TELESUR
The United States has been playing the role of the world’s economic bully. So far, the U.S. has imposed sanctions against Afghanistan, Burundi, Burma, Cuba, North Korea, China, Cyprus, Haiti, Libya, Lebanon, Belarus, Crimea, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Russia, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Russia, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen and Zimbabwe.
But if unilateral harassment has proven itself historically ineffective at achieving conventional geopolitical objectives, why does the U.S. insist on bullying Venezuela and Iran?
A glance at the political economy of international oil markets, an industry used as a battlefield to further the aims of war, provides insight into the seemingly irrational realm toward which President Donald Trump has been leading U.S. foreign policy.
U.S. energy independence requires manipulating markets
Since international markets are highly speculative, many believe that price trends cannot be manipulated; however, that is not true. When energy commodities and strategic raw materials are involved, the U.S. does not sit back as a patient price taker but prefers to throw the dice as a price maker.
Between 2006 and 2014, when China’s economic boom was increasing the demand for international commodities, structural changes occurred that paradoxically favored the U.S. a few years later. First, high oil prices allowed the fracking industry to become a financially viable option.
This, in turn, helped the U.S. gradually overcome the dependence it had experienced for 30 years, and which made it the world’s largest oil importer in 2016, with a voracious appetite of around 12 million barrels per day (bpd).
In December 2018, for the first time in the last 75 years, the U.S. became a net oil exporter thanks to “thousands of wells producing from the Permian region of Texas and New Mexico to Bakken in North Dakota and Marcellus in Pennsylvania,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
“We (the U.S.) are becoming the dominant power in the world,” as Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, Inc. said.
Trump is reaping the fruit of energy independence, a condition he did not contribute to at all. This abundance of energy is fragile, however, because maintaining it depends on keeping oil prices as high as possible.
Therefore, to force this to happen, anything that threatens to diminish global oil supplies is actually good for the U.S., including the blockade of Venezuelan and Iranian exports.
And that’s not all…
If you can’t make more pie, make sure you control the slices
While the U.S. now has enough oil to be able to export some of its reserves, Trump’s homeland can’t satisfy the world’s energy demands completely. This opens up business opportunities for Saudi Arabia and other allies who can also benefit from economic sanctions against Venezuela and Iran.
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