Piratical president prepares to carve up latest booty, eyes further conquest

(Originally published Jan. 7 in “What in the World“) Russia has moved to rescue an oil tanker from the U.S. Coast Guard.

After blocking the Bella 1 from docking in Venezuela last month to load up with oil, the Coast Guard tried unsuccessfully to board the vessel, which steamed out of the Caribbean into the Atlantic, on the way painting a Russian flag on its side, renaming it the “Marinera” and switching its registration from Guyana to Russia. Now, with the Coast Guard still shadowing the Marinera south of Iceland as it heads for Murmansk, Moscow has dispatched a submarine and other vessels to escort it.

Now apparently, and this is just a theory, spending on weapons goes up during periods of geopolitical uncertainty. That’s the groundbreaking hypothesis being spun by the boffins at Bernstein Private Wealth Management. According to its senior analyst for aerospace and defense, Douglas Harned, “Almost always, when threats of military action increase, defense budgets move higher, leading to positive trends for defense stocks.”

Abducting Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, has left the U.S. pretty much in charge of the country, whose vice president Trump has already threatened if she doesn’t do what he wants. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly presented Delcy Rodríguez with a list of demands yesterday. Topping the list: expel advisors from China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia. The list apparently also includes a demand for Venezuela to simply turn over to the U.S. what Trump boasted is 30 million to 50 million barrels of oil. Trump plans to huddle with his Cabinet U.S. oil executives on Friday to lay out a plan for divvying up Venezuela’s oil.

It’s not known if free-and-fair elections made the list. But Venezuela’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning opposition leader Maria Machado has vowed to go home to stand in them. Now that Trump is working with the ex-Maduro regime, however, his next move may have to be to expand the Coast Guard’s blockade of Venezuela from oil tankers to pro-democracy politicians.

Harned likened the situation to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was supposed to involve only a small force, paid for with Iraqi oil revenues, but which ended up with as many as 170,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and cost American taxpayers, oh, between $2 trillion and $3 trillion.

And Trump isn’t done leveling threats. He’s threatened Colombia, Cuba, and—by repeating his desire to annex Greenland—Denmark. While Rubio told members of Congress Monday that Trump’s plan is to buy Greenland, he may be planning to make Copenhagen an offer it can’t refuse. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement that, when it comes to Greenland, “utilizing the U.S. military is always an option at the commander in chief’s disposal.”

Harned believes Trump’s new expansionism could mean more money for a U.S. military that Congress last month handed a record $901 billion to spend in 2026—more than Trump even asked for. And Trump already wants an expansion of naval shipbuilding, munitions, and his Golden Dome missile defense system.

To that end, Lockheed Martin said Tuesday it would more than triple production of the missiles used in Patriot anti-missile batteries as part of a deal with the Pentagon. Lockheed said it had already boosted production by 60% in the past two years, to deliver a record 620 of the PAC-3 MSE interceptors last year. Under the new plan, it will pump out 2,000 of the missiles a year by 2030. Last year, the U.S. Army agreed to pay Lockheed nearly $10 billion for almost 2,000 of the missiles over two years.