Trump’s Venezuelan oil plan may take years to unfold: American oil executives are to gather at the White House Friday as President Trump looks to develop his plans to extract Venezuela’s oil resources and a U.S. armada continues to stage off the country’s shores. That meeting comes roughly a day after Venezuelan officials said the death toll from the Pentagon’s Saturday assault in Caracas had risen to at least 100, including Cuban bodyguards for abducted Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro and dozens of civilians across the capital city.
“I have cancelled the previously expected second Wave of Attacks [on Caracas], which looks like it will not be needed, however, all ships will stay in place for safety and security purposes,” the president announced on social media at 4:19 am ET on Friday.
“At least 100 Billion Dollars will be invested by BIG OIL, all of whom I will be meeting with today at The White House,” the president said.
However, the New York Times reported Friday, “oil giants like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips that have deep pockets, vast expertise and, crucially, experience in that country have privately expressed reservations about committing the kind of money it would take to meaningfully boost Venezuelan oil production.”
And: “Political uncertainty in the United States and Venezuela is another major obstacle, as oil investments often are measured in decades, and companies would need to be confident that any deal would last long enough for them to make a decent profit,” the Times writes.
That’s a point reiterated separately on Wednesday by veteran journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the Times, who noted, “for context, I am Cuban-American (my family fled Castro). I am also part Panamanian (yes I remember the US invasion of Panama). I have a degree in Latin American studies. I covered Latin America as a journalist since 2000 when I lived in Colombia, then Mexico and Brazil. I’ve been to Venezuela many many times. oh yeah, I also lived in and covered Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.”
“And for people saying Venezuela isn’t Iraq because it doesn’t have sectarian conflict, please understand the history of Latin America, armed conflict and transnational criminal groups,” Garcia-Navarro said. “It’s a different problem but not an easier one. You have heavily armed paramilitary forces, cartels, corrupt military all with unlimited funds, big guns and reasons to cause havoc.”
Which is to say the future of Venezuela has great potential for catastrophe, as Army veteran Monica Toft of Tufts University explained in a column this week in The Conversation.
That all may be why “Trump and his advisers are planning a sweeping initiative to dominate the Venezuelan oil industry for years to come,” as the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. But exactly how this may play out is anyone’s guess. “The only major oil company operating there is Chevron, and new entrants lack the relationships, staff and logistical capabilities to hit the ground running. Analysts say it would take years to significantly boost production there,” the Journal writes.
Another problem: The U.S. already pumps more oil than any other country, and “oil prices are already low, with the U.S. benchmark hovering around $56 a barrel,” the Journal reports. Relatedly, “Many companies see $50 a barrel as a threshold below which it becomes unprofitable to drill, and a sustained period of low oil prices could decimate the U.S. shale industry, which has been a key backer of the president.”
This is all partly why Trump has tapped billionaire oil magnate and Republican donor Harry Sargeant to help hone his extraction plans, Reuters reported Thursday. “Sargeant’s business interests in Venezuela are relatively small in comparison to the oil giant Chevron, the only U.S. oil company with federal authorization to export oil from the country, but he has been doing business there since the 1980s.” What’s more, “During the Iraq war, Sargeant contracted with the Pentagon to transport fuel to U.S. troops.”
By the way: Trump’s spy chief was cut out of Venezuela plans over her past views regarding potential U.S. intervention there, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Within this context, White House aides reportedly joked that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s job title stood for “do not invite.”
In a Wednesday interview, Times reporters asked Trump what limits his global powers. The president responded, “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
“I don’t need international law,” Trump said in that Oval Office interview, “It depends what your definition of international law is.”
Also notable, according to the Times: Trump “acknowledge[d] some constraints at home, even as he has pursued a maximalist strategy of punishing institutions he dislikes, exacting retribution against political opponents and deploying the National Guard to cities over the objections of state and local officials.” But he also “made clear that he uses his reputation for unpredictability and a willingness to resort quickly to military action, often in service of coercing other nations.” More, here.
The Senate on Thursday voted 52-47 to limit Trump’s war powers regarding military operations inside Venezuela. Trump was evidently upset by the resolution, and complained on social media that the five GOP senators who voted for it “should never be elected to office again.”
The resolution is unlikely to proceed. The House rejected a similar measure in December. And even if the lower chamber were to advance a new one, Thursday’s Senate vote tally is not sufficient to override a veto from Trump, should the process advance to that point in the coming days.
Developing: Trump’s war on alleged drug cartels may be moving inland. The president told Sean Hannity of Fox on Thursday that he’s authorized attacks against drug cartels not just at sea, but on land now as well. “We are going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels. The cartels are running Mexico. It’s very sad to watch and see what’s happened to that country,” Trump said less than two minutes into a 17-minute interview. Hannity did not request elaboration.
Trump teased a similar escalation in November when he told U.S. service members, “You probably noticed that people aren’t wanting to be delivering [drugs] by sea, and we’ll be starting to stop them by land also. The land is easier.”
Mexico’s president has reportedly rejected U.S. on-the-ground troop presence inside her country. And on Monday, Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters, “On several occasions, [Trump] has insisted that the U.S. Army be allowed to enter Mexico. We have said no very firmly—first because we defend our sovereignty, and second because it is not necessary.”
What might a U.S. ground operation against cartels around Mexico look like? We discussed the matter with longtime special operations journalist and author Kevin Maurer on our podcast in August. Listen to that conversation here.
From the region: “Russia Recruits Young Migrant Women from Latin America to Build Iranian Drones,” two researchers at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies said in a new report published Thursday. Workers are being recruited from more than a dozen Latin American countries and are often sent under allegedly misleading pretenses to work at a drone production facility based in Tatarstan.
The Russian program, known as Alabuga Start, could be the target of future U.S. sanctions, FDD’s Maria Riofrio and Max Lesser suggest. More, here.
Developing: The White House is considering payments of $10,000 to $100,000 to each of the 57,000 or so Greenlanders in a bid to persuade them to “join” the U.S., Reuters reported Thursday. That latter end of that spectrum could add up to about $6 billion.
Still in play: “The White House has said military intervention is possible, though officials have also said the U.S. prefers buying the island or otherwise acquiring it through diplomatic means,” the wire service writes.
Trump’s NATO Ambassador Matt Whitaker is scheduled to speak next Wednesday at the Reagan Library. And State Secretary Marco Rubio is reportedly set to speak with Danish officials about Greenland next week, too.
Whitaker told Newsmax on Wednesday that Trump and his advisers think Greenland isn’t safe enough, and he cited global warming in defense of Trump’s imperial ambitions regarding the Danish territory.
“As the ice thaws and as the routes in the Arctic and the High North open up,” Whitaker told the right-wing news network, “Greenland becomes a very serious security risk for the mainland of the United States of America.”
Big-picture consideration: “Pro-colonialism talking points get a boost from top Trump aide Stephen Miller,” Jonathan Allen of NBC News wrote in an analysis piece Wednesday.
“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller told CNN on Monday. “Greenland should be part of the United States,” he insisted, and went on to explain Trump’s recent foreign policy aggression thusly: “The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower. And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
Berlin reax: Trump risks turning the world “into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want, where regions or entire countries are treated as the property of a few great powers,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Wednesday. Reuters’ headline: “German president says US is destroying world order.”
Relatedly, how does Trump feel about China’s leader potentially invading Taiwan? “That’s up to him,” the president told the Times in his Thursday interview. Meanwhile, a Slovenian magazine depicted Trump in a less-than-flattering manner on its cover Friday. Newsweek has more on that image, here.
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1918, a brief skirmish between Yaqui fighters and U.S. Army cavalry soldiers, later dubbed the Battle of Bear Valley, marked the last firefight of the American Indian wars.
Around the Defense Department
USAF consolidates some acquisition program offices into mission-focused groups. On Thursday, service officials revealed the first five of the new groups and the “portfolio acquisition executives” who will run them—but observers note that most of these uniformed and civilian leaders were already running multi-mission groups anyway. “Good things are happening here, but for the Air Force it’s more of a continuation of work that’s been going on for some time,” one former service leader told Defense One’s Thomas Novelly. Read, here.
ICYMI: In November, the Office of the Secretary of Defense took control of most of the Air Force’s largest acquisition programs, including the new Sentinel ICBM and B-21 bomber.
Marine Corps picks industry team to create a robot wingman of its own. The Air Force effort to develop collaborative combat aircraft gets most of the press—and the funding—but the Marines are also working on a drone to accompany their own fighter pilots. On Thursday, the service announced that Northrop Grumman will provide systems to be integrated on Kratos’s existing VX-58 Valkyrie to produce the Marine Corps Air-Ground Task Force Uncrewed Expeditionary Tactical Aircraft, or MUX TACAIR. Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports, here.
Industry news
Buyback-ban update: The top Democrat on the Senate Arms Services Committee said he believes Trump’s attempt to limit defense companies’ stock buybacks may fall to legal challenge unless they are codified into law. “Frankly, if Congress doesn’t codify it, they’ll go into court. My sense [is] it’s really difficult to justify tax changes because the president wanted to change them,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., told reporters. “I think they [lawmakers] would have to because they [defense firms] have no shortage of lawyers, and they’ll go into court and say, ‘This is not within the tax code. You can’t do it.’” Breaking Defense has that, here.
The Philadelphia shipyard touted as the key to Trump-administration naval buildup needs more space, company officials told the Wall Street Journal. Hanwha, the South Korean shipybuilder that owns the Philly yard and has pledged to invest in its capacity, “is in active discussions with multiple federal, state and local officials about opportunities to expand capacity and property for storage around the Philadelphia region,” WSJ reports. “The company aims to ultimately crank out up to 20 ships a year in Philadelphia, up from annual output of just one or two vessels recently.” Read on, here.
Lockheed delivered 191 F-35s last year—a record that reflects the Pentagon’s refusal to accept many of the jets the previous year because promised capability upgrades had not been completed. Reuters, here.
ICYMI: Lockheed received on-time bonuses for jets delivered late, GAO reported in September.
Another shooting by ICE
A man and a woman were shot by ICE agents in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday as they drove away from agents who stopped them. The pair, whose names were not released by officials, were later treated at a local hospital.
ICE says both were affiliated with the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, though similar allegations have fallen apart before advancing in court.
Portland’s mayor wants a full investigation of the incident. “There was a time we could take [ICE] at their word. That time is long past,” said Mayor Keith Wilson.
The shootings drew protestors to an ICE building in Portland, the Associated Press reported, one day after similar protests erupted in Minneapolis after the deadly shooting of a woman there.
And in Maryland: “Anne Arundel County Police for the first time publicly disputed the federal agency’s account of a violent Christmas Eve incident involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Glen Burnie,” the Baltimore Banner reported Thursday.
Also: “Data released by ICE shows that virtually the entire growth of detention in the last few months has been among people with no criminal record at all—no criminal convictions and no pending criminal charges,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council pointed out Friday, citing the new statistics from ICE. “Only about 10% of people detained by ICE who have a ‘criminal record’ committed a serious violent offense. The most common prior convictions are immigration offenses (like illegal entry/reentry) and traffic offenses,” he added.
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