Oil, Power, and the Climate Stakes of the U.S. Move in Venezuela

To be sure, Trump has thrown some support behind nuclear power and other technologies. And litigation has blocked some of the administration’s efforts to stymie clean energy. But those counterefforts do not come close to offsetting the methane and carbon that his “energy dominance” agenda will pump into the atmosphere. Theories abound as to why Trump has so tightly embraced fossil fuels, but whatever the reasons, the burning of fossil fuels continues to cause temperatures to rise.  

Scientists determined that 2025 was the fourth hottest year on record for the contiguous United States, and in every U.S. county, human-caused climate change drove up temperatures. That extra heat exacerbated the Los Angeles wildfires and supercharged Hurricanes Milton and Helene. These climate-worsened disasters are hitting Americans in the wallet through higher insurance premiums, crumbling infrastructure, and increased health-care costs. How high will that bill get? Time will tell. But by locking in fossil fuels, Trump has also locked in escalating costs. 

David M. Hart is a senior fellow for climate and energy at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

In CFR’s recent roundup of global trends to watch in 2026, I included an entry on the rise of the “electrostate.” In it, I wrote that the term “contrasts with ‘petrostate,’ and its archetype is China.” A few weeks later, the vocabulary now needs to be extended in a new direction: “petro-empire.” Its archetype might be the United States. 

The Trump administration’s support for the domestic petro-industry has long been clear. Its “drill, baby, drill” mantra has been translated into deregulation of producers, opening of public lands and waters, and disincentives for competing technologies, such as wind energy and electric vehicles. 

Internationally, the administration has shown a fondness for traditional petrostates, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It has sought to make the world safer for U.S. petro-exports through trade negotiations and by pressuring other countries to limit their climate commitments. 

But in Venezuela, the United States is asserting control for the first time over another country’s petroleum resources. In the short run, the U.S. Navy will reportedly determine which tankers can leave and where they can land, with the U.S. government managing the proceeds. In the long run, Trump says he wants to rebuild Venezuela’s production capacity with U.S. capital and manage it with U.S. interests in mind.  

This venture has more echoes of centuries past than the one ahead. Nineteenth-century imperial powers routinely extracted resources from colonies they conquered by military force. Even though it was founded to throw off the yoke of monarchy, the United States joined the imperialist rush in the 1890s, annexing Hawaii and Puerto Rico, occupying Cuba and the Philippines, and supporting corporate extraction regimes in the Caribbean, Central America, and beyond.