The lie of “self-financing” oil wars

The US attack on Venezuela relies on the same deception that justified the war in Iraq: the idea of self-financing wars with oil.

President Trump said Saturday that the US will run Venezuela following the capture of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. “It won’t cost us anything because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial,” he said at a Saturday press conference at Mar-a-Lago following news of the US attack. But we’ve been down this road before.

“There’s a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn’t have to be US taxpayer money,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz claimed about Iraq in March 2003, the same month as the US invasion. “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” He said oil revenues could bring $50-100 billion over the first years of the invasion.

That wasn’t the case, and just like what would happen in Iraq, the military campaign in Venezuela is likely to have steep costs.

On Saturday, General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the operation to capture Maduro and Flores using more than 150 aircraft from 20 different bases. Members of law enforcement were involved in the extraction force, and according to Trump, ran through scenarios in a replica building of Maduro’s safe house. At the Saturday press conference, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the raid lasted less than 30 minutes—a smooth process following months of planning and preparation. 

But, according to what a senior Venezuelan official told the New York Times, at least 80 people, including civilians and military personnel, were killed. The Times also reported that about half a dozen US soldiers were injured. Photos show massive damage from bombings in Venezuela’s capital of Caracas.

Removing Maduro from power could have been achieved by taking what then-vice president, and now-acting president Delcy Rodríguez and other senior Venezuelan government officials offered to the US as a “more acceptable” version to Maduro’s administration last year. According to an October 2025 report by the Miami Herald, Rodríguez would lead a peaceful transition by “preserving political stability without dismantling the ruling apparatus.” The Trump administration rejected the proposal and continued to carry out deadly strikes on alleged drug boats, killing at least 115 people. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the US continues to “reserve the right to take strikes against drug boats.” He also suggested that Cuba could be the Trump administration’s next target.

Previously, US war planners vastly underestimated the cost of fixing Iraq’s oil infrastructure to fund its invasion and occupation. Linda Bilmes, a public policy professor at Harvard University, wrote in a 2013 research paper investigating the financial costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that one of the most significant challenges for future US national security policy “will not originate from any external threat” but “simply coping with the legacy of the conflicts we have already fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, Bush’s economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, said that it may cost $100-200 billion. He was fired.

Lindsey was wrong, but in the opposite way than Bush anticipated—a more accurate number is around $2 trillion. 

In her research, Bilmes pointed to long-term costs like medical care and disability compensation for service members, veterans, and their families, as well as debt servicing of borrowed funds. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on Sunday that the Senate will vote on whether to formally block Trump’s military campaign in Venezuela when Congress returns to session this week. But we are already paying dearly for the damage done.