Trump vows to 'replenish' US reserves with Venezuelan oil; ex-Pentagon official urges squeezing the UK.

As it ran on the front

You want to know how you can tell what's actually happening in this country's foreign policy? Forget the podium, forget the flags behind the podium — listen to the verbs. This week we got two of them, back to back: "replenish" and "squeeze." The President says Venezuelan oil is going to replenish the US strategic reserve, like it's a vitamin, like the ground just gives it up gratefully. And a former Pentagon official goes on the record saying the US ought to squeeze the United Kingdom — a NATO ally, a country we've stood beside for eighty years — over a defense dispute tangled up in the Falklands. Squeeze. Not negotiate. Not partner. Squeeze, like a landlord, like a loan shark checking in on a payment that's a week late.

Here's the thing about that word choice: it's not a slip. Nobody says "squeeze" by accident in a policy conversation. You say "squeeze" when you've already decided the relationship is extraction, not alliance, and you're just deciding who's on the giving end this quarter. Venezuela's oil replenishes us. The UK's defense budget gets squeezed for us. Notice the direction of every verb in this administration's foreign policy points one way — toward us, away from everybody else, friend and rival treated the same, because in this vocabulary there is no friend and rival, there's just supply.…