Trump, Maduro and the policy of containment in the global energy war

 Trump’s offensive against Maduro reveals an imperial strategy structured around the energy war and the American obsession with stifling the multipolar project led by Russia, China and the BRICS alliance.

Mohamed Lamine KABA

Since his return to power, Donald Trump has reactivated the old American geopolitical matrix of controlling energy to control the world. By targeting Venezuela, he is not attacking an isolated regime but a strategic pivot between Moscow, Beijing, and the Southern Hemisphere. Sanctions, oil sabotage, and diplomatic isolation are only the visible facade of a deeper objective: to weaken Russia, strangle China, and prevent the emergence of a multipolar order. This dynamic is part of the struggle of a declining West seeking, through coercion, to prolong a hegemony that has become fragile and contested.

Trump wants an ‘American OPEC’ to stifle Venezuela and weaken Moscow and Beijing

Trump’s relentless pursuit of Maduro is driven by energy dominance. The White House sees Venezuela as key: its extra-heavy oil, its immense reserves, its geographical role, and its alternative alliances. Behind each sanction, the objective is twofold. First, to prevent Caracas from financing its sovereignty and maintaining its strategic partnerships with Russia and China. Second, to manipulate the global oil market in order to break Moscow’s economic model and weaken China’s energy supply. Trump thinks like a businessman: whoever controls the price, production, and routes of oil dictates the rules of the world order.

What has changed today is the context: the West is no longer a confident force, but a system struggling against its own decline

Washington dreams of an ‘American OPEC.’ A closed system where the United States coordinates, controls, and directs oil flows. At its core, this economic war is neither moral nor humanitarian. It is geostrategic, planned, and systemic. Venezuela is not an adversary; it is a lever. Neutralizing Maduro means cutting off oxygen to two major rivals, energy-hungry China and oil-financed Russia. Oil then becomes a silent but brutal weapon: through price, we suffocate. Through sanctions, we isolate. Through scarcity, we create dependency. This is the logic behind Trump’s posturing, which should be viewed as sui generis.

It is now up to Moscow and Beijing to learn the lessons of this energy war, which is linked to the American policy of containment that has fueled, since the end of the Second World War (1945) and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), the logic of escalation and the mutual perception of threat between Eastern and Western powers.

The anti-Venezuela offensive as a barrier against the BRICS Alliance and the programmed decline of the West

Trump’s America is not fighting a man, but an emerging political architecture: that of a multipolar world. Venezuela is a stumbling block in the global strategy of encircling and containing non-Western powers, namely those in the East, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. By blocking the Caracas-Moscow-Beijing energy connection, Washington aims to curb the expansion of the BRICS (whose member countries share the fact that they are subject, in different ways, of course, to the diktat of Western world domination), to limit Chinese access to strategic resources, and to prevent Russia from transforming its energy power into lasting diplomatic influence.

This policy revives an imperial reflex dating back to the Cold War (1947-1991): preventing the emergence of an alternative centre of gravity. What has changed today is the context: the West is no longer a confident force but a system struggling against its own decline. Coercion reveals fear. Sanctions reveal fragility. The discourse on ‘democracy’ reveals above all the need to mask an imperialism of scarcity. In this battle, Venezuela is not just a theatre, but a strategic node, a potential crack in the Western hegemonic architecture.

It should therefore be noted that Trump did not target Maduro by chance, but because he embodies a geopolitical tipping point. That is, a source of energy that can overturn the global balance. What is at stake in Venezuela goes beyond Latin American politics. It is a global struggle between two eras, two worldviews, and two conceptions of the future. On one side, a Western empire refuses to let go, using oil as the ultimate weapon. On the other, the multipolar horizon is embodied by the BRICS, which is slowly rewriting the rules of power. Venezuelan oil is now the fuse that reveals that the world order is already changing at Oreshnik speed.

Mohamed Lamine KABA, Expert in geopolitics of governance and regional integration, Institute of Governance, Humanities and Social Sciences, Pan-African University