The fight for resources: If 2025 was the year of war, 2026 could be the land-grab year |
2025 WAS THE most violent year of conflict since the end of the Second World War. We witnessed at least 240,000 fatalities, over 117 million people displaced by war, violence and persecution, rampant war crimes not merely committed but celebrated, a livestreamed genocide, the breakdown of peace agreements and the dismantling of international human rights norms.
But thankfully, it’s now 2026, and we can all take a collective sigh of relief. Or perhaps not. On 3 January, the US kidnapped Venezuela’s sitting president and his wife while declaring full-throttled plans to seize the country’s oil.
On 5 January, Trump extended threats against Cuba, Colombia and Mexico, and the following day, the US president proclaimed that he was “very serious” about taking Greenland.
Nicolás Maduro, President of Venezuela on the USS Iwo Jima shortly after his capture by American forces on 3 January. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo
Only five minutes later, on 7 January, the US — with assistance from the UK — seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the Atlantic Ocean, and the next day, Trump removed the United States from 66 international organisations, half of which are UN bodies.
That was only in week one, and the acts of just one nation. A masterclass in the ‘flood the zone’ approach to politics.
There are currently 59 active state-based conflicts, 78 countries are engaged in a conflict beyond their borders and Europe is rearming at its fastest pace since the Cold War. 2025 was a tipping point; the normalisation of war and conflict. Could 2026 be the year of the land grab?
The United States’ actions in Venezuela echo Iraq and Afghanistan. When they invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the US government launched a series of military attacks to overthrow the Taliban government. This was followed by an invasion of Iraq in 2003, during which the US employed military force to oust, and later, assassinate Saddam Husein. Both interventions — contested as breaches of international law — plummeted each country........