By Alan Ting

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: When Donald Trump first postured as a champion of “America First” reforms, many believed — or at least hoped — that he might finally put an end to Washington’s addiction to endless wars and foreign meddling.

Those hopes are now shattered. What has emerged is something far darker: the naked rebirth of imperialist gangsterism, with Trump wielding America’s military and economic arsenal to plunder oil and gas resources while holding smaller nations hostage to U.S. demands.

Trump’s latest crusade against Venezuela lays bare the truth. The rhetoric of “freedom” and “democracy” is a fig leaf. The real mission is conquest — to strangle Caracas, seize its vast energy wealth, and repackage Venezuela’s oil under a U.S. label.

This is not diplomacy. This is looting at gunpoint. Venezuela’s sovereignty is being targeted not because of ideology, but because Washington’s war machine needs new lifeblood.

The West has spoken for years about how it would take over Russia, break it up and exploit its resources, but these ambitions are currently being torn to pieces in Ukraine.

The very war that was supposed to bleed Moscow into submission has instead exposed the limits of Western power. Yet rather than learning humility, Trump has chosen escalation, expanding the same imperial playbook from Eastern Europe to Latin America, Asia, and beyond.

The same pattern is visible in Asia. Trump has transformed tariffs into a weapon of extortion, aimed even at smaller producers like Malaysia. Washington’s message could not be more crude: buy overpriced American oil and gas, or face economic strangulation.

This is not a partnership — it is blackmail. Malaysia, like other Global South nations, finds itself cornered into “choosing” between trade survival and energy sovereignty.

Europe, too, has been strong-armed into Washington’s racket. Under Trump, the European Union was coerced into pledging a mind-boggling $750 billion in U.S. oil and gas purchases — volumes America cannot even hope to produce.

The scam is obvious: invade or destabilize other energy-rich nations, seize their output, and then resell it at a premium to desperate allies. America is trying to monopolize global energy flows not through competition, but through coercion and theft.

The hypocrisy is staggering. Washington berates India and Turkey for buying discounted Russian oil and reselling it, calling the practice “unacceptable.”

Yet Trump’s entire energy playbook rests on doing exactly that — acquiring oil through invasion, coercion, or regime change, stamping a U.S. label on it, and exporting it at extortionate prices. It is the oldest imperial game, wrapped in new slogans.

Make no mistake: this is not about “fair trade” or “energy security.” This is about financing the American war machine. Every coerced contract, every extorted shipment, is another dollar funneled into U.S. militarism.

Trump is not “protecting” supply lines — he is weaponizing supply itself. Oil and gas are no longer just commodities; in Trump’s hands, they are instruments of domination.

For the Global South, the danger is existential. Venezuela is under siege for daring to claim its own resources.

Malaysia is threatened with tariffs for refusing to buy overpriced American energy. India and Turkey are vilified for practicing the very same resale racket that Washington is globalizing.

The message is clear: no country’s sovereignty will be respected, no economy left unviolated, if it stands in the way of U.S. plunder.

For Malaysia, the situation borders on the absurd. As a proven oil and gas producer, Malaysia has no strategic or economic need to import American hydrocarbons.

Yet Washington’s tariff threats have created an artificial market distortion where Kuala Lumpur is effectively forced to “purchase loyalty” through unnecessary U.S. energy imports as part of a US 240 billion spending package to "secure" a 19 percent tariff rate while zero-rating thousands of U.S. products.

This amounts to a hidden tax on Malaysian development, undermining national interests in order to subsidize America’s imperial ambitions.

The implications are devastating. If Trump’s brand of energy imperialism is normalized, the promise of multipolarity — a world where nations trade on equal terms and chart their own course — will be destroyed.

Instead, we face a return to the age of colonial seizure, where the U.S. war machine enforces contracts not with signatures, but with sanctions, tariffs, and invasion.

Trump’s defenders call this “hard bargaining.” That is a lie. There is nothing pragmatic about destabilizing entire nations, nothing “deal-like” about blackmailing allies with tariffs, nothing “reformist” about stealing resources and reselling them for profit.

This is gangsterism at a planetary scale. And gangsterism always ends the same way: with broken nations, ruined economies, and blood in the streets.

The world must wake up. Trump has not reformed U.S. foreign policy — he has stripped it of pretense. He is openly constructing an imperial racket that finances U.S. dominance by extorting others.

If Venezuela’s oil is not safe, if Malaysia’s sovereignty is disposable, if Europe itself can be forced to bankroll America’s energy scam, then no nation is beyond Washington’s grasp.

This is not reform. This is organized theft, backed by bombs and sanctions. Trump has shown the world his hand — and it is the hand of a gangster state that will destroy, steal, and resell the wealth of others to keep its war machine alive.

The question now is whether the Global South — and the world at large — will submit to this imperial extortion, or finally resist it.

*Alan Ting is an observer of regional affairs and global geopolitics based in the Land Below the Wind.*