How far will Trump go in his 'war' with Venezuela?

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0:30how to invest and manage money. Learn more at schwab.com. What's going on between Donald Trump and Nicolas Maduro, the leader of Venezuela? Indeed, between the United States and Venezuela as a nation, the US has now seized a Venezuelan oil tanker, a huge one, with all the oil, which they're not intending to give back. Is that the first step towards proper military action against Venezuela? and how much does that comport with the wider Trump view of the outside world? Welcome to AmeriCast.

1:07AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir, right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir. We are the sickest country in the world. Oh, dear. Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry? Of course the president supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

1:33Hello, it's Sarah here in the BBC's Washington Bureau. And it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. And we should say it's 10 o 'clock in the morning on Thursday here in the US, so it's three in the afternoon with you then, Justin, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. That much I can confirm. Not much else, but I can certainly confirm that, because I was up early this morning doing my day job. But I've come in bleary eyed back to the BBC because we've got a lot to talk about. And it's absolutely fascinating. And it's about a place as well, which is a place that we've both been to and both much loved when we were there.

2:07Yeah, that's right. We're going to be focusing on Venezuela. The latest news is that last night on Wednesday, the US government released a video of US forces basically seizing a Venezuelan oil tanker. And the pictures are remarkable. I mean, it's amazing that you can see this much of a military operation happening in the ocean. But there's video of U.S. forces rappelling out of a helicopter on ropes to land on the top of this massive oil tanker. And then guns drawn, they're marching towards the cabin where the crew are. And you can see them basically taking the ship. There's about 10 of them land on it.

2:45It's really, really remarkable to be able to watch. And that was released shortly after Donald Trump told us that they had seized this ship. and said that the US was probably going to keep the oil. As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a 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 other people. What happens to the oil on this ship? Well, we keep it, I guess. Where's it called? What's his go to? Well, you have to follow the tanker.

3:25You're a good newsman. Just follow the tanker. Follow it. Get a helicopter. Follow the tanker. But we're going to, I guess, soon we're going to keep the oil. The biggest, it had to be the biggest ever, didn't it? The seizure. But if you thought that was a kind of slightly peculiar Trump-esque reaction to what had happened, listen to the Venezuelan president who was every bit as strange. Here's Nicolas Maduro.

4:21Just peace, not war. Just peace, not war, he was saying there. And in Spanish, immediately before he broke into song, he was saying to American citizens who are against the war, I respond with a very famous song. Now, the US has not actually declared war on Venezuela at this point and said that they had seized that oil tanker because it was transporting sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran as part of an illicit oil shipping network that the U.S. says is supporting foreign terrorist organisations because there are American sanctions on oil from Venezuela. So they say the ship was breaking them and that's why it's been seized.

4:59Yeah. I mean, it's fair to say most Venezuelan oil goes to China, doesn't it, in this day and age. It's not going elsewhere in the world. But it appears to be a ship that, at least in theory, was at one stage coming from Iran, which obviously is also subject to sanctions. And it may well be that all of that is true and that it is sanctioned, but it's still a very big deal, isn't it? Not just because of stealing the oil and putting it somewhere, but much more importantly, what it says about the ability of Venezuela to continue to do business in the modern world without Donald Trump putting more pressure on it.

5:39And I think that's the question, isn't it, Sarah? Are we talking about a gradual ratcheting up towards something or not? Yes, I think we are. A little bit of background. Our AmeriCasters will be very well aware that there have been over 20 US strikes now on boats that America says is smuggling cocaine to America from Venezuela. There has been CIA covert actions sanctioned inside the country, according to Donald Trump, and a huge buildup of military forces in the region as well, both land and sea forces. And Donald Trump muses every so often about the possibility of a land invasion. So I think we don't know exactly what he's going to do, but I think we do know what his aim is, and that is regime change.

6:22He wants Nicolás Maduro out in Venezuela. He doesn't like him. He's a far-left ruler who is no friend of the United States, no friend of Donald Trump, does most of his business with China, and Trump has decided he wants to get rid of him. I don't know if he has decided whether he's prepared to go to war to do it, but I think he's prepared to use a fair amount of American muscle to see how much pressure it will take to topple Maduro. And to those who think they've spotted a bit of a flaw in Donald Trump's logic. So on the one hand, he's telling the world we don't care what you do. We're not interested in regime change anymore.

6:54We're not even interested in whether you pursue human rights or you don't pursue human rights. You just do what you want to do. He made that famous speech, didn't he? I think you were there, Sarah, in Saudi Arabia. Really cogent speech, I thought, actually, that set out Trumpism. And of course, more recently, we've had the national security document that they put out, of course, so much upset in Europe, basically saying, you know, the world should get on with its business, except he's not doing that with Nicolas Maduro. And as you suggest, there are kind of various reasons why Maduro could be a target.

7:27He's not a Democrat. In fact, he almost definitely stole an election and he runs his country incredibly badly. And lots of people have to leave that country. Lots of Venezuelans have left the country. We'll perhaps talk a bit more about Venezuela in a second. But there is another reason, isn't there, why he would say this fits with his overall view of the world. A view of the world that was made very clear in that national security strategy that was released last week. Donald Trump believes that the United States has a sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere and that basically Central and South America ought to be, if not controlled by the United States, that he has the right to make sure that there are regimes friendly.

8:11They're doing business with the United States and where he perceives there to be any kind of enemy or opposition, that he has the right to interfere and to intervene and that nobody else does. He's making it very clear that this is America's backyard. A European or other foreign influence is not welcome in any way whatsoever, but that he ought to be allowed to cast it in his own image, practically. So we have this pressure campaign against Maduro in Venezuela. We've seen him interfere in Honduras, where they are still in the process of counting the results of a very recent election. Donald Trump intervened in that by saying he was backing the conservative candidate and making threats that the US would stop funding Honduras if his preferred candidate didn't win.

8:57And then, of course, he released the former president as well, who had been serving a 45-year jail sentence in America for drug smuggling. He was pardoned by Donald Trump. And then if you look at Argentina, where his friend Milley is in charge, you see very, very friendly relations, where a$20 billion loan has just been issued to Argentina in a form of a currency swap to help prop them up. and he says very supportive things about Argentina. So what he's making obvious is if you are America's friend, then you will do very well out of this. And if you are in opposition to Donald Trump, watch out.

9:29And all of it, students of history will know, stemming from the Monroe Doctrine back in 1823, President Monroe, if Marianna was here, she would ask me whether I had covered it when he made this declaration. I did not cover it, nor did I cover the Roosevelt corollary, which would have been, I can't remember when it was, was the beginning of the last century when Teddy Roosevelt was around that basically said not only must the Europeans not interfere in the Western Hemisphere, which is what the Monroe Doctrine said, but also America, exactly as you were saying, Thera, America takes to itself the responsibility to interfere where it needs to.

10:06And that's, I mean, it's fair to say this isn't new with Trump. I mean, it's been the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt corollary have been much acted on. You mentioned Honduras. Honduras was the original banana republic. And a lot of those bananas, almost all of them, owned ultimately by American firms. And of course, this whole business of America's influence in Central America, but also leeching down into South America, is nothing new. But there's also just this sense now, I suppose, that with Trump, the thing that people thought might be different was that he wouldn't actually involve himself.

10:43there might be all sorts of rhetorical flourishes about those rulers he didn't like, and Maduro would come into that category. But nobody thought he'd actually, well, I think a lot of his supporters didn't think they'd actually act on it. Yeah, because he said that he wasn't interested in getting involved in any more foreign wars. And even if he does think that South America is America's backyard, you know, it's very definitely foreign. And we've yet to see if he does have any interest in putting boots on the ground to support these policies, even though there has been this huge buildup of forces, most of whom are stationed in Puerto Rico at the moment.

11:15They could be there as a threat rather than an imminent invasion force. But this is not just because Donald Trump thinks that he ought to control the policies of other countries. This is absolutely rooted in American self-interest. So he would argue that this is about America first. And the reasons are drugs. And he goes on all the time about the number of Americans who are dying from drug overdoses. And he says that's why he needs to crack down on the drugs coming from Venezuela. albeit that's mostly cocaine and it's fentanyl that's killing people in the United States and that's coming from Mexico.

11:45But setting that aside, he says that the war on drugs is vitally important and that needs to be tackled in South America. Immigration, we know, is his number one issue and it's the failed regimes in South America that are driving a huge amount of the inward immigration into this country. Massive numbers of Venezuelans where the economy has absolutely collapsed are trying to come into the United States. It's the same from other South American countries. So if you can stabilize the regimes there, you stop one of the big drivers of immigration coming here. But also over the last couple of decades, when America wasn't as involved in South America, the trade all went to China.

12:24Every single country bar one in South America, China is their biggest trading partner. And Donald Trump wants to move them away from that and back into dealing with America. So if you look at that, drugs, migration, trade, these are his big issues, the big things he thinks America should be concentrating on. And he sees his interference in South America as helping those policies. Yeah, when you talk about migration, that's really interesting, isn't it? Because you're talking about people who are still to come out of Venezuela if it continues to spiral downhill economically. But actually, of course, there are, what, a million or so Venezuelans already in the United States.

13:02I remember just after the election, Sarah, just popping out of the office in D.C., and we went to meet a family, a Venezuelan family who were here, I say here, who were there where you are on this temporary status visa where the United States accepts that a place is an unacceptable place to send people back to for the time being, but doesn't accept it in the longer term. And the weird thing about the family I talked to, Sarah, was that mum and dad were on this temporary status, but they'd had kids in the United States, including one who'd actually become a U.S. Marine. So they were the actually epitome of this this conundrum that the Trump administration that America faces if they want to send people back.

13:47And quite often they've made lives in America and what most Americans would regard as very, very decent lives. And I just wonder whether part of this, just listening to you there, it just occurs to me, are there so many Venezuelans in the United States that if Venezuela became, in quotes, a safe country, that there'd be this sort of huge movement of people out of the United States and back into South America, which would be something the Trump administration would want to really trumpet. it. Oh, absolutely. And they want to see it happen and then be able to boast about it. And whilst there are families, as you describe, whose children are citizens because they were born here and are very, very well embedded in American society, there are also a lot of Venezuelans who have come very recently.

14:29And the temporary protected status that you're talking about, which has also been afforded to people from Haiti and other countries under the Biden administration, that's just being cancelled all the time by the Trump administration. They're just, I think they've already said, Haitians no longer have temporary protected status. So if that's the basis on which you were in the States, you're no longer legally here. So, I mean, it's entirely possible that he would happily cancel that for all Venezuelans in order to get them to go home. Yeah. I mean, on the economic side of it, is there also an argument that there are kind of plunderable natural resources?

15:06And whenever you think of oil, well, I suppose it is mainly oil, isn't it? Because Venezuela doesn't really export much else because part of this crisis, part of this long-term disaster, which we will get to in a second or two, is the inability of the Venezuelans ever to find a way of diversifying what their economy is dependent on. But, I mean, the oil is still quite significant, isn't it? You do wonder if Donald Trump would like to have, if not complete control over it, then to give American companies much more control than they have at the moment. Absolutely. American countries are not doing business with Venezuela under this regime.

15:42And actually, I think it has the largest oil reserves of any nation on Earth, although it's not great oil. It's very heavy, apparently. Don't you hate it when your oil's too heavy, Justin? Oh, yeah. I know that feeling. Well, it makes it incredibly difficult, apparently, to extract and to refine. So you need quite sophisticated methods to do it. So currently, Venezuela's not even actually being able to maximise its oil reserves. But yes, of course, American companies are chomping at the bit to get in there and make huge profits out of exploiting that. And as we know, the Trump administration isn't particularly worried about transitioning away from fossil fuels.

16:14So they would happily exploit that. So, yeah, there is there's a significant short term business opportunity and longer term policy reasons why Donald Trump thinks it's nigh on essential, I think, actually, to try and change things in Venezuela. What we don't know is if he was able to topple Nicolas Maduro, that that would necessarily guarantee that you would have a democratic regime or a Trump friendly regime come in there. But that's a different story. And at the moment, he's focused on trying to get Maduro out. You see, that's the thing, isn't it? Just before we talk a bit more about Venezuela, just on the domestic US politics side of this, it's exactly that point, isn't it?

16:49that some Trump supporters or erstwhile Trump supporters are saying, hold on a second, we didn't go for regime. We thought that this wasn't going to be a regime change administration. And what concerns us is not just the principle of the thing that we don't want to be involved in conflicts around the world. It's also the practicalities that you look back. I that George W. Bush made such a mess of Iraq, that Biden made a mess of Afghanistan and made a mess of pulling out as well, that it costs American lives, etc., etc. There is a sort of practical, within the MAGA movement, group of people, isn't there, who say, it's not just that on principle we shouldn't be doing this stuff, that in practice we get ourselves into such a mess And you, of all people, Donald Trump, ought to know that.

17:47Well, I think you could make a case. I haven't heard Donald Trump make it yet, but I think you could make a case. One, that this is principally about migration, which his MAGA supporters would listen to, especially if you highlight, for instance, the number of Venezuelans that there currently are in the United States. But also you could say that you're going about it for entirely different reasons, that George W. Bush was trying to bring democracy to Afghanistan and to the Middle East because that's an ideological good in itself. And they were trying to almost govern these countries before they could hand them back to a functioning democracy.

18:18Whereas Donald Trump just wants to remove one leader and replace it with a Trump-friendly one with no thought whatsoever of state building when you get in there or actually trying to govern any of these countries. But of course, people would point to the fact, not just that everything in Afghanistan and Iraq just grew and grew and grew into a problem that they never thought they were going to have. actually US involvement in South America hasn't exactly always gone to plan either has it Justin? No it certainly hasn't. Talking of which let us concentrate a bit on Venezuela and begin our coverage as it were of Venezuela with a young handsome foreign correspondent strutting around the capital Caracas.

18:59We're inching our way outside Caracas now through the clogged streets past the flea markets, towards the barrios, the shanty towns where the poor people live and where the Chavez revolution will succeed or fail. I'm in Mulatar, which is a godforsaken place, a shanty town clinging to the side of a hill. The buildings are made of corrugated iron, which makes them uninhabitable in the heat. There are open sewers, there are dead animals, The road isn't properly made up. People here are living in really desperate conditions. I'm with Alejandra, who's a local community organiser.

19:43Yeah, there we go. God forsaken place, Justin. I'm not sure we can say that anymore. You sound as though you're broadcasting from the 1950s in black and white. I always do. I always do. I think it's because my mother was still alive and she insisted on certain ways of speaking. But look, Hugo Chavez, who I mentioned there, Hugo Chavez still around in those days. And of course, all of this has a longer history, which is the history of Hugo Chavez and what he did to Venezuela. Hugo Chavez is very much the darling of the European left for a bit, but also, frankly, someone who ran his country into the ground.

20:20And there are all sorts of suggestions. Well, I think more than suggestions. It's a fact, isn't it, that those who are close to him, including his family, made off with quite a lot of the money that Venezuela had. And that description for me is important in this sense that Venezuela a few decades back, and I suppose you're talking about the 1960s, really, was one of the richest countries in the world per capita in the world. So you're talking about Switzerland, I don't know, Singapore, et cetera, et cetera. Their per capita income was really high. Although this oil, you attack their oil, Sarah, and say it's too heavy, they managed back in the day, maybe heavy oil was a thing back in the day, they made a ton of money out of it.

21:03And Hugo Chavez, you know, and those around him could have used that money to make their country better and didn't. And so, you know, there are plenty of reasons to criticise Venezuela and Venezuelan leaders and plenty of Venezuelans, of course, including the opposition leader who's just been to get her Nobel Peace Prize, hasn't she? Plenty of people have perfectly cogent attacks on Venezuela who are not Donald Trump. There are all sorts of ways in which Venezuela should be almost a paradise, actually, in many respects. Because you, I went to Caracas, you've been to even nicer bits of it, haven't you?

21:44Yeah, I went on holiday in the mid-90s, it must have been, with a few friends. And we had an absolutely wonderful time. In fact, it takes them quite often saying it's just heartbreaking what you see happening to Venezuela. And I remember then we got lost in the middle of a thunderstorm driving a hire car through Caracas, getting a little bit nervous because it was well known then that the slums and shantytowns surrounding the city were pretty dangerous. But actually, there was huge wealth in Caracas. You saw these wonderful mansions where the rich and prosperous lived. But we roamed around the countryside, went to see Angel Falls, this amazing waterfall in the middle of the rainforest and stayed in some beach resorts.

22:19And it was a paradise. It was absolutely glorious. I loved it. And would go back and back if only it weren't for the fact that everything has changed. And it's got these amazing beaches, isn't it? Because, I mean, just thinking about where it is, if you think about Central America, that sort of isthmus that goes down the middle bit, when it widens out again and becomes South America, we're talking about right at the top with a kind of view, as it were, metaphorically speaking, right across the Caribbean. So you're looking out towards I suppose Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados and all those places, all the way eventually to Cuba.

22:53It is an absolutely glorious part of the world, plus it's got a load of oil. I mean, what can possibly go wrong? And the answer is pretty much everything for the Venezuelans themselves. And it's worth saying, you know, there was I going around talking about desperate conditions in whenever that was, 2005 or so. It's actually got worse. Yeah, yeah, it has. And Nicolas Maduro followed on from Hugo Chavez and was his number two and his protege and is governing in very much the same way. And I don't think anybody can say that he ought to remain in charge or that he has much support around the world.

23:26And as you were quite rightly pointing out, just this week, the opposition leader received the Nobel Peace Prize. And so, you know, Trump and the Nobel Committee might not agree on a huge amount, but the need to get rid of Nicolas Maduro is the one thing of which they are of the same mind. Yeah, and it's interesting that the opposition The opposition is now playing this difficult game, isn't it, where it comes to it doesn't really want to be the Trump opposition. It doesn't want to be working on behalf of Donald Trump or seem to be too close to him or indeed to the United States, actually, because these are proud Venezuelan people who think they do want to sort out their own problems and might not want to have a desperately close relationship in the future with the US.

24:08It would certainly be a better relationship, but it might not be as a kind of vassal state relationship that Donald Trump and some of his acolytes might suggest was good to them. But at the moment, it is really interesting. We are poised, aren't we, at a moment in time where it looks as if Donald Trump is himself trying to work out whether they pull the trigger and actually go for Maduro and take all the risks of doing that. And we were talking on the pod, I was a few episodes ago now, weren't we, about a similar decision that they made with the much smaller and much easier to attack, as it were, country of Panama all those years ago, where they swooped in, got hold of the leader and put him in prison in the United States.

24:55And to do that to Maduro, I mean, he sounded from his song, didn't he, as if he's not too worried. But that might just be the sound of it. But to do it would involve presumably some bloodshed. The idea that they could just swoop in and get him, I think is unrealistic, isn't it? And presumably that's the advice Donald Trump is getting. They've offered a huge reward. I can't remember how many millions of dollars it is, but it's more than the price that was on Osama bin Laden's head in the hope that somebody around him will turn for the money. and, well, I think the United States thinks, ideally assassinate him.