When Donald Trump announced on January 6 that Venezuela’s interim authorities would hand over between 30 million and 50 million barrels of oil to the United States, he inadvertently laid bare a truth that climate advocates have long understood: the geopolitical strategies of powerful nations remain inextricably tied to fossil fuel corporate interests, even as the planet hurtles towards irreversible climate breakdown.
On January 3, the United States invaded Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro. Within days, Trump declared that Venezuela – which has the world’s largest oil reserves – would transfer oil worth billions to the US. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright was assigned to execute this plan immediately.
The United Nations Security Council has reiterated that such actions violate international law.
This brazen episode reveals the fundamental incompatibility between the current geopolitical order, which is dominated by fossil fuel interests, and any meaningful response to the climate crisis. While legal scholars rightly emphasise the violations of sovereignty and international law, it must also be recognised that collective climate efforts will remain stillborn unless the corporate forces that shape foreign policy and obstruct the energy transition are recognised – and confronted.
Venezuela nationalised its oil sector in 1976. In 1999, Hugo Chávez further tightened state control. Trump’s announcement treats this sovereign resource as a prize to be claimed through military force and by installing a compliant interim government.
Only one American company, Chevron, currently operates in Venezuela – a level of access the fossil fuel industry has long sought to expand, given the scale and strategic importance of Venezuela’s reserves.
The timing could scarcely be worse. As the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that global emissions must be halved by 2030 to avoid catastrophic warming, the world’s most powerful nation has invaded a sovereign country to secure access to more oil. This is the consequence of a foreign policy apparatus captured by fossil fuel interests.
The same industry funds climate denial, bankrolls politicians who obstruct renewable energy legislation and spends millions lobbying against emissions regulations.
Consider the numbers: fossil fuel companies spend over $100 million each year lobbying politicians directly. In the 2024 US election cycle alone, the fossil fuel industry spent over $219 million, with 88% of oil and gas money going to Republican lawmakers.
Beyond resisting domestic climate policy, the fossil fuel lobby drives foreign interventions that entrench global dependence on oil and gas. Venezuela represents the latest iteration of this dynamic, following decades of U.S. involvement in oil-rich regions – interventions often justified through security or humanitarian narratives but consistently shaped by energy interests.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq, while publicly framed around security concerns, transformed the country into a battleground that spawned a decade-long insurgency, fundamentally altered the regional balance of power and created fertile ground for the rise of ISIS.
The 2011 intervention in Libya left behind a failed state plagued by rival factions, civil war, widespread human rights abuses and a devastated oil-dependent economy.
These interventions, alongside operations in Syria and Yemen, have unleashed cascading crises that continue to generate extremism, displacement and violence years after the initial military action. The chaos becomes an opportunity for powerful actors to install friendly governments, secure favourable contracts for US corporations and maintain the global oil supply that keeps the fossil fuel economy humming.
The resource curse that afflicts Venezuela and similar nations drives this dynamic. When economies become overdependent on oil extraction, corruption flourishes, governance deteriorates and internal conflict becomes endemic.
Rather than helping such countries diversify away from fossil fuel dependence, which would serve both their populations and global climate goals, powerful actors instead exploit these vulnerabilities.
The costs are staggering. Military interventions consume enormous financial resources and political capital (in addition to the tragic cost of human lives) – resources desperately needed for climate action.
Every dollar spent on projecting military power to secure oil reserves is a dollar not invested in renewable energy infrastructure, grid modernisation or the just transition that workers in fossil fuel industries require.
Every diplomatic hour consumed by oil-motivated conflicts is an hour not spent negotiating urgently needed binding international climate agreements.
Military operations themselves generate massive carbon emissions. The US military ranks among the world’s largest institutional greenhouse gas emitters. Using military force to secure more fossil fuels creates a perverse feedback loop: burning oil to obtain more oil to burn, while the climate system is destablised.
Trump’s Venezuelan gambit also undermines the fragile international cooperation that climate action requires. Effective climate policy demands that nations honour agreements, respect international law and work collectively towards shared goals. When powerful countries flagrantly violate sovereignty and international norms to seize resources, they corrode the institutional trust on which global climate cooperation depends.
The US undermines the entire foundation of international climate cooperation when it withdraws from the Paris Agreement and other United Nations climate frameworks while simultaneously deploying military force to prioritise fossil fuel extraction over all other concerns.
Donald Trump is reported to have scheduled meetings with executives from Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil to discuss Venezuelan investments. These White House consultations strip away any pretence that the US was actually concerned about drug trafficking and human rights in Venezuela.
The interim Venezuelan authorities mentioned in Trump’s announcement derive their authority primarily from US military backing rather than democratic mandate. They will “turn over” oil because they have little choice in the matter.
Climate activists have long argued that addressing the climate crisis requires confronting corporate power. Venezuela proves this thesis. The same lobby that blocks renewable energy subsidies also cheers military action to secure foreign oil. The same industry that spreads climate disinformation also profits from geopolitical chaos in oil-producing regions.
As climate disasters intensify and future generations survey the wreckage of inaction, Trump’s Venezuelan invasion will stand as a symbol of how fossil fuel interests distorted priorities at the planet’s most critical juncture. The question is whether this pattern will be recognised – and disrupted – while there is still time to change course.
Vishal R Choradiya is an assistant professor with the Department of Professional Studies, Christ University, Bengaluru.
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