5 points on Trump's power grab in Venezuela

1. The US is a declining hegemon. 

Trump’s MAGA project is designed to reassert the power of a declining hegemon. It is an attempt to make the world ‘great again’ for the US ruling class. It is a pivot away from an ‘international order’ Washington regards as no longer serving its global domination. It is a calculation that the US can bully foreign states more effectively than it can control the multilateral rules-based order.

The US remains the world’s most powerful state. It spends more on its military than the next nine states combined and spends roughly three times as much as China ($1 trillion versus $350 billion). US banks and hedge funds continue to dominate the global financial system through what Peter Gowan defines as the ‘Dollar-Wall Street Regime’. But the US now leads a western capitalist bloc in significant decline. In 2000, the Western States made up 80 percent of global GDP, today this is just 58 percent. The graphic below captures this decline through long term growth rates. 

Source – Financial Times

Productivity has collapsed in the west, and the main engine of capital accumulation is now in East Asia. Including China, East Asia now accounts for 60 percent of global economic growth while China is dominant in global manufacturing. It produces twice as many manufactured goods as the US and now runs a $1 trillion surplus. This has created two long term trends that the US ruling class understands. The first is that the overall engine of capitalism is in decline. The second is that East Asia is now the most dynamic centre of the system. Stopping the rise of China is increasingly deemed impossible through the international liberal order but the US also relies on that order for its value chains in East Asia. The pivot to Latin America must be understood in this context. It is a calculation that the US can reassert control over an important continent, capture some much needed resources and weaken the role of China in the region.

Removing Maduro was also an important ultimatum for the ruling classes in Latin America, but it has revealed the limits of US power in two key senses. According to their recent National Security Strategy, the old Monroe Doctrine (securing Latin America from the European colonialists) is being updated through the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ - a move to refocus American power on the Western Hemisphere. In other words, initially at least, removing Maduro is part of a defensive recognition that the US can no longer dominate the entire global system; that it needs to secure its own region and then look to take on China later. It is also recognition that full regime change is now impossible following their defeat in Iraq and so rather than look for wholesale changes they will work through the remnants of the old regime. This is a second mark of relative US decline.

2. The US wants ‘imperialist domination’ not ‘spheres of influence’

Liberals lament the destruction of the ‘rules based order’. They argue that Trump is an ‘unpredictable bully’ ushering in an era of strongman politics; an era in which the US dominates in its own sphere of influence and accepts that Russia and China will dominate in theirs. This is nonsense. 

The US certainly wants to exert control over the Western hemisphere, but they have no interest in allowing China to dominate the South China Sea or to exert control over Taiwan. The US views its trade routes out of Asia and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company as vital assets in their imperialist rivalry. 

Rather than creating 19th century era ‘spheres of influence’, MAGA strategists want to underline their unique ability to deploy their hard power unilaterally. This principle was at play in Gaza and Iran, and it is being reinforced in Latin America. In other words, the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ is still about weakening China to secure US hegemony, but for now the strategy is more indirect.

The Trump Administration attempted to bully China on tariffs (in April) and again on advanced Silicon chips (in October). However, China’s near monopoly on rare earth minerals, the complexity of US value chains in the region and the need for cheap Chinese imports seems to have made this direct economic strategy impractical at present; particularly as US corporations need rare earths to try to win the race for artificial general intelligence. 

The ‘Donroe Doctrine is a pivot to dominate easier targets. It is an attempt to secure Latin America as a client continent at the same time as it demonstrates that China has neither the hard power to stop the US nor the hard power to replicate the US strategy in their own sphere of influence. But it is also worth underlining that China is no friend of working people. Like all imperialist powers, it exploits vast numbers of its own working class at home and fights for as much global power as it can secure. Opposing the US does not mean support for its imperialist rivals. 

3. Trump needs oil for multiple reasons 

Trump claims Venezuela committed one of the “biggest thefts in human history” when it nationalised its oil industry in 1976. Prior to that, Venezuelan oil largely enriched the US elites and Trump wants to get back to that arrangement. Taking control of the world’s largest oil reserves is a naked act of imperialist aggression, but it has a geo-political significance that goes beyond the immediate enrichment of the US elites. Among other considerations, Trump wants the oil to:

• Radicalise the MAGA base further right. George W. Bush spoke about high minded values when he invaded Iraq. Trump cares only about dominating the weak. The oil grab shows the MAGA faithful that ‘America First’ has an important international dimension – they will go into other states to dominate their resources but not to engage in ‘forever wars for high minded values’. 
• Secure cheap energy for US capitalism – particularly for artificial intelligence. AI is keeping American capitalism going. It is also extremely resource-intensive, with Open AI chief, Sam Altman, claiming that AI will require vast new sources of energy, equivalent to a new nuclear power plant every week. The world’s biggest oil reserves become strategically important in that context.
• Tackle rising inflation at home. Trump’s tariffs have increased prices and made him unpopular at home. He wants cheap energy to bring down the costs for ordinary Americans and to shore up the popular base of the MAGA project.
• Stop China from getting low cost oil which helps to fuel their competitiveness. China imported 61% of Venezuelan oil through 2025. The US was a distant second, taking just 15%. This is intolerable to a Trump Administration that sees China as its major imperialist rival. 
• Delegitimise the global movement demanding climate justice. Trump is doubling down on the fossil fuel economy knowing US capitalism has a relative comparative advantage over China in that sector but not in green energy. US economic dominance requires no limits on emissions.

4. Trump’s Venezuela move is part of a far-right insurgency

As was already demonstrated, western capitalism is in decline. The most obvious expression has been the stagnation of living standards among western workers after four decades of neoliberalism. This has created deep anger in the west that is being overdetermined by the climate crisis, the rise of imperialist rivalries and the increased movement of poorer people in the face of war and poverty. 

The western ruling classes generally professed high minded values during their conflict with state capitalism in the Soviet Union. They presented themselves as defenders of universal human rights and liberal freedoms against the supposed authoritarianism of Soviet style Communism. 

But liberal values are increasingly regarded as holding back the US elites in their battle with China. Far from capitalism being synonymous with human rights and liberal freedoms, it is more effective when the working class is totally subservient. 

The US ruling class think Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have been more successful at controlling their respective working classes. Trump envies their levels of domestic control and wants to emulate them. But the US ruling class also recognises it needs authoritarianism in a world that gives less and less to western workers.

MAGA is about creating an insurgent right that will divide the US working classes at the same time as it subjugates foreign workers under US clients. In Central and Latin America, the US has already begun to create a series of client authoritarian regimes each one more brutal than the last. 

In Europe, meanwhile, Trump is backing far-right movements to divide the rulers of European capitalism and to weaken its ability to compete. In this context, the supposedly high minded liberals in the EU have been exposed for what they are – a second rate imperialist bloc that longs to get back to the ‘rules based order’ to pursue their own imperialist objectives under the US security umbrella. 

Trump’s move in Venezuela exposes the weakness and hypocrisy of the European liberal elites. This, in turn, means US capitalism has more chance of getting what it really wants on the continent – unbridled access to the European markets to secure its technological advantages and pliant states that will row in behind the US even if they don’t like it.   

5. Barbarism or Socialism – Trump shows why we need a revolution 

Trump’s other objective is to present himself as the ‘master of the universe’ and to give the impression that resistance is futile. This is self-serving propaganda and very far from the truth.

The MAGA project draws on the world’s most powerful state and can deploy the most advanced means of destruction in human history. But it also represents a declining hegemon no longer able to secure its own interests while presenting itself as working for the common good.

Trump’s America is a far more divided society than US capitalism was in its heyday. It is a more volatile society, one in which resistance to Trump is growing. Trump’s candidates fared poorly in recent national elections and his poll ratings are on the decline. Millions of Americans struggle to make ends meet and there is growing resistance to the deployment of ICE. 

There are also major tensions within MAGA itself, over Israel, the Epstein Files and what it means to be ‘America First’. Trump remains a classic bully who uses bravado to hide his own weakness.  But he represents a brutal ruling class turning to ever more brutal tactics to secure their own interests. Decent people fear the consequences of a social revolution; they fear the violence our rulers will deploy, and they wish they could reform the system in a humane direction. 

But in a world of climate chaos, of inter-imperialist rivalry and of the growth of fascism, longing to reform the system in a progressive direction is no longer credible. Progressive people everywhere have to pick a side. The proliferation of far-right monsters, authoritarian despots and liberal imperialists means our options are narrowing. Increasingly we are faced with fighting to overthrow capitalism or with acquiescing in catastrophe. Every trade unionist, every progressive, every feminist, every anti-racist, every decent human being needs to realise that revolutionary politics are not radical or unattainable – they are the only politics capable of transforming the world in the interests of humanity. 

Maduro’s evolution from anti-imperialist to repressive dictator is evidence enough that only an international revolution will be enough. Trump’s one virtue is that he tells the truth about the horrors that he wants to unleash. Our first duty is to tell the truth about the politics that will be needed to stop him.