Energy Levers Shift As US Strikes A Geopolitical Blow With Maduro Arrest

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The new year begins with a geopolitical thunderclap. With the arrest of Venezuela's dictator Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. positions itself as a decisive player in the global energy market. This move has far-reaching consequences for the balance of power.

Peering through the dense fog of leftist crocodile tears following the arrest of Venezuela's dictator Nicolás Maduro, one can conclude: the U.S., with its intervention in Venezuela, has removed a key piece from the geopolitical chessboard. This step marks a turning point in a conflict that has long transcended regional boundaries, revealing the tectonic tensions of the international order.

The Caracas Breakpoint 

Everything that can be said about Nicolás Maduro has essentially been said. A communist dictator, an individual who pursued his policies through systematic human rights suppression—in the name and interest of his allies. Whether it was China’s energy hunger or functioning as South America’s resource hub, which for years primarily operated on Beijing’s behalf.

Since the mid-2000s, there has also been military cooperation between Iran’s mullah regime and Venezuela, with Iran primarily supplying the Mohajer-series drones, later continued in Venezuela as the ANSU-series. These drones were assembled, maintained, and partly armed in Venezuela, militarily supporting the Caracas regime. Deepened relations with Russia, China, and Iran are now history.

Accordingly, the saber-rattling from China and Russia in response to the U.S. military strike was sharp in the media. Europe, by contrast, once again appeared uncertain, hesitant, and divided in its assessment of the military intervention. Yet the night of January 2–3 marks a turning point. It was an impactful blow—not just against Caracas, but against all opponents of the new American policy line.

This policy line essentially revives the Monroe Doctrine. President Trump made this unmistakably clear at a press conference, stating that now everyone must understand that foreign influence in the United States’ backyard ends here.

In Colombia, Peru, and Cuba, the unmistakable subtext is that relevant actors should start packing their bags.

The era of happily financing clandestine intelligence operations with drug money and trading with China in open hostility to the U.S. ends with this administration. And one should not forget: the trail of drug money regularly leads to Europe.

At this point, we can only speculate, but it is not unlikely that intelligence activities of the Five Eyes, including funding leftist radical structures and mobs in the U.S.—from Black Lives Matter to the No-Kings demonstrations—were at least partially fueled by these money flows.

That the link between intelligence agencies and drug money is no mere speculation is clear to those familiar with the Iran-Contra affair, the CIA, and funding of Contra rebels in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

And no one disputes the deep entanglement of the Maduro regime with activities of the drug cartel “Cartel de los Soles,” which involves high-ranking Venezuelan military and other government members.

The U.S. is in the midst of a defensive struggle against what one might call a Color Revolution, against which the new administration is vigorously countering, including through the dismantling of the NGO complex around USAID.

The next geopolitical move of the U.S. 

With the return of American energy corporations like Chevron, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips to previously annulled Venezuelan production contracts, the U.S. gains a decisive new space on the geopolitical chessboard.

Venezuela possesses massive oil reserves of over 300 billion barrels—difficult to extract, difficult to refine, but strategically invaluable. With U.S. companies re-entering production, the U.S. gains practical control over the flow of this crude. Exports to China, in particular, come under U.S. oversight.

China was at times Venezuela’s largest oil customer. For Washington, this now provides an additional lever: it could slow the subsidy machine of the Chinese export sector to give its own industry breathing space, and it creates leverage to push Beijing toward concessions in ongoing disputes, such as over microchips and rare earths.

Meanwhile, Gulf Coast refineries in the U.S., specifically configured to process heavy crude from Venezuela and Canada, can once again be supplied from the south. Another geopolitical opponent, hostile to the U.S., is now partially forced to retreat.

Canada, which recently openly sided with the EU Commission—on sanctioning U.S. tech companies, censorship policy, and increasingly in the Ukraine war against U.S. interests—will need to find new buyers for its heavy crude.

For the government of Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of England, this could be problematic. His globalist ideological project, a direct inheritance from predecessor Justin Trudeau, loses further economic and political traction.

Not to be forgotten: along its northern border, the U.S. faces an ideological counterweight. With the reorganization of energy flows, this actor is now gradually being squeezed.

Europe at a crossroads 

The new year has begun with a bang, and critical weeks and months lie ahead, in which the players on this power field are forced to make moves. While the U.S., with a single step, has removed or neutralized multiple pieces from the board, Europe faces a different situation.

Here, the alliance of Brussels, London, Berlin, and Paris continues to try to solve its resource problems through escalation of the Ukraine conflict. Hovering over all of this is the hope, expressed by EU foreign affairs representative Kaja Kallas on behalf of the alliance, to weaken the Russian state through military success—and, by inference, gain influence over the massive resource complex.

A reminder: Europe has no significant domestic raw materials, is around 60 percent net energy importer, and now finds itself largely exposed as major players—the U.S. and China—gradually make their moves and wield powerful levers over the resource complex.

It is time to decide. Either Europe continues down the path of climate-socialist destruction toward the inevitable collapse of the European Union, or it accepts the strategic leadership of the U.S., follows Washington’s rules—which essentially imply dismantling the censorship apparatus and the climate-socialist control complex—and returns to a Europe of regions: a promising concept based on competitive free-market principles and preservation of regional cultural traditions.

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About the author: Thomas Kolbe, born in 1978 in Neuss/ Germany, is a graduate economist. For over 25 years, he has worked as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.