President Trump's latest idea for Venezuelan oil isn't a one-off, experts say, but part of a years-long pattern of treating foreign resources as prizes for the taking. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has stepped up its campaign against President Nicolás Maduro, using drug-trafficking accusations to justify seizing tankers loaded with Venezuelan crude and pursuing a third vessel. Asked Monday what the US plans to do with the oil, Trump said, "Maybe we will sell it, maybe we will keep it. Maybe we'll use it in the Strategic Reserves. We're keeping the ships also," the BBC reports.
Scholars and policy analysts argue this fits into what one researcher, Patrick Bigger of the Transition Security Project, calls "resource imperialism": deploying threats of force or economic punishment to secure energy supplies, the Guardian reports. Trump has repeatedly suggested that the US should have taken Iraq's oil as compensation for the war and tied a small, lingering US troop presence in eastern Syria to "securing" oilfields there, even musing about letting Exxon Mobil develop them. His administration has also leaned heavily on sanctions to choke off Iran's oil revenues and warned that any buyer of Iranian energy products will face US penalties.
The approach extends beyond oil. Trump has pushed for greater US control over rare earths and other critical minerals, eyeing Greenland's vast deposits of cobalt, nickel, copper, and lithium, and even declining to rule out using force to obtain them. Washington has explored stakes in Greenland's mining projects and struck a deal with Ukraine to gain preferential access to its minerals and uranium in exchange for military aid. Trump has also urged allies such as the UK to drill more fossil fuels and derided international climate efforts as a "green scam." Energy expert Alice Hill says Trump "sees fossil fuel dominance as key to our national power and he doesn't care about international norms or what climate science says."
Analysts say Trump's approach reflects a form of resource nationalism that prioritizes fossil fuel dominance and supply-chain leverage, particularly against China. Development expert Adam Hanieh tells the Guardian that Trump is following the same playbook as earlier administrations, just with a different style. "Previous administrations pursued the same strategic control of energy, minerals and chokepoints, but cloaked it in multilateralism and 'market stability,' whereas Trump voices the extractive logic directly," says Hanieh, author of Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market.
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