India, Jan. 5 -- While the Donald Trump administration has denied that oil was the central motive behind its audacious regime change operation in Venezuela, which culminated in the removal of anti US President Nicolas Maduro, scepticism remains widespread. Observers and critics, both within the United States and internationally, argue that Venezuela's vast and largely untapped oil reserves, the largest in the world by official estimates, were a decisive underlying factor. In this reading, strategic and ideological considerations were ultimately outweighed by a more transactional calculus, with Trump's instincts as a businessman eclipsing the administration's stated political rationale.

For decades, Venezuela's vast oil reserves have fuel...