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President of the United States Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he was ordering the blockade of all “sanctioned oil tankers” in the Venezuelaincreasing pressure on the country’s authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro in a move that seemed designed to tighten the stranglehold on the South American country’s economy.
After that comes Trump’s escalation US forces seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela last weekan unusual move that followed the build-up of military forces in the region. In a social media post Tuesday evening announcing the blockade, Trump claimed Venezuela was using oil to finance drug trafficking and other crimes and vowed to continue building up the military until the country gives the US oil, land and property, though it’s unclear why he thinks the US has the right.
“Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest army ever assembled in the history of South America,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform. “It’s only going to get bigger, and the shock to them will be like nothing they’ve ever seen – Until they return to the United States of America all the oil, land and other assets they previously stole from us.”
Pentagon officials referred all questions about the position to the White House.
The Venezuelan government issued a statement Tuesday accusing Trump of “violating international law, free trade and the principles of free navigation” with a “reckless and serious threat” to the South American nation.
“On his social media, he assumes that Venezuela’s oil, land and mineral wealth are his property,” a statement on Trump’s post said.
“Consequently, he demands that Venezuela immediately surrender all of its wealth. The President of the United States intends to impose, in a highly irrational manner, an alleged naval blockade of Venezuela in order to steal the wealth that belongs to our nation.”
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Maduro’s government, according to the statement, plans to denounce the situation before the United Nations.
The U.S. buildup was accompanied by a a series of military attacks on ships in international waters in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific.
The campaign, which has drawn bipartisan attention among US lawmakers, has killed at least 95 people in 25 known attacks on vessels.
Trump has said for weeks that the US would move its campaign out of the water and begin strikes on land.
The Trump administration defended the raids as a success, saying they prevented drugs from reaching US shores and dismissed concerns that they were expanding the boundaries of legal warfare.
The Trump administration has said the campaign is aimed at stopping drugs going into the US, but Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles appeared to confirm in an interview with Vanity Fair published Tuesday that the campaign is part of an effort to oust Maduro.
Wiles said Trump “wants to keep blowing up boats until Maduro calls his uncle.”
Tuesday night’s post appears to have a similar goal.
Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and produces about one million barrels a day, has long relied on oil revenue as the lifeblood of its economy.
Since the Trump administration began imposing oil sanctions on Venezuela in 2017, Maduro’s government has relied on a mysterious fleet of unflagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.
The state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, better known as PDVSA, has been shut out of global oil markets by US sanctions. It sells most of its exports at deep discounts on the black market in China.
Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuelan oil expert at Rice University in Houston, said about 850,000 barrels of the million daily production are exported. Of that, he said, 80 percent goes to China, 15 to 17 percent goes to the U.S. through Chevron Corp., and the rest goes to Cuba.
In October, Trump appeared to confirm reports that Maduro had offered stakes in Venezuela’s oil and other mineral wealth in recent months to try to fend off increasing pressure from the United States.
“He offered everything,” Trump said at the time. “You know why? Because he doesn’t want to mess with the United States.”
It was not immediately clear how the US planned to implement what Trump called a “TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKS entering and leaving Venezuela.”
But the US Navy has 11 ships, including an aircraft carrier and several amphibious assault ships, in the region.
These ships carry a wide variety of aircraft, including helicopters and the V-22 Osprey. In addition, the Navy operated several P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft in the region.
All in all, these assets give the military a significant ability to monitor maritime traffic coming in and out of the country.
Trump said in his post that “the Venezuelan regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” but it was unclear what he meant.
The designation of foreign terrorist organization has historically been reserved for non-state actors that do not have sovereign immunity granted by treaties or membership of the United Nations.
In November, the Trump administration announced that it had designated the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization. The term Cartel de los Soles originally referred to Venezuelan military officers involved in the drug trade, but it is not a cartel per se.
Governments that US administrations seek to sanction for funding, otherwise encouraging, or tolerating extremist violence are commonly referred to as “state sponsors of terrorism.”
Venezuela is not on that list.
In rare cases, the US has designated an element of a foreign government as an “FTO”. The Trump administration in its first term did this with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, an arm of the Iranian government, which had already been designated a state sponsor of terrorism.
