No. of Recommendations: 4
Denial of access is as valuable as gaining access, and easier to do.
No, it's not anywhere near as valuable. Trump would rather have a million bpd of oil to give away than the ability to take a million bpd of oil off the market, six days a week and twice on Sunday. Denying access is largely valueless to the big oil majors - gaining access could be really valuable to them, depending on the terms.
Rant #1 holds that chaos was the intended outcome in Iraq.
I think that's clearly wrong. The intended outcome in Iraq was a docile client state loyal to the U.S. as a patron that could be used to project power in the area and provide massive economic opportunities via Western firms developing their oil patch. Chaos could have been achieved with a much lower political cost to the neocons by simply blowing everything up without trying to build a new state in the aftermath of the war.
As for Venezuela, I think the Administration believes that establishing a Gringo dictatorship is beyond our grasp. Trump may not realize that, but the Administration does - which is why they acceded to Rodriguez (who is acceptable to the military) rather than push Machado (who would be much more pliable, but is not acceptable to the military). The public deal on offer appears to be the U.S. letting the status quo remain and not pressing the regime for political changes or new elections, in exchange for them letting us make some major policy calls (especially on the oil industry). Again, the jury's still out on whether TPTB are willing to make that deal, but they certainly didn't leap to accept it right away.
