Oil blockades and the geopolitics of double standards: Energy imperialism, normalization of coercion and the hierarchy of suffering

Oil blockades can present key moments for interrogating the politics of selectively asserting (il)legality and (im)morality. Some of the most blatant double standards in President Donald Trump's framings of oil blockades, in 2026, were unmissable while his administration blocked shipments of oil and other goods to Cuba in an effort to collapse the Cuban government. In an attempt to shield Americans and their supporters from the hardships the US was imposing on the Cuban people, US officials requested exceptional diesel import exemptions for their own embassy staff in Cuba. Meanwhile they blasted Iran's efforts to block oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz as unacceptable, while the US and Israel continued to bomb Iranian cities in what is widely agreed to be an illegal war, and the blockade devasting Gaza continues. With supply disruptions serving as extensions of energy governance, and blockading oil and gas flows providing powerful tools to inflict pressure and harm, this Perspective article considers how politicians' double standards around blockades can be conceptualised as reflections of necro-political violence, with asymmetrical power to decide whose lives are more expendable than others. Calling for a multi-pronged critique, we present a lens that frames oil blockade politics as converging with (1) petro-violence that has long been the subject of efforts to wean off fossil fuels, (2) new thinking on the ever-more overt neo-royalism under Trump that is shaping international policy, and (3) critical reconcepualisations of energy imperialism and the weaponisation of energy in afflicted geopolitical landscapes.