What lies behind the US invasion of Venezuela?
Heikki Patomäki is Professor of World Politics and Global Political Economy at the University of Helsinki
The oil tanker hijackings, the US invasion of Venezuela, and the kidnapping of Maduro violate many laws. These include the UN Charter, the law of the sea (especially UNCLOS), and the 1988 Convention on Drug Trafficking. The attack is also problematic for the US’s own political and legal system. The Trump administration acted without congressional authorisation and ignored other legal considerations. In this blog, I consider to what extent the attack only deepens the ongoing retrogression towards traditional imperialism, and to what extent it is more a matter of the old dying at the time when the new cannot yet be born. Many pathological symptoms are evident in such an in-between state.
Americans have been concerned for decades about the declining US hegemony and its consequences. As political economist Susan Strange warned in 1987, “the myth of lost hegemony is apt to induce in everybody only pessimism, despair, and the conviction that, in these inauspicious circumstances, the only thing to do is to ignore everyone else and look after your own individual or national interests”. As early as the 1980s, the US began withdrawing from international agreements and organisations it considered contrary to American interests and views, and tightening its financial grip on the UN system to advance its own will.
The rise of neoliberalism and the end of the Cold War briefly created what many pundits considered a “unipolar moment,” in which the US and its prevailing ideology seemed to be in undisputed leadership – the Fukuyama moment of world politics. The situation also allowed for double standards: others had to follow the rules set or interpreted by the US, but, when necessary, the country itself was above the rules.
The relative decline of the US continued, and soon concerns about hegemonic decline resurfaced. Neoconservatives envisioned a “new American century” and launched a global war on “terrorism”. Trump launched a trade war with China and withdrew from more and more agreements and institutions. The Obama and Biden Democratic administrations softened and reversed the neoconservatives’ and Trump’s harshest policies, without fundamentally changing the direction.
The Trump I and II administrations’ goal of “making America great again” is a sign of weakness rather than strength. The development of the last twenty years has included the increased use of sanctions and resort to coercion. As recently as the 1990s, sanctions were used to a relatively limited extent and enjoyed the support of the UN Security Council or, at a minimum, the EU and other allies. Over the past twenty years or so, however, the power to impose sanctions has been transferred to the US executive branch. At the same time, the number of sanctions has increased massively, and an increasing number of them are unilateral. At the same time, the process now widely known as the “weaponisation of interdependence” began.
In essence, the Trump administration has deepened the dominant tendencies and radicalised US policy, making it even more unilateral and coercive than before. According to a widespread interpretation, the new US national security strategy means the US is abandoning its aspirations for global hegemony, based on broad acceptance, and replacing them with traditional spheres-of-interest imperialism. The US sphere of interest includes, above all, Latin America and Europe, which the US is inclined to treat as its vassals, as well as some other “sympathetic” countries.
The US began applying sanctions against Venezuela as early as 2005–14. Following that period, Venezuela was declared a national security threat and effectively placed under a trade and financial embargo. One explicit goal already at that stage was regime change.
The Trump I administration further radicalised and unilateralised these sanctions. In addition, sanctions were also applied to those allies and international institutions that did not comply with the US policy. Although internal mismanagement accounts for a significant share of Venezuela’s economic difficulties, sanctions have also had a considerable impact. Over the past decade, sanctions have probably been as, or more, responsible for the dire socio-economic situation in Venezuela than corruption and other internal problems, the effects of which should not be underestimated either.
Many studies on sanctions against various countries have highlighted their negative consequences for democracy and the health and well-being of populations. If the goal is to bring about desired political change, the effects of sanctions are complex, unpredictable and often harmful. Sometimes they promote political change, which may or may not be democratic, but most studies find that sanctions are either ineffective or harm democracy. Sanctions often lead to “rallying around the flag” effect – that is, nationalist resistance begins to legitimise the prevailing regime – while regularly deepening domestic political repression.
Once the Americas have been defined as part of the US sphere of influence, where the US can do whatever it wants without regard for international law, the logical next step after failed sanctions is to use direct military force. The goal may not only be to change the government (or reduce drug trafficking), but also to control Venezuela’s massive oil reserves. In addition, the notion that Latin America belongs to the US sphere of interest involves reducing the influence and economic opportunities of other external powers – in this case, China in particular.
The current US practice of disregarding international law and institutions while arbitrarily applying the US domestic law extraterritorially, including to the leaders of other countries, has far-reaching consequences. Political conflict can now be recast as criminal liability. The imposed change of government in another country can be legitimised and legalised after the fact. Arguments about legal liability become even more clearly an instrument in the game of strategic or geopolitical competition.
This also has predictable consequences, some of which have already materialised to some extent. This approach accelerates the erosion of norms and the fragmentation of law and governance into different camps or spheres of interests. It makes the unilateral use of force appear ever more “normal” and weakens global institutions and global governance. This creates a feedback loop:
• Declining position and legitimacy → unilateralism
• Unilateralism → erosion of norms
• Erosion of norms → increased dependence on force
• Use of force → further erosion of legitimacy
This is the path towards a Hobbesian war of all against all (camps, alliances, or imperial spheres). One can also look for historical analogies for what is now happening in the late 2020s – bearing in mind that historical analogies are always only partial and that there are no simple transhistorical empirical regularities or laws.
Even partial historical analogies can sometimes shed light on the situation. The development of the US resembles the late or final phase of some previous empires. The disintegrating late Roman Empire or the British Empire in the 20th century come to mind, for example. In both cases, the system was, in essence, a class society with a clear centre and periphery. The gradual decline of the centre, the legal norms, rules, and principles which had for a considerable time been framed as civic or common law, resulted in an increasingly naked instrument of coercion.
If we continue with historical analogies, late imperial legal orders do not survive. As disintegrative tendencies strengthen, conflicts become more common, and the possibility of major war or collapse increases, counter-hegemonic interpretations and demands also grow stronger. Here we can apply Antonio Gramsci’s ideas about the morbid symptoms of the old system and see the present moment as an “interregnum”, in which the old is disappearing but the new cannot yet emerge.
Gramsci thought that the interim period opens space for new forms and lines of reasoning, that the crisis undermines established legitimacy, and that new institutional arrangements become thereby conceivable. While there are no sure guarantees of a transition to something better, the decisive question in the 2020s and 2030s is whether global law can be re-legitimised without a single hegemonic state.
In other words, is it possible to move from a hegemonic order to a world system that gradually and progressively establishes a global principle of the rule of law applicable to everyone in the same way, and is based on functional and democratic principles of global governance and government? Such a shift requires fundamental changes in global political economy (see for example this and this). The task is to create a new “common sense” of functionality, justice, democracy and law that works in a world where there are no longer hegemons, empires, or spheres of interests
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