{"id":50746,"date":"2025-09-14T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/?p=50746"},"modified":"2025-09-15T06:04:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T09:04:40","slug":"venezuela-the-attack-shaking-the-hemisphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/venezuela-the-attack-shaking-the-hemisphere\/","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela: the attack shaking the hemisphere"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On the 3rd<\/sup> of September, the United States launched a naval strike off the coast of Venezuela, killing eleven individuals whom Washington had identified as drug traffickers. Concurrently, President Donald Trump also announced a $50 million bounty on President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and ordered an additional naval surge in the region, presenting the move as part of an anti-narcotics campaign. But this framing conceals a much deeper reality: this is the most dramatic demonstration yet of Washington\u2019s return to unilateral military coercion\u2014occurring at a time when the liberal international order lies in disarray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This attack is not an isolated episode. It represents the culmination of overlapping trends: Venezuela\u2019s internal collapse, the erosion of multilateral constraints on U.S. power, and the resurgence of a worldview that equates might with right. Indeed, it signals that the norms that shaped international politics after 1945 now hang by a thread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Crisis of Venezuela\u2019s Own Making<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be sure, Venezuela\u2019s situation is largely self-inflicted. Once a showcase of Latin American prosperity, the country fell victim to its own overdependence on hydrocarbons. When oil prices plummeted during the 2010s and production faltered under severe mismanagement, economic fundamentals collapsed. Hyperinflation reached astronomical levels, and essential goods vanished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The humanitarian consequences have been catastrophic. More than seven million Venezuelans have fled since 2015, and today, Venezuela remains in a twilight zone. Neither a failed state nor a functional one, it is a petrostate in freefall, caught between great power rivalries and criminal networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Force Remains a Mirage<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this context, Trump\u2019s resort to military action may seem decisive, but history warns otherwise. Regime change by force has proven to be a dangerous illusion. From Iraq in 2003 to Libya in 2011, interventions launched with promises of quick success ended in state collapse and prolonged chaos. The lesson is unequivocal: dismantling regimes is far easier than rebuilding nation-states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Venezuela is no exception. Its dense forests, rugged terrain, and porous borders provide ideal ground for guerrilla warfare. Armed groups\u2014from remnants of Colombia\u2019s civil war to regime-aligned militias\u2014would thrive in an insurgency, evoking the Vietnam analogy: a technologically superior power mired in the swamps of asymmetric conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond battlefield risks lies a structural vacuum. Venezuela\u2019s bureaucracy has been decimated. Technocrats and civil servants have fled. The opposition, fragmented and discredited, lacks both credibility and institutional capacity. Removing Maduro without a credible plan for postwar governance would ignite civil war, deepen anarchy and require prolonged foreign occupation\u2014likely funded by Venezuela\u2019s oil reserves\u2014perpetuating the resource curse under a new guise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is precisely the nightmare outlined by analysts such as Sean Burges and Fabr\u00edcio Bastos, who warned back in 2018 that intervention would \u201cwaste valuable time\u201d while worsening institutional fragility. They emphasized that Maduro\u2019s survival rests on elite-military pacts\u2014disrupting these could plunge Venezuela into even deeper violence. And even if regime change were to succeed, the absence of institutions implies that reconstruction would necessitate decades of sustained external control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sovereignty Taboo and Regional Backlash<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, Latin America\u2019s diplomatic DNA is steeped in the principle of non-intervention. This is not an abstract ideal\u2014it reflects a collective historical memory of U.S. occupations, from early 20th-century interventions in the Caribbean to covert operations throughout the Cold War. The Organization of American States (OAS) has repeatedly rejected endorsing regime change driven from abroad, to avoid setting a precedent that could justify interference elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if Washington sought to project a fa\u00e7ade of regional leadership, the reality is clear\u2014no Latin American state possesses the logistical depth or strategic expertise to spearhead a mission of that scale. The United States would retain operational control and bear responsibility for the inevitable quagmire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Putin Parallel and Trump\u2019s Contradictions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk of military intervention also lays bare a glaring hypocrisy. Washington condemned Vladimir Putin\u2019s 2022 invasion of Ukraine as a violation of national sovereignty, yet now replicates the same logic. The rhetorical parallels are inescapable\u2014Trump frames Venezuela as an existential \u201cnarcoterrorist\u201d threat\u2014chillingly similar to Putin\u2019s February 2022 speech describing Ukraine as an artificial entity and a danger to Russian security. Both narratives dress raw power and neo-imperialism in the garb of necessity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The irony deepens with Trump and Putin\u2019s recent meeting in Alaska. Far from signaling firmness against authoritarian revanchism, the summit leaned towards a position of accommodation toward Moscow internationally. This, as Washington resorts to aggression in its own hemisphere. Trump\u2019s flirtation with Putin in his first term\u2014along with his attacks on NATO and delays in supplying military aid\u2014cruelly undermined Ukraine. Today he risks imposing a Kremlin-dictated peace on Kyiv while violently intervening in Venezuela\u2014and possibly soon, as he has ominously hinted at in recent months, in Panama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Great Dismantling<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The belligerent strikes of the 3rd<\/sup> of September merely exemplify Trump\u2019s systematic dismantling of liberal internationalism. Over two terms, multilateral partnerships have been destroyed, human rights offices shuttered and governance turned into a blunt instrument of coercion. Diplomacy has given way to arbitrary deals and tariffs. Persuasion, to open force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What emerges is a world unmoored from the normative anchors of the post-1945 order\u2014a world where sovereignty is negotiable, law is malleable, and might is right. In this sense, Venezuela may now stand as the gravestone of that old order\u2014an era in which the United States, once its chief architect, embraces the ethos of revisionism it once claimed to oppose. The future is not anarchic but hierarchical\u2014a system of spheres of influence ruled by brute force, transactional bargains, and fading ideals of human rights and collective security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The art of the deal? No\u2014an age of impunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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