- 19 hours ago
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00With the United States clearly siding with Russia at times
00:03and against the rest of NATO in this negotiation,
00:08the alliance's secretary-general earlier warning European members
00:12to steel themselves for the future.
00:16We are Russia's next target, and we are already in harm's way.
00:23We must all accept that we must act to defend our way of life now.
00:31Because this year, Russia has become even more brazen, reckless and ruthless
00:36towards NATO and towards Ukraine.
00:41Russia has brought war back to Europe,
00:44and we must be prepared for the skill of war
00:47our grandparents and great-grandparents endured.
00:50Russia, whose president's been on the phone with his Venezuelan counterpart.
00:57Vladimir Putin showing support for Nicolas Maduro
01:00after the United States seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela.
01:06U.S. President Donald Trump hinting he may want to keep the crude
01:11that's inside of the cargo.
01:13More now from Morgan Ayer.
01:15This is the daring moment U.S. forces dropped from a helicopter
01:21to seize an oil tanker off Venezuela's coast.
01:24U.S. media reported that the tanker is called the Skipper.
01:27Washington sanctioned it in 2022 over its ties to Iran and Hezbollah.
01:32Donald Trump confirmed the seizure, saying it was for a very good reason.
01:35As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela,
01:43a large tanker, very large.
01:46Largest one ever seized, actually.
01:49And other things are happening, so...
01:52The U.S. Attorney General said the tanker had been used
01:54to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran.
01:58For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States
02:02due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network
02:04supporting foreign terrorist organisations.
02:09By going after Venezuela's oil,
02:12this marks a significant push by the Trump administration
02:14to pressure Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro,
02:18who it has charged with narco-terrorism.
02:20Maduro has denied any involvement in the drug trade
02:23and says the U.S. just wants a regime change and Venezuelan oil.
02:27The country has the largest proven oil reserves in the world,
02:30which reached around 303 billion barrels in 2023.
02:35This view was shared by a U.S. Democratic Senator, Chris Van Hollen,
02:39who said that by seizing the oil tanker,
02:41it casts doubt on the White House claims that it's stopping drugs
02:45and its real goal is to oust the current Venezuelan regime.
02:50And for more, let's go to Boston.
02:52Daniel Landsberg-Rodriguez,
02:54professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business,
02:57founding partner of Aurora Macro Strategies.
03:01Thank you for being with us here on France 24.
03:03Thank you, Francois.
03:05The seizure of this ship.
03:09What more do we have any idea why this one?
03:13What exactly is the story behind it?
03:17Well, the United States is getting very creative in terms of, you know,
03:25it's how it's defining these interdiction efforts,
03:29armed narco or anti-narco terrorism efforts.
03:33What's really interesting here is that there isn't really a precedent for this.
03:38And that involves, you've had an extension of what it is considered,
03:45you know, international terrorist outfit.
03:49You know, you've been broadening sort of the scope to include narcotics,
03:52and it actually creates a little bit of a gray area.
03:56Because, you know, generally when you see something in an anti-narcotics raid,
04:01it's something that cannot be resold.
04:03It's something that has to be destroyed because it's illegal.
04:06That is not the case here.
04:09So, and the other times that they've seized oil,
04:12it has usually come out of the Middle East,
04:14which has a sort of different set of norms,
04:17because you've had several congressional authorizations against Islamic terror
04:21passed in the sort of wake of September 11th
04:25that don't necessarily apply here.
04:28So it'll be interesting to see where the, you know, the money ends up.
04:32In terms of the actual ship, there's, you know,
04:36it's essentially an open range because what the Cartel de los Soles designation did a few weeks back,
04:43I believe we discussed it at the time,
04:46is that it's a very sort of porous border between where the Venezuelan government ends
04:51and where the Cartel de los Soles, as defined, begins.
04:54And U.S. courts have already decided that PDVSA, the national oil company of Venezuela,
05:01is, you know, the same thing.
05:04It's an alter ego of the Venezuelan government,
05:06which means that, you know, you can sort of alter ego from Cartel de los Soles to Maduro
05:11and then from Maduro to PDVSA.
05:13And, you know, someone's going to have to sort it out afterwards,
05:17but it sort of gives you, you know, the sort of plausible argument to go in.
05:23And it sets a warning that, you know, they can seize anything at any time,
05:27which if you're trying to get a government off balance,
05:29as I think the United States is very much doing here,
05:32you know, to see if anything shakes loose,
05:34you know, it has made a stir.
05:37The timing also is probably not coincidental,
05:39given the award and the pageantry around Maida Corina Machado's Nobel Prize in Oslo yesterday.
05:47Yeah, and there have been, of course, predictable reactions.
05:52Venezuela's president calling this an act of piracy.
05:55And it's been justified on Capitol Hill
05:59by the head of Donald Trump's homeland security outfit, Christy Noem.
06:05This before congressional leaders.
06:08They appear uneasy, many of them,
06:10for the reasons you just explained with the sort of this sort of gray area of this seizure.
06:18What's public opinion like where you are in the United States when it comes to this tanker?
06:23So it's actually interesting.
06:25I would say that in terms of the sort of Trumpian base,
06:31foreign policy issues are not a big driver.
06:35I mean, we saw, you know, not a ton of polling has been done,
06:38but what there has been has shown that, you know,
06:40moves either to assist friends of the administration,
06:44like, you know, bailing out Malay and Argentina,
06:47or, you know, some of the escalation in Venezuela is very unpopular.
06:52At the same time, you know, the fact that it is that, you know,
06:55the Trump administration has managed to, you know,
06:58really strengthen the narrative that transforms Maduro from a sort of democracy problem
07:06or even a migration problem into a narco-trafficking problem
07:11dovetails with the opioids pandemic,
07:13which is, you know, a major center of interest for a lot of his base.
07:20So, you know, in that level, you know, he probably has, you know, pretty significant leeway.
07:26At the same time, there's sort of a pageantry to all this.
07:28I mean, we saw it in the video that was released of them seizing the ship.
07:32We've seen, you know, almost weekly aerial footage of, you know,
07:35the missile zooming in on the small boat before it explodes.
07:38You know, there is a, there's sort of a signaling of how much tougher this government is,
07:44which I think can also play well in certain parts of the MAGA base.
07:49In terms of, you know, what, you know,
07:52it means sort of for the broader population in the United States,
07:55I had a very interesting conversation here in Boston at a coffee shop yesterday
08:00with one of the waiters who was Venezuelan.
08:03He hadn't been here this too long.
08:05And he, you know, he knew that there was something going on with the Nobel Prize,
08:09but he couldn't remember the name of Maria Corina Machado.
08:13I think within the, you know, I'd say that within the circuits of people who are,
08:18you know, really sort of tuned into geopolitics, this is, you know, tremendous.
08:23These are new precedents that are being made and smashed daily.
08:26I'd say, you know, sort of kitchen table issues, I'd say are probably more dominant,
08:32even for folks who you would, you would assume would be very tuned in here.
08:37All right.
08:37So, so here's one that's, here's one that's difficult to explain perhaps,
08:42but I know you could do it, Daniel, for that waiter in Boston.
08:45Okay, I'll, I'll try.
08:46Here's the, here, how do you explain Venezuelan oil?
08:49There's this company called Citgo, which is American.
08:5280% of that crude gets exported these days to China.
08:56When you're thinking about where this oil was supposedly headed,
09:01it's really complicated to explain it.
09:04So Citgo is in the final stages of being lost by Venezuela.
09:08And that's something that it stems from the default on the foreign debt back in the late 2010s.
09:16And that means that, you know, Venezuela owes a fair amount of money to international bondholders.
09:24Some of, one of those bonds, the PDVSA 2020, was tied into the value of Citgo.
09:30The rest of the value of Citgo was either in the hands of Venezuela or in the hands,
09:35and then got traded to Rosneft, which, and it was then seized as an anti-Russian sanction.
09:41So basically, it'll be fully out of Venezuelan hands relatively soon, Citgo,
09:46which I think the U.S. sees as a security issue.
09:50And, you know, there's really interesting things happening in Delaware right now,
09:55sort of as the final stages of that process wind down.
09:58In terms of the way that Venezuelan oil works, yes, Venezuelan oil, as was mentioned in the video
10:04prior to our conversation, we have the biggest reserves in the world, in theory, in Venezuela.
10:12But the oil itself, it's very heavy.
10:14It's very sulfurous.
10:16You know, it's not something you can just sort of, you know, shoots out of the ground
10:19and you can put it in your Hummer and drive to work with.
10:21You know, there's not that many countries that can really refine it.
10:24The U.S. since becoming energy independent doesn't really do as much with it.
10:28But there's a couple of refineries in China, a couple of refineries in India that can still use it.
10:34So the oil tends to go over there.
10:36At the same time, there is a lot of anti sort of, you know,
10:41there's a lot of sanction skipping that has to go on right now.
10:44If oil, notwithstanding the oil that is licensed to be exported by Chevron through a joint venture.
10:51But the rest of the PESA oil, it has to go through intermediaries.
10:54And that's by design, because those intermediaries aren't free.
10:57And then that hits the margin of the amount of money that actually comes into Venezuela.
11:01So I think it's a calculated, you know, effort by the United States to, you know,
11:06not get Venezuela to the point of starvation, because it's not a particularly diversified economy,
11:11but to make sure that, you know, the leaders of Venezuela are particularly cash strapped.
11:17And I'd say that that part of it seems to be working.
11:19All right. And the price of oil this Thursday, relatively flat, we're seeing since the opening.
11:26Daniel Landsberg-Rodriguez, please stay with us, because we mentioned earlier the Nobel Peace Laureate,
11:33Maria Corina Machado.
11:35She turned heads by escaping her country and showing up in Oslo on the morning after the prize giving ceremony,
11:46her prize accepted by her daughter.
11:50In statements that she made at a press conference earlier in the day,
11:55she applauded Donald Trump's moves to pressure Venezuela, including when it came to the tanker.
12:03More broadly, she was asked about the prospect of an invasion.
12:08Some people talk about invasion in Venezuela, the threat of an invasion in Venezuela.
12:15And I answered, Venezuela has been already invaded.
12:19We have the Russian agents.
12:21We have the Iranian agents.
12:22We have terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, operating freely in accordance with the regime.
12:28We have the Colombian guerrilla, the drug cartels that have taken over 60 percent of our populations,
12:35and not only involved in drug trafficking, but in human trafficking, in networks of prostitution.
12:41So this has turned Venezuela into the criminal hub of the Americas.
12:46So joining us is Philip Terrell from our international affairs desk,
12:50who monitored earlier that lengthy press conference where she was standing alongside the Norwegian prime minister.
12:59Your reaction to that clip, Philip?
13:02Right.
13:02I think that there are a couple of things here.
13:05The first one is that, obviously, Maria Corina Machado is living in very difficult conditions,
13:14and the election that she won was denied her,
13:19and also the other candidate who was going to replace her as a result of her not being able to run.
13:24And she's had an awful lot of difficulty getting out of the country to go and claim this Nobel Peace Prize,
13:30finally getting there today to do it, not yesterday when it was handed to her daughter.
13:35So a lot of questions are being raised about how bad the situation is in Venezuela on the ground.
13:40And she's one of the only people who's in there living in hiding who's able to actually relate what she sees,
13:45what's been going on with her supporters going around organising the election for her last year
13:52and listening to what people are saying.
13:56And now she's able, because she's out of Venezuela, to be able to relate to the rest of the world
14:02what people in Venezuela are actually going through,
14:04because it's so difficult for any unbiased news coverage to come out of the country.
14:09So this is going to stack the pressure even more on the government of Nicolás Maduro.
14:14And there is now a question, I think the second point is that she's managed to get away,
14:20which was no easy task from her house outside Caracas,
14:24to get to Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize.
14:28It was so complicated that nobody actually knew whether she was going to turn up for that prize.
14:33That's why the ceremony took place yesterday,
14:35because they weren't sure she would be there, whether she was going to be there on time.
14:38So they just went ahead and did it.
14:40She got there.
14:41And today we were able to actually see Maria Corina Machado in person
14:46and hear what she actually had to say about the conditions that she'd been living in,
14:49which are not easy.
14:51So the question that I think has to be asked now is,
14:53what is going to happen to her next?
14:55How is she going to get back to Venezuela?
14:57And what's the reaction going to be from the regime of Nicolás Maduro?
15:01Will they let her back in or will they not let her back in?
15:04And that is the big question, I think, that we don't know the answer to.
15:07She claims she can go back.
15:08Before we put Philip's questions to you, Daniel Landsberg-Rodriguez,
15:11note as well, the Wall Street Journal reporting this Thursday about her daring escape.
15:17She went on a small vessel.
15:20It was tracked by the United States to protect her, landing in Curaçao and then making the trip to Norway.
15:29The fact that the Americans helped her get out, is that going to endear her to Venezuelans
15:35or will she lose street cred?
15:40Well, I think that in sort of to, I'll try and start at the earlier questions.
15:45If Northwestern were to allow me to teach a course at some point,
15:50and I've never brought this up, but on how to punch outside your weight class in a Trump administration,
15:56it would basically be a series of case studies on Maria Corina Machado.
16:01You know, the extent to which she has been able to sort of redefine herself to fit in
16:07with sort of the idiosyncrasies of the narrative space in which Venezuela occupies for the Trump administration,
16:17which is, you know, a pretty domestically focused administration,
16:21which is, you know, taking a much more outsized stance on Venezuela than any other administration before it,
16:27has been really, really, I'd say, out of the ordinary.
16:32Part of that has been, you know, sort of playing to the Trumpian line.
16:37And a lot of, you know, those talking points in terms of migration, in terms of Hezbollah,
16:43you know, those are strong parts of sort of the internal narrative for Trump world.
16:50At the same time, you know, when she was nominated for the Nobel,
16:53or when she was announced that she'd won the Nobel Prize,
16:55her first interview was given to Donald Jr.'s podcast.
16:58So, you know, she has, you know, really gone to great lengths to cultivate this network,
17:04but she's had to do so remotely because she's been in Venezuela and has been unable to get out.
17:09I do think that, or I understand that, you know, the plan is to return to Venezuela,
17:14but I do not expect that to be immediate.
17:16I think that there will be, you know, meetings in Washington prior to that.
17:21And whether she manages to get in will be huge news.
17:25Not so much, I think, that in terms of your question, Francois,
17:28whether that will endear or disendear to Venezuelans, the fact that the U.S. played such a big part.
17:35I think that, you know, the people, a lot of Venezuelans aren't particularly,
17:39you know, tracking this as far as I can tell.
17:41There's, you know, similar to the United States,
17:45they're, you know, worried about everyday issues.
17:47Inflation's very high.
17:48They're worried about shortages starting up again.
17:51They're worried about crime.
17:52You know, it's similar to the United States,
17:55maybe a step down or two on Maslow's Pyramid in terms of the urgency of those needs.
18:00And the rest of it's very polarized.
18:02So, you know, there are people who will look at the U.S. support as amazing.
18:06It means the U.S. finally cares about Venezuela.
18:08They see the depth of the problem.
18:10They're here to help.
18:11And others who, you know, play into a, you know, long script of imperialism
18:16and, you know, the sins of the U.S. in their backyard.
18:19And, you know, how you think about it will probably say more about who you are
18:22than about the facts on the ground.
18:24Whether she, the fact that she managed to escape is a big blow, however,
18:30to the security forces in Venezuela.
18:33And that is, I'd say, probably the prime sort of point of concern for Maduro.
18:39That, you know, the fact that she was able to escape prior to this,
18:42some of her people were able to get evacuated from the embassy.
18:45It pierces the sort of myth of, you know,
18:50Venezuelan government security force omniscience,
18:54which the Venezuelan government has put a lot of energy and time
18:57into strengthening, particularly since the contested election of last year.
19:03You know, if she manages to come back, that would be an even bigger black eye.
19:07And that has huge ramifications for the various, you know,
19:10power dynamics between key figures, particularly Bilbao Cabello, who's in charge.
19:16You know, every time that, you know, that she runs rings around, you know,
19:20this security, you know, and that, you know,
19:23it does whatever she says she's going to do.
19:26And, you know, it doesn't ask for permission, doesn't ask for assistance.
19:30That's something that, you know, it puts a pretty big slash into, you know,
19:36the sort of sense of fear and control that has, you know,
19:39kept Venezuelans from, you know, gathering in the streets the way they did in 2019 or 2017
19:45or 2014 or 2012 since the election.
19:49Tanya Landsberg-Rodriguez, so many thanks for joining us from Boston.
Be the first to comment