Low-Cost Imperialism has arrived
The US has accumulated a national debt of $36 trillion and are facing growing doubts about it capability to service it. Reduced trust will feed into increasing interest levels ahead and will just make the squeeze more severe. So why not go into ‘Viking Mode’ - go out looting abroad for cheap real resources to balance the book!
When the goal is Resource Extraction, Democracy is an inefficiency. A puppet dictatorship is more streamlined. Thus Rodrigues, not Machado in Venzuela - and for Greenland we will have to wait to see.
The Logic behind the US Raid on Venezuela
The Shale Oil era did not bring US energy independence as many believes. US shale fields produce “Light Tight Oil” (LTO) — thin as champagne. This shale does not fit with the US Gulf Cooast Refineries, which are set up for handling “Heavy Sour” crude.1
This mismatch means refineries cannot efficiently produce diesel—the core fuel that supports industrial logistics and suppresses inflation. Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt is the world’s largest deposit of extra-heavy crude. For the US industrial system, Venezuela is not a sovereign nation; it is a “Physical Patch” that must be reclaimed.
Venezuela’s 300 billion barrels of proven reserves constitute an asset package worth ~$24 trillion. The US Military action is, in essence, a “Hostile Takeover”: stripping assets from a “distressed debtor” and injecting them into the ledgers of US energy giants to provide a physical backstop for the Dollar’s credit for the next 20 years.
It is also to help the petrodollar system, established by Henry Kissinger’s 1974 deal with Saudi Arabia requiring global oil sales in USD, which creates artificial demand for the currency & funds American hegemony - but which has been in its death throes.
Venezuela is hit because it challenged the US by selling oil in yuan, euros, rubles, bypassing the dollar, & building alternative payment channels with China.
The invasion counters accelerating global de-dollarization led by Russia, China, Iran, and BRICS, as nations shift to non-dollar settlements and alternatives to SWIFT. But it signals desperation, potentially hastening the petrodollar’s decline.2
The Logic behind the US Raid on Greenland
While the US go for resource hunt in Latin-America, China opens new sea-routes in the Arctic. The 2025 voyage of the Chinese-owned (Liberian flag), Panamax containership Istanbul Bridge signals a game-change for global maritime trade.3
US maritime hegemony is built on absolute control of “Choke Points” (Malacca, Suez, Panama). These are the “valves” the US Navy can close at any time.
The new Arctic Route bypasses these Choke Points and renders the US maritime defense system obsolete.
The US have to look for new options to regain maritime control - and in the Artic Greenland is the closest they easily can come at the moment.
As the Chinese artic route expands we can expect to see growing American naval expansion in the Norwegian and Barents seas.
Apart for these national security concerns of course the island of Greenland will also be a resource grab, by itself, so better keep the Chinese out from the beginning of the game.