A SPIN on a Leonard Cohen song comes to mind.
First, we take… And then we take Colombia? Greenland? Iran?
One thing is for certain: the ‘rule of law’ that governs the world order has irrevocably changed; recent events in Latin America should make plain what’s ahead in 2026.
The Chinese president in his New Year address foretold that Taiwan’s days are numbered. And, so too, perhaps is the Russian president’s ambition for rebooting the old Soviet empire.
The Ukraine war will soon conclude (Don chiming in here) since Venezuela is no longer in play as a key ally for Russian oil interests (no more ambiguously flagged tankers skirting around the high & low seas). Once hostilities wrap up in Ukraine, sanctions will lift and golly! there’s a whole tonne of business opportunities ahead to rebuild — not just Ukraine, but Gaza, too, alongside the renovation of oil reserves, refineries, and pipeline infrastructure in Venezuela.
And (Donna notes) with billions & billions of American dollars set to be re-invested, alongside what China has already dropped around the world with its Belt & Road initiative, investment doors are being blown open.
WHO MAKES THE RULES REMAKES THE WORLD
What this all means for Canadians, and the rest of the world, remains to be seen. But in the early going of what was once thought improbable, it’s not difficult to envision:
- Chinese President Xi paying close attention to Trump’s defiance of United Nations niceties;
- Russian President Putin realizing his country’s influence over global oil reserves just got whacked; and
- Iranian pro-democracy advocates noticing the attention paid (or not paid) by America to Venezuelan opposition leader & 2025 Nobel peace prize winner, Maria Corina Machado.
Chevron has been tapped to play a leading role in helping to secure and protect energy infrastructure in Venezuela, and to ramp up oil production and exports. The Wall Street Journal aptly explains Chevron’s catbird seat in the region:
“Chevron’s history in Venezuela can be traced through Gulf Oil, which opened its first offices there in 1923 and was acquired by Chevron in 1984. Venezuela nationalized its oil-and-gas assets in the 1970s, creating a state-owned oil company. In 1996, Chevron returned to the country as a joint-venture partner of PdVSA. Despite the many challenges, Chevron has stayed put. The company and its joint ventures employ about 3,000 people in Venezuela.”
It’s a daunting task ahead, for Chevron, but the size of the prize is incredible. It’s the kind of opportunity people in the resource sector dream about. Can Chevron, or any oil company, run a country’s economics? Of course not. But they can have a huge hand in helping to restore Venezuelan oil infrastructure and resources…but no one wants a banana republic!
DON: I bet this conjures up old memories, Donna. The 1980s and 90s. As a corporate lawyer, you were negotiating contracts and whatnot in newly-opened market economies around the world — Vietnam, Yemen, Romania, and elsewhere; they were keen on western technology & Canadian know-how to help build or rebuild a country’s energy assets in times of transition or flux. And, yes, our money, money, money too. Let’s talk about that a bit, and how your on-the-ground experience compares with what’s happening now.
DONNA: Deja vu all over again? Too soon to tell.
I can point to Vietnam in the ’90s, and ‘doi moi‘ (meaning, the economic renovation of that communist country) which created the conditions for Canadian companies to explore for oil & gas in the Mekong Delta, ahead of American competitors.
Canadian Occidental, where I worked at the time, jumped at the opportunity. And I was the commercial lead on the new ventures team tasked with negotiating the very first foreign oil & gas investment agreement in Vietnam.
DON: What else comes to mind? You’ve been in some hair-raising places as legal counsel/negotiator for Canadian petroleum companies.
DONNA: You’re right. Tricky, too. In the late 1980s — at a time when US companies couldn’t invest in what was then South Yemen, because of US sanctions — CanadianOxy discovered, then started to produce and export, enormous oil reserves in the Hadhramout region of South Yemen. All of which contributed to a civil war with North Yemen. Caught between the aspirations of northern and southern Yemenis, the company assumed responsibility to maintain the oil infrastructure and personnel, and keep pumping oil, with the host government’s share of oil proceeds being deposited into a UK trust account.
The civil war ended with the re-unification of South Yemen and North Yemen into one country, Yemen (obviously, a solution not to everyone’s liking). It all had a transactional feel. And it does look a lot like the current situation in Venezuela. I should also mention Saudi-backed forces just took over control of the Hadhramout, the oil-producing region in Yemen.
DON: Romania. I know a bit about the former Soviet satellite. I was the voice-over translation for a Japanese television documentary that secured the rights to extraordinary footage of events leading up to and including the execution of Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife in 1989. The country’s brutal authoritarian leaders were despised by ordinary citizens, who were poor for the most part, while the bosses & apparatchiks lived in relative splendour. Romania needed foreign investment — quickly. Have I got that right?
DONNA: Mostly, yes. And Romania was indeed open to foreign investment. I led the commercial team for CanadianOxy, negotiating the first oil and gas exploration contract with Rompetrol, the state oil company, together with a UK investor, in the early 1990s. It was a turbulent time in the country, with lots of internal power struggles and citizens suffering from massive food and fuel shortages.
None of this was easy — things never progressed in a straight line or as planned — but the challenge of figuring out ways to reach an agreement, and navigate wisely and responsibly in a free-for-all investment environment, was exhilarating.
THAT WAS THEN…
Three decades ago, things were different. Then, people spoke of nation-building, foreign investment and market-based economies, all in the same breath. Today, it’s all about sovereignty. Unless you are a superpower, opportunity is more constrained. In the auto, steel and aluminum sectors, free trade is no longer a given as countries scramble to protect their own. And three in five Canadians say “losing sovereignty” over key resources — including highly coveted critical minerals — is a bigger risk to the economy than lost development.
What does this all mean for the 8 million Venezuelans who have left their country of birth (30,000 of whom live in Calgary)? Should we expect them to return, to help rebuild Venezuela now that Madura is removed? Do we expect the same of displaced Ukrainians? These are incredibly difficult questions.
Back to Trump 2.0 and what looks to be regime change in Venezuela, and asserting American interests in the region. It’s one thing to have a pretence of Maduro’s role in ‘narco gangs’ as the prime narrative to do what’s been done. We think realpolitik dictated otherwise, and as always, it gets back to the stories we tell ourselves of how things ought to be. Which begs this question:
What story is Canada telling itself, in 2026?
BEYOND POLARITY is the consensus opinion of the writers Donna Kennedy-Glans & Don Hill. If you haven’t already, please subscribe — scroll down on your phone or tablet, or look to the right in the panel beside this post. Enter your email to FOLLOW, a wheel spins, hamsters get fed.