But it's highly likely.
So likely, in fact, that in two of the last three novel manuscripts I've sent to my agent, it's a given. They're both set in the near future, and both operate under the assumption that we've gone into the Big Sticky to liberate all that oil. In the one I wrote in 2019, our invasion costs more lives than expected, which stirs us to build more AI systems to reduce all the pesky bad publicity. Which, of course, leads to the robot uprising. In the one I wrote in 2020, a vet struggles to right his life after a crippling non-combat injury sends him into a spiral of addiction. He writes a novel that reimagines his life and injury in a heroic way, which, of course, includes aliens. Where was he injured? Venezuela. Where was his alter-ego injured? Venezuela.
None of that sparked interest among publishers, though. Ah well. So it goes.
Since Venezuela discovered it was sitting on the largest remaining reserve of oil on the planet, an American invasion has seemed a possible future. The probability of that conflict required several factors to shift, though.
First, were we able to kick our national addiction to fossil fuels? O Lord no. Sure, we've gotten around that as a short-term challenge. America is now the world's largest oil producer, as we've used hydraulic fracturing to access deep new resources beneath our own soil. But while fracking is an engineering marvel, it's also an end-stage technology. Once we're done, we're bone dry. That, and it's expensive. Fracked oil is hard to get to, and requires far more work to refine. In order to make a profit from fracked oil, the cost of a barrel of the good stuff needs to be well above seventy bucks, which puts fuel prices at a politically punitive level. Were we playing the long game, we'd be well into the transition away from our dependence. Efforts to begin that transition were met by howls of protest from the reactionary right, and picked up by populist hucksters, all of whom are well funded by the fossil fuel companies. We're just as addicted as ever. Without cheap fuel, our already tottering economy would collapse.
Second, do we as a nation have a moral compass? Are we, in other words, a decent and honorable people? A nation that invades another nation to take their resources...openly, transparently, obviously...isn't an honorable nation. For decades, the enemies of the United States claimed that we're a decadent, corrupt, "imperialist" monster. Now, we are that monster, because Donald J. Trump is precisely the sort of person who takes what he wants, morality and honor be damned. He speaks, thinks, and acts like a mobster. We find that entertaining, and use that to excuse the indecency of it all.
Third, what is the likelihood of success, were we to invade? Even an amoral brute can be dissuaded by the prospect of a thrashing, after all. Given the comparative strengths of our militaries, the likelihood is high. Venezuela is not China. Their military is a small fraction the size of ours, and they aren't anywhere near as well equipped. It'd be a rout.
At first. Holding and defending refineries and oil production facilities in a subjugated nation with a restive population might be a tricky wicket, particularly as it'd give our geopolitical adversaries the opportunity to bleed us a little bit. But who cares about the long term? If we were the sort of country that had any meaningful sense of the future, we'd never have elected Donald J. Trump.
Finally, are the necessary staging events occurring? Are we prepositioning military units? Are we producing rationales for an invasion so that supporters of our current regime can rationalize such brazen anti-republican rapaciousness? Of course we are. We've assembled a strike force in the Gulf of Mexico. We've declared Venezuela a fentanyl producer, even though they're transparently not, and declared fentanyl a "weapon of mass destruction," even though it transparently isn't. Remember when Russia was holding "military exercises" near Ukraine? We're past that stage. We've started blowing things up, and seizing ships. It's all sloppily done, of course. Messaging from the White House is an incoherent shambles, as Dear Leader both says it's all about fentanyl and at the same time can't stop publicly drooling over the oil. We're clearly all geared up.
So will we invade? Not necessarily. It's not inevitable. I hope, honestly, that we don't, and that my stories about our misadventures in The Big Sticky describe a future that never comes to pass.
But it feels very, very likely now.
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