The Venezuelan Oil Grab: American Imperialism Masquerading as Energy Security

The Facts: What’s Happening in Venezuela

The Trump administration is actively planning meetings with major U.S. oil corporations including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and ConocoPhillips to discuss reviving Venezuela’s oil industry following the dramatic military operation that led to the arrest of President Nicolas Maduro. Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves estimated at approximately 300 billion barrels, but its production has collapsed dramatically over the past two decades due to a combination of nationalization policies, crippling U.S. sanctions, and chronic underinvestment.

Venezuelan crude holds particular strategic value for the United States because it can be processed by specialized refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast. The administration believes that restoring Venezuela’s oil production could reshape global oil markets, strengthen U.S. energy security, and provide Washington with significant leverage over global oil prices. However, industry experts caution that any meaningful recovery would require billions of dollars in investment and years of work, making the administration’s ambitions far more complex than initial political statements suggest.

The Context: Monroe Doctrine Revival and Great Power Competition

This move must be understood within the broader context of the Trump administration’s explicit revival of the Monroe Doctrine, which treats the Western Hemisphere as an exclusive American sphere of influence. The administration’s National Security Strategy effectively establishes what analysts call a “Trump corollary” - that external powers’ presence in the Americas constitutes a strategic threat that must be rolled back. This represents a return to nineteenth-century realpolitik updated for the twenty-first century through economic coercion, sanctions, political subversion, and information operations.

The Venezuelan crisis also represents a critical front in the escalating geoeconomic competition between the United States and China. Beijing risks losing a significant source of energy supply and economic influence in the Western Hemisphere, potentially making China more dependent on Russia and strengthening Moscow’s leverage. Venezuela may become a test case for rolling back Chinese economic presence throughout Latin America, with implications for other countries from Panama to Peru and Bolivia.

Opinion: This Is Resource Imperialism, Plain and Simple

The Hypocrisy of Western “Energy Security” Narratives

Let us be unequivocally clear: what is happening in Venezuela represents nothing less than resource imperialism disguised as energy security. The United States, after systematically destroying Venezuela’s economy through brutal sanctions and regime change operations, now positions itself as the savior of its oil industry? The audacity is breathtaking. This is the same playbook used throughout history - destabilize a resource-rich nation, create chaos, then move in to “rescue” the very resources you helped make inaccessible.

The timing is particularly revealing. As the U.S. faces structural limits to its shale revolution and growing energy demands from artificial intelligence and data centers, Venezuela’s oil reserves suddenly become “strategic assets” rather than the sovereign property of the Venezuelan people. The Trump administration’s unusual candor in admitting energy motivations exposes the true nature of this operation: it’s about securing cheap, reliable, and politically controllable energy supplies to sustain American primacy, not about Venezuelan welfare or democracy.

The Dangerous Return to Sphere of Influence Politics

Washington’s revival of sphere of influence politics represents a catastrophic regression in international relations that will primarily harm the Global South. By treating Latin America as its “backyard,” the U.S. is effectively declaring that international law and sovereignty apply only when convenient to Western interests. This approach fundamentally undermines the post-war, rules-based international order that many developing nations have relied upon for protection against great power predation.

The most dangerous aspect of this strategy is its inevitable blowback. What Washington justifies today in Venezuela, Beijing will use tomorrow regarding Taiwan or the South China Sea. The normative arguments that Western powers have deployed against Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific become hollow when the same powers openly practice sphere-of-influence politics in their own regions. This hypocrisy erodes Western moral standing and makes it increasingly difficult to rally international consensus against genuine violations of international norms.

The Human Cost of Regime Change Fantasies

The administration’s optimistic rhetoric about Venezuela’s imminent economic renewal dangerously underestimates the complexity of rebuilding a nation that has suffered years of instability. The historical record of externally imposed regime change is abysmal - Iraq, Libya, and Syria stand as tragic examples of how regime collapse rarely produces functional states. Successful cases like post-war Germany and Japan required complete military defeat, unique geopolitical contexts, and decades of massive reconstruction investment - conditions entirely absent in Venezuela.

Venezuela remains saturated with armed groups, militias, and entrenched supporters of Chavismo. The risk of prolonged asymmetric warfare is substantial, and any U.S. military involvement would likely lead to another quagmire that the American public, weary from Afghanistan and Iraq, has no appetite for. The human cost of such instability would be borne primarily by ordinary Venezuelans, who have already suffered tremendously from years of economic warfare and political turmoil.

The Global South Must Unite Against This New Colonialism

For nations across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the Venezuelan episode serves as a stark warning about the resurgence of raw power politics. The international system is drifting away from rules-based constraints toward a more brutal logic where might makes right. Middle powers and smaller states must recognize that legal frameworks alone no longer provide reliable protection against the exercise of raw geopolitical force.

The Global South must respond to this challenge with strategic unity and clear-eyed realism. We cannot afford romantic illusions about international law or multilateral institutions that remain dominated by Western interests. Instead, we must strengthen regional organizations, develop alternative financial and energy architectures, and build South-South cooperation networks that can provide genuine security against great power predation.

Venezuela’s oil belongs to the Venezuelan people, not to American corporations or geopolitical strategists. The attempt to seize these resources under the pretext of liberation represents everything that is wrong with contemporary international relations. It demonstrates that despite rhetorical commitments to democracy and human rights, Western powers remain willing to resort to nineteenth-century imperialism when their economic interests are at stake.

As nations committed to genuine sovereignty and equitable development, we must stand in solidarity with Venezuela and all nations facing similar pressures. The struggle against resource imperialism is not Venezuela’s alone - it is the struggle of every nation that believes in a multipolar world where international law applies equally to all, not just when convenient for powerful states. The time for passive observation has passed; the Global South must actively shape the emerging international order before spheres of influence become permanent features of global politics.