Venezuela and the Imperialism of Peace

5 January 2026

Stephen Gowans

A careful reading of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times offers the following account of what led up to the Trump administration’s decision to abduct Venezuelan president Nicolos Maduro. This account also brings to the fore the distinction between the imperialism of war and what Lenin called “the imperialism of peace.”

In 2007, Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, changed the terms under which US oil firms could operate in his country, home to the world’s largest reserves of oil. ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips were presented with new contracts giving Caracas majority control over joint ventures. The US oil giants balked, and sued. The two companies were compensated, but believed they were not adequately indemnified. [1] Ultimately, this would lead to Washington imposing sanctions on Venezuela which blocked US investment in the South American country’s oil industry with one exception: Chevron was granted a special licence to continue to operate in Venezuela, with restrictions. [2]

US sanctions crippled Venezuela’s oil industry and devastated the country’s economy. Since 2013, the year Maduro became president, GDP has contracted by 80 percent—the largest economic collapse in modern history outside of war. Economic misery has driven eight million Venezuelans, about one-quarter of the population, from the country. [3]

With Venezuela’s economy in crisis, the Maduro government backtracked, opening the oil industry to private investment on attractive terms. [4] The re-opening was orchestrated by Delcy Rodriquez, who would become Maduro’s vice-president, and, with Maduro’s abduction, the country’s new leader.

The US oil majors began to pressure the Trump administration to lift the sanctions that kept them from taking advantage of Rodriguez’s reforms. “They told Trump administration officials that … Caracas was so desperate that they would welcome U.S. firms with tantalizing terms not seen by the industry in decades—including no-bid contracts and little environmental or regulatory oversight.” Moreover, the US oil majors complained that Chinese and Russian firms were monopolizing the advantages the newly re-opened Venezuelan oil industry offered. [5]

The White House began to talk to Maduro about lifting US sanctions. [6] Trump told the Venezuelan leader that he wanted him “to push Chinese and Russian oil companies out of Venezuela and to open up a bigger role for American companies.” [7] Maduro agreed. In October, The New York Times reported that the Venezuelan president “offered Washington far-reaching concessions that would essentially eliminate the vestiges of resource nationalism at the core of Mr. Chávez’s movement.” In addition, he “also agreed to limit Venezuela’s economic ties with China, Russia and Iran and to stop selling oil to Cuba.” [8]

The two parties were keen to strike a deal because an agreement would be mutually rewarding. The US oil majors wanted the profit-making opportunities Venezuela could offer, and Maduro wanted out from under the crushing weight of US sanctions that had crippled his country’s economy.

But there was a problem. Trump’s top aides persuaded the president that Maduro couldn’t be trusted; that he would eventually renege on any deal the US struck with him. As a result, Maduro was told that a condition of the deal was his exit. If he refused to step down, the United States would use force to oust him. Maduro demurred, possibly believing that Trump was bluffing. [9] The Pentagon assembled an armada in the Caribbean to pressure the Venezuelan president to reconsider.

Meanwhile, Washington had to figure out who would take over from Maduro. The administration quickly settled on the country’s vice-president. She had “impressed Trump officials with her management of Venezuela’s crucial oil industry” and “intermediaries persuaded the administration that she would protect and champion future American energy investments in the country.” The White House believed they could work with her. [10] And why not? Both Washington and Caracas were keen on bringing US oil giants back to Venezuela and Rodriguez had taken the lead role in bringing about the oil sector renovations that had aroused the US energy companies’ interest. She could be counted on to do Washington’s bidding, because Washington’s bidding largely aligned with what she thought needed to be done. “She is essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump said. “Very simple.” [11]

In the event US officials had misjudged Rodriguez’s tractability, they had a back-up plan. To ensure she played ball, she was warned that she would share Maduro’s fate if she stepped out of line. According to Trump, if Rodriguez “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Some sections of the US media complained that Rodriguez is a socialist who is railing against US encroachment on Venezuela’s sovereignty, and that Maria Corina Machado, the “conservative former member of the National Assembly from an affluent Venezuelan family [with] decades-long ties to Washington,” would have been a better choice. But Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security advisor, rejoined: “We’re going to make an assessment on the basis of what they do, not what they say publicly … not what … they’ve done in the past.” [12] From Washington’s perspective, socialist or not, Rodriguez is clearly the better choice. She offers the reasonable prospect of producing what regime change would deliver—and within a framework of political stability. Installing Machado, in contrast, would mean incurring the enormous cost and uncertainties of waging a regime change war which, in the end, if it succeeded, would likely produce such great political instability that Venezuela would not be an attractive field for investment.

Imperialism can be defined simply as the process of one state imposing its will on another. The United States has clearly been trying to make Venezuela do what it wants, by using sanctions, and, of late, an oil blockade, to cripple the Venezuelan economy to force the country’s leadership to make changes to the terms under which it will allow US oil companies to operate. Washington has visited enough sanctions-generated devastation upon Venezuela to compel the government to change the rules governing its oil industry. These changes have aroused the interest of the US oil majors, but the energy companies are unable to take advantage of the new opportunities, unless the US sanctions that block them for operating in Venezuela are lifted. Accordingly, the industry has pressed the Trump administration to strike a deal with Caracas that would see US oil majors return to Venezuela.

The key to the imperialist process in Venezuela has been sanctions, not the armada the Trump administration has assembled in the Caribbean, and not the raid on the Venezuelan capital to abduct the president. Military measures have played a minor role compared to the role economic coercion has played; the imperialism of war has been less significant, in this case, than the imperialism of peace. It is true that military measures have been used to close the deal (to try to persuade Maduro to step down) but the deal was largely brought about by sanctions. Had it not been for Washington’s economic coercion, it is unlikely that Caracas would have changed the rules of investing in its oil industry.

I mention this because too little attention is paid to “the imperialism of peace”—what strong states do to impose their will on weak states without going to war. Lenin emphasized that strong states wage war against weak states as a continuation, by other means, of imperialist politics that are practiced during peacetime. Imperialism, in other words, is a broad category that includes war of aggression as only one mechanism of many for inducing another state to do one’s bidding. Imperialism doesn’t happen just in times of war; it is ongoing, even during peacetime.

The result of paying too little attention to the imperialism of peace is that voices aren’t raised in opposition to imperialist conduct unless it involves violence. People immediately took to the streets to protest Washington’s abduction of Maduro, but the abduction was small potatoes next to the enormous sanction-induced devastation Washington has wreaked on Venezuela. The sanctions have harmed and immiserated millions of Venezuelans; the abduction harmed less than 200. The sanctions have carried more weight in imposing the US will on Venezuela than has Maduro’s abduction; the ousted president had already agreed to the terms the US wishes to impose on Venezuela; the only condition he refused was his exit.

Economic coercion is sometimes referred to as “economic atom bombing” in an attempt to show that sanctions can be as destructive, if not more so, than the violence of war. John Mueller and Karl Mueller wrote a famous article in Foreign Affairs, titled “Sanctions of Mass Destruction,” showing that sanctions have killed more people than all the weapons of destruction ever used, including the atomic bombs used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [13] A study published in The Lancet Global Health in July 2025, conducted by economists Francisco Rodríguez, Silvio Rendón, and Mark Weisbrot from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), estimated that every year US and EU sanctions are responsible for a half-million premature deaths worldwide. [14] In light of this, the necessity of building anti-imperialism movements that can take full account of the imperialism of peace should be examined. The danger of anti-war movements, from Lenin’s perspective, was that being so averse to war they would accept the imperialism of peace as a win, and therefore never overcome or even see the root cause of the wars of aggression they so loathed and feared.

Update

The Wall Street Journal has reported that a “classified U.S. intelligence assessment determined top members of Nicolás Maduro’s regime—including Vice President Delcy Rodríguez—would be best positioned to lead a temporary government in Caracas and maintain near-term stability.” (“CIA Concluded Regime Loyalists Were Best Placed to Lead Venezuela After Maduro,” Jan. 5, 2026)

“The report concluded that Edmundo González, widely seen as the actual winner of the 2024 election against Maduro, and Machado would struggle to gain legitimacy as leaders while facing resistance from pro-regime security services and political opponents.”

The report also said that despite “initially striking a defiant tone,” Rodriguez has since “signaled her willingness to work with the U.S. and has spoken with Rubio.”

On January 6, The Wall Street Journal reported that Rodriguez “and Trump might be on the same page.” (“Venezuelan Regime’s New Strategy: Appease Trump to Survive”.) “Since becoming vice president in 2018, the 56-year-old has consolidated influence as Maduro’s top interlocutor with the private sector and trade partners. She has long advocated for American oil companies to pump crude in the country and says the only thing keeping them out are the economic sanctions leveled during Trump’s first term that bar companies from working in Venezuela’s energy sector.”

1. “Trump’s Claim That Venezuela ‘Stole’ U.S. Oil Fields Touches Nationalist Nerve,” New York Times, Dec. 17, 2025; “Trump Orders Blockade of Sanctioned Oil Tankers In and Out of Venezuela, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 16, 2025; “Trump Wants to Unlock Venezuela’s Oil Reserves. A Huge Challenge Awaits,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 3, 2026.

2. “Explainer: Why Chevron still operates in Venezuela despite US sanctions,” Euronews, December 29, 2025.

3. “Venezuela’s New Leader Is a Hardline Socialist Like Maduro,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2026; “Another U.S. Attempt to Topple Maduro Would Be a Disaster,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 7, 2025.

4. “Trump’s Tanker Crackdown Paralyzes Venezuelan Oil Exports,” New York Times, Dec. 23, 2025; “Venezuela’s Capital Is Booming. Is This the End of the Revolution?” Feb. 1, 2020.

5. “Trump Was Skeptical of Ousting Maduro—Until He Wasn’t,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4, 2026.

6. “Trump Says U.S. Is ‘In Charge’ of Venezuela, While Rubio Stresses Coercing It, New York Times, Jan. 4, 2026.

7. “Venezuela’s Oil Is a Focus of Trump’s Campaign Against Maduro,” New York Times, Dec. 16, 2025.

8. “Venezuela’s Maduro Offered the U.S. His Nation’s Riches to Avoid Conflict, New York Times, Oct. 10, 2025.

9. “Trump Was Skeptical of Ousting Maduro—Until He Wasn’t, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 4, 2026; “Venezuela’s Oil Is a Focus of Trump’s Campaign Against Maduro, New York Times, Dec. 16, 2025.

10. “How Trump Fixed On a Maduro Loyalist as Venezuela’s New Leader,” New York Times, Jan. 4, 2026.

11. “Venezuela’s New Leader Is a Hardline Socialist Like Maduro, “Wall Street Journal January 4, 2026.

12. “Trump Says U.S. Is ‘In Charge’ of Venezuela, While Rubio Stresses Coercing It,” New York Times, Jan. 4, 2026.

13. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iraq/1999-05-01/sanctions-mass-destruction

14. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00189-5/fulltext

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.

Maduro’s claim that Washington has used cyberwarfare to bring down Venezuela’s power grid cannot be so easily dismissed

By Stephen Gowans

March 11, 2019

In the last few days Venezuela has been afflicted by power failures, escalating the misery of a population already menaced by an ongoing economic crisis.

Two explanations are offered to account for the outages.

Western news media point to the alleged economic mismanagement of the Maduro government, which has, in their view, crippled Venezuela’s power gird via under-investment.

The Maduro government counters that the United States has brought down the power grid through a cyberwarfare attack, part of its project of bringing Juan Guaidó, the US-backed Venezuelan legislator to power, by plunging the country into chaos and blaming the crisis on Maduro.

The US news media say that Caracas has offered no evidence to back up its accusation that Washington has unleashed a cyberattack on Venezuela, but equally offer no evidence to substantiate their own accusation that the Maduro government’s economic policies are to blame for the crisis.

We are thus presented with a fact (the outage) and two competing narratives, neither based on hard evidence. Which of these narratives is more credible?

Washington very likely has the cyberwarfare capability to cripple Venezuela’s power grid. On November 12, 2018, David Sanger reported in the New York Times that,

The United States had a secret program, code-named “Nitro Zeus,” which called for turning off the power grid in much of Iran if the two countries had found themselves in a conflict over Iran’s nuclear program. Such a use of cyberweapons is now a key element in war planning by all of the major world powers.

If the United States can turn off the power grid in Iran, using a cyberweapon that is now a key element in war planning of all the major world powers, it’s highly likely that it can do the same in Venezuela.

What’s more, the United States has on at least two occasions carried out cyberattacks against foreign states. Significantly, the attacks were unleashed against governments which, like Venezuela’s, have refused to submit to US hegemony. US cyberattacks were used to cripple Iran’s uranium enrichment program (now widely acknowledged) and to sabotage North Korea’s rocket program, the latter revealed by various sources, including, again, by the New York Time’s Sanger: “[F]or years….the United States has targeted the North’s missile program with cyberattacks,” the reporter wrote in August, 2017.

The aforesaid, of course, is only evidence of capability, not of commission, but when placed within the context of Washington making clear its intention to topple the resource nationalist Maduro government, US capability, motivation, and practice, does very strongly cast suspicion on the US government.

Last week, US National Security Adviser John Bolton conceded (even boasted) that US policy in Venezuela is guided by the Monroe Doctrine, a doctrine which effectively claims US hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. In November, he used florid language to rail against Venezuela and other Latin American states which have rejected the Monroe Doctrine as belonging to a “Troika of Tyranny,” and forming part of a “triangle of terror” while acting as “a sordid cradle of communism in the Western Hemisphere.”

In 2002, as undersecretary of state, Bolton added Syria, Libya, and Cuba to George W. Bush’s infamous “Axis of Evil,” a regime change hit list which initially included Iraq, Iran and North Korea. All of the designated states were regime-changed or subjected to attempted regime change by Washington. Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria were or are resource nationalist states, like Venezuela.

Revealingly, Bolton used the occasion of denouncing what he called Venezuela’s “poisonous” ideology of socialism (more accurately termed resource nationalism) to sing hosannas to Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, an unequivocal reactionary, who Bolton lauded as a positive “sign for the future of the region” in light of Bolsanaro’s “commitment to free-market principles.”

Commitment to free-market principles is code for welcoming the takeover of a country’s land, labour, markets and resources by US free enterprise. Bolton infamously told Fox Business that “It’ll make a big difference to the United States economically, if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.” Indeed it will. Venezuela has the world’s largest reserves of oil, and is teeming with other natural resources, including gold, coveted by wealthy investors, including those with stakes in Canada’s giant mining companies (explaining why Ottawa has played a lead role in the Lima Group’s efforts to drive Maduro from power in favor of the foreign investment-friendly Guaidó.)

Guaidó showed why he has been decried as a US puppet when he said his economic “plan called for … opening up Venezuela’s vast oil sector to private investment,” along the lines envisaged by Bolton. The self-proclaimed president’s plan “includes privatizing assets held by state enterprises,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Under the Maduro government, investment in Venezuela’s oil industry must take the form of joint ventures with the country’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA, which is required to hold a majority share. Under a Guaidó government, that would change. Foreign private-owned companies would be allowed to own a majority stake in any joint-venture, and reap higher profits.

To return to the US narrative: If we accept the US-directed view that the power outages are caused by the Maduro government’s putative mismanagement of the electrical system, it appears all too convenient that the blackouts should happen precisely at the moment Washington is engaged in an effort to drive Maduro, and his “poisonous” ideology of resource nationalism, from power.

It seems more likely, given Washington’s long history of sabotaging the economies of countries that are insufficiently accommodating of US free enterprise, that US cyberwarfare capabilities were pressed into service to force Venezuelans to endure even more misery than has already been engendered by US-orchestrated sanctions. The aim is to increase pressure on Maduro to step down. As the Economist revealed, “Mr Guaidó and Mr Trump are betting that hardship will topple the regime.”

This parallels US efforts to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba. As historian Louis A Perez Jr. explained in a 2002 article in the Journal of Latin American Studies,

[C]entral to US objectives was the need to maintain the appearance that the collapse of Fidel Castro was the result of conditions from within, by Cubans themselves, the product of government economic mismanagement, and thereby avoiding appearances of US involvement. The United States sought to produce disarray in the Cuban economy but in such a fashion as to lay responsibility directly on Fidel Castro.

US officials affirmed that the goal was to make “Castro’s downfall seem to be the result of his own mistakes’.”

[US Ambassador Philip Bonsal] in Havana early stressed the importance of appearance: ‘ It is important that the inevitable downfall of the present Government not be attributed to any important extent to economic sanctions from the United States as major factor.’ The United States, Bonsal wrote … sought ‘ to make it clear that when Castro fell, his overthrow would be due to inside and not outside causes’. This was the purport of a lengthy memorandum by George Denney, Director of State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The idea was to eliminate Castro ‘without resort to invasion or attributable acts of violence and violations of international law’, specifically by ‘creating the necessary preconditions for nationalist upheaval inside Cuba … as a result of internal stresses and in response to forces largely, if not wholly, unattributable to the US’.

If the “Castro Communist experiment” was to “appear to have failed not on its own merits but as a result of obvious or inadequately disguised US intervention,… the validity of Castro’s revolutionary course might remain unquestioned.” Denney warned that if Cuba’s socialism was interrupted by the force of the world’s foremost ‘imperialist’ and ‘capitalist’ power in the absence of a major provocation, such action [would] discredit the US and tend to validate the uncompleted experiment.”

In Cuba, the United States sabotaged the economy through sanctions and tried to pin the blame on Castro and socialism. In Venezuela, the United States appears to have sabotaged the electrical grid and pinned the blame on Maduro

To be sure, there is, at this point, no concrete evidence that Washington has sabotaged Venezuela’s electrical grid, but it has the capability to do so, a record of using cyberattacks against countries slated for regime change, a motivation to throw Venezuela into crisis, and a game plan it has used repeatedly in other countries.

The US hand may be absent from this week’s power failures in Venezuela, but chances are it wasn’t.

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