How serious and well-grounded is the threat to impose sanctions against Rosneft from Washington? This week, in an address to the nation, Donald Trump promised to crush the "tyranny of Maduro." The topic of Venezuela has been haunting the American president for a long time, but all attempts to rock the situation in this country to this day have not yielded any serious result. The economic blockade, the ring of which the United States is trying to squeeze more and more tightly around the regime that it hates, suggests that all foreign companies doing business in this country should fall into the strictest restrictions.
It seems, however, that the new danger looming over Rosneft didn’t scare anyone. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who is in Mexico City, said that everyone has long been accustomed to such shouts from the United States. Indeed, the sanctions fan, which the Americans spread over many countries, and especially over Russia, has long become the same obstacle as climatic conditions or landscape features: it is unpleasant, but nothing can be done, we must be able to live with it.
It is curious that Robert O'Brien, the adviser to the US president on national security, who announced the imposition of sanctions, called the support of the Venezuelan authorities “immoral”. It is understood that the purchase of oil from the Venezuelan state-owned oil and gas company PDVSA helps keep the anti-people regime in that country afloat. As a result, the Venezuelan people experience incredible suffering. Washington knows exactly what the true interests of the Venezuelan people are. That is why the position of the Americans is deeply “moral”. They not only wish good and democracy to the citizens of the Latin American state, which stuck with a bone in their throat, but also know how to bring this good to the home of every Venezuelan.
But if you look at the situation a little more carefully, you will quickly find out that the point is not morality and democracy, but what Vladimir Putin has long called unfair competition. Under the guise of a struggle for democratic ideals, the United States is trying to secure a dominant position in international energy markets. Eloquently, this was manifested in the ongoing US attempts to disrupt the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Now Washington has set out to push Rosneft away from Venezuelan oil purchases, which were contracted before any bans.
The fact is that the US government issues general licenses to its own companies, allowing them to do business with the same PDVSA. That is, Venezuelan oil is directly purchased by America from the "tyranny of Maduro" - and no one even thinks of calling it "immoral."
The interests of American business, in all likelihood, are so important and sovereign that in this case democracy and morality can be easily neglected.
Rosneft itself has already responded to Washington’s threats, explaining on the fingers that if sanctions are imposed, it will actually be theft of someone else’s property: “Any attempts to limit the company ... in returning investments in any form permitted by law, in particular by supplying Venezuelan oil and the reciprocal supply of oil products to pay off existing debt or through participation in joint ventures will constitute unlawful expropriation of such investments by the American s authorities. "
The world is changing before our eyes, including through the efforts of Russia, which is helping countries such as Syria and Venezuela to maintain sovereignty contrary to the attempts of the United States and its allies to only these states of any political subjectivity and take them under full control.
America’s hegemony on planet Earth has long been no longer an unconditional quantity; Washington’s power is flowing like sand through its fingers. Obviously, the Americans, on the one hand, are extremely unpleasant, on the other - they do not understand that their time is over and they need to integrate into the new world order not as the sovereign masters of the world, but as even the most powerful, but one of many states, which does not have the right to impose on others a certain order of life. Sooner or later, it will have to be understood.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.