker Gamble

t o Donald Trump , Venezuela was first all about narcotics. Now it is all about narcotics, oil, and the theft of American assets. In the past week, Trump has added to his pressure campaign on President Nicolás Maduro by targeting the economic lifeblood of the regime: oil exports. The U.S. has seized three oil tankers in 11 days after Trump said on Truth Social that the United States was imposing a “TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE” of tankers carrying Venezuelan oil that are subject to U.S. sanctions. The president added that the U.S. would also seek compensation for American assets that the Venezuelan government has seized, an apparent reference to past bouts of oil-industry nationalization by Caracas. The new focus on Venezuela’s most abundant—and valuable—natural resource (the country has the largest estimated oil reserves in the world) was, in some ways, the clearest articulation yet of Trump’s ultimate aim. And some viewed the mention of a blockade as tantamount to a declaration of war, given that a blockade is recognized by international law as a belligerent act. But the response of many Venezuela experts we talked with, regardless of their political leanings, was: This is how the pressure campaign should have started all along. “I’m surprised they didn’t do it much sooner,” Juan Gonzalez, who served as a Latin America adviser at the National Security Council under President Joe Biden, told us. The administration’s previous moves have been dramatic and controversial: sending an armada of 11 ships and roughly 15,000 troops to the Caribbean and launching a series of missile strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats that has killed more than 100 people. But neither action has directly threatened Maduro’s ability to stay in power. Hitting the single biggest source of revenue that has propped up Maduro’s government since 2013, in contrast, sets in motion a process that could undermine him. And providing a way for Maduro to appease the White House with compensation for past acts could bring him to the negotiating table. “If the objective is to force Maduro to make really big concessions, this is a really smart move,” Gonzalez said. Jason Marczak, a Latin America expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, told us the blockade could be what’s needed to sever the “financial lifelines that keep Maduro in power.” But the Maduro regime also has a long track record of dodging sanctions and withstanding economic hardship. This time could turn out to be no different. “Knocking out drug boats did not stop drug trafficking or hurt the regime,” Francisco Mora, the Obama administration’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Western Hemisphere, told us. “I think the now so-called blockade and the increase to the cost to get oil out of Venezuela hurts the regime. But it is not clear how much of an impact it will have.” Despite the president’s bellicose rhetoric, this isn’t really a blockade. (The U.S. last imposed an actual blockade—preventing all ships from entering or exiting a port—during World...

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