After US forces attacked Venezuela on Saturday and captured its President Nicolas Maduro over alleged drug trafficking and narco-terrorism, President Donald Trump issued a stark warning to Cuba, Mexico and Colombia, saying the same fate could befall other “troubling neighbors”.
Trump’s decision to unilaterally authorize an attack on Venezuela was based on allegations of drug production and trafficking, as well as harboring cartels, and his warning to other “neighbors of concern” followed a similar pattern.
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Trump’s threats to neighbors
In an interview with Fox News on Saturday, Trump argued that, as with Venezuela and Maduro, Mexico is run by powerful drug cartels, not President Claudia Sheinbaum.
“Something is going to have to be done about Mexico,” Trump told reporters, adding, “They (the cartels) are running Mexico. I’ve asked her many times if you want us to eliminate the cartels. ‘No, no, no, Mr. President, no, no, no, please.’ So we have to do something.”
Trump’s comments on two other “troubling” South American nations were similar.
Trump doubled down on his criticism of Maduro ally and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, accusing the South American leader of “producing cocaine” and “sending it to the United States,” according to Axios.
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As for Cuba, Trump has said it is a “failing nation” – “I think Cuba will be something that we end up talking about,” the US president said when asked how the Caribbean country should respond to Operation Absolute Resolve.
“We want to help people. It’s very similar in the sense that we want to help people in Cuba, but we also want to help people who have been expelled from Cuba and are living in this country,” Trump said of Cuba.
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The threat of intervention in Iran
The operation in Venezuela and Trump’s subsequent threats to other Caribbean and South American nations came days after the US president warned against military intervention in Iran.
Only this time, Trump’s justification was not drugs, but the Iranian government’s crackdown on protesters.
After several deaths in Iran in recent protests, Trump warned that the US military was ready to respond.
“If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their habit, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go (sic),” the US president said on his Truth Social Platform.
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Different threats, one common thread
Although the reasons for Trump’s threats of military intervention in the four countries mentioned above differed, it should be noted that Colombia, Cuba, Iran and Mexico have one thing in common – they are oil producers.
Shortly after Maduro’s capture, Trump quickly announced that the US would “run” Venezuela while US oil corporations would be allowed to develop the country’s oil reserves, the largest in the world and accounting for nearly 20% of the world’s oil reserves.
“We’re going to have our very big oil companies in the United States, the biggest anywhere in the world, come in, spend billions of dollars, fix some seriously broken infrastructure and start making money for the country,” Trump said, adding that the U.S. would maintain a military presence in Venezuela to protect oil operations.
A quick look at the data shows that all four countries threatened by Trump also have significant oil reserves, with Iran having the world’s third-largest reserves after Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, at an estimated 209 billion barrels, more than four times the U.S.’s 45 billion, according to OPEC.
While Mexico (5.1 billion), Colombia (2 billion) and Cuba individually have smaller reserves, their combined total exceeds 7 billion barrels – about 15% of current US reserves.
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Growing energy needs
However, reserves do not necessarily translate into oil production, with the US leading the way with a 22% share of global oil production by 2023, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).
The US also leads in global oil consumption, accounting for 20% of total world consumption in 2022, according to the EIA.
Since taking office in his second term, Trump has also changed the direction of US energy policy, moving away from the climate change policies of the Joe Biden administration to a policy of energy dominance focused on fossil fuels – a shift encapsulated by his famous slogan “Drill, baby, drill”.
At the same time, the energy needs caused by the AI race have also escalated recently.
“We need to build and maintain a large-scale AI infrastructure and the energy to power it,” says Trump’s AI Action Plan, released by the White House in July 2025.
“AI is the first digital service in modern life that calls for America to build much more energy production than we have today. America’s energy capacity has stagnated since the 1970s, while China has rapidly built its grid. America’s path to AI dominance depends on reversing this troubling trend,” Trump’s plan claims.
While updating Venezuela’s infrastructure to peak production levels will take billions of dollars — $58 billion, according to CNN — and years, Trump’s promise to open up the South American country’s reserves to U.S. corporations signals a move toward the aforementioned goal of “massively more energy production.”
In this context, Trump’s threats against the aforementioned oil-producing countries cannot be viewed in isolation.
