Gangster Capitalism

The Donroe Doctrine of Regional Dominance, Obedience, and Theft

BILL ASTORE

JAN 04, 2026

There are at least 30 trillion reasons why the Trump administration is waging war against Venezuela. Recall that Venezuela has proven oil reserves of 300 billion barrels. If those barrels average $100 over the decades of their extraction, that’s $30 trillion, an immense sum representing about 80% of America’s colossal national debt. Of course, most of those trillions will go to multinationals and billionaires, not to the American people—and certainly not to the Venezuelan people. But who said life is fair?

The so-called Donroe Doctrine of hemispheric dominance represents the return of unapologetic gangster capitalism. The basic policy of the Trump administration recalls Michael Corleone, the mafia don in “The Godfather” saga. When his consigliere Tom Hagen (played by Robert Duvall) asks Michael (played by Al Pacino) whether he has to wipe everyone out, Michael coldly replies “Just my enemies.” Anyone who defies the Corleone Family must be eliminated.

Maduro defied the Trump “family” so he had to be taken out. Cuba and Iran may be the next “enemies” to be “wiped out.”

As Trump once said in an interview, the U.S has plenty of killers. This is what the exercise of naked power looks like. Power without morality. Power without principles other than profit and the further consolidation of power. 

U.S. democracy is a sham. We have shamocracy. Thugocracy. The strong do what they will; the weak suffer as they must. What matters is control, power, and profits.

Again, as Caitlin Johnstone noted, Trump has been transparent about his motives. Put bluntly, it’s the oil, stupid.

“We’re gonna take back the oil that frankly we should have taken back a long time ago,” Trump told the press following Maduro’s abduction, saying “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground, and that wealth is going to the people of Venezuela, and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela, and it goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country.”

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country, and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so,” Trump said.

“We have tremendous energy in that country. It’s very important that we protect it. We need that for ourselves, we need that for the world,” the president added.

Trump is America’s most scrutable president. He doesn’t bother to hide his motives here. This is theft, impure and very simple. We have the power to take it and we will, full stop.

Something is rotten in the States of America.