As we approach a global battle for resources

Yusuf Tuna Koç

With Trump bombing Venezuela last week and kidnapping Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores to bring them to the US, discussions have arisen that a new era is beginning for the whole world. The US's barbaric implementation of the phrase ‘the Western hemisphere is ours,’ emphasised in its National Security Strategy, while trampling on international law and lacking any legitimate basis, has raised many concerns about the future direction of the world.

The most talked about issue is that the US is resorting to more weapons as it loses its hegemony. As a Chinese proverb says, ‘if there are big shadows of small people somewhere, it means the sun is setting there.’ Today, Trump's shadow is reaching Latin America, the living representatives of the Bolivarian revolution, with special forces and F-35s.

There are many different perspectives being discussed today regarding the United States' focus on Latin America, particularly Venezuela. The weakening of US global hegemony, regional competition with China, efforts to eliminate the socialist experiment, hegemony over energy resources...

We discussed all this and more with Ergin Yıldızoğlu.

What are the main factors behind Trump's strategy of focusing on Latin America with his emphasis on the Monroe Doctrine? Is it simply a matter of oil, as in the Middle East, or can we speak of a new direction for imperialism?

Venezuela is merely a subheading within the Monroe/Donroe Doctrine. Oil reserves do not indicate that ‘Donroe’ is oil-focused. This “new” doctrine also covers other Latin American countries, Canada and Greenland: it is not easy to claim that oil is a decisive factor as an energy source in the entire ‘Western hemisphere’, even in the context of Venezuela.

Venezuela's oil is costly and requires specialised refineries.

There is an oversupply in the global oil market, with prices fluctuating below the average of $80, which is the profitability threshold for the US oil industry. Adding high-cost oil like Venezuela's to this saturated market is unrealistic.

If US companies decide to return to Venezuela, new infrastructure investments will be required in the oil industry. Who would dare to make long-term investments in a high-cost resource in an unstable country in a saturated market?

Venezuela sells most of its oil to BRICS countries; it is also an important resource for China.

Oil has significance in the context of Article 4. Yesterday, it was said that countries such as Iraq and Libya, and now Venezuela, were preparing to move outside the petrodollar system, either using their own currency with BRICS countries or through UNIT (a package consisting of gold + the currencies of participating countries), which is beginning to take shape within the BRICS system.

What significance does this attack hold in the hegemonic struggle with China?

Should we expect similar attacks to spread across the continent, and could meaningful resistance emerge against this?

One of the most important industries in terms of surplus value creation in the global economy since the 1940s has been the transport (land, air, sea) industry. US hegemony rose on the control of this sector and its energy requirements. This industry is now moving away from oil. The future is now taking shape around electric vehicles. Three points are important:

1) Minerals such as lithium and cobalt, which are necessary for the electric vehicle sector, are now rising to strategic importance.

2) China has been preparing for this transition process for decades and now virtually dominates the extraction and processing of these minerals. The US was very late in adapting to this transition process. It has been left behind in this regard.

3) At the same time, developments also show that the US economic model (neoliberalism) cannot adapt to this trend. The tendency to move away from this model is also eroding US influence.

Against this brief backdrop, we can see that the US ruling elite and its now significantly diminished ruling classes have realised that the US has lost its capacity for hegemony. In the last elections, they supported a group (Project 2025) that believed the US had no choice but to rely on its military power to defend its national interests.

Taking a step back at this point and looking at historical trends around the world, we can say two things:

A possibility of war, referred to as the ‘Thucydides Trap’ in reference to the Athenian-Spartan wars, has begun to emerge between the rising great power and the declining great power.

This possibility of war will essentially be fuelled by competition to control the strategic resources of the new era (valuable minerals and, considering global warming, water and food basins) and efforts to redivide the world.

Could meaningful resistance emerge against this? It is not easy to give a positive answer to this question at present. In 2025, a movement known as the Gen Z uprisings began, and perhaps the wave in Iran is also part of this.

However, we see that this wave lacks critical elements such as leadership, organisation focused on a defined goal, and internationalist networking. I fear that, in the competition to redistribute resources, they could also become a tool for overthrowing regimes that are undesirable to imperialist centres.

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Küresel bir paylaşım mücadelesine yaklaşırken, published in BirGün newspaper on January 11, 2026.