The Empire’s Last Oil War!!!
Biswanath Bhattacharya
January 4, 2026
There comes a moment when an empire stops even pretending to be noble. When the speeches curdle, the moral posturing collapses, and the mask of “freedom” falls off to reveal the machinery underneath. Many critics argue that this moment has arrived for the United States — and Venezuela, sanctioned, strangled, but still standing, is the nation caught in the crosshairs of a superpower terrified of losing its favourite weapon: the dollar.
Strip away the patriotic theatre and the diplomatic sermons. What remains, according to many analysts, is a country that spent half a century forcing the world to buy oil in its currency and calling that coercion “order.” A country that prints what others must suffer for. A country that mistakes global dependence for divine entitlement. The moral high ground? Nothing but a mirage masking a relentless hunger for control. The emperor, it seems, is not only unclothed but drunk on its own propaganda.
And Venezuela committed the one sin empires never forgive: it stopped kneeling.
The world’s largest oil reserves — over 300 billion barrels — and Caracas dared to price none of it in dollars. It sold crude in yuan. It built financial channels beyond Washington’s reach. It aligned with a global shift away from the dollar. It said no.
Empires don’t negotiate with no. They punish it.
Observers point to a pattern so blatant it borders on parody. Iraq switched to euros — its government was destroyed. Libya pushed for a gold-backed African currency — its leader was killed and its state shattered. Their resources were folded back into the dollar’s orbit, and the world was told it was “liberation.” The hypocrisy is so thick it could choke a nation, and in fact, it has — repeatedly. “Democracy promotion”? Or is it just looting with a flag?
Now Venezuela steps onto the same stage — but with far more oil than both of those nations combined. And suddenly Washington discovers “drug trafficking,” “humanitarian crises,” “threats to democracy.” The script doesn’t change because it doesn’t have to. The outrage is recycled. The accusations are interchangeable. The performance is the point. Empires, after all, are not known for their originality — only for their appetite.
Sometimes the truth slips through the cracks. A U.S. official once described Venezuelan oil as “American wealth” because U.S. companies drilled there a century ago — as if history were a property deed, as if sovereignty were a clerical oversight, as if empire were a natural law. Is this arrogance or delusion? Or simply the last gasp of a fading order?
But the deeper panic, many argue, isn’t about Venezuela at all. It’s about the dollar losing its throne.
Russia sells oil in roubles.
China built its own global payment system.
Saudi Arabia is exploring yuan settlements.
BRICS is constructing financial architecture that doesn’t need Washington’s permission.
The petrodollar — the invisible empire — is weakening. And Venezuela joining that shift is the kind of blow that could accelerate the unraveling. For the first time in decades, the world’s energy flows are no longer chained to the greenback. The unthinkable is happening, and the empire’s response is less a show of strength than a tantrum of desperation.
So the accusations escalate. The pressure intensifies. The speeches grow louder. But beneath the noise lies a quieter, more desperate truth: the empire is fighting to preserve the system that sustains its power — and it is losing.
And here’s the twist many critics highlight — the world is no longer intimidated. Nations across the Global South increasingly recognise the pattern: challenge the dollar, face intervention. But instead of retreating, many are accelerating their exit. The old threats have lost their sting. The illusion of American omnipotence evaporates under the harsh daylight of global realignment.
Fear no longer keeps them obedient. It keeps them moving.
The United States may still win individual battles. It may topple another government, seize another oil field, declare another victory. But each strike, each sanction, each intervention risks accelerating the decline of the very system it seeks to protect. The empire’s victories have become pyrrhic, its conquests hollow, its boasted order a theatre of decline.
This doesn’t look like a strategy. It looks like desperation.
It doesn’t look like dominance. It looks like erosion.
It doesn’t look like a confident superpower. It looks like an empire clawing at the walls of its own decline.
History doesn’t repeat.
But empires do.
And many believe this one is running out of time.
(Tripurainfo)
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