𖤐 Mr. MN 𖤐

What you just admitted, without meaning to, is that the problem was never "nationalization." The problem was who nationalization was allowed to serve. Yes, Venezuela formally nationalized its oil in 1976. And Washington was perfectly comfortable with that as long as three conditions held: Profits kept flowing out. The local elite stayed loyal. And no one used that oil money to build a genuinely sovereign project outside U.S. control. For decades, PDVSA behaved like a state within the state, closer to foreign capital than to the Venezuelan poor. Slums stayed, inequality stayed, U.S. influence stayed. Nobody in Washington called that a "nutbag regime." They called it a partner. What changed with Chávez was not the date on a legal document. What changed was the direction of the flow. Higher royalties. Renegotiated contracts. Real control over the fields that had existed on paper only. Oil revenue shifted into housing, health, education, regional alliances, and deals with China and Russia that did not ask permission from Washington. That is the "crime" you are dressing up as "swiping US assets without just compensation." Let’s be clear on language: Assets inside Venezuela, built on Venezuelan soil, operating under Venezuelan jurisdiction, are not "U.S. property" just because U.S. corporations held favorable contracts. When a sovereign state changes those terms, it may be a dispute, an expropriation, a negotiation. It is not theft from a country that never owned the ground to begin with. And "just compensation" according to whom? According to the same system of arbitration, ratings agencies, and trade rules written by the powers that have been overpaid on Global South resources for a century straight. Meanwhile, when the U.S. and its allies seize Venezuelan gold reserves abroad, freeze Venezuelan state assets, hand embassies and companies to a "president" who never won an election, and threaten blockades, that is not called "swiping." That is politely labeled "pressure," "sanctions," and "support for democracy." You are trying to invert the sequence: First came the decision of a poor country to use its oil for itself and its neighbors. Then came the campaign to paint that as criminal. Then came the seizures, the sanctions, and the recognition of a parallel government more acceptable to U.S. interests. Calling that "we only had a problem when they became socialist nutbags" is just the empire saying out loud: "We were fine with nationalization as theater. We drew the line when they started acting like the oil actually belonged to them."