sovereignty

On January 3, 2026, the United States did not merely bomb a sovereign country and capture its president. It displayed, in the most unambiguous terms, a total defiance of the post-War international order that it helped create. When US special forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and National Assembly deputy Cilia Flores from Caracas and transported them to a Brooklyn jail, they did not simply violate Venezuelan sovereignty. They declared that sovereignty itself, for any nation that refuses subordination to US imperialism, holds no weight.

As Nicolás Maduro Guerra, the president’s son, stated before Venezuela’s National Assembly: “If we normalize the kidnapping of a head of state, no country is safe. Today it’s Venezuela. Tomorrow, it could be any nation that refuses to submit.”

The response to this act, regardless of one’s political orientation or views on the Maduro government, will determine whether the concepts of international law, multilateralism, and the self-determination of peoples retain any meaning in the twenty-first century. This is not a question for the left alone. It is a question for every nation, every government, and every citizen who believes that the world should not be governed by the principle that might makes right.

The logic of hyper-imperialism unveiled

What distinguishes the current phase of US foreign policy from earlier periods of intervention is its brazenness. When the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, Washington maintained the pretense of responding to communist subversion. When American forces invaded Panama in 1989 to capture Manuel Noriega, the justification was framed within a discourse of law enforcement. The history of US intervention in Latin America spans over forty successful regime changes in slightly less than a century, according to Harvard scholar John Coatsworth.

But Trump’s announcement that the United States would “run” Venezuela represents something qualitatively different. Here there is no pretense. When asked about the operation, Trump invoked the Monroe Doctrine and said that these are called “Donroe Doctrine”, signaling that the Western Hemisphere remains a zone of US dominion – an assertion clearly made in the National Security Strategy launched in November 2025. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s subsequent clarification that the US would merely extract policy changes and oil access did nothing to soften the nakedness of the imperial project.

This represents what we at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research have identified as “hyper-imperialism”, a dangerous and decadent stage of imperialism. Facing the erosion of its economic and political dominance and the rise of alternative centers of power (mainly in Asia) US imperialism increasingly relies on its uncontested military strength. The Chatham House analysis is unequivocal: this constitutes a significant violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and the UN Charter. There was no Security Council mandate, nor any claims to self-defense.

The post-1945 international order established the formal principle that states possess sovereign equality and that force against another state’s territorial integrity is prohibited. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter was designed precisely to prevent the powerful from treating the world as their domain, which the US has now blatantly ignored.

The test for Global South solidarity

The kidnapping of President Maduro poses an existential question to the discourse of “multipolarity”. While the seeds of a multipolar world order may exist (China’s economic rise, the increasing political assertiveness of Global South countries, BRICS and its expansion, the increasing trade in local currencies) they have proven to be extremely limited in the face of the US unilateral use of force. This is an uncomfortable truth.

The initial responses from governments suggest the difficulty of moving from rhetorical condemnation to material constraint. Brazilian President Lula correctly identified the stakes when he condemned the capture as crossing “an unacceptable line” and warned that “attacking countries, in flagrant violation of international law, is the first step toward a world of violence, chaos, and instability”. Colombian President Petro rejected “the aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and of Latin America.” Mexico’s President Sheinbaum declared that “the Americas do not belong to any doctrine or any power.” China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi condemned US military intervention and called for the release of President Maduro, saying that, “We don’t believe that any country can act as the world’s police.”

The groundswell of opposition confronts a structural problem: the institutions designed to prevent such actions are incapable of constraining the permanent members of the Security Council. The United States can veto any resolution condemning its behavior. The emergency Security Council meeting convened at the request of Venezuela and Colombia produced denunciations but no enforcement mechanism.

Every government that has sought to develop independently, that has attempted to control its own natural resources, that has resisted subordination to Washington, must recognize that what has happened in Venezuela could happen to them. Trump’s threats against Cuba and Colombia underscore this point.

Sovereignty, resources, and the right to self-determination

The pattern is well established with the successive overthrowing of heads of states when they tried to implement land reform like Árbenz in Guatemala, nationalize national resources under Allende in Chile and Mosaddegh in Iran. The thread continues to the present situation in Venezuela.

Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves, estimated at 303 billion barrels. Trump made no effort to disguise the centrality of oil, announcing that American companies would rebuild Venezuela’s oil industry and the US would be “selling oil, probably in much larger doses”. The maritime blockade preceding the military operation served the explicit purpose of strangling the country economically.

Yet the entire trajectory of the US Venezuela policy since 2001, from funding opposition groups to the 2002 coup attempt, to Operation Gideon in 2020, to the “maximum pressure” sanctions, has been designed to prevent Venezuela from making free choices. The assault accelerated after Venezuela enacted its 2001 Hydrocarbons Law asserting sovereign control over oil resources.

Conclusion

The kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro and National Assembly deputy Cilia Flores should compel a fundamental reassessment of the state of the international order. The formal institutions and legal frameworks that were supposed to prevent great power aggression have failed to constrain Washington’s imperialist aggressions. This places an enormous responsibility on the governments and peoples of the Global South. The debates around multipolarity, BRICS, South-South cooperation, and de-dollarization are rendered academic if they do not translate into the practical capacity to impose costs on actions like the invasion of Venezuela. Ultimately, the imperialist aggression against Venezuela has repercussions for governments and peoples around the world, regardless of their ideological orientation or views on the Maduro government. While the real limits of “multipolarity” in this stage of US hyper-imperialism have been laid bare, we must continue building our collective capacity to resist. The defense of Venezuelan people’s sovereignty, after all, is a defense of the sovereignty of all our nations.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Atul Chandra & Tings Chak are the Coordinators of the Asia Desk at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Source: Globetrotter

The Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective’s Red Paper series takes on the pressing issues of our time with urgency and principled clarity. We are at the frontlines of the Battle of Ideas and we use anti-imperialist methodology to clarify the stakes, intensify the contradictions, challenge the propaganda, and defend the Resistance.

We, the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective (AISC), condemn in the strongest terms possible the US imperialist attack against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The US kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and First Combatant Cilia Flores in a blatantly criminal breach of international law on January 3, 2026, while violently assaulting the sovereignty of Nuestra América. We stand firmly with the Venezuelan people and their revolutionary Bolivarian State as they defend their sovereign right to self-determination. We unequivocally recognize Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela and demand the United States government immediately release him and First Combatant Flores. As an organization committed to challenging US-led imperialism and supporting the sovereignty and national liberation of the Global Majority, AISC calls on anti-imperialist forces in the US and across the world to unite in defense of President Maduro and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

In Red Paper #1, AISC provides a critical analysis of the current US attack on Venezuela, demonstrating that it must be understood as an existential conflict between US imperialism and the sovereignty of the peoples of the Americas.

Introduction: The Two Fronts of Imperialist War

The US is waging war against Venezuela on two inter-related levels. First, this war constitutes a renewed escalation of a decades-long “counter-revolutionary” attack on revolutionary forces and states in the region that have overturned imperialist property structures.[1] Second, this war represents an escalation of US imperialism’s attempt to weaken and subjugate the architects and backers of an emergent polycentric world order in which the US will no longer be the sole, hegemonic superpower.[2] The two “fronts” of the US imperialist war are inter-related. The fracturing of the alliances driving forward the polycentric world order provides a necessary condition for isolating, and destroying, the sovereign development projects of the revolutionary states of the Americas. These projects are marked for destruction as they pose an existential challenge to US imperialism. They disrupt the ability of capital in the imperialist core to superexploit labor and dominate resources while also contesting the definitive basis of imperialist power: the control over the flow of resources and capital between territories.

The attack against Venezuela and the Trump regime’s escalated war footing have generated a broad spectrum of criticism and opposition. However, the terms of the opposition have often risked delegitimizing the Venezuelan state—and thus supporting the objectives of US imperialism. In particular, there is a return to a register of anti-war opposition that posits a fundamental distinction between the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and a generic category of the Venezuelan “people.” This is a self-defeating move at best, a complicit one at worst. It is not possible to defend the “Venezuelan people” while aligning with the imperialists in delegitimizing the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as a “dictatorship.” It is not a generic category of the “Venezuelan people” that is under attack, but a specific state formation structured upon reorienting the nation’s resources in the service of national development rather than imperialist wealth appropriation. To delegitimize this state structure is to lay the groundwork for legitimizing US imperialist interventions. The questioning of an anti-imperialist state’s legitimacy, particularly by imperialist forces, should never serve as a basis for violating its state sovereignty.

As imperialist forces sow confusion, it is thus imperative that we respond with clarity as to why Venezuela has been attacked and move with a principled commitment to the defence of its sovereignty. This is a war on a revolutionary state that has challenged imperialism by reclaiming both its “internal” and “external” bases of sovereign power: it has constructed a sovereign national development project and forged sovereign international relations with other anti-imperialist states.

Socialism with Bolivarian Characteristics: Resource Sovereignty, Communal Power and Popular Defense

In the late twentieth century, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela emerged as a revolutionary challenge to the foundational bases of US imperialism. The Bolivarian Republic has deepened and sustained Venezuelan sovereign-popular ownership over its own resources, reclaiming control over its oil wealth from US corporations such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.[3] It subsequently directed its oil wealth into sovereign national development projects[4] as well as into regional and international “South-South” frameworks[5] that fundamentally challenge the dependent relations that have kept Global South states at the mercy of the US-led imperialist order.

The formation of communes has been at the heart of the sovereign national development projects advanced by the Bolivarian Republic. Emerging out of the historic social missions launched by President Hugo Chávez in 2004—which virtually eliminated illiteracy via Misión Robinson and built a nationwide, free community healthcare system via Misión Barrio Adentro and significantly reduced poverty—the commune project advanced the revolutionary process towards what Chávez termed “communal socialism.”[6] In these grassroots structures, communities legislate, administer resources, and manage their own means of production. Forged under the pressure of the US economic blockade and imperialist hybrid warfare, the communes now collectively control productive resources in close coordination with the state. They have played a central role in mitigating the deleterious impact of sanctions by meeting urgent community needs and advancing food sovereignty.[7] Even under escalating US attack, President Nicolás Maduro’s government deepened the state’s commitment to the communes by launching a new strategic plan in November 2025 based on over 36,000 proposals from a national popular consultation intended to fortify national unity and resilience.[8]

This same communal infrastructure that sustains daily life under siege also forms the material and organizational basis for Venezuela’s national defense. In December, building on the grassroots power of the communes, the Bolivarian National Militia activated Nicolás Maduro’s doctrine of “Guerra de Todo el Pueblo,” distributing rifles and other weapons to millions of civilians.[9] The intent of the militia is to involve the whole of the Venezuelan people in the national defense against imperialist aggression. Maduro warned that any large-scale US invasion will face a “new Viet Nam,” a prolonged campaign of guerrilla war characterized by cascading hit-and-run attacks springing from compact urban areas, foreboding mountains, and immense jungles. While the US military retains immensely destructive technological capacities, it is increasingly evident that it is not capable of engaging in such a land war. By its own admission, it has not trained in tropical environments in decades, having just revived its “jungle warfare” training program in Panama for the first time in over 20 years.

It is the popular basis of the Bolivarian Revolution, renewed and reforged through the communes and the National Militia, that grounds the legitimacy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The “qualitative basis” of the sovereignty of the Bolivarian Republic is to be found in the empowerment of Indigenous, Afro-Venezuelan, and working class peoples, and the reorientation of the nation’s land and resources in service of a popular form of national development that meets the needs of all its peoples. This qualitative force provides the Bolivarian Republic with its greatest source of legitimacy and deepest power in resisting US imperialism.

Venezuela v. US Imperialism

It is precisely this combination of sovereign development, popular power, and territorial defense that the US led capitalist imperialist world order could never accept. Capitalist imperialism requires a consistent drain of cheap resources and goods from the periphery into the imperialist core as a means of both stabilizing class relations in the core and appropriating surplus value from the periphery.[10] Imperialism has historically established the conditions for such appropriation through military force and imposing economic dependency on the peripheries. Time and again, when the peoples of the imperially subjugated Global Majority have sought to reclaim their sovereign right over both their territories and the flow of economic capital into and out of their territories, they have been subjected to imperialist war and economic sanctions.[11] This is the fundamental rule of the capitalist imperialist system, as seen in the economic warfare and blockades imposed on Haiti in the 19th century, Cuba in the 20th century, and now Venezuela in the 21st century.

The emergence of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been all the more threatening to the US imperialist order because it is a key insurgent challenge to the “end of history” Washington consensus that the US sought to impose on the entire planet at the close of the twentieth century. The structural adjustment programs that the United States enforced across the Global South destroyed national economies, undermined social reproduction capacities, and in so doing produced massive pools of cheap labor and resources for exploitation and appropriation by the imperialist core.[12] But what US imperialism did not foresee at the time was the strength of the anti-imperialist challenge that would be launched against the IMF-World Bank neocolonial program. Key among these challenges included the anti-IMF Caracazo movement in Venezuela that led to the Bolivarian socialist revolution and the rise of the communes;[13] Venezuela’s PetroCaribe Energy Agreement program that leveraged the country’s oil wealth for the socio-economic development and the integration of Caribbean countries;[14] the resilience of the Cuban socialist revolution in the face of the collapse of the Soviet Union;[15] the Lavalas program in Haiti demanding reparations and higher wages;[16] the struggle in Zimbabwe that led to the reclamation of stolen land by dispossessed Zimbabweans;[17] the anti-privatization water wars in Bolivia that led to the rise of MAS;[18] and the Palestinian second intifada that brought the Washington consensus Oslo framework to crisis.[19] The US has systematically sought to destroy each and every one of these challenges to the foundations of imperialist-core accumulation.

US imperialism has, over the past twenty five years, attempted coups d’etats and imposed punitive economic sanctions as a means to try to overthrow the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Among the longstanding aims of the US are to deny Venezuela sovereign control over its oil wealth and to hand it over instead to US oil majors, including through persistent demands that Venezuela pay “compensation” for the nationalization of its oil industry. Rather than cooperate with an increasingly sovereign Venezuelan oil sector, US oil majors escalated legal warfare, aggressively suing Venezuela for so-called “lost assets” and demanding compensation payments for the 2007 oil nationalization.[20] This demand for compensation to the expropriator—to the colonizer, to the imperialist—coupled with sanctions against national liberation projects, is a structural feature of imperialism. The roots of colonial-imperialist “compensation” lie in the blockades imposed against Haiti and Cuba, which demanded that colonial property owners be compensated for the “losses” incurred when the Haitian and Cuban peoples reclaimed sovereign power over their territories and lives.[21] Similar demands were imposed against Zimbabwe earlier this decade.[22] What is at stake today, however, is not only resource domination and colonial-imperialist compensation, but also control over the country’s financial flows as finance capital aims to dominate future revenues, debt, and collateral streams.

However, the US has failed time and again in its attempts to destroy the sovereignty of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The first Trump administration rolled out a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign, which led to a severe economic crisis in Venezuela.[23] Its GDP contracted by close to 90 percent between 2013 to 2020, resulting in 40,000 deaths due to the devastating impact of the sanctions regime on Venezuela’s public health system.[24] The economic crisis also triggered massive economically motivated emigration from the country. The Venezuelan state not only withstood the sanctions campaign, but has achieved a small degree of economic recovery in recent years. In fact, Venezuela is forecasted to lead GDP growth in Latin America for both 2024 and 2025.[25] It is in light of the failure of the US economic sanctions regime to achieve its objectives of regime change and complete subordination that we must view the turn to military force against Venezuela. This latest wave of US imperialist intervention seeks to extract concessions from the Venezuelan state—particularly access to its oil and mineral wealth—and to curtail its independent, South-South solidaristic international relations. The attack on Venezuela is informed by the same strategic objectives that drove the US attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran this past summer. In both cases, the US has sought to destroy a sovereign state that has provisioned regional economic or military strategic depth to anti-imperialist forces.

The Revival of the Monroe Doctrine and the Recolonization of Nuestra América

The US imperialist attack on Venezuela has been identified as an enactment of the “Trump corollary to the Monroe doctrine” that animates the 2025 US National Security Strategy.[26] At its core, the revival of the Monroe doctrine is centered upon expelling what it identifies as “non-hemispheric rivals”—China, Russia, and Iran—from the Americas and re-consolidating the region under full spectrum US domination.[27] The Trump corollary is premised upon a claim that the “non-hemispheric rivals” threaten both regional prosperity and US power, and their removal and replacement with full spectrum US “leadership” will benefit the region’s economic development and security. What the attack on Venezuela reveals, however, is that the Trump corollary is primarily concerned with these “non-hemispheric rivals” for the role they have played affording Venezuela and other states in the region greater space for constructing and sustaining projects of sovereign development. Sovereign development advances the utilization of national resources for national development, and thus threatens the reproduction of cheap labor and resource pools for appropriation by capitalist imperialist modes of accumulation.

A clearer understanding of the relationship between sovereign development and the region’s engagement with an emergent polycentric world order can be grasped if we recall the key role played by these so-called “non-hemispheric rivals” in the consolidation of the gains of the Bolivarian Revolution. After the Bolivarian Revolution, the Venezuelan state identified deepening relations with non-Western powers as central to reducing dependency on US investment and export markets.[28] This strategy became particularly urgent and pronounced after Venezuela deepened the nationalization of its oil sector in 2007. Western capital, as mentioned above, refused to accept nationalization and instead sought to contest it by suing for “compensation” and effectively conducting a “capital strike” by withdrawing investments from the country.[29] While such measures have historically been used by imperialist powers to force concessions from peripheral states after they achieve independence – i.e. the capital strike will only be ended after the targeted state relents on its nationalization program – Venezuela was able to withstand this financial imperialism by drawing on support from China, Russia, and Iran. China and Venezuela created the “China-Venezuela Joint Fund” in 2007 that received significant injections of capital from Chinese state development banks that proved essential for maintaining state oil revenues in the service of infrastructure development and social spending.[30] Russia’s state-owned oil company, Rosneft, similarly injected significant levels of investment that sustained the Venezuelan state oil sector and provisioned funds for social spending.[31] Iran and Venezuela have deepened relations across multiple sectors such as healthcare and food production, and have forged cooperative economic relations through which they support each other in withstanding US sanctions. Iran, in particular, has transferred vital technical expertise, refinery parts, and catalysts to help sustain Venezuela’s blockaded oil industry.[32]

We see here the outlines of a world premised upon sovereign cooperation and solidarity. Venezuela’s ability to sustain its nationalization program provisioned the means for strengthening the cooperative relations with regional anti-imperialist states, most notably Cuba. Venezuela’s provisioning of discounted oil flows to Cuba has been essential to the latter’s own ability to withstand the nearly 70 year US blockade.[33] Venezuela has further taken leadership in regional integration efforts such as the Bolivaria Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Venezuela and Cuban solidarity would, in turn, serve as an anchor for a growing Latin American anti-zionist bloc which raised its voice loudly, and took concrete material action, in opposition to the escalating US-zionist genocidal war against Palestinians. Both states have severed ties with the zionist entity. The US-zionist imperialist alliance has, in turn, made the defeat of the anti-zionist bloc in the Americas a key component of its larger strategy to overcome the zionist entity’s increasing international isolation.[34] We note here the commitment of the US backed Venezuelan regime change leader, Maria Corina Machado, to restore full Venezuelan diplomatic support for the zionist entity.[35] In addition, US secretary of state Marco Rubio has demanded that Venezuela sever its relations with anti-zionist forces in West Asia, namely the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah, as a condition for the ending of the US blockade on Venezuelan oil exports.[36]

These two inter-related levels of anti-imperialist sovereign expression—“internal” sovereign national development and “external” cooperation and solidarity with other anti-imperialist states—pose existential challenges to the US led imperialist world order. Sovereign national development reduces the capitalist core’s access to cheap labor and resources in the Global South, while deepening anti-imperialist inter-state cooperation counteracts the threat of “isolation” that imperialism seeks to impose on anti-imperialist states.

It is for this reason, above all, that the “Trump corollary to the Monroe doctrine” seeks to remove “non-hemispheric rivals” and why it has targeted Venezuela as its first act. It seeks to remove from Venezuela the strategic economic depth through which it has been able to withstand decades of hybrid warfare—capital strikes, international lawfare, sanctions, attempted coups—and sustain its sovereign development project. The attack on Venezuela explicitly takes as its aim the re-routing of oil flows away from China and Russia and towards the US.[37] This will open the door to windfall profits for Western finance and mining capital, severely curtail the sovereign development capacity of the Venezuelan state, and provision the US with a stronger control over international oil and capital flows. Controlling Venezuelan oil would, in turn, provide US imperialism with a powerful instrument with which to intensify its squeeze on the Cuban economy and advance its longstanding aim of rolling back the Cuban revolution. It could further be deployed to exercise leverage against China, the major source of strategic economic depth for anti-imperialist forces in the world today.

US imperialism’s strategic renewal of the Monroe doctrine is thus propelled, in significant part, by an awareness that the US has rapidly lost economic leadership in the world economy. China has demonstrated it is pulling away from the US in economic and technological sectors shaping the future of the world economy.[38] The superior efficiency and performance of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) sector has threatened the valuation of US AI sectors and firms that have received hundreds of billions of dollars in capital investment.[39] In contrast to the US doubling down on oil and gas as a means to power its AI sectors,[40] China is demonstrating a future that ties AI to the accelerated development of its renewable energy sector.[41] This represents a decisive shifting of the world away from dependence on oil and gas, which will not only challenge the basis of US imperialist power—resource dominance and dollar hegemony—but open greater space for more sustainable futures. China has further consolidated its command over the global supply chain for the transition to AI and renewable energy, securing control of both the access to, and the advanced technology required to process, the essential rare earth minerals renewable energy economies demand.[42] It bears emphasizing that China’s strategic control over energy and rare earth supply chains has been anchored primarily in long-term domestic industrial and processing capacity, while its access to upstream resources in the Global South has been sustained through negotiated South–South cooperation frameworks, as seen above in its relations with Venezuela.[43] This contrasts with the coercive sanctions, regime-change operations, and expropriatory demands characteristic of Western imperialism. Recognizing it is incapable of competing with China on economic terms, the US is increasingly using lawfare and military power to seize access to rare earth minerals, deepen control over energy flows, reshape global supply chains and shift capital investment towards US controlled global production lines.

While China has helped sustain Venezuela’s oil nationalization program, US oil majors have for decades sought to undermine and reverse it. In the fall of 2025, when U.S. courts ruled in favor of domestic energy and mining capital by ordering the Venezuelan state to sell its U.S. assets to satisfy colonial-imperialist “compensation” claims from Exxon and ConocoPhillips, the zionist-led “vulture capitalist” firm Elliot Management—owned by the notorious Paul Singer – stepped in and acquired Venezuela’s US assets—largely consisting of CITGO refineries.[44] The rush by the Trump regime to re-route Venezuelan oil to the US will then provision windfall profits to Elliot Management and other US firms involved in refining Venezuelan crude oil in the CITGO refineries.

A similar dynamic exists if the US is able to gain access to Venezuela’s substantial rare earth mineral supply. This will strengthen the “Pax Silica” alliance recently forged by the US. The “Pax Silica” is an explicit framework in which the US has brought together eleven allied states in an attempt to build a supply chain for semiconductor chips and AI technology independent of China.[45] Venezuela’s critical minerals (including coltan) would constitute an important foundation to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative.[46]

We can thus see how the US imperialist state’s “strategic” move to re-consolidate control over global energy and mineral flows has implications for the profitability and valuation of US capital and firms. It is necessary to be attentive to the motives of US imperialism at both the firm level and the structural level of the world economy in order to grasp the dynamics of the “Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.”

The Contradictions of the Trump Corollary: Tactical Gains versus Strategic Losses

In light of the US attack on Venezuela, it may appear that US imperialism has re-established its primacy in the world-system. However, it remains the case that its crises not only persist, but deepen. Absent a fundamental re-organization of its economic structure, the US will continue to prove incapable of keeping up with China’s productive leaps across a range of sectors, including renewable energy and AI. As the US doubles down on wars for oil, China has decisively opened a post-fossil fuel trajectory wherein its own dependency on oil will enter into secular decline.

The ongoing US-led wars in Ukraine and Palestine have become a resource drain for NATO.[47] Its member nations are suffering cash flow problems and declining economies compounded by exhausted weapons and defense systems that are expensive and slow-to-manufacture.[48] Social unrest across the US and Europe is high and political fragmentation threatens the stability of both.[49] In this context, the desperation of US imperialism betrays itself, manifesting in racist, colonial language, fascist repression, savage violence and abductions of both migrants and heads of state, as well as the accelerating use of concentration camps like the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador. Having lost the ability to conduct long wars as those waged against Viet Nam and Iraq, the US turns to short, sequential wars sprinkled with discrete and barbaric acts of aggression, like the abduction of President Maduro and First Combatant Flores.

The underlying contradiction persists for US imperialism: its immediate tactical victories undermine its longer term strategic objectives. It is notable that the US prepared for six months, then deployed 150 aircraft and dozens of military personnel to capture two people.[50] In the aftermath of this spectacular display of force, however, the Bolivarian Republic remains intact. Interim President Delcy Rodriguez has been sworn in, the Venezuelan armed forces, together with the mass-based Bolivarian militia, have ensured national security and stability, opposition parties have united with President Maduro’s party—Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV)—in defense of the nation; and each day has brought growing global and national outcry against the US as a “rogue superpower.”

US-led Western imperialism has once again reaffirmed its refusal to make any space for the sovereign development of the peoples of the Global South. The defeat of US imperialism therefore remains the fundamental task confronting all those who are fighting for a world founded on sovereignty, justice, and peace. In the face of the criminal terrorist attack conducted by US imperialism, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela remains standing and its popular forces remain prepared to defend it. It is imperative that anti-imperialist forces across the world unite in demanding the release of President Maduro and First Combatant Flores, the unconditional lifting of U.S. sanctions and the blockade against Venezuela and Cuba, the full defense of the sovereignty of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and the recognition of the Venezuelan people’s right to resist imperialist aggression.

Notes

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Source: Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective

Jan. 6 (UPI) — Colombian President Gustavo Petro has called for a nationwide mobilization Wednesday and urged citizens to “defend sovereignty,” responding to statements by the U.S. President Donald Trump that in Colombia have been widely interpreted as threats of intervention and direct attacks against the head of state.

The call, posted by Petro on X and echoed by government officials and political allies, urges rallies in public squares across the country starting at 4 p.m. local time, with the main protest planned for Bogota’s Plaza de Bolivar, the historic square that houses Colombia’s main government institutions. Petro said he will address the crowd.

The escalation follows remarks by Trump in which he referred to Petro in disparaging terms, accused him of backing drug production and left open the possibility of military action, according to reports by Colombian media.

In recent comments, Trump said a military operation against Colombia “sounds good,” following a U.S. military incursion in Venezuela. He also accused Petro of links to drug trafficking and said Colombia is “very sick.”

Petro publicly rejected the accusations and framed the dispute as a matter of national sovereignty. He said he would carefully assess the scope of Trump’s words before issuing a broader response but insisted that dialogue should be “the first path” and defended the legitimacy of his government.

“Although I have not been a soldier, I know about war and clandestinity. I swore not to touch a weapon again after the 1989 peace pact, but for the homeland, I would take up arms again, which I do not want,” Petro wrote, referring to the agreement that led to the demobilization of the M-19 guerrilla movement in which he once participated.

“I am not illegitimate, nor am I a drug trafficker. I own only my family home, which I am still paying for with my salary. My bank statements have been made public. No one has been able to say I have spent more than my salary. I am not greedy,” he added.

Separately, Colombia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement after remarks attributed to Trump on Sunday and said it rejects what it considers unacceptable interference in matters of sovereignty and bilateral relations.

Vice President Francia Marquez joined those describing Trump’s statements as “threats” and called on Colombians to defend national sovereignty, according to local radio reports.

Demonstrations planned for Wednesday are expected in cities including Bogota, Medellin, Cali, Bucaramanga, Cartagena and Santa Marta, with calls to gather in central squares.

Petro described the protests as “peaceful” and urged Colombians to fly the national flag at their homes and bring it to public squares, El Espectador reported. He warned of the risks of military escalation and reiterated that the armed forces must follow their constitutional mandate to defend sovereignty.

The episode unfolds amid regional upheaval linked to Venezuela’s crisis and rising diplomatic tensions in Latin America.

According to daily El Tiempo, the situation has pushed Petro’s government to return to street mobilization as a political tool while Bogota seeks to manage relations with Washington without losing internal control.

WASHINGTON — Venezuela risks “a second strike” if its interim government doesn’t acquiesce to U.S. demands. Cuba is “ready to fall,” and Colombia is “very sick, too.”

Iran may get “hit very hard” if its government cracks down on protesters. And Denmark risks U.S. intervention, as well, because “we need Greenland,” President Trump said.

In just 37 minutes while speaking with reporters Sunday aboard Air Force One, Trump threatened to attack five countries, both allies and adversaries, with the might of the U.S. military — an extraordinary turn for a president who built his political career rejecting traditional conservative views on the exercise of American power and vowing to put America first.

The president’s threats come as a third of the U.S. naval fleet remains stationed in the Caribbean, after Trump launched a daring attack on Venezuela that seized its president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife over the weekend.

The goal, U.S. officials said, was to show the Venezuelan government and the wider world what the American military is capable of — and to compel partners and foes alike to adhere to Trump’s demands through intimidation, rather than commit the U.S. military to more complex, conventional, long-term engagements.

It is the deployment of overwhelming and spectacular force in surgical military operations — Maduro’s capture, last year’s strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, assassinations of Islamic State leadership and Iran’s top general in Iraq — that demonstrate Trump as a brazen leader willing to risk war, thereby effectively avoiding it, one Trump administration official said, explaining the president’s strategic thinking.

Yet experts and former Trump aides warn the president’s approach risks miscalculation, alienating vital allies and emboldening U.S. competitors.

At a Security Council meeting Monday at the United Nations in New York — called by Colombia, a long-standing and major non-North Atlantic Treaty Oranization ally to the United States — Trump’s moves were widely condemned. “Violations of the U.N. Charter,” a French diplomat told the council, “chips away at the very foundation of international order.”

Even the envoy from Russia, which has cultivated historically strong ties with the Trump administration, said the White House operation was an act of “banditry,” marking “a return to the era of illegality and American dominance through force, chaos and lawlessness.”

Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark with vast natural resources, drew particular concern across Europe on Monday, with leaders across the continent warning the United States against an attack that would violate the sovereignty of a NATO ally and European Union member state.

“That’s enough now,” Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said after Trump told reporters that his attention would turn to the world’s largest island in a matter of weeks.

“If the United States decides to militarily attack another NATO country, then everything would stop,” Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, told local press. “That includes NATO, and therefore, post-World War II security.”

Trump also threatened to strike Iran, where anti-government protests have spread throughout the country in recent days. Trump had previously said the U.S. military was “locked and loaded” if Iranian security forces begin firing on protesters, “which is their custom.”

“The United States of America will come to their rescue,” Trump wrote on social media on Jan. 2, hours before launching the Venezuela mission. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

In Colombia, there was widespread outrage after Trump threatened military action against leftist President Gustavo Petro, whom Trump accused, without evidence, of running “cocaine mills and cocaine factories.”

Petro is a frequent critic of the American president and has slammed as illegal a series of lethal U.S. airstrikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.

“Stop slandering me,” Petro wrote on X, warning that any U.S. attempts against his presidency “will unleash the people’s fury.”

Petro, a former leftist guerrilla, said he would go to war to defend Colombia.

“I swore not to touch a weapon again,” he said. “But for the homeland, I will take up arms.”

Trump’s threats have strained relations with Colombia, a devoted U.S. ally. For decades, the countries have shared military intelligence, a robust trade relationship and a multibillion-dollar fight against drug trafficking.

Even some of Petro’s domestic critics have comes to his defense. Presidential candidate Juan Manuel Galán, who opposes Petro’s rule, said Colombia’s sovereignty “must be defended.”

“Colombia is not Venezuela,” Galán wrote on X. “It is not a failed state, and we will not allow it to be treated as such. Here we have institutions, democracy and sovereignty that must be defended.”

The president of Mexico, another longtime U.S. ally and its largest trading partner, has also spoken out forcefully against the American operation in Caracas, and said the Trump administration’s aggressive foreign policy in Latin America threatens the stability of the region.

“We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” President Claudia Sheinbaum said in her daily news conference Monday. “The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: Intervention has never brought democracy, has never generated well-being or lasting stability.”

She addressed Trump’s comments over the weekend that drugs were “pouring” through Mexico, and that the United States was “going to have to do something.”

Trump has been threatening action against cartels for months, with some members of his administration suggesting that the United States may soon carry out drone strikes on drug laboratories and other targets inside Mexican territory. Sheinbaum has repeatedly said such strikes would be a clear violation of Mexican sovereignty.

“Sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples are non-negotiable,” she said. “They are fundamental principles of international law and must always be respected without exception.”

Cuba also rejected Trump’s threat of a military intervention there, after Trump’s secretary of State, Marco Rubio, himself the descendant of Cuban immigrants, suggested that Havana may be next in Washington’s crosshairs.

“We call on the international community to stop this dangerous, aggressive escalation and to preserve peace,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel posted on social media.

The U.S. attacks on Venezuela, and Trump’s threats of additional military ventures, have caused deep unease in a relatively peaceful region that has seen fewer interstate wars in recent decades than Europe, Asia or Africa.

It also caused unease among some Trump supporters, who remembered his pledge to get the United States out of “endless” military conflicts for good.

“I was the first president in modern times,” Trump said, accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, “to start no new wars.”

Wilner reported from Washington and Linthicum from Mexico City.

As the United States reasserts its hemispheric priorities in its recent National Security Strategy document, Latin America and the Caribbean are once again cast as a zone of interest, with Venezuela squarely in Washington’s sights. Puerto Rico—still a US colony more than a century after the 1898 invasion—plays a central role in this imperial architecture, serving as both a military platform and a living example of colonial rule in the region. 

Cira Pascual Marquina spoke with Puerto Rican geographer, author, and longtime activist Déborah Berman Santana about the continuity of US imperialism, the island’s strategic function in projecting imperialist military power in the region, and why Venezuela’s insistence on sovereignty represents such a profound threat to US interests. 

Drawing on decades of grassroots struggle against militarization, including the successful campaign to halt US Navy bombings in Vieques, Berman Santana situates today’s escalation against Venezuela within a broader history of colonial control, neocolonial coercion, and popular resistance in the continent.

The US has just issued a new National Security Strategy document that shifts its focus to the Western Hemisphere. From your perspective in Puerto Rico, what does this reveal about Washington’s imperial ambitions, and how does it impact the Caribbean and specifically Venezuela?

From Puerto Rico, and with the history of US-Latin American relations in mind, what is being presented as a “new” security strategy is really the old one. Even before the Monroe Doctrine, Thomas Jefferson was already worried that Spain’s colonies might become independent before the United States was strong enough to take control of them. Hemispheric domination has always been central to US policy.

What this document makes clear is that Washington wants absolute control over the Western Hemisphere, regardless of what happens elsewhere in the world or how competition with China or Russia evolves. When US officials say “America for the Americans,” they mean the entire hemisphere for the United States: its peoples and its resources, all under US imperialist control.

The Caribbean is still referred to as the US “backyard,” even by sectors of the US left. Venezuela’s oil—the largest proven reserves on the planet—is treated as US oil. Bolivia’s lithium is viewed as US lithium. The strategy simply reasserts the United States as the dominant power, the plantation owner of the hemisphere.

There is nothing new in this policy paper except how openly it is stated. I don’t believe the substance would be radically different under a Democratic administration; it would simply be expressed in more polite language.

Puerto Rico is identified as a US “territory,” but in reality, it’s an occupied colony. How does that colonial status enable the buildup of US bases and military deployments, and why is Puerto Rico so central to projecting imperialist power in the Caribbean, especially toward Venezuela?

In the US Constitution, “territory” essentially means property. The US Supreme Court has defined Puerto Rico as an unincorporated territory belonging to, but not part of, the United States. “Unincorporated” means there is no obligation to ever make Puerto Rico a state.

The simplest analogy is a pair of shoes: they belong to you, but they are not part of you, and you can dispose of them at will. That is how Puerto Rico is legally understood. We don’t even have the limited sovereignty administratively allowed for Native peoples in the US. This is not my opinion; it is established by Supreme Court rulings.

This colonial condition makes militarization extremely easy. For roughly twenty years there was a visible reduction in US military presence, but that period is clearly over. The US does not need to negotiate with us. If it chooses to offer compensation, it may, but it is under no obligation.

There are six US military bases in Puerto Rico. Four were never meaningfully demilitarized. Two—Ramey in Aguadilla and Roosevelt Roads in Ceiba—were supposedly closed and slated for civilian redevelopment. In practice, that process has been partial at best.

I live near Ceiba, and since the summer, there has been a dramatic increase in military air traffic. The airstrip, which had been used for regional civilian flights since 2004, is now filled with F-35s, Hercules aircraft, and Ospreys. No permission was requested. The military simply took it over.

If the US decides to deploy additional warships or aircraft carrier groups—as it recently did with the USS Gerald R. Ford—it can do so without even consulting us. Whether this is intended as a prelude to an actual attack on Venezuela or primarily as pressure, it clearly sends a message.

It is the logic of a bully: “I am here, and I am ready to hurt you unless you comply.” Even without an invasion, the buildup is meant to force concessions, deepen internal divisions, or provoke instability in Venezuela. I doubt this will succeed, given Venezuela’s strong commitment to sovereignty, but it clearly reflects the US’ strategic thinking.

Venezuela faces escalating economic, political, and military pressure. Why is the Bolivarian Revolution perceived as such a threat to US imperialist interests?

The United States seeks to remain the dominant global power, but when that dominance is challenged—especially by China—it insists on absolute control of this hemisphere. In this worldview, Latin America and the Caribbean are US turf: their resources belong to Washington, and their peoples are treated, implicitly, as subjects.

What the US will not accept is a country that insists on real sovereignty, a country that engages with Washington as an equal. Venezuela’s decision to control its own resources and choose its own trading partners is intolerable to US policymakers.

That is why Cuba has faced a blockade for more than sixty years, why Nicaragua is targeted, and why Venezuela is now under such intense pressure. A Russian ship making a courtesy visit to Venezuela or expanded ties with China are treated not as sovereign decisions, but as provocations.

The real threat to Washington is not Venezuela in isolation, but the precedent it sets. The Bolivarian process represents a living challenge and a model that could inspire others across the region. That is why US policy aims either to overthrow the government or to force it to abandon its sovereign course.

And it would not stop with Venezuela: Cuba would be next, and Nicaragua would follow. Donald Trump has openly warned Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro that they could also “be next.” This military buildup sends a message to all of Latin America and the Caribbean—Mexico included—about the limits Washington seeks to impose on sovereignty.

As one billionaire ally of Trump [Elon Musk] once crudely said about Bolivia’s lithium: “We coup whoever we want.” It may sound blunt, but it reflects a long-standing reality. When US interests are challenged, it resorts to coups—soft or hard. It prefers banks over tanks, but ultimately it will do whatever is necessary to maintain imperialist control.

While Puerto Rico is under direct colonial rule, much of Latin America faces neocolonial domination. How do these models operate together today?

Puerto Rico is a colony with no sovereignty, now effectively governed by a fiscal control board imposed by the US Congress. Appointed under Obama and maintained by subsequent administrations, this unelected body can veto budgets and policies. Its priority is not social well-being, but debt repayment—most of it owed to Wall Street hedge funds.

This structure enforces privatization: electricity, education, and public services. Environmental protections are also under attack. But colonialism works by degrees. A country can be formally independent and still be coerced through debt, IMF pressure, financial blackmail, economic war, etc.

Chile’s water privatization after the Pinochet coup is one example. Haiti is another—it is formally independent, yet occupied and burdened with illegitimate debt. Elsewhere, intervention comes through NGOs, the National Endowment for Democracy, election interference, or direct coups, as in Honduras in 2009.

In Venezuela, when the right wing loses elections, the US cries fraud. When it wins, there is silence. This selective logic serves as justification for sanctions, isolation, and ultimately military threats.

The US justifies its military buildup in the Caribbean using anti-drug rhetoric. What does this narrative conceal?

Historically, Washington claimed to be fighting communism. Later, it was terrorism. Now the target is supposedly drugs. Yet it is widely known that drug demand is driven by the United States itself, and that many of its closest allies have been deeply involved in drug trafficking. It’s allowed as long as they remain politically obedient.

Meanwhile, fisherfolk across the Caribbean are targeted and killed under the pretext of drug interdiction, without evidence and without inspections. This is not about drugs. It is about control.

Most people understand this, even within the United States. The real objective is hemispheric domination and control over strategic resources—above all, Venezuelan oil.

Puerto Rico has a long history of resistance to militarization. How do those struggles connect today with Venezuela and the broader region?

Puerto Rico has consistently resisted US militarism. The struggle against US Navy bombings in Vieques was long and difficult, but it ended in a victory: the base was shut down. Although the land has yet to be fully cleaned up or returned to the community, the pueblo won that battle.

The same anti-militarist, independentista, and socialist forces that fought in Vieques continue to resist today, grounded in the understanding that Puerto Rico is part of the Caribbean and Latin America. Simón Bolívar himself insisted that his liberation project would remain incomplete without Cuba and Puerto Rico.This struggle is far from over. It will not be complete until Puerto Rico is free and can stand alongside Venezuela, Cuba, and other pueblos of the region in a hemisphere that truly belongs to its people—free, just, and sovereign.