Trump Has Turned Venezuela Into a 21st Century US Protectorate |
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A Spanish language version of this piece was published in Galde nº 53, San Sebastián. The translation is being republished here with permission.
Facing the growing loss of its unquestioned hegemony in the world system — that unipolar world that took shape after the end of the Second World War and was consolidated with the collapse of the Soviet bloc — conservative sectors have been arguing for several decades that the window of opportunity to prevent China’s power from equaling or surpassing that of the United States is closing. They argue that it is necessary to use all possible means, including military force, to halt China before it is too late.
This characterization of what is at stake has become one of the primary determinants of the Trump administration’s foreign policy. This is expressed in the aggressive application of tariffs against both enemies and allies; its attempts to prevent China from obtaining the most advanced chips required to compete in the field of artificial intelligence; and its efforts to restrict China’s access to and control of indispensable energy and mineral resources. It is expressed in the content of the new national security doctrine released at the end of 2025, in the threats against Canada, Greenland, and Cuba, and in the successive military actions that have been carried out. Equally, it is seen in the demand made to Congress to increase the military budget by 50 percent for the coming year, despite the fact that the current budget is already higher than the sum of the military spending of the ten countries that follow it.
The high probability that the Republican Party will lose control of the House of Representatives, or even the possibility of losing both chambers in the midterm elections, creates an additional urgency for Trump that makes him increasingly dangerous. The unchecked power with which he has governed until now would be limited in some way, which is why he is accelerating the implementation of his agenda, even if it implies the violation of the United States Constitution and international law, as well as defying the opinion of the majority of the population, including many of his own supporters.
First Gaza, then Venezuela, and now Iran (in a year which also included smaller-scale bombings of Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria and elsewhere) — it is the unfolding before our eyes of a new world order in which global legal norms (which were always of limited efficacy) are being openly replaced by the law of the strongest. This is happening to all of us, and recognizing it is important. This is expressed, for example, in the demand that the U.S. makes of Spain, for example, to reduce expenditures on health, education, environmental protection, and social security in order to increase its military budget from 2 percent to 5 percent of its gross domestic product.
After months of deploying an extraordinary naval operation off the Venezuelan coast resulting in the murder of scores of fishermen, in the early hours of January 3, the United States armed forces carried out a military operation in which they destroyed civilian and military installations, murdered more than one hundred people, and kidnapped Nicolás Maduro and his wife, congresswoman Cilia Flores.
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