Dirty Oil?

“Clowns beclowning themselves” may turn out to be the prevailing theme of the 2020s. Because it’s virtually a requirement at this point, talking heads and social media doom-scrollers have to offer instant hot takes on every event of significance, and those instant hot takes have to be in line with their partisanship.

Trump’s Venezuela escapade was assessed by the occupants of the various clown cars almost the moment it was announced, with barely a thought, let alone any prudent data gathering. You’ve read and heard many of them, for sure. Including today’s theme, the assertion that Trump did this solely “for the oil.”

We heard this line before from critics of Republican presidents. The Iraq War was, we were told, surely and obviously and only about oil. A moment’s reflection reveals the absurdity of that assertion - rather than spend $2T and engage in risky and complex military operations, a President who only wanted the oil could easily have made a backroom deal with Hussein. But critical analysis of one’s own hot takes isn’t very satisfying, so the “smarter than the riffraff” snobs insisted and persisted.

This time around, Trump did include oil in his list of reasons for the raid. The hot-takers seized on that, despite it being only one of several reasons, and decided it was the only real reason. No Donroe Doctrine, nothing about drugs, nothing about tempering China’s influence and insinuation, nothing about Maduro’s illegitimacy or murderous ways, nothing about the Venezuelan refugee/migrant crisis, nothing about stabilizing the region, nothing about enforcing sanctions, and on and on.

Underlying the “war for oil” premise is a presumption that doing anything that might generate economic benefit is fundamentally dirty and thus to be denounced.

Venezuela’s oil industry is a shambles. Since Chavez nationalized oil companies’ assets back in 2007, production has decreased by three-quarters. I’m sure you are shocked, shocked! to find out that socialists can’t run a business as well as capitalists. Restoring Venezuela’s oil industry by allowing Big Oil companies to take back what was stolen and start running thing more properly would be of great benefit to Venezuela, to America, to the Western Hemisphere, and to the West in general. Geopolitically, adding supply from “friendlies” to the equation would further undercut Russia, break the China-Venezuela-Cuba money pipeline, and further weaken the Middle East petro-states that foment discord (not to mention disseminating radical Islamism) around the globe.

Since profit itself is a Bad Thing in the eyes of our Best-and-Brightest, however, they’d rather decry actions that might produce such positives - and defend a murderous, illegitimate thug like Maduro - than tip their hats and say “let’s make some lemonade.”

As I recently blogged, I have some serious philosophical qualms about the Venezuela action. I’m also reflexively suspicious of nation-building and foreign adventures in general, with decades of mess in the Middle East supporting those suspicions. Grabbing Maduro was the easy part, and there is a lot that could go wrong. With the caveat that things were already terrible in Venezuela, so we must guard against nirvana fallacies. As far as “what’s next,” I abide. I feel no rush to prognosticate, no desire to be first with predictions of what will happen, what might work, what will fail, or the like. The more such major events I witness, the more I realize that what pundits put forth in the early hours or days is worth very little. It’s a lot of handwaving done for the sake of filling up space and catching the eyes of the doom-scrollers, it is usually based on very little concrete information, and it’s as ephemeral as (h/t to Harlan Ellison) a fart in a wind tunnel.

Back to the “dirtiness” of wanting Venezuela’s oil industry to resume. Sure, there’s profit in it for Chevron (who had the biggest footprint there) but so what? With profit come jobs, direct and supporting. With profit comes economic growth in a nation that has suffered terribly. That suffering produced waves of migrants, and one estimate puts the number of illegals of Venezuelan origin currently in America at half a million. A nation that thrived on its oil industry, once restored, could repatriate its citizens, and they could return to living productive lives.

So what if the Venezuela action produces positive benefit to its oil industry, and so what if American companies benefit as well? While we can and should debate the legality and propriety of the Maduro grab - and I repeat that I already did so - picking one of the many motives as “the only real one” and treating it as if it’s poison is not only empty posturing, it’s a signal that the posturer doesn’t give flying rat’s ass about the welfare of the Venezuelan people.

If your response to that is “Trump doesn’t care either,” I ask again “so what?” If some billionaire donates a hundred million dollars to build a hospital wing, is the benefit tarnished or diminished if he did so for selfish reasons or expected his name on it? Will the Venezuelans who benefit grumble about Trump’s motives, or will they simply be happy to be rid of Maduro?

Again, this is a very new matter, fraught with pitfalls, littered with questions, and looking at a spectrum of outcomes. Informed judgment on the wisdom of the action will take years. Today, I only look at those who sniff in disdain at the notion that economic benefit is a Bad Thing.