‘Our oil’: Venezuela, Trump and the brutal logic of 21st century imperialism
Republished from Alternative Viewpoint.
On January 3, 2026, a long-brewing rupture in the post–Second World War order became explicit when the United States launched a military operation in Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro. This moment is significant not only because it violates international law, but also because imperial intent was articulated with unprecedented clarity. For decades, the moralistic language of democracy, human rights, and humanitarianism shrouded U.S. interventions in the Global South, concealing their underlying logic of dominance. Trump’s intervention eliminated these covert tactics. Declaring that “very large oil companies” would rebuild Venezuela and profit from “our oil”, he spoke in the language of possession rather than partnership, marking a moment when the empire no longer felt obliged to justify itself ideologically.
This action is a result of structural pressures, not solely due to the actions of one individual. The decline of US economic dominance, the ever-growing US-China geopolitical competition and the historical subjugation of Latin America as an area of extraction and strategic control created a point of convergence for these structural forces. The Bolivarian movement had previously created a glimmer of hope around the globe for the left, until it began to unravel under the Maduro regime due to the combination of extreme dependence upon oil revenue, an inability to diversify the economy and a growing reliance upon military loyalty instead of popular consent, leading to a state of built-in vulnerability. This phenomenon is evidenced by Venezuela, a nation severely damaged by years of economic mismanagement, international sanctions and a continued decline in political legitimacy.
The dual reality of external assault and internal collapse presents a profound dilemma for the left. Opposing U.S. intervention is necessary, but doing so without analysing the internal limits of the Maduro regime risks reducing politics to reflexive allegiance. The arrest of Maduro did not signal the end of a revolutionary movement; instead, it represented a critical juncture, underscoring the intrinsic weaknesses of a system dependent on commodity booms and incapable of sustaining democratic or social authority in the face of evolving external conditions.
In this story of imperial aggression, we have to examine the audacious revival of the Monroe Doctrine, the material and geopolitical limits of oil as a source of revenue, the contrasting eras of Chávez and Maduro; and the structural collapse of the Venezuelan state and military. Above all, it argues that the left must respond with clarity: opposing imperialism while reconstructing social power, deepening participatory structures, and addressing the internal contradictions that have historically undermined sovereignty. Venezuela today is both a victim and a warning: a lesson in the dangers of dependence, the fragility of redistribution without structural transformation and the imperative for anti-imperialist strategy rooted in working-class power.
Trump-era US imperialism
Donald Trump’s declaration that the United States would send oil companies to “fix” Venezuelan infrastructure and extract profits encapsulates more than rhetoric—it embodies a new phase of imperial governance where military might, corporate interests, and geopolitical ambition converge openly. The logic was straightforward: sovereignty is secondary to the imperatives of extraction and strategic control. In this, Trump did not depart from the historical pattern of U.S. imperialism; he simply stripped away the ideological veneer that traditionally accompanied it. This shift must be understood within the context of a changing global order. The United States, while still militarily dominant, is experiencing a strong challenge to its economic and technological supremacy. China is increasingly challenging trade and investment flows, undermining its industrial base, and straining traditional alliances. In this setting, coercion is replacing consent. The intervention in Venezuela illustrates this transition: the empire is now less focused on fostering cooperation or leveraging local proxies and more intent on ensuring compliance through the direct application of force. The phrase “our oil” shows not only arrogance but also an awareness of structural insecurity. Imperial power no longer trusts global norms, multilateral institutions, or ideological persuasion to get what it wants. Behind this posture stands a recognisable social bloc: energy capital intent on securing reserves, defence corporations dependent on continuous conflict, and logistics and construction firms, for whom occupation itself becomes a field of accumulation.
By framing the intervention as a business operation, Trump collapsed the traditional divide between violence and profit. Military occupation, infrastructure reconstruction, and resource extraction are no longer separate domains—they are integrated instruments of accumulation. Such an arrangement represents a departure from the versions of imperialism, which relied on proxy governments, economic coercion and conditional aid. Now, the United States openly entertains the direct management of foreign territory, treating the Venezuelan state not as a sovereign partner but as a resource to be appropriated. Military-backed corporate operations render local political actors, previously considered indispensable intermediaries, optional.
Yet the intervention is not only about immediate extraction. It serves as a demonstration of imperial capacity, designed to send a warning to the region: defiance of U.S. interests will be met with coercion, not negotiation. Venezuela functions as a laboratory for a new hemispheric order, where sovereignty is conditional and resistance is criminalised. The structural logic behind Trump’s posture also reflects internal pressures within the U.S. capitalist system. Slowing global growth, market volatility, and intensified competition for energy resources create incentives for direct appropriation. Military force becomes a tool for securing assets that cannot be reliably obtained through trade or diplomacy. Yet this strategy is inherently unstable: occupation can provoke resistance, administrative overreach can inflate costs, and reliance on coercion undermines the legitimacy necessary for long-term control. The Venezuelan case thus exposes a fundamental tension in contemporary imperialism: capacity for force exists, but the capacity for sustainable governance is limited. Imperial rhetoric presents simplicity, but material and political realities remain complex and costly.
Revival of the Monroe Doctrine
The intervention in Venezuela on January 3 is not an isolated act of aggression; it is the actual revival of a doctrine that has shaped U.S.–Latin American relations for more than 200 years: the Monroe Doctrine. Articulated in 1823, it positioned the Western Hemisphere as a U.S.-protected sphere, warning European powers against intervention. Historically, it functioned less as a legal principle than as a strategic claim: Latin America was to remain subordinated to U.S. geopolitical and economic interests. Under Trump, this doctrine has resurfaced with unprecedented bluntness, stripped even of the veiled language of diplomacy, multilateralism, or ideological pretext.
For most of its history, the Monroe Doctrine operated indirectly. Coups, covert operations, economic pressure, and proxy regimes allowed Washington to dominate regional politics while preserving the formal appearance of sovereignty. During the Cold War, support for military dictatorships, conditional aid, and covert sabotage enabled efficient control, often framed in moralistic terms—from anti-communism to the defence of democracy. Sovereignty was nominally respected while materially hollowed out.
Trump’s intervention in Venezuela marks a decisive break from this indirect model. His National Security Doctrine explicitly frames the hemisphere as a U.S. sphere of influence, leaving no ambiguity about autonomy or external presence. The conditionality of sovereignty—previously masked by diplomatic language—is now openly codified: deviation from U.S. strategic or economic priorities is treated as hostility. Latin American states are no longer junior partners or managed allies; they are objects of enforcement, with political legitimacy contingent on compliance. The Monroe Doctrine thus shifts from a strategic warning to an operational blueprint for unilateral intervention.
Venezuela functions as the testing ground for this revived doctrine. The intervention demonstrates that defiance, even when articulated through popular sovereignty or anti-imperialist rhetoric, can trigger direct military and economic coercion. The objective is not merely regime change but precedent-setting: resistance invites occupation, resource seizure, and geopolitical subordination. The message to the region is clear—we will punish autonomous policies, diversified alliances, or independent economic strategies.
Several structural factors accelerate this shift. Expanding Chinese investment across Latin America—particularly in energy, infrastructure, and mining—has eroded the U.S.’s uncontested dominance. Even where such engagement remains limited in scale, its strategic significance is profound. The Trump administration interprets these footholds as challenges to hemispheric control, with Venezuela’s oil reserves and strategic location making it the primary site for forceful reassertion. The revived Monroe Doctrine is therefore both a continuation of historical domination and a response to intensifying global competition.
Unlike earlier periods, this revival carries no promise for development, modernisation, or regional integration. It is no longer framed as benevolent hegemony or pan-American cooperation but as coercion: compliance in exchange for protection, defiance in exchange for punishment. By discarding the ideological veneers of democracy, human rights, or anti-corruption, Trump’s doctrine exposes imperial power in its rawest form—territorial and resource domination enforced by military capacity.
The consequences extend well beyond Venezuela. Open coercion destabilises regional politics, militarises domestic governance, and renders institutions such as the Organization of American States largely irrelevant. Even compliant elites recognise the danger: a hemisphere governed by force alone is inherently unstable, prone to cycles of resentment, unrest, and conflict. At a global level, the message is clear—sovereignty is conditional, international law is subordinate to power, and imperial aggression is no longer exceptional but normalised. Venezuela is not an anomaly; it is a warning of a broader descent into unapologetic power politics.
Chávez era, Maduro era
A thorough understanding of Venezuela’s crisis requires distinguishing between two distinct historical periods: the Chávez era (1999–2013) and the Maduro era (2013–2026). Collapsing these periods into a single narrative obscures the material and structural conditions that made the Bolivarian project viable initially and explains why it became untenable under Maduro. This is not merely a question of personal leadership or political competence, but of economic foundations, social legitimacy, and institutional resilience.
Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela benefited from a historically exceptional conjuncture. The global commodity supercycle of the 2000s, driven in large part by Chinese demand for oil, pushed prices to unprecedented heights. For an economy overwhelmingly dependent on petroleum exports, this generated a massive inflow of rents. Chávez used these resources to finance expansive social programs: subsidies for housing, healthcare, and education, wage increases, and programs aimed at empowering the historically marginalised. These policies materially improved the lives of millions, anchoring the Bolivarian project in genuine popular support. The working class and poor were not merely passive recipients but participants in a broader project of social redistribution, creating a coalition that gave Chávez significant legitimacy.
Yet even at its peak, Chávez’s model rested on a fragile foundation. Redistribution was almost entirely dependent on oil rents, while the underlying economic structure remained largely untransformed. Non-oil sectors remained underdeveloped, productive diversification was minimal, and private capital retained control over most production. The state functioned primarily as a distributor of oil wealth rather than a planner or regulator of long-term investment. This meant that the system’s stability was contingent on sustained high oil prices and continued access to rents — conditions external to domestic political action.
The death of Chávez in 2013 coincided with a collapse in global oil prices, exposing the fragility of the rent-based model. Nicolás Maduro inherited not only a deteriorating economic situation but also a political apparatus dependent on continuous redistribution to maintain legitimacy. Unlike Chávez, Maduro faced structural constraints that severely limited his policy options. The social coalition that had supported the Bolivarian project was increasingly disillusioned as living standards declined, hyperinflation eroded wages, and shortages became widespread.
Maduro’s response marked a qualitative departure from Chávez’s approach. Rather than reconstructing popular participation or transforming the productive base, the state increasingly relied on coercion and administrative control. The military became central to regime survival, enjoying economic privileges, access to subsidised goods, and control over lucrative sectors. The broader working-class base, once empowered and politically engaged, was marginalised, with social programs functioning more as mechanisms of political compliance than as instruments of empowerment. In effect, Maduro substituted class-based support with military loyalty, hollowing out the social and political foundations of the Bolivarian project.
This transformation had multiple consequences. First, it weakened the capacity of Venezuelan society to resist external aggression. In principle, a politically mobilised populace could serve as a check on imperialist encroachment, but Maduro had largely disengaged this social base. Second, it amplified internal contradictions: reliance on oil rents and military patronage left the economy and state vulnerable to shocks, whether from sanctions, price fluctuations, or foreign intervention. Third, it reinforced the corporatisation of the state, transforming institutions that had once facilitated popular participation into tools for managing scarcity and preserving elite control.
It is crucial to note that these internal failures do not absolve external aggression. U.S. intervention, sanctions, and geopolitical pressure compounded the crisis, but they did not create the structural fragility that allowed the Venezuelan state to collapse so rapidly. The Bolivarian system, built on oil rents and charismatic leadership, required continuous popular engagement and economic diversification — conditions that were weakened over time. The Maduro era shows that redistribution without change can’t keep legitimacy during a long-term crisis and that relying on narrow institutional mechanisms, like military loyalty, makes a country vulnerable to both internal collapse and external pressure.
In short, Chávez and Maduro governed under different structural and historical conditions. Chávez operated during a period of extraordinary resource inflows that allowed for meaningful, albeit temporary, redistribution and the construction of popular legitimacy. Maduro inherited a weakened economy, declining rents, and an eroded social base, leading to a reliance on coercion, bureaucratic control, and military patronage. The Bolivarian project’s collapse under Maduro was therefore not accidental; it was structurally produced, reflecting the perils of resource dependence, limited economic diversification, and the hollowing-out of popular power. Recognising this distinction is essential for understanding the Venezuelan crisis and for formulating strategies that link anti-imperialist struggle with the reconstruction of genuine social and political empowerment.
Crude oil: Politics precedes economy
While President Trump presented Venezuelan oil as an immediate windfall for the United States, this claim is far more rhetorical than economic. Venezuela does possess the world’s largest proven oil reserves — around 303 billion barrels — but the assumption that military conquest can be smoothly converted into profit ignores deep structural constraints. What appears on paper as an irresistible prize is, in practice, technologically complex, politically risky, and economically uncertain.
Years of underinvestment, mismanagement, and political turmoil have severely degraded Venezuela’s oil infrastructure. Pipelines, refineries, and extraction facilities require massive capital infusion simply to restore basic functionality. Moreover, most Venezuelan crude is extra-heavy oil concentrated in the Orinoco Belt. Unlike light crude or U.S. shale, it demands complex processing, specialised refining, and continuous technological maintenance. These conditions make rapid profitability unlikely even for the largest and most experienced energy corporations, with upfront costs vastly exceeding the “billions” promised rhetorically.
Global market conditions further constrain profitability. By 2026, oversupply, slowing demand growth, and an accelerating energy transition characterise the oil markets. Benchmark prices remain relatively low, barely sustaining U.S. shale operations, while the technical and logistical challenges of Venezuelan heavy crude sharply reduce margins. Restoring production to even modest levels would require sustained investment running into the hundreds of billions, confirming that Venezuelan oil is not a short-term revenue source but a long-term, high-risk project.
Extraction is also inseparable from politics. Securing oil production would require continuous military and administrative controls to protect infrastructure, discipline labour, and suppress resistance. Trade unions, local communities, and sabotage risks ensure that extraction cannot be treated as a purely technical or commercial operation; it is a political process enforced through coercion.
For these reasons, Venezuelan oil functions less as an immediate economic windfall than as a geopolitical instrument. Control over reserves is primarily about strategic leverage: denying rivals — especially China — access to resources and reasserting U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere. Possession, despite limited direct profits, signals authority and reshapes regional power relations. Trump’s use of the phrase “our oil” serves as an ideological justification, hiding the fact that the intervention is motivated by control and subordination rather than quick profits.
This gap between rhetoric and material reality carries broader implications. Military aggression is framed as economic necessity, generating public support for ventures that are strategically risky and economically dubious. The left’s main concern is not just who benefits from extraction, but also who has power, who sets the rules, and who pays the social costs. Venezuelan oil is technologically difficult, politically contested, and economically precarious, yet symbolically central to imperial dominance. The anti-imperialist strategy must therefore focus less on resource arithmetic and more on sovereignty, popular mobilisation, and the reconstruction of social power.
Silence of the army and collapse of the state
One of the most striking features of the January 3, 2026, U.S. intervention was the conspicuous silence of Venezuela’s military. The armed forces’ inaction was not simply a matter of fear, incompetence, or poor leadership; it was the product of a profound political and institutional transformation that decoupled the military from the revolutionary and social bases it once defended. To understand this silence, it is necessary to situate the armed forces historically—from their politicised role under Chávez to their corporatised function under Maduro— and to see how these changes intersect with the broader collapse of state legitimacy.
Hugo Chávez saw the military as a politically aware and socially integrated part of the Bolivarian Revolution. Officers and soldiers were trained to see themselves as part of a broader collective mission: the defence of national sovereignty, popular redistribution, and the revolutionary project itself. Their loyalty was tied not merely to the abstract notion of the state but to the active participation of the people and to the material improvements that Bolivarian policies provided. The 2002 coup attempt demonstrated this alignment; segments of the armed forces mobilised decisively to restore Chávez, signalling that a politicised military could actively counter both domestic elites and foreign aggression. Institutional authority and popular legitimacy were intertwined, and the military functioned as both protector and enabler of the revolutionary social project.
By contrast, under Nicolás Maduro, this relationship underwent a decisive transformation. The military has increasingly become a self-contained, corporatised pillar of the state rather than a socially rooted force. Officers gained privileged access to markets, loans, property, and state-controlled resources. Their material interests became the primary guarantee of loyalty, rather than ideological commitment or connection to the populace. The armed forces were no longer vehicles of mass empowerment but instruments of administrative and political survival, insulated from the hardships and mobilisations of ordinary citizens. Political allegiance shifted from revolutionary ideals to bureaucratic and economic incentives, establishing a hierarchy in which the military itself became a beneficiary of the system it was charged with defending.
This depoliticisation had immediate consequences during the U.S. intervention. When confronted with a foreign military incursion and the kidnapping of President Maduro, the military defaulted to caution and inaction. The structures of authority upon which they had relied — state institutions, bureaucratic hierarchies, and personal privilege — remained intact, but the moral and political imperative to resist was absent. Their silence was not necessarily cowardice; it reflected a structural reality: the decoupling of state power from popular legitimacy had left them without a clear social or ideological mandate to act. The state itself had hollowed out the institutional connections that once aligned military action with societal defence.
The implications of this silence are profound. The Venezuelan state, already weakened by mismanagement, corruption, and a narrow economic base, now faces a legitimacy crisis that cannot be remedied by reinstating a single leader. Legal frameworks, constitutions, and formal institutions lose functional meaning when the coercive arm of the state — the military — is neither ideologically aligned with the populace nor capable of autonomous enforcement. In practice, the presence or absence of external forces, rather than domestic political authority, becomes the determining factor for sovereignty. Social trust diminishes, civil society is restricted, and the ability for spontaneous, collective resistance is significantly impaired.
The military’s inaction, on the other hand, shows how limited foreign intervention can be. The hollowing out of local institutions prevents even overwhelming U.S. military power from translating into sustainable governance. Occupation or coercion may secure short-term compliance, but it cannot substitute for social legitimacy, popular participation, or functional governance. The U.S. can remove a leader, control resources, or enforce submission, but it cannot rebuild political consent from the outside. In this sense, the silence of the Venezuelan armed forces is both a symptom of systemic collapse and a restraining factor against immediate, potentially catastrophic confrontation.
This situation teaches the left an important lesson. Defence against imperial aggression must account for the social and institutional foundations of power, not merely the military balance of forces. A politically hollowed state is vulnerable not only to external coercion but also to internal dysfunction. Strategies of resistance must therefore focus on rebuilding popular institutions, revitalising social accountability, and reconnecting state power with working-class organisations. The Venezuelan crisis demonstrates that sovereignty is inseparable from social legitimacy; without it, even nominally independent states can be rendered impotent in the face of external threats.
Erosion of popular support
The erosion of popular support under Nicolás Maduro is central to understanding Venezuela’s dual vulnerability: internal fragility compounded by external aggression. Under Hugo Chávez, the Bolivarian Project rested on a broad social coalition linking working-class communities, marginalised groups, and grassroots organisations through redistribution, participatory structures, and tangible improvements in living conditions. High oil revenues and Chávez’s political authority sustained this arrangement, anchoring the project in real popular legitimacy rather than symbolic allegiance.
Under Maduro, this foundation steadily unravelled. Venezuela’s structural dependence on oil, combined with falling prices, hyperinflation, and collapsing living standards, eroded the material basis of support. Social programmes became bureaucratic and politically mediated rather than empowering, while scarcity pushed communities into survival strategies that constrained collective mobilisation. The promise of participation gave way to the management of the crisis, replacing political engagement with administrative control.
The government’s increasing reliance on the military for political survival exacerbated this erosion. Officers became key beneficiaries of state-controlled resources, credit systems, and logistical monopolies, securing loyalty through material privilege rather than ideological commitment. The result was a widening divide between a protected security apparatus and an increasingly impoverished population. Bureaucratic regulation and coercion displaced active social consent, weakening the mechanisms that once underpinned popular resilience.
Partial neoliberal changes made the project even less coherent. Concessions to private capital, tacit accommodations for foreign investment in oil, and limited market liberalisation signalled a retreat from participatory and redistributive principles. Trade unions and community councils lost influence as top-down management replaced grassroots control, contributing to declining organisational and political initiative at the base.
These dynamics decisively shaped the response to U.S. intervention. The hollowing out of the institutional and material links that enable collective action, not apathy, muted popular mobilisation. Legitimacy had weakened, leaving the state exposed to both external coercion and internal disillusionment. The crisis intensified due to sanctions and military pressure, which exacerbated already structurally embedded vulnerabilities.
Therefore, we cannot reduce Maduro’s criticisms to personal failure. They reflect contradictions inherent in a project dependent on a single commodity, partial redistribution, and limited institutional democratisation. By prioritising military loyalty, bureaucratic control, and market accommodation, the government fragmented the social base that once sustained the revolution, leaving it insufficiently empowered to resist imperial encroachment.
For the left, the implications are clear. Opposing U.S. aggression does not require uncritical defence of the existing regime, nor can internal critique be detached from the reality of imperial threat. Rebuilding popular power — through revitalised community councils, labour organisation, and participatory structures — is essential to restoring sovereignty. Without the reconstruction of grassroots legitimacy, resistance remains fragile, and the state is vulnerable to both domination from without and disintegration from within.
The task of the left
The Venezuelan crisis confronts the left not with a menu of tactical choices, but with the consequences of a long historical impasse. The convergence of open U.S. imperial aggression and the internal hollowing-out of the Bolivarian project has produced a moment of exposure: sovereignty without social power collapses under pressure, while resistance stripped of popular legitimacy cannot be sustained. This is not a dilemma that can be resolved by rhetorical alignment or selective silence. It compels us to examine the ways we have practiced, defended, and often postponed anti-imperialist politics.
The U.S. assault on Venezuela — the military seizure, the open claim over oil, the revival of the Monroe Doctrine in its naked form — marks a qualitative shift. Latin America is no longer disciplined primarily through diplomacy, proxies, or conditional aid, but through the direct assertion of force. To normalise this as “geopolitical necessity” is to accept the demotion of sovereignty to a privilege granted by empire. For the left, opposition to this intervention is not a matter of loyalty to a government but of defending the possibility of autonomous social development against a precedent that threatens the entire continent.
However, external pressure alone cannot explain away the collapse of popular mobilisation in Venezuela. The erosion of participatory structures, the substitution of military loyalty for social consent, and the accommodation to market mechanisms fractured the very base that once sustained resistance. When sovereignty became concentrated in institutions detached from mass participation, it became vulnerable to seizure. This is not a moral indictment but a historical lesson: redistribution without durable popular power cannot withstand prolonged crisis, sanctions, or force.
What the Venezuelan experience reveals is not simply the brutality of imperialism but the limits of defensive politics that treat state power as a substitute for social organisation. Without active, organised, and self-confident working-class forces, anti-imperialism becomes reactive, brittle, and dependent more on leadership than collective capacity. The silence that followed the intervention was not only imposed from outside; it was produced internally, through the gradual dismantling of the mechanisms that once translated social support into political action.
The left now faces a dual danger. To oppose U.S. aggression while refusing to confront the internal failures that preceded it risks turning anti-imperialism into an empty reflex. To concentrate on those failures while excluding imperial violence constitutes complicity in subjugation. The Venezuelan crisis exposes the cost of separating these questions. Declarations and institutions alone cannot defend sovereignty, but the density of social power beneath them does.
Venezuela therefore stands not only as a victim but also as a warning. It warns against the illusion that control over resources can compensate for the erosion of democratic participation. It warns against substituting military or bureaucratic stability for popular legitimacy. And it warns that imperialism today no longer waits for ideological cover: it advances where resistance has been structurally weakened. Whether this moment becomes a precedent or a turning point depends less on diplomatic outcomes than on whether the left is willing to draw the full lessons of this defeat — and to rebuild, from below, the social forces without which sovereignty cannot survive.
Sankha Subhra Biswas is an Editorial Board Member of Alternative Viewpoint.
