President Trump said we invaded Venezuela not so much over the drugs or democracy but for the oil. We left the drug runners in charge of the country with gunboats moored offshore ready to invade again if they don’t cede control of their oil fields. Trump disregards the winners of the 2024 Venezuelan elections exiled by dictator Nicholas Maduro, who sits in a New York jail on drug charges. Trump warned that the same thing could happen with other neighbors, calling out Mexico with its own large nationalized oil reserves.
Gunboat diplomacy seldom, if ever, ends well for the gunner or the target. Venezuela is acutely familiar. Its history with European and US colonizers coercing the nation led to the rise of nationalist Hugo Chavez and successor Maduro. A bunch of criminals associating with Russia have been left to run the country while Secretary of State Marco Rubio issues orders. The junta in charge claims that it will explore cooperation. They told Teddy Roosevelt the same thing until he drew the gunboats back. The place has been in turmoil since. It is likely to remain in turmoil as US oil companies lay claim to the national resources.
Trump pledged to oil executives that if they could shower him with $1 billion he would return the favor many times over. He gave them Venezuela, if they can manage it with the resident criminals in charge.
Iowa Republicans praised the action. Democrats assailed it. Nathan Sage, a Democratic candidate for US Senate who is a veteran of both the Marine Corps and the Army, said: “The American people are fed up with endless wars and the leaders who enable them.” That could have been a Trump voter in 2016. Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson said it was about time that Maduro was held accountable. She did not address the practical issues surrounding regime change in return for oil.
Regime change for profit most often results in chaos, corruption and more war, even with the best-laid plans. It is the history of Latin America over the past 150 years, at least, along with gunboat diplomacy.
It is hard to imagine how Rubio can order up democracy and liberty from a military junta set on preserving power, which means controlling natural resources. China also has significant investments that it intends to protect by its own forms of leverage — for example, how it regards Taiwan or access to rare minerals vital to our security. The role of China has not been discussed. That should make us all nervous. What discussions have we had that nobody knows?
Which is all why we should listen to the Marine/soldier Sage. Congress steps aside while Trump commits us to hegemony over our neighbors. He provokes Iowa’s valued trading partner, Mexico, with threats to its sovereignty.
Iowans voted for Trump in large part for his promise not to engage us in foreign wars. He is using the US military to complete transactions on behalf of oil executives. The flow of cocaine has not relented. Venezuela is not a factor in fentanyl. The problem with the United States is demand, not supply. We cannot blame Mexico for the fact that the guns and money come from north of the border.
US warships protect the thugs controlling the oil, so long as they do what Trump wants, which is to enrich his friends and himself. Maduro in handcuffs is a better picture than Trump partying with Epstein, and is a compelling distraction from high-priced hamburger.
The near-term effect on petroleum is higher prices. That affects everything from gasoline to fertilizer. There is no telling how this shakes out in coming months as Trump hurls military threats at adversaries near and far, including Iran.
It’s part of a nervous energy driving toward authoritarian power. How this affects lives matters little. This is a play for petrodollars disguised as a drug interdiction that actually enhances and protects the power of the criminal class.
Iowans must vote against an imperial presidency. We must elect a Congress that asserts its constitutional war-making and oversight authorities. We must demand something more cogent than regime change for another class of tinpot dictators. There is no plan. We must elect a Democrat to the US Senate in hopes of putting some sort of a check on this haphazard jingoism in search of foreign treasure.
Our adventurism almost always ends up in tragedy. Trump no doubt thinks this will play to his benefit. He is not in control of what happens, as Teddy Roosevelt learned long ago. We still have some measure of control over Trump’s impulses if Congress lived up to its duty.
Republicans in the legislature have thorny problems to address as they plan for midterm elections next November, with property taxes and eminent domain leading the agenda. We have described before how Gov. Reynolds is warning about reduced services from local government, including schools, in order to damp rising property taxes. It’s a tough spot but she asked for it by insisting on lower income taxes.
Eminent domain is even more troublesome for the deep emotions and divisions it creates within the Republican Party. You have the Steve King wing that defends property rights as derived from the Divine, and you have the Gov. Kim Reynolds corporate wing that likes gobs of money and panders to agribusiness interests. Support for the right to take property to lay a carbon dioxide transport pipeline is nearly a religious issue in the ethanol industry, which occupies a sacred place among rural voters who populate the Republican Party.
Things change, but the controversial Summit pipeline continues to push for approval. That compels the property-rights advocates to fight back in this session of the legislature. Either way, it could affect Republican turnout in the primary and general elections. Democrats can stand by and watch the fight during the legislative session. The Republicans have not found a way to split the difference. It could become a red-hot issue in the Fourth Congressional District, which is where so much of the ethanol footprint leaves its political impression, with a contested GOP congressional primary.
Beware the news last week that the federal government awarded Iowa $209 million to put in place Gov. Kim Reynolds’s health-care construct that she calls hub-and-spoke. As described, it should be a huge waste of money if not a disaster for health care in marginalized rural communities.
The money came down to salve the wounds of cuts to Medicaid. Reynolds proposes to use the money by calcifying an existing regional health care delivery system that only a money-grubber can love. The contorted health care “market” (which is a badly run conspiracy between health insurance companies and the government) already established a hub-and-spoke system. Sioux City or Spencer is the hub, Storm Lake is the spoke. Resources are directed to the hub. We get baubles. That is how it works. You get basic treatment in Storm Lake. The real money for specialists and surgeries flows to Sioux City. Reynolds wants to reinforce it with even more money, while Storm Lake gets nothing but a headache.
It means a better website experience in Sac City to speak with a doctor some distance away, probably Fort Dodge and certainly not the Mayo Clinic or the world-class medical complex in Omaha. Money will flow to places already consolidating health services. It will be bad news for places like Pocahontas, which is trying to maintain a hospital.
Recall how all those rural nursing homes closed under the Branstad/Reynolds Medicaid privatization scheme, including in Storm Lake, Albert City and Newell.
The problem for rural health care providers is low reimbursement rates from private and government insurers. Medicaid will lose nearly $1 trillion under the Trump administration’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” that cuts taxes for the wealthiest Americans. Iowa would be better off with stable Medicaid funding. While increased cancer screening and better telemedicine are welcome, they cannot replace the need for a steady and predictable revenue stream that supports comprehensive health care in the community. Grants to attract rural physicians, as envisioned by Reynolds, can only take you so far. They need a regular paycheck sustained by a sensible revenue scheme. While Reynolds is blowing federal money, health insurance premiums are rising beyond the pale with no help on the horizon in the governor’s Healthy Hometowns initiative. It is a Trojan horse for reduced rural health care.
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