The US seizure of a Russian-flagged, Venezuela-linked oil tanker is the latest and most dangerous episode in Donald Trump’s neo-imperialist takeover of Venezuela and its oil industry. After last month’s seizure of the tanker Skipper, on Tuesday a second tanker with a cargo of Venezuelan oil was intercepted by the US Coast Guard off the northern coast of South America.
US War Secretary Pete Hegseth posted: “The blockade of sanctioned and illicit Venezuelan oil remains in FULL EFFECT – anywhere in the world.”
Such imperialist power grabs in the 19th century invariably created friction between great military states and brought them into conflict – a process that culminated in the First World War. Assertion of extra-territorial authority – like Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro – likewise fuels imperial hubris and over-reach, with the potential to spark violent conflict anywhere in the world.
Trump now acts as the unchallenged sovereign of the seas with the right to seize any vessel breaching US sanctions or acting contrary to the wishes of the US government – regardless of international law. On land he is establishing control over formerly independent Venezuela, whose post-Maduro leadership he threatens to depose unless they do exactly what he tells it to do.
Russian state television showed a helicopter hovering near the MV Marinera, originally known as the MV Bella 1, as US forces boarded the tanker. A Russian submarine and vessel were nearby as the seizure took place, underlining Moscow’s humiliating inability to defend its own interests or those of allies like Venezuela. Vladimir Putin is unlikely to react forcefully because he needs to cultivate Trump’s goodwill in talks about the Ukraine war.
UK vessels participated in the seizure, in keeping with the long-standing British policy of giving priority to the maintenance of its security relationship with the US. As with UK participation in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, UK officials are seeking to portray the seizure as a legal proceeding to, in the words of Defence Secretary John Healey, “protect our national security, our economy, and global stability – making Britain secure at home and strong abroad”. The claim that the seizure of other countries’ vessels on the high seas aids global stability requires considerable cheek, as does a quibble about whether or not the ship was legally Russian.
The UK Ministry of Defence statement claims that “this ship, with a nefarious history, is part of a Russian-Iranian axis of sanctions evasion which is fuelling terrorism, conflict, and misery from the Middle East to Ukraine”. No mention is made of Venezuela, though in practise the UK is participating in the US blockade.
China says that “the United States’ brazen use of force against Venezuela and its demand for ‘America First’ when Venezuela disposes of its own oil resources are typical acts of bullying”. But, despite its evident anger, there is little that China can do to deter the US.
The ship seizures by the US will further alarm European Union and Nato powers who are already in a state of panic because of Trump’s threat to take over the huge Arctic island of Greenland, which is a semi-autonomous part of Denmark. The timid European response to the Maduro kidnapping – and the killing by US forces of at least 32 Cubans and 23 Venezuelans – will have emboldened Trump in his wider territorial ambitions.
Indeed, European leaders appear to be on the verge of a political nervous breakdown as they seek to balance the perceived need for US support against Russia in the Ukraine war against the need to resist Trump’s systematic demolition of the international order as it has existed since 1945. Despite ceaseless meetings of the so-called “coalition of the willing” – directed against Russia in Ukraine – Sir Keir Starmer and other European leaders have projected weakness and irresolution on all the great issues facing the world. It is clear, however, that the policy of never opposing or even criticising Trump has only led to him and his chief lieutenants regarding Europe – going by the tone of the administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy – with ill-concealed contempt.
Trump may now believe that the success of his Venezuelan venture so far shows that the US has the military and political weight to move against Colombia, Mexico and Cuba, and exercise semi-colonial rule over Latin America. Trump has described this reassertion of US predominance in its hemisphere as his version of the Monroe Doctrine, the American foreign policy position which for 200 years has sought to keep other Western powers out of Central and South America.
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Seldom mentioned in the current crisis is the fact that the US, in alliance with Israel, has already established hegemony in the Middle East in a series of US-supported wars between 2023 and 2025. In Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran, opponents of the US have been weakened or eliminated, making Washington the ultimate decision-maker in the region.
As we enter an era in which countries settle their differences with others by force – something never abandoned at the best of times but the new norm under Trump – then multiple crises are likely to erupt.
Small states will resist subjugation and big states will bump into each other as they fight for their own interests. In less than a week we have seen successive developments – Venezuela, Greenland, seizure of oil tankers – each creating friction, each with the potential to ignite a crisis. This is a foretaste of an unstable and more dangerous world to come.
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