President Trump’s actions in Venezuela, threats to Colombia and desires for Greenland are rational, strategic and considered. They may also be arrogant, insulting and imperial, but that does not make them illogical.
Because many people think that Trump is a bad joke, they mistake the mangled syntax that emerges from his mouth as nonsense. It may frequently be unpleasant, but not all of it is idiocy. The logic of the administration’s actions is rooted in energy security, future-proofing supply chains (especially minerals) and in the strategic denial of competitors.
In the 19th century access to coal was crucial and fuelled gunboat diplomacy. In the 20th century the location of fossil fuels was central to economic and military policymaking. In this century critical minerals have joined them. A new “Great Game” is being played out across the world. Securing access to critical minerals such as copper, lithium and graphite is essential for a country’s economic welfare and security. They are needed for, among other things, green energy, batteries, drones, semiconductors, precision guided weapons, quantum technologies (a coming force multiplier) and the wiring for AI data centres.
Their importance will grow in tandem with the competition to acquire them. Now factor in that we have moved on from the post-Cold War era. No single event ruptured the old order. It faded as China rose and Russia reconstituted itself. Simultaneously, globalisation was lifting many boats but sinking others while mass migration was changing politics in the countries to which people were moving. The 2016 election of Trump was a sign that the era of liberal internationalism was ending. His replacement by Joe Biden was only a speed bump in the direction of travel.
In his second presidency, Trump has shifted into second gear, accelerated and barrelled into Caracas. Venezuela not only has the world’s largest oil reserves, it holds significant reserves of metals including nickel and uranium as well as the mineral bauxite. The latter is used to make aluminium, but a by-product is gallium, which is crucial for producing advanced semiconductor chips. China produces almost all of the world’s gallium and in the past has restricted sales to the United States. If the Trump administration succeeds in controlling Venezuela, it gains access to all these resources. Venezuelan oil is of a similar type to Russia’s, and the US could undermine Moscow by offering it as an alternative. Washington would also be able to cut oil supplies to Cuba — an island which sits at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico and the critically important port of New Orleans.
President Maduro is escorted towards a Manhattan courthouse on Monday
ADAM GRAY/REUTERS
Washington’s strategy to secure minerals will not end in Venezuela. Latin America holds 60 per cent of the world’s lithium reserves, 40 per cent of its copper reserves and many other metals. Argentina, Bolivia and Chile have the most lithium while Chile and Peru have the lion’s share of copper. And who buys most of this? China. More than 50 per cent of Chile’s mineral exports go to China, as does most of Peru’s copper. China is a huge investor in Brazil’s rare earth industry and is its major trading partner. Beijing, which read the future long before Washington, has spent this century investing in Latin America’s mining sector to get the stuff out of the ground, and in railways and ports to get it to China to be refined.
The Russians are also in Latin America, although they are more involved in oil and gas than minerals. There’s another actor in town: Iran has invested in embedding its proxy militia Hezbollah in South America, where it has conducted terror attacks and become involved in the drug trade. This dates to the bombing of Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 which killed 29 people. Two years later another attack killed 85 people at a Jewish community centre in the Argentine capital. In 2016 Bolivian police raided a warehouse belonging to Hezbollah members in La Paz and seized explosives. In 2023 Brazilian police foiled a Hezbollah plot to attack synagogues. At least six Latin American countries designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.
The above brings us back to the future — to 1823. In recent weeks White House officials have begun stressing the phrase “our hemisphere”. Near Trump’s desk in the Oval Office hangs a portrait of James Monroe who, as president in 1823, set out his doctrine that foreign powers should stay out of the USA’s backyard — Latin America. In 1904 Theodore Roosevelt updated the Monroe doctrine with a corollary stating that the US may be forced, “however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power”.
The administration’s defence of its actions in Venezuela was an echo of those words. We should not be surprised. December’s 33-page National Security Strategy document told us of Trump’s intentions. Page five says “we want a hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets … In other words, we will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine”. It’s all in there: “no competing powers physically dominant in our hemisphere … most advanced tech sector … AI, biotech, and quantum computing … military dominance for future generations”.
Industrialised powers are rushing for the materials that power data centres
JASON ALDEN/BLOOMBERG
What’s missing is any reference to international law. This is the background to the events in Venezuela, and to the administration’s global strategy. It is a break with the postwar system that America built, then maintained after the Cold War. The new thinking is that America’s success is unrelated to that of other countries. It says American military presence should move away from regions whose significance to national security has declined. Regional security must be paid for by regional countries. It asks that if Russia can’t even take Kyiv, why are 350 million Americans subsidising 500 million Europeans to defend themselves against 140 million Russians?
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To succeed in this new era the White House believes America’s position as the world’s leading tech and military power must be maintained. To do that, you to need not only secure supplies of minerals but reduce the supply to your rivals. That brings us to Greenland, which American presidents have long wanted to control.
Harry Truman tried to buy it in 1946. His rationale then was similar to Trump’s now: geography. Greenland is on the shortest route to the US east coast for Russian submarines and missiles; complete control would allow better monitoring and the ability to counter Russian and Chinese interest in the Arctic and the emerging Northern Sea Route. Greenland also has vast natural resources including rare earth materials, although getting to them is difficult. It even has anorthosite which was used as moondust for training astronauts. (As an aside: space is another arena in which the race for resources is being played out. China and the US head two groups of countries hoping to extract precious metals from the moon’s south pole.) But military action in Greenland? It seems unlikely. Nuuk is the name of Greenland’s capital, not a threat by Trump.
Washington’s interests are not confined to Latin America and Greenland. Like all big industrialised powers it is involved in the new “scramble for Africa” and its minerals. Here again China has the lead. Areas of competition include graphite in Mozambique, Madagascar and Tanzania, and copper in DR Congo and Zambia. European and American companies have built the “Lobito corridor” to get the resources west to Angola’s coast and into the Atlantic while China has financed a similar scheme but heading east to Tanzania and the Indian Ocean. In November Trump hosted the leaders of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan at the White House. Top of the agenda was central Asia’s large deposits of uranium, tungsten, copper and lithium. The previous month the US concluded a multibillion-dollar deal with Australia for access to its wealth of critical minerals.
Simultaneously the Americans are moving to undermine China’s hold on the mineral supply chain. Beijing controls most of the refining of the globe’s critical minerals. Washington hopes to increase its own refining capacity and establish partnerships elsewhere. These minerals are what is required for new technology in this new era. Trump is both a symptom and cause of these times. The Don of a new age — Delta Force Diplomacy.
Tim Marshall is the author of bestselling books including Prisoners of Geography and The Power of Geography