Category: Venezuela
‘SHOULD BE ASHAMED!’: Trump Unloads on Senate Republicans Who Voted for War Powers Resolution
Five days after the capture of Caracas strongman Nicolás Maduro, the Senate moved to put President Trump in a constitutional straitjacket.
The Spectacle Ep. 312: Venezuela: Enemies Foreign and Domestic, Part II
The Democrats continue to sympathize with Nicolás Maduro’s arrest, such as Rep. Delia Ramirez condemning the U.S. intervention in Venezuela…
Venezuela was the stage. China was the target.
Last weekend’s Caribbean live-fire exercise in and around the suburbs of Caracas delivered a steady stream of tactical messages to the Western Hemisphere. We don’t like narco-terrorists, wannabe communists, bloated dictators, or people who supply oil to our adversaries.
But that wasn’t the real message.
Message to Xi: There’s a new sheriff in town. He isn’t ‘Sleepy Joe.’ And his call sign is FAFO.
The love note was addressed to China, and it read: We are awake now. Our game is FAFO.
America’s 36-year slumber on the Monroe Doctrine — “Stay out of the Western Hemisphere or else” — began after Panama in 1990. The Gulf War and the Global War on Terrorism followed, and Washington became dangerously myopic about threats in America’s own backyard.
Then came the turning point. When Bill Clinton signed off on communist China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2000, Beijing rapidly surged into a world-class economic power. Along with that rise came a succession of Chinese leaders who openly advanced the idea of global Chinese hegemony.
Oddly enough, many of those ideas came from an American — my late friend Alvin Toffler.
Toffler’s book “The Third Wave” so impressed Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang in 1984 that millions of bootleg Chinese translations were distributed — without royalties — throughout the People’s Liberation Army. The same thing happened after Toffler published “War and Anti-War.” Once again, millions of pirated copies circulated, and Beijing began integrating his ideas into military doctrine.
In the late 1990s, PLA Major General Qiao Liang and Colonel Wang Xiangsui wrote “Unrestricted Warfare,” borrowing heavily from Toffler while laying out a strategy to defeat the United States.
In hindsight, it should have been titled “Slow Motion War.”
The book focuses on perceived weaknesses in American character and American war-making. The United States remains a nation of quarterly earnings reports and election cycles. We change political leadership every two or four years. The Chinese think in generational time frames.
From their perspective, Americans only go to war when facing a “clear and present danger.”
The genius of “Unrestricted Warfare” lies in exploiting what happens when a threat is clear but not present — like cancer from long-term smoking — or present but not clear, like the slow poisons Lucrezia Borgia allegedly used on her enemies.
Qiao and Wang proposed a slow, steady pressure campaign against the four pillars of American national power: diplomatic, information, military, and economic — the DIME.
Examples abound. Diplomatic and economic leverage through the Belt and Road Initiative. Tight control of information inside China paired with aggressive information warfare abroad through platforms such as TikTok. A decades-long military buildup aimed at surpassing U.S. power. And a long trail of currency manipulation.
(And then there’s this gem from page 191 of “Unrestricted Warfare”: “Can special funds be set up to exert greater influence on another country’s government and legislature through lobbying?” Eric Swalwell might find that line interesting.)
RELATED: From Monroe to ‘Donroe’: America enforces its back yard again
Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
While America fixated on the Middle East, China quietly embedded itself throughout Latin America. In Panama, Beijing gained control of port management at both ends of the Panama Canal and began upgrading the system. In Costa Rica — which has no army — China donated 3,500 police cars and built a national stadium in San José, free of charge. It also cut sweetheart deals involving hundreds of Chinese fishing trawlers. Colombia saw similar treatment.
Then came Orange Man Bad.
Donald Trump is the first president to grasp that China isn’t a Red Godzilla stomping cities with napalm breath and a scything tail. China is more like the Blob — and Trump is Steve McQueen.
Venezuela, Maduro, oil, and narco-terrorism were all subsets.
China was the target. Xi Jinping was the bullseye.
Zero hour wasn’t set by the weather. It was set by the departure of Chinese envoy Qiu Xiaoqi, who had just wrapped up discussions on future ties with Venezuela. Unfortunately for Beijing, Delta Force snagged and bagged Nicolás Maduro and his wife and had them sitting in a Brooklyn jail before the envoy even made it home.
Message to Xi: There’s a new sheriff in town. He isn’t “Sleepy Joe.” And his call sign is FAFO.
Any questions?
How Trump’s capture of Venezuelan oil leaves America’s adversaries sputtering
The U.S. military deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, bringing him to New York City to face drug, narco-terrorism, and weapons charges.
Days later, President Donald Trump — who last month ordered a naval blockade of sanctioned oil tankers into Venezuela and has been in talks with the vestigial Maduro regime about opening up to American oil companies — announced that “Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America” to be sold at market price for the supposed benefit of the American and Venezuelan people.
‘After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.’
The geopolitical implications of America’s removal of Maduro and Washington’s increasing oversight of Venezuela’s oil sector are far-reaching.
In addition to demonstrating the reluctance of certain American adversaries to support one another with anything beyond strongly worded statements, Trump’s reassertion of U.S. influence over Venezuelan energy and his removal of the leftist dictator serve to undermine the communist regimes in China and Cuba as well as to threaten Russia’s ability to finance military aggression in the medium to long term.
“The recent actions taken by the U.S. in Caracas were motivated by a desire to show greater assertiveness by the U.S. against China and Russia’s efforts in Latin America,” David Detomasi, a professor of international business at Queen’s University who has written extensively on the geopolitics of oil, suggested to Blaze News.
“Because much of Venezuela’s oil exports ended up in Chinese and/or Russian hands, gaining control over those exports was an important goal,” Detomasi added.
The Trump administration indicated in its National Security Strategy that “after years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.”
RELATED: From Monroe to ‘Donroe’: America enforces its back yard again
Photo by XNY/Star Max/GC Images
To this end, the administration indicated it would “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”
Venezuela is home to the largest proven oil reserves in the world, with an estimated 303 billion barrels as of 2024.
Despite this natural abundance, output has been nowhere close to what it could be, owing to the nationalization of oil assets under Hugo Chávez in the mid 2000s and other ruinous leftist policies that have since starved the industry of investment, expertise, and infrastructural support. Since the 1970s, when the country was producing 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, daily output has dropped to 1.1 million barrels.
While output has dropped from 7% to 1% of global oil production since the 1970s, Venezuelan oil exports have nevertheless proven valuable for nations antipathetic to the United States, China and Cuba in particular.
China
The Chinese foreign ministry condemned the recent American actions in Venezuela, stating that “such hegemonic acts of the U.S. seriously violate international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty, and threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean region.”
China, here throwing rocks from a glass house, announced in 2023 the elevation of the China-Venezuela relationship to an “all-weather strategic partnership” and indicated Beijing would back Venezuela’s “just cause against external interference.”
In addition to having its “all-weather” partnership exposed as an undefended fair-weather compact and losing a key ally in Caracas, China now faces the possibility of losing a significant source of energy.
Chinese imports of Venezuelan oil reportedly hit 470,000 barrels per day last year, accounting for around 4.5% of China’s maritime crude imports. In November, Venezuela reportedly sent as many as 746,000 barrels per day to China.
Reuters indicated that a portion of these imports goes to paying down Venezuela’s debt to China, believed to be in excess of $10 billion.
J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy, recently noted that “depending on the figures, and factoring in Venezuelan oil shipped to China under a false flag like Malaysia, Venezuela and Iran together provide as much as 30-35% of China’s present oil imports.”
RELATED: The Venezuela crisis was never just about drugs
Photo by Manaure Quintero / AFP via Getty Images
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, an economist and the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment, told Blaze News that China wants to buy all the oil it can since it already has coal and doesn’t produce much oil or natural gas.
‘China is not going to send its military to defend Venezuela, and neither is Russia.’
In addition to depriving China of a critical source of energy or at the very least regulating its flow, the economist suggested that the restoration of American influence over Venezuelan energy and the potential of Caracas ramping up oil production may also diminish a key source of China’s geopolitical power.
“If there’s more oil around, it might lose geopolitical power in terms of the demand for its wind turbines, its solar panels, and its electric batteries that go in the electric vehicles,” Furchtgott-Roth said.
As of 2024, China reportedly manufactured 92% of the world’s solar panels and 82% of wind turbines.
Andrés Martínez-Fernández, senior policy analyst for Latin America at the Heritage Foundation, told Blaze News that many of Maduro’s fellow travelers remain in power, so it is presently unclear whether Caracas will keep China cut off or resist its influence.
Martínez-Fernández suggested, however, that ultimately “extricating that Chinese influence and presence in our hemisphere” would amount to a massive victory, serving also to weaken BRICS and reveal how such anti-American alliances “collapse once they’re tested by the strength of the United States.”
“When it comes to it, China is not going to send its military to defend Venezuela, and neither is Russia, even when they have substantial interests there,” Martínez-Fernández said.
Cuba
Whereas Maduro’s ouster and the premier exercise of the “Donroe Doctrine” spell trouble for Beijing, they could prove catastrophic for the regime in Cuba.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel suggested this week that “it is urgent that the international community mobilize, organize, and coordinate in denouncing this flagrant act of state terrorism and the illegal, immoral, and criminal kidnapping of a legitimate president.”
Díaz-Canel’s sense of urgency is understandable granted that Cuba — which has suffered rolling blackouts in recent months and years — relies on Venezuela for subsidized oil.
“If oil supply were to cease entirely, the Cuban economy would grind to a halt,” Pavel Vidal, a former Cuban central bank economist who teaches at Javeriana University, told NBC News. “This would represent a devastating blow to a Cuban economy already in recession for six years and lacking the productive capacity, competitiveness and foreign currency to replace these flows.”
Bert Hoffmann, a political scientist at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, told Euronews, “Over the last months, Venezuelan oil still made up 70% of Cuba’s total oil imports, with Mexico and Russia sharing the rest.”
‘Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall.’
In addition to Cuba’s energy dependence on Venezuela, Díaz-Canel’s regime was closely linked with Maduro’s, with Cuban intelligence and security services lending a hand in Caracas.
When asked about whether the U.S. should give other countries in the region the Venezuela treatment, Martínez-Fernández said, “By doing what we did in Venezuela, we are helping to cut off lifelines to the more dramatic and dangerous threats beyond Venezuela in our hemisphere.”
Weeks ahead of Maduro’s capture, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made clear that bringing down Cuba’s communist government is the policy of the United States.
“I think every administration would love to see a different type of situation in Cuba. Cuba is a disaster. It’s a disaster. It’s not just because they’re Marxists and because they’re terrorists,” Rubio said. “They’re incompetent. These are incompetent people, and they’ve destroyed that country.”
Trump told reporters on Sunday, “Cuba always survived because of Venezuela. Now they won’t have that money coming in.”
“Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall,” Trump said. “I don’t know if they’re going to hold out.”
Russia
Russia’s foreign ministry characterized the recent American actions in Caracas as “destructive foreign interference” and urged the Trump administration to “reconsider their position.”
While Russia, like China and Cuba, had a close strategic partnership with Maduro’s regime, it does not similarly rely on Venezuelan oil. Nevertheless, the crackdown in Caracas could nevertheless have profound consequences for Moscow.
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Photo by Mikhail METZEL / POOL / AFP via Getty Images
Furchtgott-Roth recently wrote that “Russia, reliant on oil revenues to fund military operations, will suffer if expanded Venezuelan output pushes prices lower.”
Income from Russia’s oil and gas exports amounts to nearly one-third of the country’s federal revenues.
When asked about the timeline for such consequence, Furchtgott-Roth told Blaze News that the consequences could be felt in Moscow in the near future, even though it might take years for Venezuela to significantly increase oil production.
“Prices are set on the basis of expectations of future supply. So as soon as people see that the conditions are in place for Venezuelan oil to be produced in greater quantities, prices will adjust, presumably down lower than they would have been otherwise,” the economist said.
‘They might want to take similar kinds of actions in their neighboring countries.’
While Maduro’s ouster and the potential U.S.-led energy renaissance in Venezuela could profoundly impact Russia, Moscow’s response has been rather muted, amounting to little more than heated blather before the United Nations.
Neil Melvin, a political scientist at the Royal United Services Institute, told Deutsche Welle that “Russia’s support for Venezuela has been more symbolic than practical.”
Although Russia’s influence and relations in the Western Hemisphere have been impacted, Melvin suspects that Moscow does not want to offend Washington with heavy criticism at a time when the U.S. is working to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.
The relative Russian silence on America’s shake-up in Latin America might also have something to do with its own geopolitical ambitions.
Professor Detomasi told Blaze News that while the U.S. action in Caracas might give China and Russia “pause in the operations in Latin America,” they “will use the U.S. action as a justification if and when they might want to take similar kinds of actions in their neighboring countries.”
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A Merry Ballad for a Weeping Mustache
I had a boil upon my ass. It lingered year by year, But on a sudden Saturday, The boil just…
From Monroe to ‘Donroe’: America enforces its back yard again
When President Donald Trump stood before reporters Saturday and invoked the Monroe Doctrine, he was not indulging nostalgia. He was announcing enforcement. Then came the line that removed all ambiguity: The Monroe Doctrine, he said, will now be known as the Donroe Doctrine.
The leftist political class recoiled on cue. Mainstream commentators scoffed. Corporate editorial boards feigned alarm. Strip away the theatrics, and the meaning was clear. The United States has decided to resume responsibility for the Western Hemisphere — not in the language of empire, but in the language of order, law, and consequence.
One reality is already clear. The Western Hemisphere no longer serves as an unguarded corridor for corruption, narcotics, and foreign subversion.
The Monroe Doctrine emerged in 1823, when President James Monroe warned European powers that further colonization or political interference in the Americas would not be tolerated. It never meant isolationism. It reflected realism.
Power vacuums invite conquest. Disorder invites domination. The early American republic understood that if Europe continued exporting its political systems into the New World, the hemisphere would remain unstable and unfree. America declared an end to European colonial ambition long before “decolonization” became a fashionable academic slogan.
Over time, enforcement varied in wisdom and restraint. Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary warned that chronic wrongdoing in the Americas could require U.S. intervention. During the Cold War, Washington invoked the doctrine — sometimes clumsily — to block Soviet expansion and nuclear weapons in the hemisphere.
Through each phase, the premise endured: The Western Hemisphere is a distinct political space, and the United States bears a special responsibility to prevent it from becoming a staging ground for criminal regimes and foreign adversaries.
That responsibility eroded in recent decades, replaced by a dangerous fantasy: that cartel-run states can invoke sovereignty to excuse any behavior so long as it occurs within their borders — or moves outward through drug routes and illegal oil networks. Venezuela stands as the clearest casualty of that delusion.
The U.S. Department of Justice indicted Nicolás Maduro on narco-terrorism charges for conspiring with drug cartels to flood the United States with cocaine. This was no symbolic gesture. It marked a recognition that Venezuela under Maduro is not a normal sovereign government, but a criminal enterprise masquerading as one. Enforcement, not rhetoric, gives such indictments meaning. That is what the Donroe Doctrine signals.
Democratic critics objected immediately, even though the indictment originated under the Biden administration. Some argued that because the United States cannot remove every tyrant everywhere, it lacks moral authority to act against any single one. That is moral paralysis disguised as principle. By that logic, no law should ever be enforced because more criminals remain at large. Police would stop making arrests. Courts would close. Justice would dissolve into excuses.
Others insisted Venezuela’s sovereignty places it beyond American reach. Sovereignty does not magically convert criminal conduct into legitimacy. A regime that finances itself through narcotics trafficking, collaborates with cartels, launders money through international systems, facilitates human trafficking, and exports violence across borders has already violated the sovereignty of others — especially the United States. Cocaine and fentanyl ignore borders. So do the trafficking networks Venezuela enables. By its conduct, the Maduro regime declared hostility. Enforcement followed.
Venezuelan officials now appeal to international law. The claim borders on parody. Venezuela ranks among the world’s most corrupt regimes. Its institutions lie hollow. Its courts serve politics. Its elections perform theater. For such a regime to suddenly demand protection from a rules-based order it has systematically violated is not irony; it is audacity. This is not a government. It is a cartel with flags and uniforms.
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Photo by XNY/Star Max/GC Images
The more revealing question is not why the United States finally enforced its laws against a narco-state but why so many Western politicians rushed to defend it. How many careers, campaigns, and institutions have drawn quiet benefit from regimes like Maduro’s? How many activists and academics repeat talking points that align perfectly with the interests of Caracas, Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran?
America’s adversaries understand Venezuela well. China, Russia, Cuba, and Iran treat it as a strategic asset — oil-rich, geographically close to the United States, and governed by leaders willing to trade sovereignty for survival. Through Venezuela, hostile powers gain leverage and access in the Western Hemisphere. Only America’s political class pretended this did not matter.
Venezuelans themselves understand what is at stake. Many celebrated the renewed enforcement of U.S. law because polite diplomacy never delivered accountability. They lived under a regime that destroyed the economy, emptied shelves, silenced dissent, and drove millions into exile. They do not fear American responsibility. They welcome it. While American professors protest Donald Trump and plead for Maduro, Venezuelans cheer Trump and hope for freedom.
The Donroe Doctrine does not promise instant liberation or universal justice. It promises something more basic and more necessary: Criminal regimes will no longer receive legitimacy simply because they occupy a seat at the United Nations. Traffickers, tyrants, and their patrons now face consequences.
Whether this approach extends beyond Venezuela remains to be seen. But one reality is already clear. The Western Hemisphere no longer serves as an unguarded corridor for corruption, narcotics, and foreign subversion.
The age of moral neutrality is over. The age of the Donroe Doctrine has begun.
Trump Rescues Venezuela
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Trump Says Venezuela Turning Over Huge Stockpile Of Oil To US
‘used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States’
Dem Senator Chris Murphy Dodges When Asked Whether Toppling Maduro Helps Anyone
‘nobody is shedding a tear’
