In our present analysis we will provide answers to several questions, including: Why does Trump want Canada as the 51st State? – Why the willingness to clash with the cartels in Mexico? – Why did Formula Noriega return to Venezuela?
Ι. USA: Empire, Debt and the Energy Issue
An argument in modern international relations holds that a great power can be either an empire or a debtor, but not both at the same time. Although this is not a well-established saying in the field of international relations, there are several relevant historical examples such as the debt of the Ottoman Empire and Egypt that resulted in their dissolution or transformation into protectorates.
The idea echoes a long tradition of scholarly thought about imperial overexpansion, fiscal-military burdens, and the structural limits of hegemonic power (Kennedy, 1987; Gilpin, 1981).
But for nearly eight decades, the United States has seemed to defy this rule, projecting unparalleled military power while simultaneously becoming the world’s largest debtor, leaving it with a national debt of $38 trillion by 2025.
Aggressive realism argues that states pursue power not because they are evil, but because the anarchic international system pushes them in that direction (Mearsheimer, 2001). However, material constraints, especially energy supplies and reserves, remain decisive. This theoretical framework explains why the United States under Donald Trump has simultaneously shown an interest in tightening control over Canadian resources, a willingness to clash with drug cartels in Mexico, and a revival of a coercive foreign policy toward Venezuela.
II. Why was Trump attracted to Canada?
1. The Strategic Logic: Canada Has the Oil That U.S. Refineries Really Need
The U.S. is now the world’s largest crude oil producer, but the shale boom has yielded mostly light, sweet crude that cannot replace the heavy crude for which the Gulf of Mexico refining complex was designed (EIA, 2020). These refineries have historically been configured to import from:
- Canada (Western Canadian Select)
- Venezuela (Orinoco Basin heavy crude)
- Mexico (Maya crude)
Because refinery retrofits are slow, expensive, and politically difficult, structural dependency persists (Yergin, 2011).
Consequently, U.S. “energy independence” is geologically illusory. Shale oil production does not eliminate the need for foreign heavy crude, a reality that energy strategists in Washington are well aware of.
2. The Aggressive-Realist Interpretation of the Trump Approach
Trump’s worldview was fundamentally transactional and mercantilist, consistent with aggressive-realist preferences for maximizing security through exploitation of neighboring resources (Mearsheimer, 2001).
Canada has never wanted or seriously considered integration into the United States. However, from a strategic perspective, it represented:
- a stable supplier of heavy oil
- a resource basin accessible by pipeline
- a continental ally within the American security perimeter
- a gateway to Arctic shipping and its minerals
Trump’s repeated statements about buying Greenland, renegotiating NAFTA “with a gun on the table,” or attacks on Canadian trade surpluses reflect a coherent, if crude, logic: control the continent to secure empire.
This reflects the classic view that great powers aggressively pursue their regional dominance as a basis for global influence (Mearsheimer, 2001; Waltz, 1979).
III. Why Venezuela Remains in the Crosshairs?
1. The Geochemistry of Power: Venezuela Has the Oil Molecular Weight the U.S. Needs
The Orinoco Belt in Venezuela contains the world’s largest known reserves of ultra-heavy crude (IEA, 2021). And the crucial point is that:
This is precisely the fuel that U.S. refineries were designed to handle.
Without heavy crude, the Gulf system cannot produce sufficient quantities of diesel, marine fuel, or jet fuel. Energy infrastructure—not ideology—dictates this reality.
2. The Miscalculation of Sanctions
The US sanctions (2017–2020), aimed at the collapse of the Maduro government, produced unintended results:
- China, India, and others bought oil from Venezuela at deep discounts.
- Transactions increasingly bypassed the dollar.
- Venezuela demonstrated that a major producer can operate outside the petrodollar system (for more information about this issue please read the analysis titled “The Dollar and the dedollarization was the real reason for the blow to Venezuela“).
This aligns with predictions in the literature that the excessive use of sanctions accelerates financial multipolarity (Tooze, 2022; Drezner, 2019).
3. Why is Gunnery Diplomacy Reemerging?
Historically, when financial coercion fails, great powers have reverted to the threat of naval power (Bull, 1977; Bially Mattern, 2005). The reemergence of US naval forces in the Caribbean follows a classic pattern:
- Protecting sea lanes.
- Pressuring recalcitrant states.
- Signaling the ability to scale.
- Assuring access to strategic resources.
- When diesel shortages threaten supply chains, aggressive realism predicts aggressive behavior regardless of ideology.
4. Maduro’s Kidnapping in Venezuela
From the perspective of aggressive realism, the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026 on drug trafficking charges, based on the indictment of Manuel Noriega by the US (also arrested on January 3 but in 1990), reveals the crude mechanisms of hegemonic power covered by legalistic pretenses.
The United States, burdened by a staggering and accelerating national debt exceeding $30 trillion, has once again instrumentalized international law as a discretionary tool, rejecting it altogether when access to strategic resources is at stake.
Venezuela, with an estimated $18 trillion in oil and mineral wealth, does not represent a rogue state in need of correction, but a prize for the US to seize under the thin veil of moral condemnation of the war on drugs.
This unilateral act of regime removal, carried out without Security Council authorization and against the sovereign will of a recognized government, signals the definitive death knell of the rules-based international order, revealing it for what it always was: a temporary arrangement convenient to American primacy, not a real restraint on power.
In an anarchic world where survival favors the bold and ruthless, the US has clearly signaled that the law is only subject to those who exercise overwhelming violence and that sovereignty is a privilege granted exclusively to the most powerful (for more information about this issue please read the analysis titled “Venezuela: Violation of International Law by American Imperialism“).
IV. Troops in Mexico: War on Cartels or Effort to Control Maya Crude?
It is no coincidence that Donald Trump’s repeated threats to send US troops to Mexico, ostensibly to combat cartels, coincide with the broader search for heavy, sour crude from Latin America and specifically from the Maya crude deposits.
Maya crude (≈21–22° API, ~3.4% sulfur) remains a key feedstock for Gulf refineries. From an aggressive-realist perspective, the cartel rhetoric serves as a convenient pretext. In practice, it serves as a lever of pressure to ensure continued access to critical energy flows. In other words, US foreign policy is signaling to Mexico its interest in Maya Crude.
What looks like a drug speech functions as an energy strategy footnote.
V. Trump’s Strategy in the Context of the Monroe Doctrine 2.0
Trump’s national security logic, better than American foreign policy that has continued regardless of presidents, aligns with a long tradition of hemispheric dominance:
- Control of the Western Hemisphere
- Deterrence of extraterrestrial powers
- Control of resource flows
- Projection of power from a secure continental base
- This infrastructure, once built, determines strategy for decades (Colgan, 2021).
VI. Main Conclusion: The Chemistry of Energy Power
Aggressive realism teaches us that material constraints, not values or ideology, shape sound foreign policy. The United States has oil, but not the right molecular mix. Thus:
- Canada is treated as a strategic appendage.
- Venezuela is made a target for coercion.
- The “war on drugs” is aligned with energy needs.
- Heavy crude dictates policy more than ideology.
- Power has a molecular structure—and strategy follows it.
VII. Financial Implications
The energy problem is exacerbated by the difficulty of financing the US debt. Reduced demand for bonds raises interest rates, making imports more expensive and straining the energy system.
Conclusions
The common thread is clear: Trump’s rhetoric about Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela is linked to the need to secure heavy crude for refineries that is tailored to that particular composition.
Sources
- Bially Mattern, J. (2005). Ordering International Politics: Identity, Crisis, and Representational Force.
- Bull, H. (1977). The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics.
- Colgan, J. (2021). “Oil, Domestic Politics, and International Conflict.” Annual Review of Political Science.
- Drezner, D. (2019). The System Worked—Until It Didn’t.
- Energy Information Administration (EIA). (2020). U.S. Refinery Capacity Report.
- Gilpin, R. (1981). War and Change in World Politics.
- International Energy Agency (IEA). (2021). World Energy Outlook.
- Kennedy, P. (1987). The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.
- Layne, C. (1997). “From Preponderance to Offshore Balancing.” International Security.
- Mearsheimer, J. (2001). The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
- OPEC Bulletin. (2022). “Shifts in Global Oil Transactions.”
- Yergin, D. (2011). The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World.
- BBC VERIFY, (1st August 2025), President Trump has accused Canada – alongside Mexico – of allowing “vast numbers of people to come in and fentanyl to come in” to the US, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg93nn1e6go
- Tooze, A. (2022). Shutdown: How Global Crisis Changes Global Finance.
- Waltz, K. (1979). Theory of International Politics.
