On January 3, 2026, the world witnessed what can only be described as an act of state terrorism – the United States military conducted airstrikes on Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, resulting in the capture and forced removal of President Nicolás Maduro. This brazen violation of international law—an unprovoked military assault on a sovereign nation followed by the kidnapping of its head of state—has been justified by Washington with the dubious rhetoric of fighting drug trafficking and defending democracy. Yet beneath these pretexts lies the same imperial logic that has guided United States foreign policy for decades – the pursuit of global dominance and the protection of economic interests through military force.
The bombing of Caracas is not an aberration. It is the continuation of a long-established pattern of U.S. imperialism, one explicitly articulated by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and implemented across the globe from Afghanistan to Yemen. To understand the attack on Venezuela, we must place it within this broader context of unilateral intervention, resource extraction, and the maintenance of what PNAC called “American global leadership“—a euphemism for empire.
The Caracas Operation – Imperialism Unmasked
In the early hours of January 3, American forces launched what officials describe as a large-scale strike against multiple targets in Venezuela, including Fort Tiuna, a major military installation in Caracas. The operation, reportedly involving the elite Delta Force, resulted in the capture of President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, who were subsequently flown out of the country to face charges in the United States.
The justification offered by the Trump administration is transparently cynical. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that Maduro is “not the President of Venezuela” but rather “the head of the Cartel de Los Soles, a narco-terror organisation“, language serving to legitimise what is, in essence, an act of war against a sovereign nation. The administration claims the operation was necessary to execute an arrest warrant, yet international law recognises no such right for one nation to invade another to apprehend its leader.
The fact that Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves—a point Maduro himself has repeatedly emphasised—cannot be separated from Washington’s sudden urgency to remove him from power.
PNAC and the Blueprint for Empire
To understand the ideological framework undergirding the Venezuelan operation, one must examine the Project for the New American Century, the neoconservative think-tank founded in 1997 by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. PNAC’s foundational documents reveal an explicit agenda – the establishment of what they termed “Pax Americana“, an American global dominance enforced through military superiority.
The Venezuela operation fits squarely within this framework. It represents the continuation of a doctrine that views the world as America’s to order, with military force as the primary tool for managing threats to U.S. interests—which invariably means economic interests, particularly access to resources like oil.
A Pattern of Interventions – From Afghanistan to Yemen
The attack on Venezuela is the latest in a series of military interventions that have devastated nations across the Global South, all conducted in the name of fighting terrorism, promoting democracy, or protecting human rights—noble-sounding pretexts that mask the ugly reality of resource extraction and geopolitical control.
The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, launched in response to the September 11 attacks, became the longest war in American history. What began as a mission to capture Osama bin Laden evolved into a two-decade occupation that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and left the country in ruins. The war enriched American defence contractors while impoverishing Afghans. When U.S. forces finally withdrew in 2021, the Taliban—the very force America had sought to destroy—returned to power, rendering the entire enterprise a catastrophic failure.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq stands as perhaps the clearest example of PNAC ideology in action. The invasion, launched under the false pretence of weapons of mass destruction, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the displacement of millions, and the destabilisation of the entire region. Iraq’s oil industry, once nationalised, was opened to foreign investment. The country descended into sectarian violence, and the power vacuum created by the American occupation gave rise to ISIS.
In 2011, the United States and NATO allies launched a bombing campaign against Libya, ostensibly to protect civilians during an uprising against Muammar Gaddafi. What began as a no-fly zone quickly became a regime change operation. Gaddafi was overthrown and killed, and Libya—once Africa’s wealthiest nation with the highest Human Development Index on the continent—descended into chaos. Today, Libya remains a failed state plagued by civil war, human trafficking, and the presence of ISIS affiliates. The Libyan intervention revealed how easily humanitarian rhetoric could be weaponised to justify imperial aggression.
In Syria, the United States has pursued regime change through a combination of support for armed opposition groups, military occupation of oil-rich regions in the country’s northeast, and economic sanctions that have devastated the civilian population. American forces remain illegally stationed on Syrian soil, controlling oil fields, while Syria’s people suffer under crushing sanctions. The war has killed hundreds of thousands and created the worst refugee crisis since World War II.
Perhaps nowhere is American imperialism’s moral bankruptcy more evident than in Palestine. The United States provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid annually, enabling the occupation, settlement expansion, and military operations in Gaza and the West Bank that human rights organisations have documented as potential war crimes. The recent intensification of Israeli operations in Gaza, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths, has proceeded with full American military and diplomatic support. Washington’s unconditional backing for Israel serves multiple strategic purposes – maintaining a powerful military ally in the Middle East, projecting American power in a region crucial for global energy supplies, and demonstrating to other nations the consequences of defying American interests.
Venezuela – Oil, Resources, and the Logic of Plunder
Venezuela’s vast oil reserves—the largest proven reserves in the world—make it a prime target for American imperial designs. For years, Washington has pursued regime change through unproven allegations of government-sponsored drug trafficking, economic sanctions, support for opposition groups, and diplomatic isolation. These measures have contributed to Venezuela’s economic crisis, creating the very instability that American officials now cite as justification for their military involvement.
The pattern is familiar – create false and misleading narratives about the incumbent leaders, impose sanctions that devastate a country’s economy, blame the resulting suffering on the targeted government, then use that suffering to justify a coup d’état, or unilateral seizure of power, to remedy the engineered situation. This was the playbook in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. It is now being applied to Venezuela, and the tactics reveal a fanatical determination to remove any obstacle to American economic interests by any means necessary.
The people of Venezuela, like the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Palestine, Syria and countless other nations subjected to American violence, deserve self-determination—the right to choose their own leaders, control their own resources, and chart their own futures without foreign interference. Until that fundamental right is respected, resistance to American imperialism remains not only justified but necessary.
The Caracas raid is not the end of a story. It is another chapter in the long struggle against imperialism—a struggle that will continue until all peoples are free to determine their own destinies, free from the threat of American bombs.
— © 2026 Sul Nowroz – Real Media staff writer – Insta: @TheAfghanWriter
