Nicolas Maduro Introduction: A Conflict Framed by Policy, Not People The tension between the United States and Venezuela is often narrated through ideology—democracy versus authoritarianism, sanctions versus sovereignty. Yet beneath the rhetoric lies a more structural issue: how states manage resources, markets, and mobility. A neutral reading of recent events suggests that neither maximal state control nor external political pressure has delivered durable outcomes for Venezu

Oil Piracy Introduction: A Sea of Crude with Nowhere to Go In the complex dance of global oil markets, the price of a barrel is not just set by OPEC+ meetings or economic forecasts. Today, a significant and growing portion of the world’s crude supply is caught in limbo—literally afloat . This floating armada of tankers, acting as makeshift storage, is a direct symptom of the geopolitical fractures that have reshaped energy flows since the pandemic. While the 2020 crisis was d

UP-NS Merger In November 2025, shareholders of both Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern overwhelmingly approved an $85 billion stock-and-cash transaction to combine the two rail giants. This approval represents a critical milestone in what the companies describe as the creation of “America’s first coast-to-coast rail network”—a unified freight system spanning over 50,000 miles of track across 43 states, connecting major ports on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Under the