Venezuela & the Duopolistic Amerikkkan Imperial Project
By Saswat Pattanayak
New York, 01/07/26
Recent shock and the awe surrounding kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro are distractions from acknowledging the rather steady continuation of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism. And therefore, focusing on Trump’s actions as arbitrary or rogue denies the systemic nature of how imperialism is meant to evolve.
Well over a century ago, Lenin wrote, “The non-economic superstructure which grows up on the basis of finance capital, its politics and its ideology, stimulates the striving for colonial conquest.” In his support, he had cited Marxist theorist Rudolph Hilferding - “Finance capital does not want liberty, it wants domination.”
It is the very nature of capitalism to dominate - by quashing competition, establishing monopoly and by colonizing land and labor at any cost. When Trump invokes Greenland or Canada and that creates panic, it should not. Because the domineering aspiration of capitalism is precisely to transcend national boundaries.
Whether Hawaii or Puerto Rico, Nicaragua or Panama, Philippines or Iran, Cuba or Chile, Syria or Libya - last century alone highlights its transnational dominations masquerading as achievements. Yankee imperialism as Che Guevara used to paint it (and for which he had to pay ultimate price) was a logical outcome, not an aberration of capitalism.
Therefore, it’s of little surprise that regardless of parties, the ruling class in Washington DC has ruled against any advent of socialistic policies in any of the Latin American countries. Specifically to Venezuela, it was Barack Obama who first signed the “Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014” to declare that Venezuelan government was “unable to ensure political and economic well being” of its own people, and therefore the US (without necessarily invoking the Monroe Doctrine) needed to hold the government of Venezuela “responsible for or complicit in the use of force against antigovernment protests”.
And it was Joe Biden who increased the bounty on Maduro from $15 million to $25 million. Biden also increased the bounty on Venezuela’s interior minister Cabello from $10 million to $25 million, and announced another $15 million bounty for capture of defense minister Lopez, apart from imposing sanctions on nearly 200 government officials.
With millions of dollars at stake, the arrest of Maduro now was only natural. It was a logical culmination of a policy that was signed by Obama, strengthened by Biden and now executed by Trump. It is not a shocking departure from any non-interfering policy of peaceful co-existence championed by peaceniks. In fact, just the contrary.
This history of imperial patterns is something the corporate media (them being overwhelmingly liberal) have consciously decided to suppress. No wonder when Jon Stewart made an outstanding segment connecting Iraq with Venezuela - to expose how American foreign policy was warmongering without any credible basis, he too focused on the Republican mischiefs alone. Conveniently, Stewart forgot to mention about Libya and Pakistan and other countries whose sovereignty claims were relentlessly abused by the Democrats when their bosses were in Oval Office.
Gaddafi wasn’t even produced before a New York court. Libya was invaded and its leader was eliminated under the watchful eyes of the Democrats. It was not Saddam alone, it was a plethora of leaders in the Third World who were systematically taken out in the guise of successive US presidents exporting democracy. President Eisenhower had formally planned the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in fear that Congo might align with Soviet Union. The anticommunist saga has been uninterrupted in its giving birth to numerous extrajudicial killings, drone attacks on civilians, violent overthrows of disfavored dictators to replace them with favorable dictators - regardless of party and the president.
Then came Gaza Holocaust. After causing over 380,000 deaths of children, the water had been tested, the people had been conditioned to absorb nonstop tears, blood and amputations. The psychological numbing effects of imperialism has now been resolutely completed. For those of us who decried the genocide for years and demanded for arrests of those Israeli henchmen that were designated by international courts as war criminals, the response of the world leaders was in crickets. There should be no ambiguity left for shock and awe to prevail anymore among those who have been paying attention.
For, it’s a world bereft of not just logic and rule of law, but also of basic empathy and decency. Its a world where the genocidal maniacs get standing ovations in joint sessions of US Congress, whereas those who demand accountability while peacefully exercising their free speech rights are arrested. In Germany, laws are made to prevent anti-imperialistic protests altogether. In Britain, even senior citizens who hold pro-Palestine placards are dragged away and charged for crimes that can land them in jail for 14 years. No wonder the so-called Labor Prime Minister of UK and the Liberal Prime Minister of Canada lose no time before issuing statements to support the move to kidnap Maduro.
As for the “fourth estate”, whether New York Times or CNN, the consensus building for imperialism has become key and mainstream media establishments like BBC have even instructed their staff to not use the word “kidnap” to describe Maduro’s “capture”, because civilized first world’s free speech hypocrisy must not arrive with any limitations, after all.
xxxxxx
I wish I had some hopeful words beyond all this despair…
alas.
Some moments from a Hands Off Venezuela Protest, Times Square/New York City
(Photos: Saswat Pattanayak)
