- 7 weeks ago
This special report analyses the geopolitical shockwaves following the US operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Experts discuss the legality of the move, debating whether it constitutes a valid intervention or a breach of sovereignty under international law. The discussion highlights the US administration's renewed focus on the Monroe Doctrine and the strategic implications for global powers like China and India. A significant portion of the analysis focuses on the energy sector, examining whether the intervention was driven by oil interests and how Venezuela’s heavy crude reserves fit into US refining needs. The report concludes with an assessment of the challenges in restoring Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure and the uncertainty facing the region.
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00:00I want to quickly cut across to the other development that we've been tracking very closely,
00:03and that comes in from the United States of America in Venezuela.
00:07From the presidential palace to a prison transport, Maduro now finds himself in a New York court.
00:13The visuals on your screen show Maduro being escorted in cups to a Manhattan federal court.
00:19Venezuela's deposed leader, along with his wife, were flown from a Brooklyn jail to face U.S. drug trafficking charges.
00:26Following what Washington described as a dramatic operation leading to his capture.
00:31Meanwhile, President Trump has issued a fresh warning to interim president of Venezuela, Mr. Rodriguez,
00:38saying the United States will strike again if Venezuela does not fall in line.
00:45The next question is who's in charge of Venezuela right now.
00:48Have you spoken to the newly sworn president there, Rodriguez, and what are your thoughts on the entire situation?
00:55You said the U.S. would run Venezuela.
00:57We're dealing with the people. We're dealing with people that just got sworn in.
01:01And don't ask me who's in charge because I'll give you an answer and it'll be very confident.
01:07What does that mean?
01:08We're in charge.
01:09This isn't a country that's on the other side of the world.
01:12This isn't a country like we have to travel 24 hours in an airplane.
01:17This is Venezuela. It's in our area.
01:19The Don Road Doctor.
01:20So is that what you would say, that we're in the business of having countries around us that are viable and successful
01:29and where the oil is allowed to freely come out because that's good against the prices there.
01:35That's good for our country.
01:37President, if you had to sum up Operation Absinthe Resolve, would you say that it was about oil or it was about regime change?
01:44It's about peace on Earth.
01:48How is it peace on Earth?
01:49Peace on Earth.
01:50We've got to have peace. It's our hemisphere.
01:53The Monroe Doctrine was very important when it was done.
01:56And other presidents, a lot of them, they lost sight of it.
02:00I didn't. I didn't lose that.
02:02But it really is. It's peace on Earth.
02:03All right. The big questions that we ask at the back of that development, which we saw take place over the course of the weekend.
02:11What is President Trump's plan for Venezuela?
02:13Is Trump planning more invasions?
02:15Is Venezuela raid all about oil?
02:18And how will China respond?
02:19Let's take these questions to Casey Singh, former Indian ambassador, Dr. Thaymur Beg, managing director and chief economist,
02:25DBS Bank Limited, Daniel Freed, former diplomat and Wiser family distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council.
02:32Let's cut across to Mr. Freed first.
02:34Mr. Freed, what is your reading of what transpired in the last 48 hours, sir?
02:41We are dealing with a legally and constitutionally questionable U.S. move.
02:50Deposing Maduro, however, could find some measure of vindication if what replaces it is democracy, stability and renewed prosperity for the Venezuelan people.
03:01That was more or less the result of the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989.
03:09But whether U.S. policy is headed in that direction, I can't say.
03:15President Trump has spoken of running, the U.S. running Venezuela.
03:21Secretary Rubio has backed away from that.
03:26The United States seems to have little interest in a democratic transition to the Venezuelan opposition, which won the last election, by all accounts.
03:40Instead, the U.S. seems to be counting on some sort of arrangement with the rest of the Maduro regime, which is still in power.
03:49So a great deal of uncertainty and the U.S. is staring into a dark room.
03:57And it is not clear to me what's at the other side.
04:03I want to bring in Casey Singh as well.
04:05Ambassador Singh, you know, when you look at the developments and India's response to say it's very, very measured concern, but not condemnation in a fast evolving geopolitical situation.
04:18Do you think it's the prudent line to take?
04:23Look, I think there are many legal elements to it, but I think there are three basic ways, three basic reasons how you can, or justification, you can intervene and go and grab somebody from another country.
04:36One is you have the U.N. Security Council approval, which they don't have in this case.
04:41Second is the other country approves, which they didn't, because you grabbed the president.
04:44And the third is that you say self-defense.
04:48Now, U.S. is not talking of, they're using self-defense, saying drugs were coming to us and drugs are killing people in America.
04:56And hence, it is self-defense to go and get him.
04:58Now, that itself is questionable because fentanyl is really not coming from Venezuela.
05:04And then the reasons given by U.S. they go on wearing.
05:07The Southern Command Chief, General Lede, she said, no, it's got nothing to do with democracy.
05:13It's got to do with oil.
05:14It's got to do with minerals.
05:16So you're getting different arguments from different people.
05:19You've got the European Commission, 26 countries have signed a statement.
05:23And they've said, we are not for Maduro.
05:25We think there should be an orderly transition to a popularly elected government.
05:29No, you can't use illegal means to do it.
05:32So there is a debate.
05:34In fact, U.N. Security Council is probably meeting as we discuss this.
05:38They're meeting today.
05:40And this will be brought up by China and by other countries and by Russia, the prominent members, and probably even England and France.
05:46The French have taken a position on this.
05:48And then what has happened is, I think the danger is that President Trump is feeling so emboldened by this,
05:54that he is threatening Colombia, then he is threatening Greenland, then he is back to, again, many of Cuba.
06:01So he is threatening all those.
06:02So he is saying there's the Monroe Doctrine of the 19th century, and we can intervene wherever we want.
06:07Now, what nobody has told him is the Monroe Doctrine was because the countries in Latin America had attained independence from Portugal and Spain.
06:16So the American president was saying, now, don't intervene in their independence.
06:21They were not saying, don't come to Latin America to trade.
06:24Now, that argument has been taken by President Trump.
06:26He's calling it the Don Roe Doctrine.
06:32And that means that he can intervene wherever he wants.
06:34And anything which is there in Latin America, South America, Central America, they will intervene and they will grab it.
06:41And this is really something going back to colonial times, 19th century.
06:45I think it's going to lead to international debate.
06:48And particularly if he steps in on Greenland, I think it would cause a serious problem between NATO and U.S.
06:56There would be a very wide split, which can have implications.
06:59We don't know where this is headed.
07:02Also, we don't know wherever Americans have intervened in the past.
07:05The result has not been very good with Afghanistan.
07:07No, it was Iraq.
07:09They were not able to bring democracy.
07:10And in this case, the final point, that the ones who won the election, which was Gonsalves and the Nobel Prize winner, Muchado, they've been dumped by America.
07:21Now, if you want to take, you know, the dictator out, then call those people in and have a transition to an actually elected government, which won the last election.
07:32So all that has been sidelined.
07:33They've cut a deal with the current president, Rodriguez.
07:39And I think they are trying to see if they can get control of oil, control of the minerals.
07:44And that is what this whole game is about.
07:46I don't think there's a stable path available.
07:48Fair point.
07:49So, Dr. Berg, less about taking a dictator out, more about the fact that Venezuela accounts for 20% of the world's oil produce.
07:58And the U.S. military intervention was more about oil than anything else.
08:01Well, the U.S. oil refineries, particularly in the south, are equipped to deal with what is known as extra heavy crude that Venezuela produces.
08:11Very few countries in the world are in that crude, and their refineries are not equipped to deal with that.
08:16So in a way, you could argue that this is tailor-made for oil refineries in southern United States.
08:23But mind you, none of this oil that Donald Trump covets are going to be in the pipeline anytime soon.
08:29Venezuela has a fairly dilapidated oil production infrastructure, ruined by decades of sanctions.
08:36It produces about a million barrels a day, which really does not make any difference in the global oil output picture, less than 1% of global output.
08:45There are countries in the world that really depends heavily on Venezuelan oil, including that China.
08:50And therefore, it doesn't have major systemic implications for the oil market, for oil production, or oil price for that matter.
08:59Unless the U.S. Congress comes up with a legal framework, it'll be actually very hard for U.S. oil companies also to start devoting billions of dollars of investments in Venezuela.
09:10Because what happens when they're around, and there are people that this entire adventure was done on the premises?
09:21So I think that there's very well-seasoning, economic reasoning behind this, although it is the easy sell.
09:30It's about oil, and we're going to seize it.
09:32But when we look at the fundamentals of the economy of Venezuela, it does not look like a very persuasive case.
09:40All right.
09:41Well, the sheer fact that India also has investments in Venezuela's oil sector, do we look at this as an opportunity?
09:46We're going to come back on that question.
09:48But Daniel, Mr. Freed, I want to bring you back into this conversation.
09:51What next now?
09:52Because there's talk of Greenland, there's talk of Iran, you know, as a former diplomat.
09:58How do you look at it?
09:59What would be the next target?
10:00President Trump likes to keep other Americans and other countries off balance.
10:12He likes to threaten.
10:14He likes to brag.
10:16It is not clear to me that Trump is going to act quickly against any of these countries.
10:24His political base voted for him because he promised to extract the United States from foreign entanglements.
10:35Now he seems to be getting back into it.
10:38The operation to seize Maduro was frankly brilliant.
10:43It was just a textbook perfect operation, very impressive.
10:48But the outcome in Venezuela is far from clear.
10:53And it may not be as easy as Trump imagines.
10:58It's easier to conduct a quick military operation than it is to help set up a country or, as Trump says, to run a country or, as Marco Rubio says, to basically intimidate the remnants of the Maduro regime to cooperating with us.
11:16It's not clear that the U.S. has a viable or any plan for Venezuela.
11:22All right.
11:25Ambassador, Casey Singh, you know, to get you back into this conversation, the fact is that India has, you know, communicated to the U.S. that if it is expected to curtail its oil purchases from Russia, it must permit other markets like Venezuela.
11:41Do you see this as an opportunity?
11:43India also has investments where Venezuela's oil sector is concerned.
11:47I don't think Venezuela is the only source because, as has just been put, for them to go up from about just under a million barrels a day to a higher production level.
11:57The highest was three or four million a couple of decades ago.
12:00It's going to take a long time because they don't have the pipelines.
12:03It's a very heavy crude.
12:05It's very difficult to pull it out and then to transport it and to really develop that infrastructure.
12:10And that's assuming things remain stable within Venezuela because don't forget the army is sulking.
12:17This was not a proper military operation.
12:20I think this was a connivance on the part of domestic forces which allowed the president to be removed.
12:26Only most of the people killed were his personal Cuban guard.
12:30So it's a very long journey and there are much safer places to buy oil from.
12:35Than Venezuela.
12:37Yeah.
12:37Venezuela is not about to sell the oil on a discount.
12:39And there are many other transportation costs.
12:43Fair point.
12:43Dr. Beg, I'm running out of time.
12:45So I just want to quickly get in, Dr. Beg, for an intervention.
12:48How do you think China is going to react?
12:50Because not just a customer, it's also a big investor where Venezuela's oil industry is concerned.
12:56So China is quite deeply entangled in the Venezuelan economy.
13:01You have perhaps more than 100,000 Chinese nationals who work in Venezuela.
13:06And, of course, Chinese oil companies have substantial investments in Venezuela.
13:11If this is a way to push China out, it's going to be very problematic.
13:16I don't think that is part of President Trump's design.
13:19Because I haven't really heard the word China mentioned in any of these discussions.
13:24It would actually be a very dangerous geopolitical escalation if that were to happen.
13:29Mind you, even in Iraq, after the U.S. went ahead with this intervention, there were fears
13:35that the Chinese investment in Iraq would be under jeopardy.
13:38Actually, that didn't happen at all.
13:39In fact, once things stabilized, China actually doubled up on it.
13:44Venezuela, in my view, would probably follow a similar script.
13:48I don't think U.S. is in there to push China out, because it's not like China has had major
13:53success in influencing a Maduro regime in any way or protecting it.
14:00The Americans went in and just abducted him just like that.
14:02So I don't think if there were any military questions we would be discussing in this particular
14:08line of reasoning, it would be very different.
14:09So I would say that as far as China is concerned, they have to watch and see.
14:14They will also say that, you know, if your neighborhood is that separate, what about our neighborhood?
14:18Is that then our plaything?
14:21I appreciate all three gentlemen for joining us.
14:23We're going to keep a keen eye on all developments as they take place.
14:28And we'll see you tomorrow night.
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