Why Trump’s War Is Dumb, Brazen—and Of Course, All About Oil
The Daily BeastUpdated
Sat, January 3, 2026 at 11:45 PM UTC
A poet once wrote of small men who measured their lives in “coffee spoons.” But, all of us as Americans living in the modern era, can just as easily measure ours by the number of oil wars we have lived through. As a young guy just starting out in the world of foreign policy, I remember hosting a conference in Caracas, Venezuela, when a buzz went through the room. “They’ve started bombing!” people said to one another and an evening event broke up so everyone could head to the rooms to watch the bombing of Baghdad on CNN. The images back in January 1991 were strikingly similar to those broadcast on Saturday as the U.S. conducted bombing raids, this time on Caracas of all places. There were plenty of similarities. Two Republican administrations took action while answering to higher powers in the fossil fuels industry. Media outlets hyperventilated about the drama, not sure whether to cheer on the military or tell the truth about why they were fighting. Officials offered canned remarks about values and higher purpose while revealing that once again that the only line that really mattered was neither in the sand nor was it red, it was then and now, the bottom line.