The events unfolding in Venezuela do not merely constitute another episode of regional instability. They reflect a deeper transformation of the international system: the return of spheres of influence and the revival of nineteenth-century realpolitik. What is happening in Caracas matters less for Latin America as such than for the shape of the emerging global order.
Washington is reviving the Monroe Doctrine not as a historical artifact but as a strategic choice. The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy codifies what has been described as a “Trump corollary” to the traditional doctrine: the Western Hemisphere is defined as an exclusive zone of American influence, within which the presence of external powers is no longer simply unwelcome but treated as a strategic threat to be rolled back. This amounts to a revival of classic gunboat diplomacy-updated, however, for the twenty-first century through economic coercion, sanctions, political subversion, and information operations.
Energy security or resource imperialism?
In the case of Venezuela, energy lies at the heart of American involvement, a point the U.S. president has made with unusual candor. Venezuela’s oil represents a strategic asset that could help sustain American primacy into the second quarter of the twenty-first century. The U.S. economy, particularly in light of the explosive growth in energy demand driven by artificial intelligence and data centers, requires cheap, reliable, and politically controllable energy supplies. The shale revolution, by contrast, faces structural limits; within a few years its momentum is expected to wane. Under these conditions, Venezuela (home to the world’s largest proven oil reserves, estimated at roughly 300 billion barrels) has returned to the center of Washington’s energy calculus.
At the same time, the crisis in Caracas must be understood within the broader geoeconomic competition between the United States and China. Beijing risks losing a significant source of energy supply and economic influence in the Western Hemisphere. Should this occur, China will become even more dependent on Russia, strengthening Moscow’s leverage over Beijing while simultaneously increasing the financial resources available to sustain the war in Ukraine.
In this sense, Venezuela may evolve into a test case for rolling back Chinese economic presence in the Americas. If such a precedent consolidates, the message will resonate across Central and South America, from Panama to Peru and Bolivia. Even major regional powers-such as Brazil, governed by the left and active within the BRICS framework, as well as Mexico-will find it difficult to ignore the signal. The strategic logic guiding Washington is neither novel nor subtle: first secure dominance in one’s own sphere of influence, then negotiate from a position of strength in the rival’s periphery.
For non-aligned third parties, particularly in the Global South, the Venezuelan episode is likely to be perceived less as a matter of energy security than as a case of resource imperialism. America’s adversaries will not hesitate to exploit this perception, further eroding Washington’s moral standing and complicating its global diplomacy.
The dangers of a world of spheres
The American strategy carries significant risks. What Washington does today in Venezuela furnishes Beijing with a powerful argument for tomorrow. From a Chinese geopolitical perspective, Taiwan is far more plausibly framed as an internal matter than Venezuela is as an exclusive American sphere of influence. The invocation of spheres of influence is thus a double-edged sword: arguments used to legitimize U.S. intervention in Latin America inevitably weaken Western positions in East Asia, not only with respect to Taiwan but also in the South China Sea. This precedent undermines the normative arguments that Washington has deployed to rally allies and partners against Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific, potentially eroding alliance cohesion precisely where it matters most. Nothing will prevent Beijing from deploying analogous reasoning in the future.
Despite optimistic rhetoric about imminent economic renewal, Venezuela’s reconstruction will be neither easy nor swift. Failed states are not rebuilt through declarations of intent. The assumption that the United States can readily “run” the country underestimates the complexity of its social, economic, and institutional structures. By pursuing regime change, Washington assumes responsibility for managing a profoundly unstable environment – at considerable political and strategic cost.
Once responsibility for political transition is assumed, responsibilities for security, economic stabilization, and political outcomes inevitably follow. Any unrest will demand intervention; any failure will invite escalation. The risk is prolonged entanglement, rising expenditures, and credibility traps from which disengagement becomes increasingly difficult.
If Washington is genuinely intent on governing Venezuela, as President Trump has suggested, the deployment of U.S. troops would become nearly unavoidable. Even if policymakers believe the country can be managed through proxy governance or a compliant local administration, reality is likely to intrude. Venezuela is saturated with armed groups, militias, and entrenched supporters of Chavismo—the authoritarian socialist model that shaped the country for more than a quarter century. The risk of asymmetric warfare is substantial. Should Russia or China seek to bog the United States down in a new strategic quagmire, Venezuela offers fertile ground.
The debate over “boots on the ground” therefore has multiple dimensions. Sustained military presence would be exceedingly difficult to justify to an American public weary of protracted military engagements, from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if such a deployment were undertaken, the dangers of prolonged instability, civil conflict, and institutional collapse would remain acute. As Iraq, Libya, and Syria have demonstrated, externally imposed regime collapse rarely produces functional states. Successful cases of regime change are exceedingly rare, with post-war Germany and Japan standing as exceptional, and historically unique, outliers. Those cases succeeded precisely because they involved complete state collapse following total military defeat, occurred within the unique geopolitical context of the Cold War, and benefited from massive, sustained reconstruction investment over decades. Venezuela possesses none of these conditions.
Implications for the international system
Venezuela, then, is not merely another geopolitical flashpoint. It is a diagnostic case for broader trends shaping the international system. Judging by the rhetoric of President Trump and his advisers, the appetite for similar initiatives is not confined to Latin America; it has already been signaled, in different forms, toward Canada, Panama, Cuba, and Greenland.
The Venezuelan case underscores a larger reality: the world is drifting away from the assumptions of the post-war, rules-based international order and returning to a more brutal logic of power. In this emerging environment, spheres of influence are no longer aberrations but structural features of global politics. The costs of this transformation will be borne primarily by states deemed to lie within the “backyards” of great or regional powers – while certain third actors, including Russia and Turkey, look on with evident satisfaction.
For states that have traditionally relied on international law and multilateral norms as sources of strategic capital, the erosion of rules-based constraints marks a fundamental shift – one that demands not rhetorical resistance but strategic adaptation. In a world where power increasingly prevails over principle, middle powers and smaller states must recalibrate their security strategies accordingly, recognizing that legal frameworks alone no longer provide reliable protection against the exercise of raw geopolitical force.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
