John Mearsheimer

But that didn't make any sense.

And then when Trump finally went in, the explanation became oil.

But oil was not touted as the main reason for going into Venezuela for most of the period before the kidnappings.

It wasn't like oil was front and center as the argument.

And I was saying on various podcasts that I thought the principal reason was ideology.

But you want to remember that ideology and oil are tied together because when you talk about oil, what bothered the Americans was the nationalization of Venezuelan oil.

Who are these Venezuelans to nationalize their own oil?

This is unacceptable.

American oil companies should be free to come down there and exploit Venezuelan oil.

That's basically the view of the Trump administration.

And that is inextricably bound up with left-right issues, right?

And of course, the Chavez government and now the Maduro government, these were socialist governments, you know.

Anytime you use the word socialism, you know, the trouble is in store for that country that identifies itself as a socialist country.

So I think the oil issue morphed into, excuse me, the oil issue and the ideology issue were tied together.

But as you point out, in the case of Cuba, there's no oil issue, right?

Cuba doesn't have oil.

Cuba is not Venezuela.

There, it's, I think, purely the ideological issue.

Got it.

Well, they failed in Iran.