Recently an article in The Economist addressed the radical “honesty” of Donald Trump, claiming that it was “forthrightness” when he says that his intervention in Venezuela was about oil.
In fact, he seems content with regime stabilisation, as long as the regime recognises America is “in charge”, because what he wants most is the oil
It’s not just The Economist who believes that Donald Trump is being honest about his intentions. All over the internet I am seeing people discussing the merits of the oil argument, and talking about the fact that the US has now started yet another war for oil. But I disagree with this perspective.
The intervention in Venezuela was not about oil, just like Greenland is not about “national security”. After all, if Venezuela was about oil, why did American oil companies all say “no” when asked if they wanted to return if Maduro were to go? The US is also a net exporter of oil, and finally, Venezuelan oil is heavy and expensive to refine, and it will require massive investments which may be hard to recoup in a time of low oil prices and falling oil demand.
The thing that drives me crazy is that people use these facts to attack Donald Trump’s intervention as if it’s some great line of attack. “Oh you say Venezuela was about oil, but it’s deepy unprofitable, and oil companies are not interested, so clearly Trump was wrong to do it!”
The fundamental misunderstanding that people have, is that they think that Donald Trump is being honest when he’s claiming that the attack on Venezuela was about oil. After all, people spent decades arguing that the Iraq war(s) were about oil, something which the US administration at the time denied, so when Donald Trump gets out there and says it’s about oil, people take it at face value and think that he’s being honest. After all, “they” lied about Iraq being about oil, so when he says Venezuela is about oil, he must be telling the truth, right?
But if Venezuela was about oil, there would be something, anything, that would point to it making sense, and as I mentioned above, there isn’t. The fact is that oil is an entirely made-up justification, and largely so are the drug charges.
Now this same scenario is playing out with Greenland. Donald Trump says the US “needs” Greenland for “national security” reasons. People then point out that the US has all the military access it needs to Greenland, and so what does Donald Trump say? He says that Denmark has only sent an extra dog patrol to Greenland. People then point out that this is in fact wrong, and that Denmark has invested billions of extra dollars in Artic security. Donald Trump then claims that the waters of Greenland are full of Russian and Chinese ships, and I’m already seeing people furiously trying to debunk this latest round of bullshit.
Debunking the Venezuela oil argument or the Greenland national security argument is a complete waste of time and energy. Donald Trump may sound refreshingly honest, but he’s just making up arguments to justify what he deep down wants to do, and so anyone trying to counter him will run into the problem of the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle, which states that the amount of energy spent trying to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude greater than it takes to create it. You refute one of his justifications? Whatever, he’ll just make up some new bullshit justification for his actions. Because people are not attacking his actual intentions, he is free to create another distraction for you to spend your energy attacking.
You see, Donald Trump is not a 21st century politician. He’s more like an old-fashioned pre-20th century ruler, who loves to wage war against his enemies to settle petty personal disputes or idelogical grievances. Nicolas Maduro was an enemy of the US, and Donald Trump wants to exercise his vast powers, because it feels good. Back in the day, this wasn’t unusual. Rulers used to go to war all the time, but in our modern enlightened post-1914 world, you can’t just go to war without a justification. After all, we are civilized people who live in a civilized world of international norms and rules, and so you can’t just start shooting and invading. You need a casus belli, a respectable justification for your wars, so if you’re mentally a 15th century ruler who wants to get rid of an annoying adversarial ruler, you will need to make something up. Well guess what, we are gonna make so much money on Venezuelan oil you won’t even believe it. They took our oil!
And that brings me back to Greenland. Just like Venezuela is not about oil, Greenland is not about national security. The US does have all the military access it could possibly want. After all, the US has had no more loyal ally since like the Korean War than Denmark. The simple answer to “why does Trump want Greenland” is that he wants to expand his realm and make it look bigger on a map. That’s it. That’s all. In modern times though, this is taboo. Even Vladimir Putin has to find thinly veiled excuses like protecting the rights of Russian speakers, Ukrainian nazis or NATO expansion or whatever to justify his invasions of Georgia and Ukraine.
But if you put this kind of thing in a historical context, it’s not unusual. Rulers have spent the entire history of civilization invading and annexing each other. It’s not like Alexander the Great pretended to have legitimate security concerns when he invaded his way from Macedonia to Egypt and on to India. That Donald Trump wants to annex Greenland because he wants to make US bigger is not unusual. Historically speaking, the fact that he has to pretend it’s not about imperialist expansion is the unusual bit.
And that brings me back to the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. Stop attacking what Donald Trump says is his intentions, because he’s not being radically refreshingly honest about them. He’s not a 21st century respectable politician with legitimate security or economic concerns. His rule is personal, not institutional, he believes he is above the rule of law and he wants to wage imperialist wars of conquest, and use his powers to eliminate his rivals and adversaries. If you want to speak against him, attack his true intentions and motivations. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself having debunked a lie, and then being faced with another one straight away. He spends no effort lying, and you spend a lot of effort trying to tear it apart. What a shame that would be.