What the U.S. Attack on Venezuela Means: The Geopolitics of Power
The article was originally published on the portal Mašina.
Some things align in strange ways. A conversation with Dejan Mihailović, a philosopher and political scientist who lives and works in Mexico City as a professor and researcher at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, was originally planned as a discussion of political and economic dynamics in Latin America, especially Mexico. But reality imposed a different focus.
On the night between January 2 and 3, the United States carried out an act of aggression against Venezuela and kidnapped the sitting president, Nicolás Maduro.
“Unfortunately, the world is beginning 2026 with yet another flashpoint and another crisis,” Mihailović notes. “There is deep concern among Venezuelan citizens that their country has been attacked. The Charter of the United Nations has been blatantly violated, particularly Articles 1 and 2, which concern the sovereignty of member states. Once again, we are witnessing a textbook case of a flagrant breach of international law and a threat to the security of a sovereign country.”
There is no doubt that what is currently happening in Venezuela reflects the state of the world. Major powers no longer even bother to justify their actions with carefully packaged narratives. We are living in a kind of Wild West, a world governed by the law of the stronger.
“Of course, there is the narrative about drugs, about the ‘war on drugs,’ and even about migration, but all of that largely serves as a smokescreen,” Mihailović says. Has that narrative successfully legitimized the intervention? It would seem not. But most states will remain silent, or at best voice mild disapproval.
For the people of Venezuela, the key question now is: what comes after Maduro?
“One possible scenario is that Vice President Delcy Rodríguez assumes the presidency on an interim basis. That would be the internal dimension, at least. However, the overthrow of Maduro is, in essence, a settling of accounts with the remnants of the Chavista regime. What concerns me most personally is the possibility of an internal escalation of conflict, where there is now a very real risk of a civil war breaking out,” Mihailović explains.
In his view, Washington would look favourably on such an outcome for a certain period of time, at least as long as stability in energy markets and the export of Venezuelan oil are not threatened.
The kidnapping of Maduro is just one episode in the decades-long relationship between the United States and Venezuela.
“Ever since 1998, when Hugo Chávez came to power, you have had a very interesting project of ‘socialism for the 21st century’ that went beyond the framework of the nation-state. That project was not realized to the extent Chávez and his closest associates had envisioned. Still, it was a thorn in Washington’s side precisely because, all of a sudden, in a Latin American country – one that is not small, given its population, resources, territory, and influence – there emerged a project that politicized the population and brought politics closer to ordinary people. The idea was to involve people, to make them aware of their rights, to develop mechanisms of a stable civil society within a democratic environment, without a trace of authoritarianism. That bothered Washington because it could produce a domino effect, which, in fact, did happen in the region,” Mihailović says.
Under Chávez, Venezuela’s foreign policy shifted toward strengthening ties among countries in the region, as well as creating new international trade agreements without Washington’s tutelage. The formation of regional organizations such as UNASUR, CELAC, and ALBA represented one of Latin America’s most ambitious attempts to break out of the logic of dependent integration and to articulate its own political, economic, and geopolitical space. Unlike earlier forms of regional cooperation, which were largely instruments of market liberalization, these organizations had a clear political dimension. Their essence was not merely free trade, but joint political action, coordination of foreign policies, the exchange of resources, and the construction of regional autonomy.
ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) was the most radical project within this framework, a direct alternative to the ALCA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), which Washington promoted as a continental extension of the NAFTA model. While the ALCA implied deepening neoliberal dependency and strengthening the power of transnational capital, ALBA offered a model of integration based on solidarity, complementarity, and social needs. That is precisely why these projects were perceived as a threat to U.S. hegemony: they demonstrated that emancipatory regional integration on the periphery was possible.
“Perhaps the most important element was the fact that Venezuela acted as a sovereign country with its own foreign policy, one that consistently denounced neo-imperialist and neoliberal projects that threaten global security. There is that famous Chávez speech at the UN General Assembly, when he says that ‘it smells of sulfur here,’ alluding to the presence of George W. Bush. In that sense, Venezuela launched numerous initiatives aimed at curbing the influence of U.S. foreign policy through unilateral military interventions,” Mihailović emphasizes.
Chávez’s rise to power marked the beginning of the “Pink Tide” in Latin America, which enabled Lula da Silva’s first term in Brazil, as well as the rise of the Movement for Socialism in Bolivia under Evo Morales. In Ecuador, Rafael Correa won the presidency, and in Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega returned to power.
“That was a serious problem for Washington. And it became even more serious when Washington realized that it was possible, at the same time, to have progressive, left-leaning governments in three key Latin American countries that would not blindly submit to Washington’s dictates. That partially happened at a moment when you had Alberto Fernández in Argentina, Lula da Silva in Brazil, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico,” Mihailović says.
In recent years, we have seen a wave of right-wing advances in Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, and Ecuador, and now the violent overthrow of Maduro, along with enormous pressure on Nicaragua and Cuba and potentially also on Colombia and Mexico. When we look at the broader picture, it becomes clear that the attack on Venezuela is not an attack on Venezuela alone.
“What is at stake is the establishment of absolute dominance over the American continent by Washington through regime change. Regime change is merely an instrument for reasserting total control over the entire hemisphere – politically, diplomatically, and in every other sense,” Mihailović believes.
It is always worth recalling that this is also a struggle for control over resources. Venezuela has around 303 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, more than Saudi Arabia, Canada, or Iran. “The fight against narcotics has never been the real priority of any U.S. administration, from Nixon to today. The ultimate goal of this intervention is tied to the return of the United States through a renewed Monroe Doctrine from 1823. The aim is to once again fully subordinate what they have for decades, even centuries, called their ‘patio trasero,’ their backyard, to Washington,” Mihailović concludes.