Trump is unabashedly trying to enforce colonial-era control in the 21st century: he is leading colonial powers to enforce their belief that mineral rights obtained through colonial and quasi-colonial means in the 20th century remain enforceable today.
Simon Chege Ndiritu
Trump’s accusations against Venezuela misrepresent the 2007 actions of nationalizing Venezuelan oilfields previously held by US, British, Norwegian, and French Multinationals. These multinationals had gained these oil rights through colonial practices, including gunboat diplomacy. The US and its allies are attempting to undermine the sovereignty of Global South countries by separating political independence from control over land and resources. The West wants an outcome where independent Global South countries leave their land and minerals to firms owned by colonial powers, while rights declared by the UN Charter only advance the West’s interests as they relate to former colonies.
…And What Is The UN Saying? Nothing
The attitude brought to the fore by Trump’s ultimatum against Venezuela is dangerous because it is tacitly abetted by Western-centric institutions of global governance. The bureaucratic scaffold has abetted the murder of tens of civilians beginning from early September 2025, without UN approval, or an independent judicial process. These civilians were targeted by the US military while sailing in the Caribbean Sea after being accused by the Trump administration of being in “drug boats.” Trump has later shifted goalposts and declared that the US Navy has been operating around Venezuela to enforce an oil blockade until the latter country returns land, oil, and other assets he alleges Venezuela stole from the US, as mentioned earlier. He also intensified the military threat on December 17, 2025, against UNSC resolution 2(4), which expressly prohibits members from threatening others. This threat occurred days after the US Navy hijacked and commandeered an oil tanker ferrying crude oil from Venezuela to the US, still without UN approval. Washington’s killing of civilians, violating UNCLOS, and contravening UNSC resolution 2(4) has continued without meaningful resistance from institutions of global governance, showing how colonial logic persists in international relations today. These institutions have so far acted like they can abet Trump’s effort to defend colonial plunder in the 21st century.
Colonial Oil Rights that Trump Wants to Enforce
Western oil companies that lost oil rights to the Venezuelan government in 2007 had not gained these rights through fair or competitive means. Instead, they gained them through forced concessions extracted by Western colonial governments that manipulated politically weak governments that had recently emerged from colonialism. In the 1920s, Latin American governments, including Venezuela, faced constant Western interference, which led to the development of authoritarianism. These dictators, including those from Venezuela, exchanged their sovereignty for the promise of diplomatic protection and foreign capital. However, the said ‘foreign capital’ was only directed at oil extraction and export, which turned Venezuela into a petrostate, as other areas of the economy remained underdeveloped. Western oil companies (including Dutch, British, and US) extracted Venezuelan oil while paying minimal royalties, ignoring legal oversight, and repatriating profits; essentially, colonial extraction. Many decades later, in the 1970s, the Venezuelan government attempted to renegotiate revenue sharing with these companies, culminating in the first nationalization of 1975/76, which failed to yield the desired economic development.
After Venezuelans’ observing colonial extraction between 1922 and the 2000s, without gaining satisfactory socioeconomic development, it was predictable that their government would take control of this crude oil for the citizens’ benefit, which was attempted again in the nationalization of 2007. Subsequently, the US has implemented many rounds of economic and covert military actions to force Venezuela to relinquish its crude reserves, but Trump seems ready to openly use force. The president’s latest threats and accusations against Venezuela are his corollary to Western colonialism in the 21st century. He and other drivers of Western colonialism appear to believe they own all resources anywhere on the planet and that these resources should be given over to them whenever they demand.
Trump’s attitude presents persistent challenges to the Global South because the bureaucracy running global governance tacitly allows colonialism. Additionally, the bulk of the US political class supports using the military to advance colonial exploitation; as noted on December 17, 2025, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly rejected a bill curtailing Trump’s potential military invasion of Venezuela. Trump had already directed the US Navy to interdict oil shipping from Venezuela, and the military implemented such a direction, stealing a tanker ferrying Venezuela’s crude. Some members of the UNSC have only made tangential statements about the matter, essentially allowing Washington to enforce colonialism in the 21st century. The UN’s mix of silence and chamfered response to evolving US aggression against Venezuela constitutes approval of modern colonialism. It appears the UN Charter, with provisions such as equality of all nations and prohibition of military threats, are only suggestions when it comes to the US.
Open Display of Colonialism and the UN’s Impotence
From the current US aggression against Venezuela and its past devastation of Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen, among others, it is clear that the UN mechanism can never protect Global South countries from modern colonialism. Western UNSC members only issue hypocritical statements such as “expressing concern” whenever the US and its allies invade countries and grab resources. The West and its Mainstream Media sanitize such maneuvers, cheering how the absence of formal annexation or colonial governors makes such murderous interventions ‘democratic.’ These parties have, in decades, sanitized brutal sanction regimes that harmed civilians, while systematically blaming the effects of US sanctions on Venezuela’s regime. Sources have revealed that Trump’s 2017 sanctions on Venezuela caused over 40,000 deaths in 2 years, yet neither the UN nor any Western country has attempted to hold the US government to account. Washington has been killing Venezuelans for years using sanctions but has now started using bombs without declaration of war or judicial process, all to exploit the country’s oil in a 21st-century colonial replay.
Trump’s openly demanding Venezuela’s land and oil rights, which the West had obtained through colonial means, constitutes him showcasing how Western colonial ideology has become more brazen, and is no longer hidden behind sophistries such as ‘fighting terrorism’ or ‘finding Weapons of Mass Destruction’.
Simon Chege Ndiritu, is a political observer and research analyst from Africa
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