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NERMEEN SHAIKH: In a major escalation, U.S. troops seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, a day after U.S. fighter jets flew over the Gulf of Venezuela, the closest the U.S. has come to the country’s airspace. Attorney General Pam Bondi released video showing U.S. forces rappelling from helicopters and pointing weapons at sailors. Bondi claimed the tanker had been used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran. President Trump confirmed the raid while speaking with reporters at the White House.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: As you probably know, we’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually. And other things are happening, so you’ll be seeing that later, and you’ll be talking about that later with some of the people. …
REPORTER 1: We’re interested in the seizure of this tanker. What happens to the oil on this ship?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, we keep it, I guess. I don’t know.
REPORTER 2: Where does it go? What port does it go to?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, you’ll have to follow the tanker. You know, you’re a good newsman. Just follow the tanker.
REPORTER 3: Do you know where it was going? Was it going to China?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Follow it. Follow it. Get a helicopter. Follow the tanker.
REPORTER 4: Is it true it was going to Cuba?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But we’re going to — I assume we’re going to keep the oil.
AMY GOODMAN: The Venezuelan government denounced the action, calling it “blatant theft” and “an act of international piracy.” Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro spoke in Caracas Wednesday.
PRESIDENT NICOLÁS MADURO: [translated] Anyone who wants Venezuelan oil must respect the law, the constitution and national sovereignty and get down to producing, invest and sell our oil. Venezuela an oil colony? Never again, neither a colony nor slaves.
AMY GOODMAN: He also started singing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
The U.S. seizure of the oil tanker comes as the Pentagon ramps up its military buildup in the Caribbean ahead of possible strikes on Venezuela. Since September, the U.S. has carried out more than 20 deadly strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, though they’ve never offered evidence.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the right-wing Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. On Tuesday night, hundreds of protesters marched in Oslo to condemn the selection of Machado, who’s supported Trump’s threats against the Venezuelan government. In October, she dedicated the peace prize to President Trump. Machado did not attend the prize ceremony on Wednesday but later appeared in Oslo waving to supporters from the balcony of her hotel. She spoke at the Norwegian parliament today. CNN reports the United States gave her support to travel to Oslo from Venezuela, where she had been in hiding. She apparently, last step, flew from Bangor, Maine, to Oslo.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We’re joined by Alejandro Velasco, associate professor at New York University, where he’s a historian of modern Latin America. Velasco is a former executive director of NACLA Report on the Americas and the author of Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela. He was born and raised in Venezuela.
Welcome back to the show, Alejandro. So, if you could comment on these latest developments, the U.S. coming the closest it has to invading Venezuela’s airspace, and then also Machado receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?
ALEJANDRO VELASCO: Yeah, no, for sure. But on the one hand, you have to think of it as an escalation on two fronts. The most apparent front, of course, is the military escalation. Even though they’re calling it a legal maneuver, more of a high seas stakes kind of operation, in fact, the United States has amassed the greatest number of troops in the 21st century in the Caribbean. And so, this absolutely escalates this kind of war of chicken with the Venezuelan government.
But it’s also, in some ways, an escalation of illegality. The United States has in the past seized Venezuelan assets. It now controls millions of Venezuelan Citgo assets, that it has essentially, you know, kidnapped for ransom in the United States. The U.K. has also held Venezuelan gold in the wake of 2019’s crisis that saw Juan Guaidó become sort of interim president, self-proclaimed. And so, that kind of escalation is very significant and worrisome.
It’s been interesting that the Venezuelan government’s reaction has been really disciplined. They’ve not fallen into the trap of trying to be goaded into some kind of, you know, response that would surely bring greater military action on the part of the United States.
Now, on the other hand, of course, you have the María Corina Machado ceremony. She had said that she would not leave Venezuela until the final battle is won. And so, now the question is: Will she be able to return, or will she run the fate of many Venezuelan politicians in the opposition who have lived out their promise in exile?
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But was she under a travel ban? She had apparently not seen her own children. Her daughter received the prize in her stead. She had not seen the kids for a year or possibly two. What kind of ban was she under?
ALEJANDRO VELASCO: So, the Venezuelan government had an arrest warrant on her, and so they had alleged that she had violated campaign laws, political actions, as well. And so, certainly, she was under hiding. And, of course, her concern was, if she was going to be detained, then she might suffer the consequences of torture or other kinds of violations. But, of course, her profile is so significant. It’s so high-profile that it’s also somewhat far-fetched to imagine that the Venezuelan government would in fact detain her, rather than in fact see what she’s doing now, which is to leave.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me play María Corina Machado speaking at the Norwegian parliament today.
MARÍA CORINA MACHADO: I am very very hopeful Venezuela will be free, and we will turn our country into a beacon of hope and opportunity of democracy. And we will welcome not only the Venezuelans that have been forced to flee, but citizens from all over the world that will find a refuge, as Venezuela used to be decades ago.
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday night, hundreds of protesters marched in Oslo to condemn the selection of Machado for the Nobel Peace Prize because she has supported Trump’s threats against Venezuela. In October, she dedicated the peace prize to Trump. This is Lina Álvarez of the Norwegian Solidarity Committee for Latin America in Oslo.
LINA ÁLVAREZ REYES: [translated] We are here in a demonstration organized together with a broad alliance of Norwegian solidarity and peace organizations, where we are highlighting that the Nobel Prize is being used to legitimize military intervention. This year’s Nobel Prize winner has not distanced herself from the interventions and the attacks we are seeing in the Caribbean, and we are stating that this clearly breaks with Alfred Nobel’s will.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Professor Velasco, if you can comment on this? And then talk about this tanker. President Trump boasted it’s the largest tanker ever seized.
ALEJANDRO VELASCO: Yeah, it’s hard to parse the Nobel Prize Committee’s selection and then how they have proceeded over the last few weeks since the announcement. The history of the Nobel Prize being awarded to politicians and opposition politicians is, let’s just say, not a very storied one. More recently, of course, you have Barack Obama, who had been awarded the prize, and, before that, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese politician. And at the time, they said that these were more aspirational awards for, hopefully, what would come, if they in fact reached the kind of power that they wanted. But in both of those cases, of course, we did not see peace. We saw, in the case, unfortunately, of Obama, war, and of Aung San Suu Kyi, an authoritarian turn.
So, part of the question here is: Why would the Nobel Prize Committee take another chance on an opposition politician who has been so vocal in requesting and demanding an armed intervention of her country, even, of course, as, on the other hand, she would say, like, “Well, we want peace, and we want democracy”? This is what the Norwegians — you know, the prime minister conversation was like. So, that’s on the one hand: What is going on with the Norwegians, who have in the past tried to broker some kind of negotiation with the Venezuelan government?
But in terms, of course, of the oil question, it’s a kind of a two-handed approach on — you have this seeming carrot of, you know, will we seek peace, and bringing the Norwegians along, but, on the other hand, we’re seizing ships, we are launching military aircraft, fighter jets, right literally off the coast of Venezuela, all in an effort to try to goad the Venezuelan government to a kind of misstep that would then justify some military intervention.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But what do we know about this ship? U.S. officials, of course, say the ship had been previously linked to the smuggling of Iranian oil. The final destination of the ship was indeed Asia. Can you talk about the claim that the Venezuelan state-owned oil company PDVSA is part of a global black market network?
ALEJANDRO VELASCO: So, Venezuela’s oil, and PDVSA in particular, has been sanctioned since the first Trump administration. And those, as we call, sectoral sanctions are part of a maximum-pressure campaign on the part of the U.S. to try to force the Venezuelan government out of power. They, of course, you know, withheld — withstood that pressure. But it does mean that Venezuelan oil and Venezuelan oil interests and assets abroad, as well as domestically, are under threat.
The paradox here is that Venezuela continues to sell oil to the United States. So, on the one hand, we have the seizure of a tanker, and then other tankers that are just finding their way to the United States by way of licenses to be sold in the U.S. market. And so, part of this is this larger narrative of Venezuelan narcoterrorism and this access between Iran and Venezuela and Cuba. But, on the other hand, you have the continuation of politics as normal. So, it’s hard, extremely difficult to parse what the actual intentions are.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about Venezuela having the world’s largest oil reserves. It’s under threat from the United States, and followed by Colombia. On Wednesday, President Trump threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Colombia is producing a lot of drugs, a lot of — they have cocaine factories that they make cocaine, as you know, and they sell it right into the United States. So, he’d better wise up, or he’ll be next. He’ll be next, too. And I hope he’s listening. He’s going to be next.
AMY GOODMAN: “I hope he’s listening,” he says about Petro. “He’s going to be next.” He also brought in narcotrafficking. It’s important to note that in this past week, he pardoned a major narcotrafficker — right? — the former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced in a U.S. court to 45 years in prison, served about a year of that, accused of bringing in, using all the levers of the Honduran state, military, police, helping to facilitate 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. So, talk about Colombia.
ALEJANDRO VELASCO: I mean, Colombia has been nothing if not a stable partner for the United States in terms of drug interdiction. It is, continues to be a major oil — drug producer and exporter, although Ecuador has now become far more. And, of course, Ecuador has a friendly ally to the Trump administration as president currently, and so they’re not talking about Ecuador.
But, you know, what this demonstrates is that, certainly on the part of Trump, but also on the part of Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and others in the U.S. government, Venezuela is not the only target. It’s other Latin American governments. And questions about narcoterrorism are really subterfuge claims, in fact, to get rid of leftist governments in the region. Right? This is what we see with Colombia. We’ve seen all the threats to Mexico, as well, which has a leftist government, as well. So, this has a lot to do with ideology, despite the claims that it’s impact about drugs.
AMY GOODMAN: Before you go, I wanted to ask you about what is a national story but also has international significance, this Miami mayoral race, Florida voters electing a Democratic mayor and the first woman, for the first time a Democratic mayor in 30 years. In a stunning upset, the former County Commissioner Eileen Higgins received about 59% of the vote, defeating the Cuban-born Republican, Emilio González, who had been endorsed by Trump. How does this relate to what we’re seeing now? Trump reportedly has been extremely affected by these two races this week. One was her upset victory. And another, a smaller race in Georgia, in a Trump region, a state legislator, Democrat, won this time around. But what about Miami?
ALEJANDRO VELASCO: It’s massive, and especially in the worldview of Trump and his ties to Florida, in particular, but his sense that Florida was now in the bag for Trump. And this tremendous upset — and it wasn’t even close, right? And we’re talking massive margin — suggests that perhaps the message, the bellicose message, that the Cuban American community, most of the Cuban American community in South Florida —
AMY GOODMAN: And if you can bring up Rubio in this, the secretary of state, and his role in what’s happening, a Cuban American from Miami?
ALEJANDRO VELASCO: Of course. I mean, yes, this sort of —
AMY GOODMAN: From Florida.
ALEJANDRO VELASCO: — staid, Cold War-era discourse being brought up again. What it suggests is that it’s perhaps run a bit of its course, and the interests of people in Miami, as elsewhere in the country, especially Republican voters, is much more fixated on: What are you doing for me here at home? Why are we worrying about interventions abroad? What are you doing for us here at home? And this is a tremendous warning, I think, to the Trump administration, Trump in particular, that the shift — the focus has to shift to domestic interests, especially around the economy, rather than these war games with tremendously high stakes in the Caribbean.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we want to thank you, Alejandro Velasco, for joining us, associate professor at New York University, historian of modern Latin America, former executive editor of NACLA Report on the Americas, author of Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela.
Coming up, acclaimed academic and writer Mahmood Mamdani. He’s author of the new book, Slow Poison. He’s also the father of the New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: “Peaceable Kingdom” by Patti Smith, performed at Democracy Now!’s 20th anniversary, as we move into our 30th anniversary this February.
