Abstract
The Stakes Of Retaining Power In The Face Of Imperialist Aggression
Venezuelan Defiance
The extended duration of Chavista rule appeared to challenge the “inevitability thesis” – a cornerstone of anti-socialist discourse – that any government committed to socialist transformation is doomed to failure. In that sense, the U.S. kidnapping of Maduro and the First Lady Cilia Flores on January 3, 2026 was not surprising. Since ancient times, imperial powers have harshly punished peripheral regions that defy their hegemony. The case of Haiti is exemplary, in that it suffered exclusion and onerous obligations for having dared to eradicate slavery and win independence through the slave uprising of 1791. The inevitability thesis was clearly articulated in the 1980s through the “There Is No Alternative” doctrine, which underpinned neoliberalism, and then the “End of History” thesis that emerged in the context of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. In this context, the imperative to demonstrate that socialism does not work accounts in large part for Washington’s sixty-five-year campaign of crippling sanctions against Cuba.
The same logic lay behind the U.S. ongoing support for destabilization and regime change in Venezuela. While Washington viewed Pink Tide governments in general as adversaries, the longevity of the Chavista governments partly explains why they were singled out as a special target. The explanation is particularly compelling in understanding the January 3 incursion because it occurred precisely at a time when the Maduro government had succeeded in achieving a degree of economic and political stability.
Needless to say, the Trump administration was well aware of the Venezuelan government’s improved economic and political prospects when in late 2025 it decided to block the nation’s oil exports and then militarily intervene. The improvements were tangible. On the economic front, the hyperinflation that reached 130,000 annual percent in 2018 had steadily declined to 16-48 percent by 2024. Similarly, oil production, which reached a nadir in 2020 with 527,000 barrels per day (bpd), by late 2025 had exceeded 1 million bpd. Furthermore, Venezuela was projected to lead Latin America in GDP growth in both 2024 and 2025 (Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective, 2026).
On the political front, by January 2026 the opposition was so fragmented that it had ceased to constitute a serious challenge to Maduro’s hold on power, due in large part to actions undertaken by both Maduro and Trump. In 2020, the Maduro government had resorted to measures of dubious legality to deepen fractures within the opposition, pitting hardline leaders advocating electoral abstention against those who recognized institutional authority and supported participation in elections (Ellner, 2024a: 8-9). Then in 2025 a split in the hardline bloc set María Corina Machado – who supported Trump’s demonization of Venezuelan immigrants, his gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean and the tightening of sanctions – against ex-presidential candidates Henrique Capriles and Manuel Rosales, who criticized those measures. By the time of the U.S. incursion in 2026, the pro-Machado hardliners no longer had any significant leadership presence within Venezuela.
The Maduro government also achieved a degree of success in circumventing sanctions by relying on a “shadow fleet” of oil tankers that evaded Washington’s monitoring system designed to target companies involved in Venezuelan oil shipments. Over the past decade, the U.S. sanction regime had expanded both in enforcement capacity and the number of targeted countries, and emerged as an all-important instrument of foreign policy. Undoubtedly, Washington was especially determined to make an example of Venezuela, given its location in the hemisphere and the fact that sanctions targeted such a strategic commodity as oil. In late 2025, the U.S. seized several shadow fleet ships off the Venezuelan coast as Trump announced a “total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers” entering and leaving Venezuela. The New York Times, however, reported that according to experts “the operation was unlikely to significantly disrupt a broader network of vessels” (Elliot and Eavis, 2025: B-1).
The Venezuelan government’s impressive staying power troubled Washington policymakers, who employed distinct strategies, even as regime change remained their ultimate objective. After the first Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign proved ineffective, the Biden government changed course by offering sanctions relief to induce Venezuela to improve terms for foreign investment, distance itself from U.S. adversaries, and implement political reforms facilitating the opposition’s return to power. By the end of Biden’s administration, the Financial Times ran articles titled “Biden’s gamble on Venezuela has misfired” and “How Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro outfoxed the West.” The latter article quoted Christopher Sabatini – who had been involved in Venezuelan “democracy promotion” at the outset of the Chávez presidency – stating “the current strategy on Venezuela hasn’t worked, so we have to try something else” (Financial Times, 2023; Fray, Daniels, Silva, Stott, 2023).
The longevity of Chavista rule must be viewed within a broader, theoretical framework as it relates to the demonstration effect. The Italian Marxist Domenico Losurdo argued that upon reaching power, governments of the Global South committed to socialism invariably confront imperialist aggression that elevates anti-imperialism to a new level. A paramount challenge becomes that of retaining power. Losurdo concludes that the analysis of these nations needs to pay special attention to the struggle against imperialism, which cannot be subordinated to other dimensions such as that of class struggle (Losurdo, 2024: 73-91).
This argument is applicable to Venezuela. I have argued elsewhere that the Chavista governments – given their foreign policy including special relations with Cuba and China, their ambitious social programs, attention to alternative modes of production (such as communes), and their socialist discourse – can be classified as progressive and anti-imperialist with a socialist component (Ellner, 2024b). The extended survival of the Chavista governments in the face of relentless hostility from Washington, combined with ongoing regime change attempts by domestic reactionary and pro-oligarchic actors, explains why Washington targeted Venezuela more relentlessly than other Pink Tide governments. In short, the endurance of Chavismo in power represents a victory for progressive causes, particularly the broader struggle against imperialism.
Navigating Cracks In The Empire
The achievement of relative stability in Venezuela weighed on the decision of the Trump administration to carry out the January 3 military actions. At the time, President Trump considered options that corresponded to two lines of thinking within the administration. One was the transactional strategy of negotiations “through strength” (read: “dollar diplomacy” through the use of blackmail and threats), and the other, the regime change approach based on an ideological outlook adhered to by the “hawks” headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Both came into play in the events of January 3 and its aftermath. The January 3 military action – which occurred despite Maduro’s willingness to engage in dialogue and make concessions including the release of prisoners – aligned with the hawkish camp. Subsequently, however, Trump adopted a transactional approach by praising interim president Delcy Rodríguez while compelling her to provide generous terms for multinational oil corporations. In the press conference just hours after the January 3 kidnapping, Trump used the word “oil” twenty-five times and the word “democracy” not once. This emphasis was a reflection of the priority objectives of the transactional tendency – though it could hardly be equated with “good imperialism” given that blackmail and threats were used to extract concessions. The hawks, for their part, expressed dissatisfaction with Trump’s close engagement with Rodríguez and his sidelining of Machado, although most of them did so in cautious terms, such as in the case of South Florida Republican Representatives Maria Elvira Salazar, Mario Díaz-Balart, and Carlos Antonio Giménez. Ian Vásquez of the right-wing Cato Institute was more explicit, calling Trump’s stance “a tremendous strategic and moral mistake” (Bennett, 2026).
The conflicting currents within the Trump administration constituted the broader context within which Maduro’s concessions to private capital – heavily criticized by sectors on the left (Bean, 2026) – need to be evaluated. The strategy of seeking a modus vivendi with Washington, beginning in the latter years of the first Trump’s administration and culminating in the reforms enacted by Delcy Rodríguez, was not far-fetched but rather constituted a “tactical retreat,” considered by some analysts to be necessary (Gilbert, 2026). It was designed to capitalize on the transactional orientation of the Trump administration in order to achieve a breathing space for a country confronting a severe economic crisis. Moreover, other Pink Tide presidents – such as Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro – along with Delcy Rodríguez followed the same basic approach of making concessions to Washington to avoid reprisals such as harsh tariffs, and in doing so achieved a measure of success. The approach, however, was limited due to Trump’s volatility and the absence of transactional figures (such as the diplomat Richard Grenell) in influential positions within the Trump administration.
In backchannel talks, Maduro indicated his willingness to allow U.S. drug enforcement agents to return to Venezuela, reversing Chávez’s decision to expel the DEA in 2005. He also affirmed that the adoption of lenient terms for U.S. oil investment was intended to bring Trump to the bargaining table (Confessore, Kurmanaev and Vogel, 2020). Following John Bolton’s forced resignation as Trump’s National Security Advisor in September 2019 – largely the result of his hardline interventionist stance – Trump appeared receptive to reaching a deal with Venezuela. By then, according to Bolton (2020: 247-286), Trump had become disillusioned with the self-proclaimed president Juan Guaidó and questioned the wisdom of recognizing him as president, at the same time that he expressed admiration for Maduro’s resilience. Trump even announced that he was open to talks with Maduro, which, in effect, would have recognized the legitimacy of his presidency (Swan, 2020). Similarly, in 2025 Trump vacillated by first terminating and then renewing Chevron’s licenses to operate in Venezuela, while also wavering on whether to engage in talks with Maduro. These mixed signals lend support for the argument that Caracas’ concessions to private capital were in large part politically motivated, as opposed to the notion that Maduro was won over to neoliberalism. Furthermore, the Maduro government’s strategy was grounded in the not far-fetched possibility that the concessions might lead to much needed sanctions relief.
How much is imperialism to blame?
Maduro’s harshest critics across the political spectrum reject the claim that the U.S.-imposed sanctions were the principal cause of the nation’s economic crisis (Millán Campos, 2026: 56). Right-wing analysts attribute the alleged 75 percent decline in national production to government mismanagement and corruption, adding that the sanctions only “exacerbated the problem” (Financial Times, 2023). In contrast, anti-Maduro analysts on the left contend that U.S. sanctions and misgovernment were equally responsible (Bean, 2026).
The debate over these allegations has to do with whether the economic crisis preceded or followed the imposition of the sanctions. The issue boils down to one of chronology. The position on the right claims that the most important sanctions – which cut off oil Venezuelan imports, undermined Venezuelan oil production and froze Venezuelan assets in the U.S. – were issued in January 2019, long after the economic crisis had set in. In contrast, anti-Maduro leftists point out that Trump’s August 2017 executive order obstructing the state oil company PDVSA’s access to financial markets was highly damaging. But they contend that those sanctions coincided with the onset of the crisis, rather than preceding it, and therefore cannot be singled out as the sole cause of the nation’s economic breakdown.
Both positions overlook the fact that U.S. hostility was not confined to sanctions since Washington’s multifaceted campaign against Venezuela, which predated the first Trump administration, inflicted significant damage on the nation’s economy. The Obama executive order which declared Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States issued in March 2015 adversely impacted the Venezuelan economy. In the months following the order, Kimberly-Clark, Ford, Bridgestone, General Mills and Proctor & Gamble curtailed production in Venezuela and then closed shop.
The two principal catalysts of Venezuela’s economic crisis were the collapse of international oil prices and Washington’s aggressive actions against the nation. Both erupted prior to – not after – the two most important expressions of the crisis that Maduro’s critics attribute to mismanagement, namely hyperinflation and the collapse in Venezuelan oil production. The dramatic fall in oil prices in 2015 (from $99 a barrel in 2014 to $52) and the Obama order in 2015 came first (Rodríguez, 2025: 151). Then came hyperinflation which peaked in 2018 and the plunge in oil production which declined moderately in 2016-2017 and crashed between 2018 and 2020 (from 2.86 mbd in 2015 to 0.527 mbd in 2020). Although various factors interacted, the sequence demonstrates that U.S. actions combined with plummeting oil prices were the fundamental cause of Venezuela’s economic crisis. Within this framework, the errors stressed by analysts on the left – among them economic liberalization, the problem of corruption recognized by virtually all analysts, and, in my own assessment, the sectarianism of the Chavista leadership (Ellner, 2023: 401-402) – must be analyzed.
An examination of the retreat of financial institutions from Venezuela between the Obama order of March 2015 and Trump’s initial sanctions of August 2017 is instructive, as it reveals the harsh impact of U.S. hostility at an early date (MRonline, 2019). Although Venezuela faced an economic downturn, partly due to falling oil prices, the contraction was not of a magnitude that would have justified the withdrawal of foreign capital and the nation’s economic marginalization.
Thus, for instance, Standard & Poor’s steadily downgraded Venezuela’s credit rating between 2014 and 2017, when its status reached “CCC-” or “default considered likely.” Moody’s exhibited a similar pattern, which had the effect of scaring off investors, despite Venezuela’s cancellation of over $68 billion dollars of its foreign debt over the same period. In addition, Citibank closed the accounts of Venezuelan state entities in mid-2016, after first informing the U.S. government. Maduro blamed the Obama administration for the move which he claimed formed part of a “financial blockade” (Schipani, 2016). Other international banks took comparable actions, thus raising the costs of international transactions. These reactions to the Obama executive order foreshadowed the phenomenon of “overcompliance” whereby corporations world-wide went beyond the formal requirements of U.S. sanctions to the detriment of the Venezuelan economy.
Conclusion
The military incursion on January 3 was the ultimate expression of Washington’s hostility toward the Chavista governments and its prioritization of achieving the goal of regime change in the nation. Many viewed the action as part of the “war on Venezuela” that included the Obama Executive Order of 2015 and the sanctions beginning in 2017. The characterization of Washington’s measures as a “war” reinforces the argument that U.S. aggression against Venezuela cannot be placed on the same scale as other important, but less transcendental, factors – such as erroneous policies and government mismanagement –in accounting for the nation’s pressing problems. In addition, the intensity of the economic, political and military aggression employed by the Trump administration has led some analysts to ask whether governments facing unrelenting imperialist pressure can be judged by the same standards applied in more normal circumstances (Baraka, 2026). This was the core argument advanced by Losurdo (2024: 111-130) in his analysis of anti-imperialist movements that came to power in the Global South in the twentieth century.
January 3 should be viewed as the culmination of a continuum of Washington’s regime-change efforts against Venezuela, rather than an aberration attributable exclusively to Trump. That continuum dates from the Washington-supported abortive coup of April 11, 2002, if not before. It can also be traced to the four months of opposition disturbances in 2014 known as the “guarimba,” which resulted in the death of 43 people on both sides, 10 of whom were members of government security forces. The corporate media attributed the unrest to government repression, in the process demonizing Maduro while portraying Leopoldo López – the far-right opposition leader who initiated the protest call – as a heroic figure. The demonization of Maduro paved the way for the Obama executive order of 2015, which in turn led to the sanctions of the first Trump administration and the diverse destabilization campaigns that followed (Emersberger and Podur, 2021: 124-140, 160).
January 3, however, did not represent a definitive defeat for the Chavista government. Trump’s announcement that Delcy Rodríguez would be recognized as the legitimate ruler of Venezuela, and that Machado lacked “the support or the respect within the country” to govern, was not an off-handed remark. It was based on a realistic assessment of the relative strength of domestic actors, one that was corroborated by the CIA (Schectman, Matthews and Bergengruen, 2026). Indeed, the anticipated opposition-led mobilizations failed to materialize, despite predictions to the contrary (Daniels, 2025).
Contrary to the military intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and what Washington pursued in Iran in 2026, Venezuela’s ruling bloc was not removed from power. Trump’s statement on January 3 and his subsequent policy toward Venezuela was a tacit recognition that after a quarter of a century in power, Chavismo was still the dominant force in the nation. Trump’s comment about Machado broke with Washington’s policy of aligning with far-right Venezuelan leaders such as López, Guaidó and Machado herself.
The multiple Washington-backed regime-change attempts against Maduro fit a pattern that sectors on the left that demonize him, as well as many scholars, tend to overlook: the Monroe Doctrine has historically been invoked not only to promote U.S. economic interests but also to punish defiance of U.S. hegemony. Washington has targeted Venezuela because Chávez’s legacy of resistance had to be discredited and in addition Maduro’s staying power, in the face of ongoing attempts at destabilization, was setting a dangerous example.
A glance at Venezuelan history and of the region highlights the enduring power of the cause of defense of national sovereignty. Two examples underscore this reality. Chávez, in his attempt to unify the nation in opposition to Washington interventionism, frequently made reference to the unyielding adversary José “Mocho" Hernández of president Cipriano Castro over a century before. Castro amnestied the jailed Hernández in 1902 to join him to rally Venezuelans against the blockade of European powers off the nation’s coast. In another example of the tenacity and staying power of symbols of national sovereignty, the Sandinista movement took its name from Augusto César Sandino who led a rebellion against the U.S. intervention in Nicaragua from 1927 and 1933. Sandino was killed by the father of the man (Anastasio Somoza Debayle) who the Sandinistas overthrew nearly half a century later.
Over the recent past, Marxist writers have drawn on anti-imperialist struggles of this nature to back the thesis that the defense of national sovereignty has often united broad sectors of the population in a national front, which emerges as the nation’s dominant force. Domenico Losurdo contends that this strategy—what he terms “Eastern Marxism”—has proven more viable for the Global South than approaches grounded in traditional leftist dogma narrowly focused on the working class.
Prior to January 3, a broad alignment was emerging in Venezuela that encompassed actors across the political spectrum, uniting leaders and the population at large in repudiation of Washington’s threats and aggressive actions. These Venezuelans distanced themselves from opposition leaders such as Machado who praised Trump and welcomed foreign intervention in all its forms. If history serves as a guide, the discourse of national sovereignty will ultimately resonate decisively with Venezuelans and in turn offset the narrative that demonizes Maduro.
Footnotes
Steve Ellner taught economic history and political science at the Universidad de Oriente (UDO) in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela from 1977 to 2003. As of January 2019 has been Associate Managing Editor of the journal Latin American Perspectives: A Journal on Capitalism and Socialism and is currently manuscript editor. As of 2025, Ellner has been on the advisory board of Science & Society: A Journal of Marxist Thought and Analysis.