Q&a: John Bolton On Trump’s Venezuelan Oil Grab

President Donald Trump has long been obsessed with the idea he could simply take Venezuela’s oil, says John Bolton, Trump's onetime national security adviser.

But Bolton warned in an interview Tuesday with POLITICO’s E&E News that Trump’s recent actions against Venezuela could embolden U.S. rivals — especially since Trump laid claim to Venezuela's natural resources after his administration deposed President Nicolás Maduro.

"The mistakes he's making today ... lend greater credence to a Russian or a Chinese effort to say, well, we're just doing what the U.S. did in Venezuela," Bolton said.

During the first Trump administration — when Bolton served as Trump's national security adviser — Trump and other White House officials often talked about taking Venezuela’s oil, Bolton said. White House officials even reached out to the oil refiners on the Gulf Coast, which process the thick Venezuelan crude, to see how their business would be affected, Bolton added.

At the time, Bolton was supportive of the idea — and was among those pushing to depose Maduro in Trump’s first term. But now he says he is concerned Trump has no plans for what comes next in Venezuela.

“There's no Plan B because there's no plan A,” he said.

Here's what else Bolton told E&E News. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What happens now that Maduro has been deposed? 

I still think they're going on a seat of the pants, ad hoc basis. Maduro has been removed, unquestionably a good thing, but the rest of the regime is still in place.

I think we're in a situation where we have not gotten regime change. The same group, minus only Maduro, is still in power, and it's not at all clear just how much intimidating force that we've really got.

There are pressure points. I think they're in trouble on oil exports and so on. But what are China and Russia and Iran and Cuba going to do in the face of that, just sit back and watch it happen? So, I'm not at all sure what day-after planning there was, because I'm not sure we're finished with the day yet.

Trump said President George W. Bush's big mistake in Iraq was not taking the oil, and that he wouldn't repeat that error. What do you think of that?

I think that's basically it. Trump talked about getting the oil, and I think there would have been a legitimate argument that U.S. oil companies kind of get first dibs to come in — not that we would take it, but that we would get some preference in terms of the ability to present proposals — and we should, at a minimum, get some of that production and maybe a lot of it.

But that's not how Trump looks at it. He just wants to take control of it, and that's how he's going to pay for the military force and sort of everything else he's been promising.

I just think that's the kind of limited vision he has. He focuses on what he thinks he understands, the tangible economic asset.

The idea that American oil companies are just lining up to go invest in Venezuela is just flatly wrong, and the idea that somehow there will be a quick transformation of the incredibly dilapidated Venezuelan oil infrastructure that's going to suddenly turn the production back online is fantasy, too.

It's going to take tens of billions of dollars over a sustained period of time before they get this thing back up and running the way it used to be.

Do Trump's actions send a message to China and Russia that they can make similar moves with weaker nations?

That's why the whole approach he's taken is very destructive. I think we do have full authority under international law to go after Maduro because what we would consider the legitimate government today is the opposition, with Maduro having stolen both the 2018 and 2024 presidential elections.

When you basically go back to dealing with the old regime and undercut the legitimate government, you're giving Russia and China the precedent that they don't have.

There's nobody in Ukraine calling for Russian intervention, and the government of Taiwan certainly isn't calling for Chinese intervention.

So the Venezuelan case as it stands now is quite different from those, but that's not the way Trump's behaving, and it's the mistakes he's making today that lend greater credence to a Russian or a Chinese effort to say, well, we're just doing what the U.S. did in Venezuela.

In your 2020 book, “The Room Where It Happened,” you wrote about Trump officials in the first term checking with the oil industry and refiners as they weighed actions against Venezuela. Did that happen this time? Is there support for it?

I suppose there was. Chris Wright, the Energy secretary, is out now talking to oil company executives, meaning after the fact.

And not untypically of Trump, he gets a rationale, makes a decision, then says “Go, make the decision happen, or make it look like it was an informed decision.”

So I don't know what they're hearing from the oil company executives, but with the price of oil, you know, between $55 and $60 a barrel, I'm not sure in the big oil companies, they're looking to spend a few tens of billions of dollars on new capital investment. And let's face it, in a country where the political environment is very dicey.

Trump has largely talked about oil in the days that have followed Maduro being deposed. Why do you think he's so fixated?

This is typical of Trump. These things kind of roam around inside his head. They get all mushed together, and that obviously prevents coherent decision-making, because if your rationale is changing, then the methods you use, the objectives you're seeking, change, too.

So the policy is always in flux. It never stabilizes, and people are constantly having to make adjustments there.

There's no Plan B because there's no plan A.

What are you watching for next?

The argument that Trump has made is that we still maintain the capacity to put enormous pressure on acting President Delcy Rodriguez and the rest of the boys and girls down there. And there's a certain validity to that. It's true, but how long is the Gerald Ford [carrier] strike group going to stay in the Caribbean? And they're already over their normal deployment time, they should be heading back to home port. Another month isn't going to make any difference.

At some point, the strain is going to begin, but how long does he leave them there? Not to mention everybody else that's accumulated in Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago and elsewhere in the Caribbean?

How long can he just leave them there doing nothing except threatening, and as he pulls them out, what's the leverage? Then you know you've got to get them back there before you can exert the leverage.

So I think events may overtake this idea that we're going to set the bounds, and Venezuela is going to do what we want. Well, what if they decide they're not going to do what we want six months from now? Where are we going to be at that point? And I don't think Trump has addressed that.