In ‘Unhinged’ Rant, Miller Says US Has Right to Take Over Any Country For Its Resources
Julia Conley for Common Dreams
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| Miller's wife Katie tweeted this map. Kinda says it all |
To Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.),
however, Miller was simply providing viewers with “a very good definition
of imperialism”
as he described the worldview the administration is operating under as it takes
control of Venezuela and
eyes other countries, including Greenland, that it
believes it can and should invade.
“This is what imperialism is all about,” Sanders told CNN‘s
Jake Tapper. “And I suspect that people all over the world are saying, ‘Wow,
we’re going back to where we were 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, where the
big, powerful countries were exploiting poorer countries for their natural
resources.’”
The senator spoke to Tapper shortly after Miller’s
interview, in which the news anchor asked whether President Donald Trump would
support holding an election in Venezuela days after the US military bombed
the country and abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife.
Miller refused to directly engage with the question, saying
only that it would be “absurd and preposterous” for the US to install
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado as the leader of the country,
before asking Tapper to “give [him] the floor” and allow him to explain the
White House’s view on foreign policy.
“The United States is
using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere,”
said Miller. “We’re a superpower and under President Trump we are going to
conduct ourselves as a superpower. It is absurd that we would allow a nation in
our backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries but not to
us.”
Instead of “demanding that elections be held” in Venezuela,
he added, “the future of the free world depends on America to be able to assert
ourselves and our interests without an apology.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that Venezuela “stole” oil from the United States. The country is believed to have the largest oil reserves in the world, and the government nationalized its petroleum industry in 1976, including projects that had been run by US-based ExxonMobil. The last privately run oil operations were nationalized in 2007 by then-President Hugo Chavez.
Miller offered one of the most explicit explanations of the
White House’s view yet: that “sovereign countries don’t get sovereignty if the
US wants their resources,” as Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) translated in
a social media post.
Moulton called Miller’s tirade “genuinely unhinged” and “a
disturbing window into how this administration thinks about the world.”
Miller’s remarks followed a similarly blunt statement at a
UN Security Council emergency meeting by US Ambassador Michael Waltz.
“You cannot continue to have the largest energy reserves in
the world under the control of adversaries of the United States,” said Waltz.
Miller’s description of the White House’s current view on
foreign policy followed threats from Trump against countries including
Colombia, Mexico, and Greenland, and further comments suggested that the
administration could soon move to take control of the latter country—even
though it is part of the kingdom of Denmark, which along with
the US is a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
“Greenland should be part of the United States,” said
Miller. “The president has been very clear about that, that is the formal
position of the US government.”
He dismissed the idea that the takeover of Greenland, home
to about 56,000 people, would involve a military operation—though Trump
has said he would not rule out using force—and said that
“nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of
Greenland.”
The vast island is strategically located in the Arctic Circle and has
largely untapped reserves of rare-earth minerals.
Danish and Greenlandic officials have condemned Trump’s
latest threats this week, with Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen,
warning that, in accordance with the NATO treaty, “everything would come to an
end” if the US attacks another NATO country.
“The international community as we know it, democratic rules
of the game, NATO, the world’s strongest defensive alliance—all of that would
collapse if one NATO country chose to attack another,” she told Danish news channel Live News on
Monday.
The Danish government called an emergency meeting of its Foreign Affairs
Committee on Tuesday to discuss “the kingdom’s relationship with the United
States.”
On CNN, Sanders noted that
as Trump sets his sights on controlling oil reserves in Venezuela and resources
in Greenland, people across the president’s own country are struggling under
rising costs and financial insecurity.
“Maybe instead of trying to run Venezuela,” said Sanders,
“the president might try to do a better job running the United States of
America.”