“The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.”
― Simon Bolivar
The events in Venezuela at the start of 2026 make plain what many prefer to ignore, the empire does not act gently, and it does not act apologetically, makes no attempt at neutrality, nor does it seek refuge behind the acrimony, ceremonial language of objectivity. It speaks instead from the heart of judgment, tempered by the long memory of history and the quiet insistence of observation, carrying with it the bitter taste of indignation at the hubris, the violence, and the moral erosion that have come to define empire. In those first days of January, 2026, as news filtered slowly across the world, Venezuela became the stage upon which these forces acted with terrible clarity. What happened was no accident, no confusion, no miscalculation of benevolent intent. It was the exercise of power in its purest and most unrelenting form, a demonstration of how an empire moves, not with apology or hesitation, but with the certainty of one accustomed to command.
Barely three days into the new year, reports arrived of American planes moving across Venezuelan skies, engines humming like a distant, ominous drum, and within hours, the voice of Donald Trump announced the removal of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their country, as if it were an everyday event, a matter of routine administration. Kidnapped, taken from the land they had been chosen to serve, by a foreign power, with a casualness that belied the gravity of the act. The familiar phrases of Washington, counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, stabilization offered no disguise; the truth was stark, a coup made visible, proclaimed openly and without shame.
Instantly, this was no sudden eruption, no violent whim. It had been prepared, patiently and deliberately, through months of measures designed to weaken, isolate, and humiliate. Maduro’s third inauguration, in the chill of January 2025, was treated not as a political reality, but as a provocation demanding redress. In April, tariffs were imposed, twenty-five percent upon all Venezuelan trade, a weight pressed upon a people already burdened by circumstance. Accusations followed, flimsy and unproven, claiming support for the Tren de Aragua, swiftly designated by Washington as a “foreign terrorist organization.” By September, American naval forces had turned to the waters of the Caribbean, attacking Venezuelan vessels under the familiar guise of fighting drugs as a pretext so transparent that even the President later admitted it was never the true concern.
Behind these gestures lies a simpler, darker truth: Venezuela possessed what the United States could not endure being outside its influence. Oil, vast and unyielding, the largest reserves known to the world. Yet it is not a matter of need, for shale oil has made the United States largely self-sufficient; it is a matter of control, of power projected forward, of shaping the conditions under which others must live and decide, now and in the years to come. Shale may supply energy, but it cannot command influence, cannot dictate the order of the world or bend the will of rivals. Conventional reserves like Venezuela’s offer something far more potent: leverage, durability, the shaping of futures.
Empire, in truth, does not rest upon self-sufficiency. It rests upon the ability to deny, to withhold, to arrange scarcity and timing as instruments of obedience. Tariffs, sanctions, accusations, the thrum of warships as all these are not mere measures of punishment; they are the architecture of power, shaping possibility, deciding who may rise and who must wait. Venezuela’s refusal to submit was, and remains, intolerable, for it threatens the neat lines of authority that the empire requires.
In these acts, Monroe Doctrine 2.0 found its expression. The Western Hemisphere is to be a canvas for power, compliant, aligned, and circumscribed, insulated from the influence of rivals, particularly China and Russia. To control Venezuela is to assert the ordering of a hemisphere, to write in advance the conditions of sovereignty and dependence alike. And yet, the more forcefully this order is asserted, the more apparent becomes the vulnerability beneath its veneer: legitimacy cannot be imposed by threat alone, and violence, however spectacular, betrays insecurity.
Venezuela, in its tragedy, stands as both lesson and warning: power exercised without respect for law, without regard for consent, leaves behind not order but resentment, not obedience but resistance. Those who inhabit the Global South, who watch these events unfold from near and far, might see in them the contours of survival: that energy, finance, diplomacy, and trade cannot be treated as the possessions of one, but as collective instruments, capable of securing autonomy in a world where empires seek to dominate. Unfolding of the empire in Venezuela is also a story of the world that refuses to yield, a reminder that even the mightiest of powers meet their limits when confronted by the determination of those who will not bow.
Resource Sovereignty Versus Imperial Discipline
To understand the campaign against Venezuela, we must first discard the comforting fiction that U.S. foreign policy is guided by law, morality, or consistency. Such pretenses serve only domestic audiences, cloaking the naked exercise of power in the language of principle. In truth, Washington acts where it perceives its economic and geopolitical interests, and it acts decisively when these are threatened. Venezuela, with the largest proven oil reserves on Earth, represented such a challenge. Though its exports are modest and its state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), lacks the sophisticated refining capacity of global majors, its crude carries strategic weight: China has emerged as a principal customer, and in a world of tightening energy competition, control over reserves matters more than the immediacy of production. Ownership of oil is leverage; it is power deferred into the future.
Venezuela’s real transgression lies not merely in possession but in sovereignty, the audacity to determine its own destiny. When Hugo Chávez nationalized the country’s oil resources in 2001, he violated an unspoken rule of imperial order: that resource wealth should flow according to external priorities. From that moment, the Chavista project intended to convert natural wealth into social development and assert national autonomy was marked for destruction. The ensuing two decades unfolded as a blueprint of imperial discipline: repeated coup attempts, targeted sanctions, financial strangulation, legal harassment, and the systematic cultivation of opposition forces aligned with U.S. interests. Venezuela was not to be permitted an independent path; its experiment in sovereignty had to be disciplined.
The Trump administration’s 2017 sanctions crystallized this strategy into a weapon of extraordinary precision. By cutting Venezuela off from U.S. financial markets and prohibiting the purchase of its sovereign debt, Washington engineered a liquidity crisis that threatened the very survival of an oil-exporting economy. These measures were not collateral damage; they were the instrument itself. As Justin Podur has documented in Extraordinary Threat: The U.S. Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela, the aim was explicit: inflict systemic economic suffering, then displace responsibility onto the target. The principle was clear: discipline comes through deprivation, and sovereignty through punishment.
By late 2025, the logic of attrition was elevated into doctrine. The U.S. National Security Strategy, released that November, declared Washington’s intent to “reassert” control over the Western Hemisphere, invoking a revival of the Monroe Doctrine. Once a nineteenth-century declaration against European encroachment, the Doctrine in its modern guise signaled that Latin America must remain an exclusive zone of U.S. authority. Neutrality is a fiction; sovereignty is conditional. Leaders must govern according to what is acceptable to Washington, or risk becoming lessons in subjugation.
Venezuela’s alignment with Russia and China compounded its intolerability. Financial support, technological assistance, and diplomatic backing from these rising powers positioned Caracas as a locus of resistance to the U.S. order. In a world increasingly multipolar, where global influence is contested beyond the orbit of Washington, Venezuela’s defiance was tangible, symbolic, and instructive. It could not stand unpunished. To allow it autonomy would be to signal that the empire’s reach has limits, that discipline is negotiable. Control over resources, over sovereignty itself, demanded enforcement. Venezuela became both a target and a message: independence comes at a cost, and the empire tolerates no exceptions.
The campaign against Venezuela illustrates the intimate link between material resources and geopolitical authority. Oil is not merely a commodity; it is leverage, the instrument through which empires shape not only markets but political hierarchies, alliances, and the limits of what states may dare to do. Resource sovereignty, when exercised against the imperatives of empire, triggers the machinery of discipline. In Venezuela, that machinery has been deployed systematically, relentlessly, and with strategic clarity as a stark reminder that in the global order, possession alone is insufficient; the terms of possession must always defer to the demands of those who claim supremacy.
Empire and the Erasure of Sovereignty
The United States, in its conduct across the globe, has long made clear that international law is neither constraint nor guide, it is an instrument, invoked when convenient, ignored when inconvenient, and reshaped to suit the imperatives of power. The assault on Venezuela, initiated in earnest by September 2025, followed precisely this logic. Legal scholars around the world condemned it. Luis Moreno Ocampo, former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, characterized the sustained attacks as potential crimes against humanity. United Nations legal experts, echoing this judgment, declared that the operations violated both the UN Charter and the most elementary principles of state sovereignty. Yet Washington treated these observations with indifference. The United States has for decades regarded the Geneva Conventions of 1949, along with the dense web of human rights treaties they anchor, as optional appendages. The UN Charter is similarly instrumentalized: cited when expedient, ignored when it obstructs, and treated as decoration when diplomacy requires show. The lesson is consistent: rules exist for others; power excuses itself.
The instruments of coercion are manifold. The “reciprocal tariffs” announced by President Trump in April 2025 illustrate the point with particular clarity. They are a direct violation of World Trade Organization rules—rules that the United States once championed as global standard-bearer—and they stand on precarious legal ground even within U.S. domestic law, where challenges have been brought before the Supreme Court. Yet legality was never the point. Tariffs, sanctions, and financial restrictions are deployed as weapons, aimed at disciplining states that refuse to yield to Washington’s dictates. They are instruments not of justice but of obedience, deployed precisely because they can be, because they function effectively as coercive leverage in the global hierarchy.
This double standard is nowhere clearer than in U.S. policy toward Israel. There, the consistent disregard for law, human rights, and sovereignty demonstrates the principle plainly: the United States enforces law only when it coincides with its interests, otherwise offering protection, cover, and tacit consent for violations. The rights and protections promised to weaker states do not extend to those under the aegis of American alliance. Law exists to justify power, not to constrain it; the logic is simple, brutal, and systematic.
Latin America has long been a laboratory for such imperatives. The assault on Venezuela is neither an anomaly nor the inception of a new practice as it is the continuation of a long-established pattern. In 1973, U.S. intelligence agencies played a decisive role in overthrowing Salvador Allende, Chile’s democratically elected president, replacing him with Augusto Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship. In 1983, Operation Urgent Fury saw the United States invade Grenada under the pretext of protecting its citizens, yet the outcome was regime change and the death of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. In 1989, Operation Just Cause brought U.S. forces into Panama to capture Manuel Noriega, a former CIA asset turned liability who was subsequently transported, tried, and punished on U.S. soil. Each intervention violated the norms of international law. Each caused substantial civilian suffering. And each was subsequently rationalized through moralistic rhetoric that, upon scrutiny, collapsed into the plain mechanics of power.
The Venezuelan operation falls squarely into this lineage. It is not an isolated act of aggression but the latest manifestation of a strategic habit: when sovereignty conflicts with U.S. interests, it must be overridden, subordinated, or erased entirely. The United States does not negotiate; it dictates. It does not abide; it enforces. Every sanction, every legalistic fig leaf, every invocation of morality serves the same ultimate function: to discipline those who would assert independence, to ensure that global power relations remain hierarchically structured in Washington’s favor.
Empire is most transparent when it discards law and precedent. The Venezuelan case is instructive precisely because it lays bare the mechanisms of coercion, the machinery through which a global power translates capability into obedience. Tariffs, sanctions, air strikes, and kidnappings are not episodic aberrations; they are instruments calibrated to reproduce a hierarchy of dependency, to communicate that sovereignty is conditional, and that resistance comes at a cost. To observe this process is to see not disorder but design: a methodical, historically grounded enforcement of imperial will.
The United States, as a rogue power, governs not through legitimacy but through leverage. Its violations of international law are not incidental; they are systemic. Its disregard for treaty, charter, and convention is not an oversight; it is functional, an expression of structural necessity. Venezuela, in the context of these operations, is a lesson in the erasure of sovereignty, a demonstration of the principle that in a world dominated by U.S. power, legal norms, human rights, and state autonomy exist only insofar as they are convenient. The Venezuelan people, and the international system, are thus reminded that the empire tolerates no exceptions, that defiance however justified is always met with discipline, and that the sovereignty of weaker states remains provisional, contingent, and precarious.
What Comes After Venezuela?
It would be treachery to speak with certainty about what comes next. This is not a technical forecast, nor a model derived from abstract assumptions. It is observation, grounded in the long arc of historical precedent, guided by the patterns of imperial behavior and the logic of power. Certain developments, however, demand attention. Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s vice president, along with senior figures of the existing government, continues to assert Nicolás Maduro’s legitimacy and calls for resistance. They operate in the shadow of direct foreign coercion, in a context where sovereignty is neither assumed nor recognized, it is assigned. Donald Trump, for his part, has openly declared that Rodríguez has been appointed with U.S. approval and that she will do “what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again.” The language is telling. Sovereignty, here, is a privilege granted at the discretion of the powerful, not a right inherent to the state.
Trump has gone further still, acknowledging that this is not an operation against narcotics, nor even a defensive maneuver. It is regime change. Beyond rhetoric, he has explicitly indicated that U.S. oil companies will invest billions of dollars into Venezuela’s energy sector. The message is clear: the occupation of resources is enforced through coercion, backed by military power. By international law, these actions are illegal. By imperial logic, they are routine. The rule of law does not bind the powerful; it regulates the weak. Venezuela, a country rich in natural wealth and assertive in its sovereignty, has become an instructive example of this principle in action.
The global reactions to these developments have been instructive. China and Russia, whose diplomats had met Maduro only hours before the U.S. air strikes, issued rapid condemnations. Indonesia, South Korea, Chile, Spain, and other states joined in voicing concern. Yet the European Union’s response was conspicuously muted. Kaja Kallas, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, confirmed that consultations with U.S. officials had taken place, but offered no meaningful critique of the operation. One cannot help but imagine how differently Brussels would have reacted if the target had been in Eastern Europe rather than Latin America. Principles, it seems, travel poorly across geography and conveniently bend to the imperatives of alliance.
This is not merely an isolated act of aggression; it is a symptom of systemic decline. The United States lashes out not from confidence but from fear. Its economic dominance has been eroding for years. Its political authority is increasingly contested, both globally and domestically. Its narrative of a liberal, rules-based order convinces fewer with each passing year. The weapons of hegemony, sanctions, tariffs, legal manipulation, regime change have become more visibly coercive, more openly violent, more indiscriminately applied. The Empire, it seems, resorts to force when its moral and ideological claims weaken. In this context, Venezuela is not a singular target; it is a warning to all who might assert independence or resist the dictates of power.
For the countries of the Global South, this moment carries a lesson that is as old as imperialism itself: confrontation with bullying cannot be undertaken alone. Bilateral defiance invites punishment; unilateral resistance is punished with precision and brutality. Collective action, by contrast, creates space for survival. Coordination among Southern states, economic, political, and diplomatic is no longer merely aspirational. It is necessary. The task is not to replace one hegemon with another but to refuse hegemony entirely. Autonomy is inseparable from solidarity, and sovereignty, when exercised, must be defended collectively.
Resistance has never been easy, and it has never been morally untainted. But it is nonetheless imperative. Venezuela today stands not only as a victim of U.S. coercion but as a mirror held up to the international system. What it reflects is the essence of power, stripped of illusion, stripped of the moral pretenses often invoked to sanitize violence. Oil, sanctions, military deployments, legal manipulation, all these instruments are not anomalies; they are the routine mechanisms of the empire. To ignore them is to misunderstand the nature of the world order in which we live.
It is also a moment to observe the contradictions of the United States’ position. The more it asserts itself through violence, the clearer it becomes that such force is a symptom of weakness rather than strength. Hegemony cannot be maintained solely by rhetoric or historical prestige. Influence in a multipolar world requires legitimacy or, at minimum, acquiescence. When legitimacy fades, coercion intensifies. Venezuela, in defiance, exposes the vulnerability that underpins American imperialism: power is not absolute, and control is never total. Each act of aggression is as much about sending a message to others as it is about subjugating the target.
The occupation of resources, the imposition of regime change, and the selective application of international law demonstrate the structural logic of the modern empire. Sovereignty is conditional. International law is invoked to justify interventions when convenient, and ignored when inconvenient. Economic sanctions and coercive diplomacy are instruments of power rather than instruments of justice. History offers repeated confirmation: Chile in 1973, Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989, and now Venezuela in 2026. The pattern is consistent; the objective is the same: to discipline, to subordinate, and to demonstrate the consequences of independence from the dictates of power.
Ultimately, the question of what comes after Venezuela is inseparable from the broader struggle over the future of global order. The United States may continue to assert its influence with growing aggression, but the era in which unilateral coercion suffices is ending. The Global South faces a choice: accept subjugation, or develop mechanisms of collective resistance. Venezuela is at once a tragedy and a lesson, a reminder that the empire leaves no space for neutrality, that sovereignty is always provisional under domination, and that the capacity to resist is inseparable from the willingness to act together. The crunch for the world now is to recognize this truth and to refuse the illusion that power, unchecked, will inevitably prevail.
Shale and the Logic of Empire
The claim that the United States has achieved “energy independence” through shale oil has become a staple of contemporary geopolitical commentary. It is often deployed as an argument against the relevance of older imperial conflicts over oil, particularly in Latin America. If Washington can drill its way to abundance at home, so the argument goes, why would it still care about Venezuela’s reserves? The answer lies not in energy balance sheets, but in the logic of the empire itself.
Shale oil has undoubtedly transformed U.S. production figures. Through hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, the United States has become one of the world’s largest oil producers and exporters. Yet production is not power, and output is not controlled. Shale extraction is structurally fragile: wells decline rapidly, capital costs are high, debt burdens are persistent, and profitability depends on sustained price levels. When prices fall, investment collapses; when prices rise, costs rise alongside them. This boom–bust cycle makes shale an unstable foundation for long-term strategic planning.
Conventional crude oil operates on a different temporal and political logic. Large reserves can remain in the ground, extracted slowly, and mobilised when geopolitical conditions demand. They provide endurance rather than speed, leverage rather than flexibility. Venezuela’s oil matters not because the United States needs it today, but because others will need it tomorrow. In a world where much of the Global South and major industrial economies, China remain deeply dependent on imported energy, control over future supply carries immense strategic weight.
This distinction exposes the myth embedded in the rhetoric of U.S. energy independence. Independence is framed as self-sufficiency, but imperial power has never rested on meeting one’s own needs alone. It rests on the ability to shape the conditions under which others meet theirs. Oil is valuable not merely as a commodity to be consumed, but as a lever through which access can be granted, restricted, or weaponised.
Sanctions are central to this system. By financially isolating Venezuela and crippling its productive capacity, the United States has not simply punished a hostile government. It has effectively frozen the world’s largest proven oil reserves outside the global market. This artificial scarcity tightens supply, preserves future leverage, and ensures that any eventual reintegration of Venezuelan oil occurs on terms dictated by Washington. Sanctions, in this sense, are not merely punitive instruments; they are tools for managing time and scarcity.
The strategic logic becomes clearer when placed within the framework of what might be called Monroe Doctrine 2.0. The Trump administration’s explicit revival of hemispheric dominance reflects not nostalgia, but recalibration. As U.S. influence weakens in other regions, the Western Hemisphere is to be secured as a compliant resource base—politically aligned, economically subordinated, and insulated from rival powers. Venezuela’s partnerships with China and Russia render it intolerable not because they threaten U.S. oil supply, but because they challenge U.S. authority over the region’s future. Shale oil, in this context, provides domestic flexibility but not imperial discipline. It allows the United States to absorb shocks, but it does not allow it to command others. Venezuelan oil, by contrast, represents leverage over competitors and dependents alike. The former sustains production; the latter structures hierarchy.
Seen this way, regime change in Venezuela is not an irrational obsession nor a contradiction of shale abundance. It is its logical complement. As global energy competition intensifies and as energy transition narratives clash with continued fossil dependence, control over reserves becomes more, not less, important. Empire is forward-looking. It is concerned less with present sufficiency than with future constraint. Yet this strategy carries a deeper contradiction. The more openly the United States relies on coercion, sanctions, seizures, kidnappings, and the erosion of international law, the more it accelerates the loss of legitimacy that once underpinned its power. Empires at ease do not need to revive nineteenth-century doctrines or govern through brute denial. They rule through consent, or at least acquiescence. Coercion is the language of insecurity.
For the Global South, the lesson is stark. Energy dependence in a fragmented world invites domination. Collective capacity, shared infrastructure, coordinated diplomacy, and alternative financial arrangements is no longer an abstract aspiration but a condition of survival. Venezuela’s oil crisis is not an anomaly; it is a warning. The struggle over shale and crude is ultimately a struggle over who controls the future, and whether that future will be organised through cooperation or enforced through empire.
Peta Amerika Latin dengan Venezuela sebagai fokus geopolitik global
