TRUMP'S WAY OF MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN

Venezuela has abundant natural resources including large reserves of oil, but US sanctions have reduced their output

- By Gamini Akmeemana

President Donald Trump's decision to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro makes us wonder if Hollywood is running the United States. It's an unprecedented cowboy act of derring-do.

Venezuela is the sixth largest country in South America (over 555,000 square miles), wedged between Colombia, Brazil and Guyana, roughly the size of Pakistan, but with a relatively small population of 28.4 million people. It has abundant natural resources including very large reserves of oil, but US sanctions have reduced its output to less than one per cent of global oil production over the years.

Trump accused Maduro of flooding the US with narcotics, an accusation without foundation. Bolivia is the region's principal cocaine producer, and Venezuela is only a transit country. The real reasons for the outrageous American action lies in oil, and Trump's avowed goal of 'Making America Great Again' (MAGA) which includes (among many other things) attacking left-wing bulwarks in Latin America and countering the global reach of the Chinese-Russia nexus.

He started with American universities, vowing to wipe out liberalism. Venezuela logically looms bigger in the same firing line.

Let's look at the cons first. There is no question that the rule of Nicolas Maduro, the chosen successor of the charismatic Hugo Chavez, was heavy handed. Under him, Venezuela slid into authoritarianism. Maduro took over after Chavez died in 2013. Since 2016, nearly eight million people have left the country citing economic hardship, food and medicine shortages and political instability. Most, though not all, fled to the U.S. and Trump says this is another reason why he wanted to remove Maduro from power. But there is no evidence that Maduro was deliberately sending drug gangs to the US, as Trump accuses.