To adopt a now clichéd phrase in re­la­tion to the con­flict be­tween the Unit­ed States and the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic of Venezuela, it has now been tak­en to “the next lev­el” through the con­fis­ca­tion of Venezue­lan oil by the US mil­i­tary.

“You re­mem­ber they took all of our en­er­gy rights. They took all of our oil not that long ago. And we want it back. They took it — they il­le­gal­ly took it.”

The ref­er­ence of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is made against the back­ground of Venezuela’s 1976 na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of its oil in­dus­try un­der the gov­ern­ment of Car­los An­dres Perez from con­trol by Amer­i­can transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

Na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of oil and sug­ar, util­i­ties, fi­nance and oth­er ma­jor sec­tors of the economies of for­mer colonies, as well as of Cu­ba’s oil re­fin­ery and elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­ny, was part of a trend start­ed in the 1950s-1960s in the post-colo­nial pe­ri­od among the Arab states, In­dia, sev­er­al African coun­tries.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, the gov­ern­ment of then Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams took back the Amer­i­can-oc­cu­pied base at Ch­aguara­mas, and na­tion­alised the com­mer­cial bank­ing sec­tor and oil com­pa­nies such as Tex­a­co, which was all but left be­hind.

What US Pres­i­dent Trump is there­fore seek­ing to do is to re­verse that his­tor­i­cal process of de­vel­op­ing coun­tries tak­ing con­trol of their re­sources.

In the im­me­di­ate sit­u­a­tion, what­ev­er the long-term con­se­quences which are like­ly to fol­low, this seizure by Pres­i­dent Trump of a loaded Venezue­lan oil tanker has im­me­di­ate prob­lems and con­se­quences in­to the fu­ture.

“I am or­der­ing a to­tal and com­plete block­ade of all sanc­tioned oil tankers go­ing in­to and com­ing out of Venezuela, un­til they re­turn to the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca all of the oil, land and oth­er as­sets that they pre­vi­ous­ly stole from us,” Trump stat­ed.

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro has re­ferred to the seizure as an “act of pira­cy” and is­sued a call to “oil work­ers of the world to unite.” He has pe­ti­tioned Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al An­to­nio Guter­rez, claim­ing that the US is “block­ing free naval trade,” which he says “is against in­ter­na­tion­al law.”

Pres­i­dent Maduro has promised that his coun­try will con­tin­ue trad­ing its prod­ucts to the world. Pres­i­dent Trump, how­ev­er, has as­sem­bled an ar­ma­da across the face of Venezuela, which ef­fec­tive­ly locks the coun­try in­to a knot via sea and land.

Con­scious of the re­al po­ten­tial for con­flict as stat­ed above, Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar, who has giv­en en­thu­si­as­tic sup­port to the dead­ly US strikes on ves­sels al­leged­ly tak­ing drugs to the US, told re­porters, “They (US) have asked for no as­sis­tance about blockad­ing Venezuela; those are mat­ters with­in the sov­er­eign pow­er of the Unit­ed States; I am not part of that.”

The crit­i­cal is­sue is where will the con­flict be tak­en from this dan­ger­ous point, the US House hav­ing vot­ed against res­o­lu­tions to pre­vent the Pres­i­dent from go­ing to war with Venezuela. Will Pres­i­dent Maduro sub­mit to the con­se­quences of the block­ade, in­clu­sive of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of war; or will Pres­i­dent Trump back off?

Will Rus­sia and Chi­na car­ry out their promise to re­main sol­id with Venezuela and, if so, what does that mean in re­al terms? If Pres­i­dent Trump wins out through one means or the oth­er, will that sig­nal a re­turn to a stran­gle­hold on the re­sources of for­mer colonies?

Time will sure­ly tell.