They’ll tell you it’s about democracy. Or terrorism. Or drugs. Or stability.
Then the dust settles. The cameras move on. And the paperwork arrives: production-sharing agreements, “reforms,” privatization plans, arbitration filings—and a polite invitation for foreign firms to “develop” what locals once controlled.
There isn’t a single smoking gun here. It’s a pattern: a repeatable method of converting the natural wealth of poorer countries into leverage for richer ones—often through law, finance and contracts rather than flags and formal colonies.
Step 1: When a poor country says “This is ours,” it becomes a “problem”
The trigger is frequently ordinary politics: a government tries to nationalize resources, renegotiate terms, or raise the price of access.
Iran, 1953: Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh moved to nationalize Iran’s oil, challenging Western control. The U.S. and U.K. backed a coup that removed him—an episode widely documented and treated as a turning point in Iranian history.
Encyclopedia Britannica +2 • AP News +2
Guatemala, 1954: Land reform threatened the interests of the United Fruit Company; the CIA ran Operation PBSuccess to overthrow the elected government. Declassified records and National Security Archive collections map how that machinery worked.
CIA +2 • National Security Archive +2
Chile, early 1970s: A leftist government sought to restructure ownership and nationalize key industries, including copper. The paper trail shows U.S. covert efforts to undermine Salvador Allende’s government and cultivate coup conditions—even where direct coordination of the coup itself remains debated.
National Security Archive +1
Translation, in practice: if you’re poor and you insist on controlling your own wealth, you’re no longer a negotiating partner. You’re a “threat.”
Step 2: “Security” becomes the justification—and the strongman becomes the solution
Destabilization creates an opening for a familiar bargain:
Accept our preferred political order—or face chaos.
Congo is among the starkest illustrations of how “security interests” and resource interests travel together.
Congo, 1960: The U.S. Senate’s Church Committee documented CIA involvement in an assassination plot targeting Patrice Lumumba, including the delivery of lethal materials to the station—while noting no evidence those particular instruments were used.
AARC Library +1
The point isn’t a cartoon villain. It’s a structure: leaders who won’t play ball can become expendable, and the country becomes a chessboard.
Step 3: War opens the market—then “reconstruction” hands out the prizes
Coups are one route. War is another. And war has a distinctive feature: it turns public money into private profit fast.
In Iraq, early “restore oil” work moved through vast contracting pipelines, with no-bid and sole-source controversies around initial oil infrastructure deals. Government hearings and documentation trace how that contracting system operated.
DPC +1
After the invasion, Iraq pursued major oil development deals with foreign firms. Reuters covered landmark post-invasion agreements like the BP–CNPC Rumaila deal in 2009—an emblem of how global majors re-entered in a new political order.
Reuters +1
Scholars have argued that the “oil motive” debate is often misframed: less “did the U.S. literally steal barrels,” more “did U.S. power reshape governance and access in ways that made extraction, influence and leverage durable?”
Taylor & Francis Online +1
This is the modern trick. “Stealing” isn’t always a truck hauling gold. It’s a new legal reality—one that decides who gets access, on what terms, and for how long.
Step 4: Sanctions + licenses = remote control over a country’s lifeblood
When a government won’t fold, tanks aren’t the only option. Financial chokeholds can do the job—then relief is sold back, one permission slip at a time.
Venezuela is a blunt example:
The U.S. sanctioned PDVSA under executive authorities tied to the oil sector; Treasury/OFAC materials lay out the structure.
U.S. Department of the Treasury +1
Chevron’s ability to operate has been governed by licensing decisions—expanded, tightened, or wound down depending on Washington’s political demands. Reuters reported a wind-down order that would end exports under the license.
Reuters
And in early January 2026, Venezuela is again at the center of an escalation: Reuters reports U.S. pressure that includes tanker actions and a blockade dynamic affecting oil exports, alongside reports of strikes and Maduro’s situation—oil facilities reportedly unscathed even as disruptions and seizures shape exports.
Reuters +2 • Reuters +2
Even if you set motives aside, the mechanism is clear: outside power can squeeze a country’s primary revenue stream, then condition relief on political outcomes.
Step 5: “Critical minerals diplomacy” is the new flag over the old empire
The vocabulary changed. The hunger didn’t.
Now the pitch is clean and modern: supply chain security.
Translation: We need your cobalt, copper, lithium, rare earths—so let’s make a deal.
The Financial Times reported exploratory U.S. talks with the Democratic Republic of Congo about a potential minerals deal—access to critical minerals in exchange for forms of support, including security cooperation, in a country already ravaged by conflict in mineral-rich areas.
Financial Times
This is what empire can look like in the 2020s: fewer colonies, more contracts—often signed under pressure, instability or dependence.
“So the U.S. does atrocities for resources?”
Sometimes resources are the engine. Sometimes they’re the prize that becomes available once the engine starts. Often, it’s both.
To be fair, U.S. officials routinely justify actions through Cold War strategy, counterterrorism, anti-narcotics policy or human-rights claims—and those factors can be real. But the recurring outcome is hard to miss:
- Leaders who threaten foreign economic interests get isolated, undermined or removed.
Encyclopedia Britannica +1 - “Stability” arrangements can protect extraction even as democracy bleeds out.
AARC Library +1 - Sanctions-and-licensing regimes can give Washington veto power over resource economies.
U.S. Department of the Treasury +1
The blunt truth is this: many poor countries don’t stay poor because they lack resources. They stay poor because their resources attract predators.
What real sovereignty would look like
Not slogans—mechanisms:
- Transparent contracts, published terms, and regular public audits of extractive deals
- Anti-corruption systems that don’t outsource “reform” to foreign consultants with conflicting incentives
- Regional alliances that reduce divide-and-rule vulnerability
- Legal defenses against asset seizures, coercive debt and forum-shopping in international arbitration
- A global rule: resource access without regime change
Because if “democracy” arrives on the back of a contract, it isn’t democracy.
It’s a takeover with better branding.
