In a stark echo of colonial-era resource grabs, former US President Donald Trump has deployed military force to seize control of Venezuela's vast oil reserves. The move, executed in the dead of night last week, marks a dramatic escalation in his administration's blunt use of American might during the first year of his second term.
From Trade Bullying to Military Force
Trump's intervention, which saw the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, was thinly veiled as a political action. While gesturing towards Maduro's illegitimacy following the widely disputed 2024 election, the primary motivation was transparent: securing Venezuelan oil for the fossil fuel companies that heavily backed his re-election campaign.
This military action follows a pattern of aggressive economic diplomacy. Over the preceding twelve months, Trump has wielded US economic power with particular bluntness in trade talks, using the threat of tariffs to pressure rivals and allies alike—including the United Kingdom. The Venezuela operation makes clear he is now prepared to supplement economic threats with direct military force to seize resources for favoured corporate interests.
The precedent is deeply alarming. It not only signals what Trump might attempt against other perceived targets but also potentially emboldens rival powers with even less regard for international law to pursue their own resource-driven interventions.
An Outdated Vision of Economic Success
Critics argue that Trump's focus on securing physical oil reserves is a hopelessly outdated economic strategy, akin to his famously retro music tastes. The global oil market is currently well-supplied, and the US itself has become a significant net exporter since the shale boom. This shift has insulated the American economy from the kind of energy price shocks that recently crippled Europe after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Furthermore, the economic rationale is shaky. Heavy Venezuelan oil is expensive to produce and refine. Analysts, including those at the Washington-based Institute of International Finance, believe it will take many years and billions of dollars of investment to significantly boost the country's output. They foresee a "gradual and conditional recovery" fraught with potential for political setbacks, rather than a swift normalisation.
Meanwhile, the real resource bottlenecks concerning modern corporations lie elsewhere: in the critical minerals like copper, aluminium, and lithium needed for the global shift to electrification and net zero—a transition Trump explicitly rejects. Prices for staples like cocoa and coffee are also being driven up by climate change, not a lack of oil.
Undermining the Foundations of US Strength
Trump's muscular trade and resource policies appear disconnected from the drivers of contemporary economic success. Despite hopes that aggressive tariffs would trigger a wave of manufacturing reshoring, the US sector has continued to decline, shedding over 200,000 jobs in two years.
Simultaneously, policies that slash government grants for scientific research and attack major universities on culture-war grounds threaten to starve the innovation ecosystem widely seen as key to long-term US competitiveness.
While Trump fixates on reviving heavy industry, economic rival China is surging ahead in the technologies of the future. Between January and May last year alone, China added enough wind and solar capacity to power a nation the size of Turkey. Its firms are leading in electric vehicles and cut-price solar panels, and its AI companies, like DeepSeek, are preparing to release advanced large language models that could outperform US equivalents at a fraction of the cost.
Trump's Venezuelan gambit is a raw exercise of power that may foreshadow further interventions. However, by unleashing international anarchy and trashing the rule of law, this strategy is more likely to corrode the very foundations of US economic influence—innovation, alliances, and stability—than to enhance it. The act of looting may secure short-term plunder, but it risks a long-term decline.
