Venezuela

NY Times - Nicolás Maduro, the ousted Venezuelan leader, insisted on Monday that he was still his country’s president and had been “kidnapped” in the military raid on Caracas that captured him and his wife to face drug trafficking charges in the United States. Mr. Maduro and his wife both pleaded not guilty to charges, including drug trafficking and other crimes.

Mr. Maduro, his hair streaked with gray, said he was innocent through an interpreter after Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein asked him for his plea. “I am a decent man, I am still president of my country,” he said. As he was led from the courtroom, he declared himself “a prisoner of war.”

Donald Trump said the US needs “total access” to a post-Maduro Venezuela—including its oil.

NPR - The Trump administration appears to be relying on a controversial 1989 Justice Department memo written by Bill Barr during his time in the Office of Legal Counsel to justify its operation, NPR’s Carrie Johnson says. The memo paved the way for American law enforcement to arrest suspects in foreign countries, even when those actions violate international law. In court today, it is possible that Maduro will challenge his capture. However, legal scholars note that Supreme Court precedent allows the government to prosecute defendants regardless of how they reached American soil. 

NPR - President Trump told reporters on Air Force One yesterday that the U.S. is in charge of Venezuela. This comes two days after U.S. troops seized President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in the country’s capital, Caracas. Federal authorities are expected to bring Maduro into court in the U.S. today. The U.S. has left the Venezuelan government in place for now, expecting it to obey. Here are seven takeaways from Trump’s incursion into Venezuela.

MS NOW - Twenty years ago, the U.S. strained to defend against accusations that the Iraq War was about oil. Today, President Donald Trump openly admits the U.S. is willing to carry out regime change in Venezuela to secure privileged access to the country’s oil reserves.

   

Trump announced on Saturday that U.S. forces had captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a brief military campaign to stand trial on drug-trafficking charges — an extraordinary moment in American foreign policy, both for the intervention itself and for Trump’s framing of what comes next. The U.S., he said, will “run the country” until it can lock in a transition of power, and announced that “very large United States oil companies” will go in, “fix the badly broken infrastructure … and start making money for the country.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday this actually meant “running policy,” a statement that did little to clarify the administration's next steps.

Indeed, what Trump is laying out as a straightforward mission is anything but that. The president described a situation that doesn’t match reality on the ground, starting with the leftover Chavista regime vowing it “will not be anyone’s colony.”

Trump understated the time-consuming, costly effort it would take to rebuild Venezuela’s decrepit oil sector. And already, he is making fresh threats that underscore the uncertainty of what’s next.

This is a preview of Joseph Zeballos-Roig's latest column. Read the full column here.

Axios - President Trump's vision of American oil companies rebuilding Venezuela's broken petro-sector creates his biggest test yet of the U.S. industry's tolerance for risk.

Trump and other administration officials haven't been subtle about calling Venezuela's massive oil reserves a key reason for toppling President Nicolás Maduro.

• "You cannot continue to have the largest oil reserves in the world under the control of adversaries of the United States ... but not benefiting the people of that country," Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC yesterday, citing China, Russia and others.
• Trump told reporters yesterday aboard Air Force One: "We're in the business of having countries around us that are viable and successful, and where the oil is allowed to freely come out ... It gets the prices down. That's good for our country."

U.S. firms' appetite for investing in Venezuela's dilapidated infrastructure is far from certain, multiple analysts caution, despite U.S. officials' confidence.

• "The potential to boost Venezuelan production hinges on capital, which in turn depends on political stability and likely requires guarantees from the US government," Jefferies Global Research & Strategy analysts said in a note yesterday.
• U.S. companies "will be wary to enter without a stable security environment, and very favorable terms to reduce the risk. Especially with markets over supplied and prices low in the near term," Eurasia Group analyst Gregory Brew said via email