The Extraction Playbook: From Slave Ships to Military Bases—How Empire Always Serves the Same Few

When Donald Trump threatens to seize the Panama Canal, "run" Venezuela for its oil, or annex Greenland, the American media treats each episode as an erratic outburst from an unpredictable leader. What they miss—and what people in the Global South immediately recognize—is that Trump isn't innovating. He's reciting from a script written centuries ago, one that European empires perfected and the United States inherited: the extraction playbook. From the holds of slave ships to the flight paths of military drones, from the sugar plantations of Haiti to the oil fields of Iraq, the logic has never changed. Powerful nations seize resources and labor from weaker ones, install compliant governments when necessary, and ensure that the profits flow in one direction—upward to a small elite. What changes are the justifications: civilization, Christianity, anti-communism, democracy, the war on drugs, and the war on terror. The constant is extraction. The constant is who benefits.

The Original Model: European Empires and the Slave Trade

The template was established during the transatlantic slave trade and colonial expansion. European powers—Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium—didn't conquer Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean to spread civilization. They went to extract wealth. The slave trade itself was a business model: extract human beings from Africa, transport them as cargo across the Atlantic, force them to produce sugar, cotton, tobacco, and coffee in the Caribbean and Americas, then ship those commodities back to Europe, where they generated massive profits for merchants, financiers, and industrialists. Over 12 million Africans were forcibly transported. Millions more died in the process. 

The wealth generated by these enterprises built European cities, funded industrial revolutions, and created banking dynasties that persist today. In the Caribbean, colonial plantations functioned as pure zones of extraction. Jamaica under British rule, Haiti under French rule, Cuba under Spanish rule—all were organized around a single principle: maximize the extraction of sugar, rum, and coffee at minimum cost. Enslaved people were worked to death and replaced. Local populations had no say in how their land was used. Wealth flowed in one direction: outward to Europe. The same model applied everywhere. The Belgian Congo was stripped of rubber, ivory, and minerals under a regime so brutal that it killed an estimated 10 million people. India was deindustrialized, its textile industry deliberately destroyed to benefit British manufacturers, while Britain extracted hundreds of billions of dollars worth of wealth (in today's terms). Indochina was a plantation economy. 

The entire colonial project rested on a lie: that European rule brought order, development, and progress. In reality, it brought extraction, violence, and enrichment of European elites at the direct expense of colonized populations. And here's the critical class point: ordinary Europeans didn't benefit either. The wealth didn't trickle down to French or British factory workers, who lived in squalor while their nations' empires spanned the globe. Colonial profits enriched monarchs, aristocrats, merchants, and the emerging capitalist class. Empire served the few, not the many—even within the imperial core.

America Inherits the Playbook (1898-1960s)

By the late 19th century, European empires were weakening, and the United States was positioning itself as the new dominant power in the Western Hemisphere. But instead of rejecting imperialism, the U.S. adopted it—with updated rhetoric. In 1898, the U.S. went to war with Spain, ostensibly to "liberate" Cuba. In reality, American corporations wanted access to Cuban sugar plantations and strategic control of the Caribbean. After driving out Spain, the U.S. didn't grant Cuba independence; it imposed the Platt Amendment, giving Washington the right to intervene in Cuban affairs whenever it chose. Cuba became nominally independent but actually a U.S. protectorate—extraction continued, now under American corporate control. The pattern repeated across the region: 

- Panama (1903): When Colombia refused to sell canal rights on U.S. terms, Washington backed a Panamanian independence movement, sent warships, and immediately secured control of the Canal Zone. The Panama Canal wasn't built to serve Panamanians—it was built to serve U.S. commercial and military interests. 

- Haiti (1915-1934): U.S. Marines occupied Haiti for nearly two decades, ostensibly to restore order. The real reason? U.S. banks had lent money to Haiti and wanted to ensure repayment. During the occupation, the U.S. rewrote Haiti's constitution to allow foreign ownership of land (previously prohibited), seized Haiti's gold reserves and transferred them to New York banks, and forced Haitians to work on American-controlled plantations through a system of corvée labor that resembled slavery. When Haitians resisted, U.S. forces killed thousands. 

- Honduras and Guatemala—The Banana Republics: United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) effectively controlled Honduras, Guatemala, and other Central American states, owning massive plantations, railroads, and ports. When Guatemala elected a reformist president, Jacobo Árbenz, who attempted land reform in 1954, the CIA orchestrated a coup, installed a military dictator, and ensured United Fruit kept its land. Over the next four decades, U.S.-backed Guatemalan governments killed over 200,000 people—many of them Indigenous Mayans. The term "banana republic" isn't a joke; it describes states whose governments serve foreign corporate interests instead of their own people.

The Cold War: "Fighting Communism" While Protecting Corporate Interests

After World War II, the U.S. needed a new justification for intervention. European-style colonialism was now embarrassing, and many former colonies were gaining independence. The solution: rebrand extraction as anti-communism. Any leader who threatened U.S. corporate interests or sought economic independence could be labeled a communist, justifying intervention. 

- Iran (1953): When democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized Iran's oil industry (previously controlled by British Petroleum), the CIA and British intelligence orchestrated a coup, installed the authoritarian Shah, and ensured Western oil companies regained control. Decades of dictatorship, torture, and repression followed, setting the stage for the 1979 Iranian Revolution—a direct consequence of U.S. intervention. 

- Congo (1960-1961): Patrice Lumumba, Congo's first democratically elected prime minister after Belgian rule, sought to use Congo's vast mineral wealth to benefit the Congolese people. Within months, the CIA was plotting his assassination. Documents now confirm that the U.S. provided support to Congolese officials who ultimately murdered Lumumba in January 1961, with Belgian execution squads dissolving his body in acid. The U.S. then backed Joseph Mobutu, who ruled as a brutal dictator for over three decades, enriching himself and Western corporations while Congo remained one of the poorest countries on Earth despite its mineral wealth—cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, the very resources now essential for modern technology. 

- Guyana (1961-1964): Cheddi Jagan, an Indo-Guyanese leader who identified as socialist, was democratically elected as Premier of British Guiana (soon to be independent Guyana). U.S. intelligence acknowledged Jagan wasn't a communist and favored non-alignment, but President Kennedy told the British Prime Minister that another "Castro-style regime" in the Caribbean was unacceptable. The CIA launched a comprehensive campaign: funding Jagan's opponents, running propaganda operations, organizing a devastating general strike in 1963 that crippled the economy, and pressuring Britain to change the constitution to a proportional representation system designed to prevent Jagan from winning a majority. The U.S. also imposed economic warfare—restricting market access, embargoing goods, withholding oil supplies—to push Jagan toward dependency on Cuba and the USSR, creating the very "communist threat" Washington claimed to be preventing. By 1964, the operation succeeded: Jagan was out, and Forbes Burnham—the CIA's preferred candidate—took power, ruling Guyana as an increasingly authoritarian leader for the next two decades. 

- Chile (1973): When Chileans elected socialist Salvador Allende, who nationalized copper mines (Chile's primary resource, largely controlled by U.S. corporations), the CIA spent years destabilizing the economy and supporting military plotters. On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet led a coup, bombed the presidential palace, and installed a dictatorship that murdered thousands, tortured tens of thousands, and implemented radical free-market economic policies designed by U.S.-trained economists. Copper extraction continued—now under terms favorable to foreign corporations. 

 The pattern is consistent: leaders who sought to use their own nations' resources to benefit their own people were labeled communists and removed. Leaders who cooperated with U.S. corporate extraction were supported, no matter how brutal.

Post-Cold War to Today: New Justifications, Same Extraction

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the U.S. lost its go-to justification. The solution? Invent new threats. The "War on Drugs" in Latin America and the "War on Terror" globally provided cover for continued intervention and extraction. 

- Colombia: Framed as fighting drug cartels, U.S. military aid to Colombia—through Plan Colombia and successor programs—has given Washington access to multiple military bases in a country rich in oil, coal, and strategic positioning. Meanwhile, Colombia remains one of the world's most dangerous places for labor organizers and Indigenous activists, many of whom oppose resource extraction projects backed by multinational corporations. 

- Iraq (2003): The invasion was sold as a response to weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist and as "bringing democracy" to the Middle East. The result? Over a million Iraqi deaths, a shattered state, and Iraqi oil fields opened to foreign corporations. Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, received billions in contracts. Defense contractors made fortunes. Ordinary Americans gained nothing except thousands of dead soldiers and trillions in debt. 

- Venezuela (2002-Present): Every U.S. administration—Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, and Trump again—has sought regime change in Venezuela, a country with the world's largest proven oil reserves. In 2002, the U.S. supported a failed coup against Hugo Chávez. Under Trump and Biden, economic sanctions have devastated Venezuela's economy, causing a humanitarian crisis that has killed tens of thousands and forced millions to flee. 

Trump's recent invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its President "for its oil" simply made explicit what was always implicit: this is about extraction. In October 2025, Trump even acknowledged authorizing CIA covert operations in Venezuela, framing it as part of a broader drug interdiction campaign while U.S. military forces targeted vessels in Caribbean waters. 

Trinidad & Tobago as "America's Aircraft Carrier": As explored in my previous blog, the U.S. now frames Trinidad & Tobago as a strategic military platform for controlling Caribbean sea lanes, monitoring Venezuelan oil shipments, and projecting power across the region. The rhetoric is about security; the reality is about maintaining U.S. dominance over regional resources and trade routes.

Who Actually Benefits? The Class and Race Analysis

Across centuries, continents, and justifications, one thing never changes: who profits. 

Then: European monarchs, aristocrats, merchant companies, and early capitalists grew obscenely wealthy from the slave trade and colonial extraction. The Dutch East India Company, the British East India Company, the Royal African Company—these were the Exxons and Lockheeds of their era, extracting wealth through state-backed violence. 

 Now: Defense contractors (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman), oil corporations (ExxonMobil, Chevron), mining companies (Freeport-McMoRan), and financial institutions that manage resource-backed debt. Between 2001 and 2023, U.S. defense contractors received over $2 trillion in contracts from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone. ExxonMobil's annual profits often exceed the GDP of entire countries in which it operates. 

 Who doesn't benefit: 

-American workers don't benefit. The trillions spent on foreign interventions could have funded universal healthcare, free university education, infrastructure repair, or a Green New Deal. Instead, working-class Americans see declining wages, crumbling infrastructure, and austerity, while billionaires who profit from war pay lower tax rates than nurses. 

 - People in targeted countries obviously don't benefit. Millions dead, societies destroyed, resources stolen, and when they flee the chaos created by intervention, they're demonized as migrants and refugees. 

 - Even the soldiers sent to fight don't benefit. Working-class Americans—disproportionately Black, Latino, and from poor rural communities—are sent to kill and die for corporate profits, then come home to inadequate healthcare, homelessness, and a society that thanks them for their service while abandoning them. 

The race and class dimensions are inseparable. From slavery onward, the empire has always relied on racializing the victims—framing Black, Indigenous, Arab, Asian, and Latino people as less than human, as threats, as backward populations needing to be civilized, controlled, or eliminated. This racism serves a function: it makes exploitation palatable to working-class people in imperial nations by offering them psychological wages (the sense of racial superiority) instead of actual material benefits.

Conclusion: Breaking the Pattern Requires Naming It

When Trump threatens to seize Greenland or invade other countries, he's not breaking with American tradition—he's making it explicit. The extraction playbook has been running for centuries, and it serves the same small elite it always has. 

Caribbean and other nations are beginning to break the pattern by recognizing that U.S. dominance no longer serves their interests and by diversifying their partnerships—deepening ties with Mexico, China, Europe, Canada, and one another. They understand that sovereignty entails the right to decide with whom they trade, with whom they partner, and how their resources are used. Washington characterizes this as "choosing China over America," but it's actually choosing autonomy over dependence. 

For Americans, breaking this pattern requires two realizations: First, your government doesn't intervene abroad to help you. The wars, coups, and sanctions don't make you safer or more prosperous—they enrich a tiny elite while leaving you with debt, dead soldiers, and crumbling infrastructure. The same corporations that extract oil from Venezuela or cobalt from Congo are the ones denying you healthcare and affordable housing at home. 

Second, you have more in common with a Haitian factory worker, a Venezuelan teacher, or an Iraqi farmer than you do with an American billionaire. Empire doesn't serve the working class of any nation—it serves capital. The lie of nationalism is that you share interests with your ruling class simply because you share a flag. You don't. The extraction playbook only works when people in powerful nations believe the propaganda: that interventions are about freedom, democracy, security, civilization. The moment enough people recognize the pattern—that it's always been about extraction, that the beneficiaries are always the same few, that the costs are borne by everyone else—the playbook loses its power. From slave ships to military bases, the logic remains unchanged. Until we name it, confront it, and reject it, the pattern will continue. The only question is whether enough people will recognize it in time to build something different.