Matthew Waxman, a Columbia University law professor who was a national security official in the George W. Bush administration, said seizing control of Venezuela’s resources opens up additional legal issues.
“For example, a big issue will be who really owns Venezuela’s oil?” Waxman wrote in an email. “An occupying military power can’t enrich itself by taking another state’s resources, but the Trump administration will probably claim that the Venezuelan government never rightfully held them.”
But Waxman, who served in the State and Defense Departments and on the National Security Council under Bush, noted that “we’ve seen the administration talk very dismissively about international law when it comes to Venezuela.”
Hours after an audacious military operation that plucked leader Nicolás Maduro from power and removed him from the country Saturday, President Donald Trump said the United States would run Venezuela at least temporarily and tap its vast oil reserves to sell to other nations.
The dramatic action capped an intensive Trump administration pressure campaign on the South American country and its autocratic leader and months of secret planning resulting in the most assertive American action to achieve regime change since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Speaking to reporters hours after Maduro’s capture, Trump revealed his plans to exploit the leadership void to “fix” the country’s oil infrastructure and sell “large amounts” of oil to other countries.
Venezuela’s Vice President demanded in a speech that the U.S. free Maduro and called him the country’s rightful leader.
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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
