The Revival of Monroe Doctrine and Empire in Decline
Washington's antagonistic policy towards leftist governments in Latin America, such as those in Venezuela and Cuba, operates as a modern enactment of the 1823 "Monroe Doctrine," President James Monroe's declaration that asserted the Western Hemisphere as an exclusive U.S. sphere of influence. Originally framed as a warning to European imperial powers, the Monroe Doctrine was transformed into the ideological bedrock of U.S. imperial domination in the 20th century. During the Cold War era, this doctrine was employed as a systematic campaign of overthrowing socialist and left-leaning governments in Latin America, including in Brazil (1964) and Chile (1973). The empire supported state terror through Operation Condor (1975-1983), with the singular goal of eliminating socialists and communists in Latin America. The Trump administration's revival of the Monroe Doctrine, rebranded as the "Trump Corollary," is merely old wine in a new bottle. This corollary, and the hybrid warfare it justifies against Venezuela, are the direct ideological descendants of the empire’s two-century legacy of hemispheric and global domination.
The current actions of the US empire in Venezuela and their threats to Cuba and Colombia, however, represent the desperation of an imperialist power in decline. Global industrial dominance has decisively shifted in recent times. From over half of the world's production in 1950, the U.S. now accounts for only about 17%, while China leads at nearly 30%. This trajectory points toward a 2030 landscape where the U.S. may hold a mere 11% share to China’s 45%. This economic weakening undermines Washington's ability to fund infrastructure investments that could compete with China's Belt and Road Initiative, which 21 Latin American and Caribbean countries have joined. Moreover, China has become Venezuela and broadly South America's largest trading partner, with exchanges growing from $12 billion in 2000 to over $518 billion in 2024. This economic reality makes Washington's calls for hemispheric decoupling from China impractical. The Monroe Doctrine's 200-year-old logic, which assumed U.S. industrial superiority could force markets open, is no longer tenable to the same degree owing to the relative decline of the United States as an industrial powerhouse, crumbling infrastructure, and diminished industrial capacity. Despite remaining the world's largest economy with significant technological advantages and the strongest military-industrial complex, this shift has led Washington to abandon its former economic diplomacy in favor of naked military aggression and actions such as kidnapping, revealing the emptiness behind its imperial posturing.
Venezuela's Oil and Gas: A Critical Target of the Empire
Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves on the planet, estimated at over 300 billion barrels, and possesses the world's 8th largest natural gas reserves. In proven oil reserves, Venezuela is followed by Saudi Arabia (297.5 billion barrels), Iran (208.6 billion barrels), Canada (170.3 billion barrels), and Iraq (145 billion barrels), according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2023. A cursory look at this list reveals a telling pattern: nations that govern their vast resources outside the dictates of Washington, Venezuela, Iran, and previously Iraq, are invariably branded as "rogue states" or "undemocratic," a label that is routinely used by the empire as a pretext for economic warfare and regime-change operations. In particular, for years, a significant segment of Western international media has consistently portrayed Venezuela's government as illegitimate and authoritarian, creating a dominant narrative that has shaped global perceptions and often vilified its leadership. Venezuela's assertion of sovereignty over its oil has historically encountered persistent friction with US interests. The 1976 nationalization that created the state-owned company PDVSA established state control that resulted in lasting resentment in Washington. A neoliberal reopening in the 1990s briefly allowed foreign corporations back in, only to be reversed by Hugo Chávez's socialist government, which reinstated strict state majority control. This move provoked a failed international legal challenge by ExxonMobil and started a three-decade-long conflict over who controls the nation's resources.
The recent military escalation for grabbing Venezuelan oil is the culmination of this long-drawn conflict. While the US succeeded in kidnapping President Maduro, it failed to achieve its main objective. Donald Trump, immediately after Maduro's kidnapping, met with corporate executives to demand a USD 100 billion private-sector investment to rebuild Venezuela's oil industry. The corporate response exposed the limits of the empire’s ambitions: ExxonMobil's CEO declared the country "uninvestible," citing that twice their assets were seized by the revolutionary and sovereign state. While Trump's simultaneous boast of seizing 30-50 million barrels of oil, a haul worth about 2.75 billion USD, which represents less than 3% of the demanded investment and equals just two-and-a-half days of U.S. oil consumption. This highlights how aggression cannot guarantee plunder, especially against a revolutionary state like Venezuela.
The Deeper Threat: How Venezuela's Mission to Create New Socialist Humans Triggered Imperial Aggression
Beyond its vast resources, Venezuela has posed a political and ideological threat to U.S. hegemony by establishing a sovereign, socialist model of development, one that prioritises people over profit and fuels regional integration. The very existence of this sovereign socialist project in what Washington claims as its "backyard" has become the empire's greatest Achilles' heel. The Bolivarian Revolution under Hugo Chávez and its continuation under Nicolas Maduro was never merely an economic project of redistribution; it was a conscious project of human transformation, fueled by oil revenue but aimed at creating a new socialist society. The Chavez government created thousands of grassroots communes and launched national "Missions," which used oil wealth to redistribute not just wealth but political power directly to the people. These programs delivered massive gains: Misión Mercal built a national network for subsidized food; Misión Robinson eradicated illiteracy, educating 1.5 million adults; Misión Barrio Adentro provided 163 million free medical consultations in its first 18 months, deploying doctors into neglected neighborhoods; and the Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela constructed over 2 million homes for the homeless. Moreover, Chavez argued in 2007, echoing Che Guevara, "A revolution has to produce not only food, goods, and services, it also has to produce, more importantly than all of those things, new human beings." The mission networks served as centres of social welfare and schools of political practice, where participation would, as Chávez insisted, change the people themselves: "We have to practice socialism... this practice will create us, ourselves, it will change us; if not, we won't make it." After the death of Hugo Chavez, the Nicolas Maduro government carried on with social welfare programs with the long-term goal of building socialism. These revolutionary goals pose a political and ideological threat to the very foundations of US imperialism.
The commitment of the Bolivarian Revolution to Internationalism has been one of its most defining features. Venezuela led the creation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), conceived as a direct alternative to US-backed financial initiatives. Unlike the existing neoliberal model, ALBA emphasized solidarity economics based on complementarity rather than competition, social welfare cooperation across member states, and energy integration via PetroCaribe (Petróleos del Caribe). For instance, PetroCaribe allowed Caribbean countries to purchase Venezuelan oil under concessionary terms, 17-25 year maturities with 1-2% interest and payment flexibility through goods and services. This allowed participants to finance 40-60% of oil imports through low-interest loans, thereby providing crucial breathing space and reducing dependency on Washington-controlled financial institutions. These attempts extended far beyond Latin America. Venezuela's unwavering solidarity with Palestine, from hosting legendary Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled to leading UN condemnations of apartheid by Israel, constitutes a direct rejection of the imperial order, framing the Bolivarian and Palestinian struggles as a single, global fight for liberation. Venezuela’s success in building sovereign power and a regional alternative triggered a sustained imperial counterattack. The USA’s response has been a continuous hybrid war over the last three decades, characterized by crippling sanctions and multiple regime-change operations designed to reverse the ongoing political transformation.
Venezuela’s response to US imperial aggression mirrors the hydra, a serpent with multiple heads from Greek mythology. When Hercules cut off one of the hydra's heads in a battle, two more would grow back in its place, making it nearly impossible to defeat. Nassim Nicholas Taleb refers to the hydra in his book "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder" as a metaphor for systems that grow stronger or more complex when confronted with challenges. Unlike things that are fragile (which break under stress) or robust (which resist stress but remain unchanged), antifragile entities thrive in uncertainty and chaos. In today’s world, Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution embodies this antifragile principle. For over two decades, each external assault has been met with a more organized and widespread popular response, proving its hydra-like capacity to grow stronger from disorder.
Hours after President Maduro’s capture, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez declared, “We will never again be a colony of any empire.” This statement was not mere rhetoric but represents the deep-rooted resilience developed through decades of struggle. The immediate response proved its substance: the core leadership, the armed forces, and the People’s Militias held a united front, while thousands mobilized in the streets, demonstrating that popular power, built over the years, commune by commune and mission by mission, could withstand even the most brazen imperial attack.
This moment of cohesion and mass mobilization is the latest chapter in a continuous story of popular sovereignty, from the 2002 coup overturned by a people’s uprising in 48 hours to the present-day defiance. It is this very resilience and political consciousness that ensures no temporary setback, however severe, can reverse the historical process of social transformation it represents.
-- Prakash
