A grim inauguration for 2026 saw a dramatic U.S. military escalation in Venezuela, with the Trump administration conducting bombings and abducting President Maduro in a brazen attempt to seize the country’s oil resources. This constitutes a desperate act by a declining imperialism.

This interventionist pattern finds its roots in the 1902-1903 crisis, when President Theodore Roosevelt reinterpreted the Monroe Doctrine as a rationale for exclusive U.S. hemispheric “police power.” This maneuver simultaneously blocked European rivals and cemented American economic domination.

The consequences were immediate and enduring, beginning with U.S. support for dictators like Juan Vicente Gómez, who granted vast concessions to American oil companies. The historical trajectory from that point is clear: a continuous line connecting oil nationalizations, U.S.-backed coups, crippling sanctions, and the present crisis. Trump’s aggressive revival of the Monroe Doctrine—aimed at countering China’s influence—is not a display of strength, but a dangerous and delirious lurch toward regional war and global confrontation.

From gunboat diplomacy to regime change, this marks a century of U.S. intervention in Venezuela.

Janus Press