International Man: President Trump justified the operation and capture of Nicolas Maduro by saying it was because of drug trafficking and illegal immigration.

What is the real objective of the US involvement in Venezuela?

Doug Casey: The lies that the US government has put out regarding Venezuela are shameful. The amount of drug trafficking done in and from Venezuela is trivial. But the killing of at least 80 people on the high seas with no proof of wrongdoing is very serious. We may never know what the real truth is, but drugs have little or nothing to do with it.

It may be Venezuela's oil resources. Note that I said "resources", not "reserves." These are well-defined technical terms in the mining and oil businesses. A "resource" simply means that a mineral exists. That's very different from a "reserve", which is a resource that can be economically recovered at existing prices with existing technology.

The 300 billion barrels of oil that's always mentioned in the press materialized out of thin air after oil briefly hit $140 a barrel in 2008. The Venezuelans arbitrarily raised their reserves to 300 billion barrels based on politics, not geology. And everyone has slavishly and stupidly repeated that number ever since. What we know for sure is that under the socialist Chavez and Maduro regimes oil production has dropped from 3 million BPD to under 1 million BPD. That's because most competent oil men have left the country over the last 30 years, there's been minimal maintenance of old facilities, and no new investment. The regime has used all the cash flow to stay in power.