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monroe doctrine
Venezuela After January 3: A Nation Standing in the Storm
In Caracas, the situation is tangled, contradictory, and volatile. But amid the uncertainty, one thing felt clear: the Venezuelan left is not collapsing. It is recalibrating.
Mar 06, 2026
On our recent delegation to Venezuela, one quote echoed again and again — a warning written nearly two centuries ago by Simón Bolívar in 1829:
“The United States appears destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.”
For many Venezuelans, that line no longer feels like history. It feels like the present.
The January 3 US military operation that seized President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores marked a dramatic escalation in a conflict that Venezuelans describe not as sudden but as cumulative—the culmination of decades of pressure, sanctions, and attempts at isolation. “We still haven’t totally processed what happened on January 3,” sanctions expert William Castillo told us. “But it was the culmination of over 25 years of aggression and 11 years of resisting devastating sanctions. A 20-year-old today has lived half his life in a blockaded country.”
Carlos Ron, former deputy foreign minister and now with the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, described the buildup to the invasion as the result of a carefully constructed narrative. “First there was the dangerous rhetoric describing Venezuelans in the United States as criminals,” he said. “Then endless references to the Tren de Aragua gang. Then the boat strikes blowing up alleged smugglers. Then the oil tanker seizures and naval blockade. The pressure wasn’t working, so they escalated to the January 3 invasion and kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and the deaths of over 100 people.”
While in the United States the events of January 3 have largely been forgotten, replaced by a devastating war with Iran, in Venezuela the reminders are everywhere. Huge banners draped from apartment buildings demand: “Bring them home.” Weekly protests call for their release.
In the Tiuna neighborhood of Caracas, we met Mileidy Chirinos, who lives in an apartment complex overlooking the site where Maduro was captured. From her rooftop, she told us about that dreadful night, when the sky lit up with explosions so loud her building shook and everyone ran outside screaming.
“Have your children ever woken up terrified to the sound of bombs?” she asked.
We shook our heads.
“Ours have,” she said. “And they are US bombs. Now we understand what Palestinians in Gaza feel every day.”
She told us psychologists now visit weekly to help residents cope with the trauma.
Within days of the US invasion, the National Assembly swore in Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as acting president. President Trump publicly praised Rodríguez for “doing a good job,” emphasizing his strong relationship with her. But from the beginning, she has been negotiating with the United States with a gun to her head. She was told that any refusal to compromise would result not in the kidnapping of her and her team, but death and the continued bombing of Venezuela.
The presence of US power looms large. Nuclear submarines still patrol offshore. Thousands of troops remain positioned nearby. Every statement and decision made by the government is scrutinized. And on February 2, despite Trump’s praise for Delcy Rodríguez, he renewed the 2015 executive order declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security.
The visits from the heads of the CIA and Southern Command have undoubtedly been difficult for the government to swallow. Delcy’s revolutionary father was tortured to death in 1976 by a Venezuelan government that worked closely with the CIA. The US Southern Command coordinated the January 3 attack.
But the government is not without leverage.
“The United States thought the state was weak, that it didn’t have popular support, that the military was divided,” said Tania Díaz of the ruling PSUV party. “January 3rd could have triggered looting, military defections, or widespread destabilization. None of that happened.”
The United States has overwhelming military dominance, but it was also aware that millions of Venezuelans signed up to be part of the people’s militia. This militia, along with the army that remained loyal to the government, gave Washington pause about launching a prolonged war and attempting to replace Delcy Rodríguez with opposition leader María Corina Machado.
While Machado enjoys enthusiastic support among Venezuelan exiles in Miami and the Trump administration recognized her movement as the winner of the 2024 election, the picture inside Venezuela is very different. The opposition remains deeply divided and Trump realized there was no viable faction ready to assume power.
Besides, as William Castillo put it bluntly: “Trump does not care about elections or human rights or political prisoners. He cares about three other things: oil, oil, and oil.” To that, we can add gold, where the US just pushed Venezuela to provide direct access to gold exports and investment opportunities in the country’s gold and mineral sector,
Certainly, under the circumstances, the Venezuelan leadership has had little choice but to grant the United States significant influence over its oil exports. But while Trump boasts that this is the fruit of his “spectacular assault,” Maduro had long been open to cooperation with US oil companies.
“Maduro was well aware that Venezuela needed investment in its oil facilities,” Castillo told us, “but the lack of investment is because of US sanctions, not because of Maduro. Venezuela never stopped selling to the US.; it is the US that stopped buying. And it also stopped selling spare parts needed to repair the infrastructure. So the US started the fire that decimated our oil industry and now acts as if it’s the firefighter coming to the rescue.”
In any case, the easing of oil sanctions—the only sanctions that have been partially lifted—is already bringing an infusion of much-needed dollars, and the government has been able to use these funds to support social programs.
But in Venezuela the conflict is not seen as simply about oil. Blanca Eekhout, head of the Simon Bolivar Institute, says US actions represent a brazen return to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. The doctrine originally warned European powers not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere, but over time it became a justification for repeated US interventions across the region.
“We have gone back 200 years,” she said. “All rules of sovereignty have been violated. But while the Trump administration thinks it can control the hemisphere by force, it can’t.”
The historical contradiction is stark. In 1823, the young United States declared Latin America its sphere of influence. A year earlier, Bolívar envisioned a powerful, sovereign Latin America capable of charting its own destiny. That tension still echoes through the present.
Bolívar’s dream is also being battered by the resurgence of the right across the region. The left in Latin America is far weaker than during the days of Hugo Chávez. Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa have been replaced by conservative leaders. Cuba remains under a suffocating US siege. Progressive regional institutions like CELAC and ALBA have faded, and the vision of Latin American unity that once seemed within reach now feels far more fragile.
In Caracas, the situation is tangled, contradictory, and volatile. But amid the uncertainty, one thing felt clear: the Venezuelan left is not collapsing. It is recalibrating.
As Blanca told us before we left:
“They thought we would fall apart. But we are still here.”
And in the background, Bolívar’s warning continues to drift through the air—like a storm that never quite passes.
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Trump’s Imperial Proto-Fascism Can Only Be Defeated Through a United Front
More and more people are recognizing Trump’s government for what it really is, an abomination. But without organized resistance, there is little hope for defeating him or forging the better future we deserve.
Jan 29, 2026
The United States is on a very dark path under President Donald Trump, argues political scientist, political economist, author, and journalist C. J. Polychroniou in the interview that follows with the independent French-Greek journalist Alexandra Boutri. Democratic rules and norms have virtually collapsed, and cruelty is the name of the game. Trump has used the military and federal law enforcement to build a paramilitary force that carries out pogroms against immigrant communities, assaults the constitutional rights of citizens and even murders people if they protest against its Nazi-like tactics. Under Trump, the US is acting at home in the same lawless manner that it acts abroad. How to fight Trump’s fascism is the million-dollar question.
Alexandra Boutri: I want to start by asking you to elaborate a bit on the concept of “imperial proto-fascism” that you referred to in the last interview we did together. I don’t think I have encountered this term before.C. J. Polychroniou: It’s really a pretty basic and straightforward term. It seeks to capture the type of political order that is unfolding in the United States under Trump 2.0. The United States is and has been an imperialist power at least since the late 1890’s, although imperialism has changed its pattern over time and surely since the time of the writings of Hobson, Lenin, Luxembourg, and Hilferding. Yet, in a very surreal way, the Trump administration is reviving the Monroe Doctrine and seeks to take over foreign territories through whatever means necessary while making a mockery of international law. Whether you want to call it “Old Imperialism” or “New Imperialism” is a rather academic matter. The point is that the Trump administration envisions a new role for the US in today’s word in which might is right. No tricks or deception about pursuing US interests in the name of democracy, human rights, and freedom, which has been the rhetorical approach to US foreign policy by all previous administrations since the end of the Second World War. There is no point talking about international niceties because as Trump’s Waffen-SS chief Stephen Miller recently put it, “the iron laws of the world” are strength, force, and power.
On the domestic front, you have the emergence of a regime that relies on the same tactics that it uses on the international arena. Cruelty and brute force are its main traits. Under Trump, the US is acting at home in the same lawless manner that it acts abroad. But Americans are rebelling against Trump’s imperial proto-fascist political order, so interesting times do lie ahead.
Alexandra Boutri: The Trump administration has brazenly lied in order to justify the deaths of the two people in Minneapolis. What sort of government people can justify the murders of their own citizens?
C. J. Polychroniou: Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by Trump’s own fascist paramilitary squad. The mission of ICE is to capture undocumented immigrants and instill fear across communities. In shooting and killing two harmless protesters, ICE thugs did not violate any protocol. They followed the protocol. When pressed about ICE’s tactics and the murder of Alex Pretti, Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller turned against each other. But they are both complicit in Trump’s lawless police state actions. They work for a criminal government and are carrying out its leader's orders. Miller is in fact the architect of Trump’s inhumane anti-immigration policies.
The current administration in Washington DC does not pretend to be a national government looking after the interests and the well-being of all Americans. So let’s put aside political niceties. It is an administration of hateful, racist, ruthless thugs who have embarked on an open war against democracy and the rule of law, against the “other,” and against human decency. It is fascism with US characteristics.
Alexandra Boutri: It appears that Trump has switched tactics and is now trying to turn attention back to the economy. Will it work?
C. J. Polychroniou: It depends on what he decides to do with his inhumane immigration crackdown. I don’t see anti-ICE protests going away as long as the paramilitary squad's barbaric tactics continue unabated. Most Americans are clearly fed up with Trump and his policies. He has nothing to point to that would make the public feel good about his administration. He had made life much less affordable in just one year. He has added trillions to the debt and the US dollar is collapsing. Only those supporting Trump like sheep, either because they are wearing blinders or because they have vested interests in him being in office, like the tech oligarchs, can find something positive with his administration. But he has three more years left in the White House and there is no doubt that his wrecking ball will keep swinging. And Trump will continue with his distraction tactics during damaging stories for his administration. And that includes embarking on new military adventures abroad, more bombings and killings, and even pursuing regime change.
Alexandra Boutri: How do people push back against Trump’s imperial proto-fascist order?
C. J. Polychroniou: The anti-ICE protests are very important because they signify resistance against one of the administration’s cruelest and most dangerous policies. The US is indeed on a very dangerous trajectory under Trump. The situation is so critical and overwhelming that only a united front, I believe, could defeat Trump’s imperial proto-fascist order. In this context, what is needed is full-fledged resistance against the Trump regime and all its collaborators, especially including its corporate collaborators. A united front against fascism is an alliance of working-class organizations with all progressive forces whether they are reformist or even attached to liberal institutionalism. And I am not necessarily referring to the united front strategy of Leon Trotsky against Hitlerism. The united-front formulation predates Trotsky, and it was a united front strategy in France that defeated the far right in the legislative elections of 2024. The primary goal here is to resist and ultimately defeat Trump’s plan for an imperial proto-fascist order. Nationwide general strikes which are a very powerful tool against unpopular and repressive regimes, but are exceptionally rare in the US, have a much better chance of happening if there is a movement of mass resistance based on a united-front formulation. Hopefully, with each passing day, more and more people will come to recognize Trump’s government for what it really is, an abomination, and realize that “you can’t be neutral on a moving train,” as Howard Zinn aptly put it.
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Is Rural America Finally Realizing Trump Is an Elite in Populist Clothing?
The administration’s domestic policies, coupled with aggressive foreign postures, are accelerating disillusionment among Trump’s core supporters.
Jan 29, 2026
As President Donald Trump’s second term unfolds, the contradictions at the heart of his “America First” agenda are increasingly apparent. What began as a populist revolt against elite globalism appears to have morphed into policies that alienate the very rural and small-town constituencies that backed him in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
These rust-belt and rural counties were drawn to his promises of economic revival, border security, and non-interventionism. Yet, emerging signs of fracture in this MAGA base suggest a potential backlash in the upcoming midterms.
The administration’s domestic policies, coupled with aggressive foreign postures, are accelerating disillusionment among Trump’s core supporters.
Domestically, Trump’s intensified immigration enforcement has backfired. Ramped-up Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids were sold as fulfilling pledges of mass deportations targeting “criminals”. But these operations have swept up undocumented workers essential to rural economies. Small family farms and businesses in states including California, Idaho, and Pennsylvania are reliant on immigrant labor for harvesting crops, dairy operations, and meatpacking. They now face acute shortages.
Trump, meanwhile, is perceived as profiting personally. His properties and branding deals benefit from economic nationalism, even as family farms teeter on the verge of bankruptcy.
Agricultural employment dropped by 155,000 workers between March and July 2025, reversing prior growth trends. Farmers in Ventura County, California, for example, denounced raids that targeted routes frequented by agricultural workers. Fields lie unharvested signalling financial ruin for some operations. Family-run farms struggle to find replacements. Low wages and grueling conditions simply fail to attract American-born laborers.
This labor crisis exacerbates a broader sense of betrayal. Rural voters supported Trump for his anti-elite rhetoric, expecting protection for their livelihoods. Instead, the administration’s actions have hollowed out local workforces without viable alternatives.
The H-2A visa program, meant to provide temporary foreign workers, has been streamlined—but remains insufficient amid ongoing raids, which deter even legal migrants. These disruptions ripple through small-town economies, where agriculture underpins community stability. Democrats, sensing opportunity, are investing in rural outreach, emphasizing economic populism to woo disillusioned voters who feel abandoned by Trump’s enforcement zeal.
Compounding these woes are the ongoing tariff disruptions. Trump touts his tariffs as tools to “make America great,” but in fact they have driven up costs for the same rural groups. Between January and September 2025, tariffs on imports from China, Canada, Mexico, and others have surged, collecting US$125 billion. However, the figure may be even higher according to experts.
But while the administration claims these taxes punish foreign adversaries, the burden falls squarely on American importers and consumers. Small businesses, which account for around 30% of imports, faced an average of US$151,000 in extra costs from April to September 2025, translating to $25,000 monthly hikes. Farmers, already squeezed by low grain prices, pay more for necessities, such as fertilizers (hit by 44% effective tariffs on Indian imports) and machinery parts.
Midwest producers of soybeans, corn, and pork—key US exports—suffer doubly from retaliatory tariffs abroad, which reduce demand and depress revenues. In Tennessee and Pennsylvania, builders report 2.5% rises in material costs, while food prices climb due to duties on beef, tomatoes, and coffee.
Trump, meanwhile, is perceived as profiting personally. His properties and branding deals benefit from economic nationalism, even as family farms teeter on the verge of bankruptcy. This disparity fuels resentment. Polls show Trump’s approval slipping in swing counties, with economic anxiety eroding the loyalty that once overlooked his character flaws.
Foreign Policy Compounds Domestic Fractures
These domestic fractures are mirrored in foreign policy, where Trump’s interventionism starkly contradicts his campaign pledge of “America First” restraint. Having promised no new wars, he has instead pursued aggressive postures that many Republicans view as unnecessary. The most emblematic is his renewed bid to acquire Greenland, apparently by negotiation or force, which has swiftly followed the US raid on Venezuela in the first week of January, accompanied by threats against other Latin American countries including Cuba and Colombia.
The US president has justified demands for control over the Arctic island—citing threats from Russia and China—as a strategic necessity. But NATO allies such as Denmark—of which Greenland is a constituent part—have rebuked it as an potentially alliance-shattering move. Congressional Republicans, including Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-NC), have broken ranks, warning that force would obliterate NATO and tarnish US influence.
Such dissent highlights broader paradoxes. Trump’s populist realism prioritizes tough rhetoric for domestic consumption but yields aggressive, even reckless actions abroad. His administration is effectively dismantling post-1945 institutions while embracing 19th-century spheres-of-influence and outright colonialist thinking, including invoking an updated version of the 1823 Monroe doctrine.
The fractures signal that Trump’s “America First” policies may ultimately leave its rural and rust belt champions behind.
Rural voters, weary of endless wars, supported his non-interventionist promises. Now they see echoes of past entanglements in Trump’s suggestion that the US could intervene in Iran. This cognitive dissonance is accelerating disillusionment with his presidency.
These self-inflicted but inherent contradictions are hastening a pivotal reckoning for Trumpism. In many counties that have thrice backed him—and especially in swing counties—economic hardship and policy betrayals erode the cultural ties binding rural America to the Republican party. Democrats, through programs such as the Rural Urban Bridge Initiative, are betting on this “betrayal” narrative, spotlighting farmers’ plights to flip seats in November 2026.
Polls show Latinos and independents souring on Trump, with the US president’s base turnout potentially waning as the midterm elections approach in November. If Republicans suffer larger-than-expected losses in those elections, it could mark the decline of Trumpism’s grip by exposing its elite-serving underbelly beneath populist veneer.
Yet, without a compelling alternative vision, Democrats risk squandering this opening. For now, the fractures signal that Trump’s “America First” policies may ultimately leave its rural and rust belt champions behind. Whether Trumpism proves resilient or begins a long decline may well be decided not in Washington and Mar-a-Lago, but in the county seats and small towns that once formed its unbreakable base.
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