President Trump’s military intervention in Venezuela this month was, in part, a bid to seize the source of this wealth. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. Trump made no secret of his desire to exploit them in what many have criticized as an act of naked imperialism and the theft of Venezuela’s economic patrimony: “We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking oil,” Trump said in an interview after the January 3 attack that captured the strongman President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.