Venezuela and the Imperialism of Great Power

3 January 2026

Stephen Gowans

The US attack on Venezuela and the abduction of its president with Washington’s avowed aim of “running the country” and “taking its oil” can be viewed on three levels: As the action of: 1) the Trump Administration; 2) US imperialism; or 3) great power. The level one selects is important, because it shapes what one believes needs to, or can, be done in response to the US aggression.

We can attribute the attack on Venezuela to the Trump Administration specifically, since it was the Trump White House that set the crime in motion. But inasmuch as the aggression is only one of scores of foreign aggressions the United States has undertaken in the last 135 years (since the end of the Indian Wars in 1890 and the closing of the US West, which saw the United States turn to expansion into the Western hemisphere and the Pacific), we might say that the problem of US aggression is not one of the Trump Administration alone, but of US imperialism generally. Some people argue that imperialism will only cease once the United States is brought down, as if the United States is the only country capable of dominating and exploiting other states.

I believe this perspective is too narrow (though it is vastly better than one that focusses on the Trump Administration, as if Trump’s foreign policy is an aberration.) Imperialist aggressions will not end with the end of the United States, since imperialism isn’t unique to the United States (or to the Trump Administration).

No single country, no single era, no single mode of production, is the progenitor of imperialism. Even Lenin, who many erroneously believe linked imperialism uniquely to monopoly capitalism, recognized that imperialism is a phenomenon as old as antiquity. “Colonial policy and imperialism existed before this latest stage of capitalism,” Lenin wrote in his 1916 pamphlet Imperialism, the Latest Stage of Capitalism, “and even before capitalism. Rome, founded on slavery, pursued a colonial policy and achieved imperialism.” Lenin’s point about imperialism and capitalism’s latest stage, was that imperialism in the capitalist era—which he defined as a handful of great powers vying to divide and re-divide the world—was a product of monopoly capitalism, as opposed to the earlier stage of what he called ‘competitive’ or ‘free trade’ capitalism.

Thinking about the origins of imperialism as a phenomenon that spans many eras, Kenneth Waltz, a theorist of international relations, attributed imperialism, not to a particular mode of production (or stage), or to a particular form of political organization, but to what Marxist-Leninists call “uneven development” and what Waltz called “great power.” Owing to the uneven development of the world–as present in antiquity as it is today–some states are blessed with great power and others cursed with great weakness.

In his 1979 Theory of International Politics, Waltz wrote: “Weakness invites control; strength tempts one to exercise it, even if only for the ‘good’ of other people.” This he called “the imperialism of great power.” Whenever and wherever great power is found at one pole, weakness is found at the other. And whenever and wherever vast gulfs of power exist, so too does imperialism.

Where does great power come from? A “country that sustains an imperialist movement must produce … ‘surpluses’,” argued Waltz, by which he meant economic surpluses, “in the specific sense that the imperial country requires a margin of superiority over the people it controls.” The margin of superiority derives from the ability of a state to command, in excess of what other states can, the economic resources necessary to bribe, cajole, intimidate, and coerce other nations.

“[H]ow the ‘surplus’ is produced, and the nature of the state producing it, appear to be quite unimportant,” Waltz observed. “Republics (Athens and Rome), divine-right monarchies (Bourbon France and Meiji Japan), modern democracies (Britain and America) have all at times been imperialist. Similarly, economies of great variety—pastoral, feudal, mercantilist, capitalist, socialist—have sustained imperialist enterprises.”

Imperialism arises independently of the mode of production and the form of political organization, except insofar as the most advanced mode of production or a political arrangement compatible with it, allow a state to command a greater surplus than states around it can. “The economic organization that will cause imperialism (in the sense of enabling a country to pursue imperialist policies) is whatever economic form proves most effective at the given time and within the pertinent area.”  Hence, “the phrase that expresses the root cause that operates across differently organized economies is ‘the imperialism of great power.’” The handful of great powers that Lenin defined as imperialist were precisely those states that operated at the highest level of economic organization, i.e., monopoly capitalism. Waltz asked:

“Are the advanced countries ‘imperialist’ because they are capitalist or because they are advanced? The growth of industrial economies in the nineteenth century spawned a world-girdling imperialism. Was the hegemony of the few over the many produced by the contradictions of capitalism or by the unlocking of nature’s secrets, the transmuting of science into technology, and the organization of the powers of technology on a national scale? Is imperialism the highest stage of capitalism or are capitalism and imperialism the highest stage of industrialism?“

Great power also critically depends on population size. Luxembourg will never exercise great power, no matter how advanced its economy. But populous countries—the United States, China, Russia, India, Brazil, and a few others—have the potential to dominate and exploit smaller and weaker states, if they organize their economies to produce great surpluses. So far China appears to be the only country even remotely able to match the United States in surplus creation, but the gulf between the two remains enormous and shows no sign of narrowing. True, China is growing economically and militarily, but US GDP per capita—a critical component of state power—is growing faster in absolute terms, and the United States retains many power-relevant geopolitical advantages that China will never match. (See, for example, Michael Beckley’s analyses here and here.)

The imperialism of great power explains why the United States launched its aggression against a weak Venezuela. The vast US economic surplus—a product of the large US population and an advanced and efficient economy—has furnished Washington with what is far and away the world’s leading military. Washington uses its unparalleled military strength (plus its unmatched soft power) to impose its will on weak states. Venezuela, a country of insignificant power, greatly hobbled by years of US economic warfare, refused to develop the world’s largest reserves of oil in line with US elite economic interests. In a world of the imperialism of great power, it was—and has for some time been—the greatest power’s inevitable target.