The recent seizures of Venezuelan oil tankers, as well as Trump’s order of the US military to kill dozens of Venezuelans in illegal, extrajudicial executions in international waters, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said were “not compatible with international law,” have declared Trump's promise of a peacemaking presidency null and void. Thus far, Trump has not launched direct attacks inside Venezuela, although he confirmed that he authorized the CIA to carry out secret operations in Venezuela and has not ruled out the possibility of war, telling NBC News that he doesn't rule it out. In addition, he has deployed the world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R Ford, thousands of troops, and F-35 military jets to the Caribbean. A war with Venezuela would not be popular, with 55% of Americans opposed to a US invasion of Venezuela and only 15% in support of one. US tensions with Venezuela are not new, however, nor are they about drug smuggling. The US State Department insists that drug trafficking concerns are the reason for the Trump administration’s boat strikes in Venezuela, saying the country remains "firm in its counter-drug operations in the Caribbean and its commitment to protecting Americans from the Maduro regime's deadly poison." However, the Trump administration hasn’t specified the amount of drugs that were destroyed in the boat strikes, and how many overdoses were likely prevented. The Trump administration has shared aerial videos of the boat strikes, where Trump described the drugs present as fentanyl in floating bags all over the ocean, yet no bags of drugs were visible in the footage. In July, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Maduro of being “the leader of the designated ‘narcoterrorist’ organisation Cartel de los Soles” and responsible for “trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe”. However, he did not provide evidence to back his claim. Not to mention that the Trump administration had no clear idea of where the first of the boats they struck was headed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed it was headed for Trinidad or the Caribbean before changing his story to say it was en route to the US. It was only after survivors were killed in what is a war crime that the administration actually explained that the boat was headed for a link up with the Suriname, a transit country for drugs headed to Europe, not the US. This is a huge miscalculation for the Trump administration, and one that will likely carry no consequences. Additionally, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, most illicit fentanyl, which is the drug linked to most U.S. overdoses, comes from Mexico, not Venezuela. ​ Maduro claims Trump is seeking regime change. This makes sense, considering that the US-backed opposition leader, Machado, agrees with Trump’s actions in Venezuela and is willing to acquiesce to US interests. Machado is open about wanting to privatize Venezuela's massive oil reserves and sell off assets to US corporations, something the US would benefit from. This is why she was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize under the guise of "protecting democracy." The Venezuelan government has faced economic despair as a direct result of sanctions imposed after Obama declared Venezuela to be a supposed "national security threat." From 2014 to 2016, the global price of oil crashed, causing huge economic problems in Venezuela. Venezuela lost 99% of its government revenue because of the US sanctions. In 2019, Trump imposed an economic embargo on Venezuela. This prevented the country from exporting oil, which was the source of most of its revenue. Venezuela holds 303 billion barrels of crude, a fifth of the world’s global reserves. Sanctions have forced Venezuela to sell at lower prices to China, as it was blocked from more lucrative markets. Venezuela's oil reserves interest Trump, as do its ties to US foes China and Russia. "The idea that you have this country, with oil, minerals, and rare earths in our hemisphere, and its main allies being China and Russia, that's something that doesn't really fit into Trump's view of the world," said David Smilde, a Venezuela expert at Tulane University. The oil industry was nationalized by Chávez, but the technology it used was still the intellectual property of Western corporations. The sanctions prevented Venezuela from repairing its oil equipment and purchasing needed machinery to maintain and modernize its oil infrastructure. This led to a huge fall in Venezuela’s petroleum output, which the Energy Information Administration boasted about in 2019. The US has a history of staging coups to overthrow governments that nationalize their resources, in order to replace them with US-aligned leaders. In 1953, The US funded a coup in Iran that installed a US backed leader after Mohammed Mossadegh nationalized oil fields. In 1954, the US funded a military coup that removed President Arbenz Guzman after he nationalized land belonging to US Fruit, a multinational American corporation. The war against Venezuela is part of a broader US strategy to suppress left-wing resistance and install groups that serve US interests. In this context, Machado is the US-backed leader, while Chavez and Maduro represent the opposition to US imperialism.