The Citgo Foreign Policy

The following story is co-published with Joe Cirincione’s Substack.

Donald Trump has taken American national security policy and driven it off a cliff. His attack on Venezuela and his kidnapping of its president and his wife have nothing to do with threats to America and everything to do with the personal fortunes of Trump and his billionaire friends. It is about replacing diplomacy and the rule of law with a gangster strategy for how great powers should rule the world — and great men should profit from it.

“Clearly this is wildly illegal,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told CNN. “This is a president who has been operating illegally since he was sworn in — stealing from the American people, seizing spending power, now dragging America into a war overseas. … Donald Trump’s entire foreign policy is corrupt.”

“Let’s be clear: The Trump administration is lying to the American people,” Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “This has never been about stopping drugs from coming to the U.S. — it’s about grabbing Venezuela’s oil for his billionaire buddies. Trump has put American troops in harm’s way to boost oil company profits. Outrageous.”

There was scant mention of drugs and not a word about democracy at Trump’s weekend press conference touting the attack. For good reason. Venezuela’s drug output is minor compared to other nations. As CNN reported on Monday afternoon, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s own assessment for 2025 doesn’t even list Venezuela as an exporter of fentanyl, the drug responsible for half of all overdose deaths annually in the United States. Some 48,000 Americans died from fentanyl last year. But most of that supply comes from Mexico, China, Colombia and India, according to the DEA.

Cocaine is trafficked from Venezuela, but not much. When the Trump administration started its campaign against Venezuela, it said that the country exported 200 to 250 tons of cocaine each year. But that pales in comparison to shipments from other countries, for example, the 1,400 tons of cocaine shipped through Guatemala each year, a far smaller country. And most of Venezuela’s cocaine is sent to Europe, not the United States.

So what is this all about? In a word: OIL.

Billionaires run U.S. policy

Although he refused to tell Congress about the attacks (and Democrats say his top officials directly lied under oath when asked about plans to attack), Trump did tell the people closest to him. Trump on Monday proudly said that he talked to oil company tycoons “before and after” the attack. “And they want to go in, and they’re going to do a great job for the people of Venezuela, and they’re going to represent us well,” Trump claimed. There was no mention of the 80 people killed in the bombings, including a 78-year-old woman sleeping in her bed.

Often it helps to look at the specifics of a corrupt policy to understand how the pursuit of profits destroys national security strategy. Judd Legum did us a service with his Popular Information newsletter when he detailed on Monday how the attack “created a financial windfall for a prominent Trump-supporting billionaire, investor Paul Singer.”

Singer, a former backer of Marco Rubio who has met with Trump four times and contributed millions to his coffers, acquired Citgo (the U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-run oil company) in November 2025. Although the company is valued at $13 billion to $18 billion, Singer got it for $5.9 billion because a long-running U.S. embargo forced the company to default on its bond payments.

“Singer acquired Citgo at a bargain price in large part due to the embargo, with limited exceptions, on Venezuela oil imports to the United States,” Legum explains. “Citgo’s refiners are purpose-built to process heavy-grade Venezuelan “sour” crude. As a result, Citgo was forced to source oil from more expensive sources in Canada and Colombia. (Oil produced in the United States is generally light-grade.) This made Citgo’s operations far less profitable.”

If Trump’s plan succeeds, Citgo and other U.S. companies will be “very strongly involved,” Trump says. Singer will make a fortune.

In the fully corrupt way that policy is now made in Washington, Singer helped this scheme along by generously funding nongovernmental organizations that pushed out papers and articles favoring attacks on Venezuela.

Singer helped establish elite political support for regime change in Venezuela through his funding of right-wing think tanks.

Singer has donated over $10 million to the Manhattan Institute since 2011, including $2 million in 2024 and $1.8 million in 2023. From 2008 to 2025, Singer served as chairman of the Manhattan Institute board of directors. He currently serves as chairman emeritus.

The Manhattan Institute has produced a steady stream of papers and reports calling for Maduro’s ouster and defending Trump’s aggressive policies against the regime.

Legum further notes:

Singer is also a major donor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). In November 2025, FDD produced a report calling for military strikes in Venezuela. “The United States should strike cartel infrastructure, drug production facilities, and regime military assets that enable narcoterrorism,” the FDD report argued.

Singer has supported other right-wing think tanks that have promoted hawkish U.S. policies against Venezuela, including AEI and the Heritage Foundation.

Journalists and media organizations facilitate this targeted propaganda by citing these supposed experts while rarely noting who funds them.

It is all about controlling resources

American presidents are no strangers to coups, invasions and regime change. Revolutionary War militias 250 years ago were attacking and overthrowing the leaders of the Native American nations that occupied the land they desired. I began my national security career in Washington working on Central America and am well aware of the sordid history of CIA coups in Latin America and around the world. British Petroleum’s desire, for example, to get back the oil refineries that the democratically elected president of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, had nationalized led directly to his 1953 overthrow in a joint British-U.S. covert coup. Britain and America installed as monarch the unpopular “Shah of Iran,” ushering in new profits for oil companies and 73 years of tyranny for the Iranian people.

Since World War II, however, these operations have been conducted largely in the framework of a global system of laws, treaties and institutions that sought to prevent new world wars by prohibiting nations from invading other countries. Major U.S. military operations have largely been conducted with the direct authorization of Congress, including the 1965 Vietnam War, the 1991 war with Iraq, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Trump seeks to eliminate any congressional role and throw off international restraints. This is his and the far-right’s vision of a “unitary president” that rides above the other branches of government. It fits well with Trump’s personal disregard for laws, institutions and norms. It is strength, power and will that determine policy, not collaboration, compromise and national unity.

Trump and his allies have now formalized this vision in the new National Security of the United States of America statement, released last November. With unauthorized attacks in Trump’s first year on Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela, the new strategy focused heavily on the Western Hemisphere. Read it as the clear acknowledgment that Trump sees the world as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping do, as “spheres of influence” where a great power dominates the other states and peoples.

Thus the national security strategy asserts that all of North and South America are subordinate to U.S. rule. It claims:

After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities.

It is all about controlling resources, their exploitation and extraction:

The Western Hemisphere is home to many strategic resources that America should partner with regional allies to develop. … Non-Hemispheric competitors have made major inroads into our Hemisphere, both to disadvantage us economically in the present, and in ways that may harm us strategically in the future. Allowing these incursions without serious pushback is another great American strategic mistake of recent decades .…

The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity — a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region. … Successfully protecting our Hemisphere also requires closer collaboration between the U.S. Government and the American private sector. All our embassies must be aware of major business opportunities in their country, especially major government contracts. Every U.S. Government official that interacts with these countries should understand that part of their job is to help American companies compete and succeed.

There is much more, but you get the picture. This is state capitalism, using the power and military might of the United States to dominate other nations, push aside rivals and enrich favored corporate interests. This is naked imperialism. It is a return to 19th century ideas that caused the deaths of tens of millions in brutal wars of occupation and territorial aggrandizement.

Nor is Venezuela the end of Trump’s illegal adventurism. He speaks openly of “needing” Greenland and of his desire to make Canada part of the United States. He wants the resources of Panama and Mexico and hinted that Colombia could be next and its president should “watch his ass.”

Trump has greatly strengthened Putin and Xi, who can now cite his actions as justification for their own designs on Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively. It is another body blow to the interlocking system of global security — however incomplete and imperfect — that the United States championed for over 80 years. America and the nations of the world are less secure today than they were last week.

In November, I listed all the reasons why an invasion of Venezuela was insane and highly unlikely to succeed. I warned, however, that as the Iraq War has shown, just because something is stupid doesn’t mean a country won’t do it.

We are entering a very dangerous period where our nation is run by vile, corrupt and incompetent leaders more interested in grift than governance. As Trump’s popularity continues to sink, as he seeks to divert public attention away from the Epstein files, as he seeks to grab as much money as he can, the crisis will only worsen.

The next few months, as the historian Heather Cox Richardson says, may well determine whether we remain an imperfect nation of laws or descend into full authoritarianism. Trump, she says, “has signed on to the project to destroy the international, rules-based order.” But as his failures become more apparent, as he gets more cornered, as the struggle deepens, she says, “either they are going to grab control and turn the United States into a dictatorship or the American people are going to take our system back.”

I’m betting on the American people.