There is no doubt that the invasion of Venezuela is about oil. Trump said so himself. Using the charge of narco-terrorism against Maduro is a pretext for holding a higher moral ground that the United States continues to think it has in the World. To maintain this higher moral ground the US engages in regime changes wherever it pleases, sustained by over 750 military bases across all time zones.

If the invasion of Venezuela is about oil, then what does the US Government want to do with it? Again, the moral high ground declared by Trump is that the enormous oil reserves of Venezuela (see also here) should benefit Venezuelans and Americans. These reserves would need to be extracted, refined, sold and consumed to create this alleged benefit.

This chain of reasoning skims over many assumptions. The first assumption is that American oil companies which will allegedly take over the extraction of oil in Venezuela will exploit that oil for the benefit of regular Venezuelans and Americans. In practice this would mean selling refined oil in those two countries for the benefit of consumers. But we know, fossil fuel companies do not sell fuels to aid a specific population. They sell it to make money. Profit is what makes the difference, not the wellbeing of citizens. If the military industrial complex is the top buyer for fossil fuels produced from the reserves of Venezuela, then fossil fuel companies will produce and sell for the military first and for the general population second. These companies do not even care about taking sides in wars. If they find buyers on both sides of a war, they will make profits from both sides, excluding Russia from the equation that can sustain its military from its own fossil fuels. Let us remember that the Ford Motor Company had no problem making cars for the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.

The interest of fossil fuel companies overlaps with the interests of the state when it is about self-preservation. The principle of self-preservation is what sustains governments, states, and capitalist corporations. To the extent that these entities want to continue their own existence, they will find ways to collaborate and cooperate to pursue the goal of self-preservation.

The second assumption is that exploiting the oil from Venezuela will actually help with the ­self-preservation principle. There is no guarantee that the exploitation can begin in the first place without a full cooperation from the Venezuelan government, or that there will be no other geopolitical backlash that would escalate the conflict to such an extent that the US government can maintain its position. Self-preservation is very tricky business. Empires, old and new, started wars, enslaved nations in an attempt to solidify their positions, but with every such attempt they increased their complexity which precipitated their inevitable collapse. The collapse of the American Empire has been declared and predicted for quite some time. Of course it will happen. It is a matter of time.

Having these two assumptions in mind, we can see how the American Empire is addicted to growth, much like any other empire. The growth incentive existed before capitalism, but under capitalism it has become something specific. Growth under capitalism is still about the self-preservation of corporations and governments, but it is also about the self-preservation of the design of the system itself which is predicated on a certain set of principles: property begets power, power controls capital, capital converts property. This cycle of causal links never stops because it is enshrined in law.

The cycle can be broken only with degrowth, which is a set of instruments that are aimed at the beating heart of capitalism. Degrowth removes the dependency on growth. Degrowth removes the cancer that links property to power, power to capital, and capital to property. In the end, the invasion of Venezuela is the about the self-preservation of the American Empire, but not about the self-preservation of the American people. Trump has no problem with poverty, hunger, racism, inequality inside America.

Anarchists would say that the idea of state and government is a corrupt idea because it creates abstract institutions that are detached from the interests of regular people. That is of course true. All institutions, regardless of their size, have their own internal objectives that seek to justify and maintain their own existence. States are no different. But states are also legal persons. States are creations of law, regardless if they are labelled capitalist, socialist, communist or anything in between.

Degrowth seeks to redefine the institutions that outgrew their purpose. The vast majority of humans reject the American invasion of Venezuela. But the invasion happened anyway using the excuse that it is intended to benefit the very people who rejected the idea. Clearly, the problem is the government that has gone rogue, including Maduro himself.

From a moral perspective, when evil is removed from power, it is a good thing. Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, Nicolas Maduro can be seen as similar examples. The problem is how the removal is done. Saudi Arabia has made a long deal with the US Government. They play ball so they don’t need to be invaded. Their regime is safe. But they are also much closer to Russia. An invasion of Saudi Arabia by the United States would go beyond the so-called Donroe Doctrine, even if Saudi Arabia has the second largest oil reserves in the world, after Venezuela. The US has not lost yet any wars in the Western Hemisphere but it has surely lost many wars in the Eastern Hemisphere. They may be a super power, but the are surely not an invincible super power.

Regarding the moral perspective, a degrowth position would answer the question how to remove evil from power with a more holistic approach. A degrowth president would not have removed Maduro by force. A degrowth president of a major super power, would have made Maduro removable from inside the country, by helping the people of Venezuela oppose him. Degrowth believes in economic democracy, and because degrowth removes the self-preservation principle that is underpinned by the dependency on perpetual growth, it will have the effect of making invasions of countries obsolete. Oil, lithium, land can all be excuses for imperialism. Degrowth would perform a growth-ectomy on the design of the economic system to stop this madness. Nothing can appease the blood lust of Empire.

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