Mainstream media outlets eagerly reported the Trump administration's seizure of an oil tanker laden with Venezuelan oil as "an escalation in President Trump's military pressure campaign against Venezuela's leader, Nicolás Maduro," as The New York Times put it. Yet not every new development is an escalation, and, for an administration that has stirred controversy by blasting nearly two dozen alleged drug boats out of the water, seizing oil tankers is a surprisingly conventional turn.