The US military operation against Venezuela on January 3, 2026, which left hundreds dead, including 32 Cuban combatants, and resulted in the abduction and transfer of President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores to New York, marked the most severe blow to Latin American sovereignty in the 21st century. For decades, the U.S. government had used a combination of hybrid warfare and sanctions to strangle, restrict, and threaten left-wing projects in the region. But the second Trump administration escalated, first with a massive military build-up and encirclement in the Caribbean not seen in over a century, and then a rapid high-tech strike to capture a sitting head of state. The goal was to seize the world’s largest oil reserves and force the Venezuelan state to reorient toward compliance with Washington.The overwhelming force of U.S. imperialism on January 3, 2026, followed by the threat of continued intervention (the stick), the opportunity to reintegrate into the world economy (the carrot), and the decisions made by Venezuela’s leadership since January, have clearly led to the erosion of Venezuela’s sovereignty under the tutelage of the U.S. government. This new period of compliance and reorientation to U.S. interests is most visible in the Bolivarian Revolution’s new foreign policy, but it is also evident in its new trade agreements with U.S. companies and in the “new phase of coexistence” with reactionary sectors in the country. Understanding Venezuela’s shift from a foreign policy based on regional integration, anti-imperialism, and socialist principles to alignment with U.S. imperialism requires examining the material conditions that produced it, rather than mere moral judgments.Back in February, we used the analogy of the 1918 Brest-Litovsk Treaty that the Bolsheviks signed with German imperialism as a tactical retreat, in which they gave up large territorial concessions in order to live for another day. It has since become clear that this retreat has gone considerably beyond tactical necessity, and constitutes a larger strategic realignment, which imperils the Bolivarian Revolution as a whole. In the case of Brest-Litovsk, German imperialism collapsed less than a year later, creating a totally new political situation for the Bolsheviks, and all the lost territory was reclaimed. In the present situation, no favorable transformations are on the immediate horizon in the region, nor is any help on the way from another revolution or world power.Understanding the character of the Bolivarian Revolution, and its current predicament, requires recognizing the era of counter-revolution it grew up in, which the world has lived in since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The wave of socialist and anti-colonial revolutions that began with the Russian Revolution in 1917 and which transformed two-thirds of the planet had not only come to an end, but gave way to a larger imperialist counter-offensive. Under the new correlation of forces, the idea of new socialist revolutions seizing power became far less probable in any immediate sense. Beyond just the seizure of state power, retaining power in this world environment would mean existing without the only counterweight that had historically constrained U.S. military interventions, and which could provide an economic lifeline outside of the capitalist world economy. In this new era, with the absence of a counter-hegemonic socialist bloc, the United States renewed its aggressive stance against China, tightened the blockade against Cuba, and intervened militarily across the Global South, from Yugoslavia to Iraq, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere. Independent states that did not comply with the dictates of U.S. imperialism faced its full onslaught and destruction, leaving millions dead or displaced.In this era of counter-revolution, the arrival of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela in 1999 was exceptional, an astonishing aberration to the triumphalism of U.S. imperialism. It became a force for the renewal of socialism and anti-imperialism as the world moved in the opposite direction. While the United States consolidated its unipolar dominance, Venezuela reorganized its state, drafted a radically democratic constitution that reframed political participation, developed the communes as new form of people’s power and decision-making, re-nationalized its oil industry to redirect profits towards social spending, redistributed land to poor peasants, universalized access to healthcare, education and culture, and built a network of regional integration that challenged U.S. hegemony. This was not a revolution that emerged from favorable conditions. It emerged in spite of them. The only two main global trends working in its favor were 1) booming oil prices, in which the U.S. market still depended on Venezuelan heavy crude; and 2) the Bush administration being largely tied down by full-scale occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, which had also become unpopular at a global scale.Venezuela, because of its militant anti-imperialism, mass mobilization, and the political unity of its leadership, resisted permanent U.S. intervention in its affairs for over twenty years, defeating coups and surviving sanctions and hybrid warfare aimed at regime change. It inspired a new progressive wave across the region, presenting new possibilities for economic, social, and political integration — the only path to overcome isolation in the unipolar world.The strategic alliance forged between Cuba and Venezuela, alongside the launch of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) to foster regional economic integration, served as a catalyst for a broader leftward shift, fueling electoral victories for left and progressive forces such as in Bolivia (2005), Nicaragua (2006), and Ecuador (2006).Yet, the Chavez government never aimed to break off its economic relations with the U.S. — this was the consequence of Washington’s unremitting hostility, a punishment for the Revolution’s defiance. By 2025, the crushing weight of over a decade of sanctions on the economy and a naval blockade on its oil exports, had impacted both the morale and capacity of a socialist project deprived of the resources to meet the basic needs of the people. It was also politically isolated by its regional neighbors, including progressive governments in Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, and thousands of miles away from its strongest allies Russia and China, for whom it was never a top priority compared to their other security and political interests. Nor did Venezuela ever possess the military capacity to deter a determined U.S. assault, and it was unable in the second Trump administration to respond to the extrajudicial killings and lethal strikes against small boats in the Caribbean. While there was mass anti-war sentiment in the U.S., it was not well organized or powerful enough to restrain the Pentagon. Venezuela faced a highly unfavorable correlation of forces. Operation Absolute Resolve, ordered by the Trump administration, demonstrated this: an overwhelming military intervention with over 150 aircraft and helicopters, elite Delta Units and the largest U.S. naval fleet ever assembled in the Caribbean participated in the strike, after months of secret rehearsals. The operation’s technical sophistication confirmed what the correlation of forces had long implied.The successful kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro by the U.S. imposed a dilemma in the hands of Venezuela’s leadership. Having been attacked and their sovereignty violated, they could fight to the death against the US, a scenario in which their top leaders would be immediately eliminated, the rest of the government would have to become a guerrilla-style “government in arms,” while the population endured massive airstrikes. This is what Maduro announced might happen during civic-military mobilizations in 2025, but the population and military’s true level of preparedness for such a scenario cannot be assessed from afar. The other option was essentially to surrender and accept U.S. terms as the condition for normalization of relations, the end of diplomatic isolation, and reentry into the world economy under U.S. tutelage. Maduro had himself offered comparable concessions to the Trump administration during the military build-up, but he had been rejected; now the White House was re-offering something similar under the humiliating conditions of his abduction, with a gun pointed at the heads of the rest of his inner circle. They accepted. The terms presented by the Trump administration set the stage for a new dynamic of coercion in which Venezuela’s economic and foreign policy are effectively made in consultation with Washington.Trump’s public statements left no ambiguity about the terms imposed on the existing Bolivarian leadership, such that Venezuelan sovereignty has been substantially compromised and U.S. imperialism has taken control over Venezuela’s finances and oil exports. “We will run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” he declared. He demanded “total access to the oil and other things in the country”. “Other things” include Venezuela’s vast gold reserves and unmined resources, diamonds, etc. Some $4 billion of gold now held by the Bank of England is reportedly being transferred to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Many defenders of the Bolivarian Revolution hoped and assumed that this was Trump’s typical neocolonial bluster. But it has largely come to pass, and the Venezuelan government’s response, signed by Delcy Rodríguez as acting president, invited the U.S. “to work jointly on a cooperation agenda.”The reorientation of Venezuela’s government is now indisputable. On May 16, Alex Saab, a former Venezuelan diplomat of Colombian origin, was deported to the United States to face trial again after being pardoned in 2023 by the Biden administration as part of a prisoner swap between the two countries. Saab has since then pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in the U.S. and agreed to fully cooperate with U.S. prosecutors in “other federal cases.” On June 12, Venezuela’s military cooperated with U.S. military forces who carried out an airstrike inside the country, which they say killed Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, listed on the FBI’s most wanted list for gang activity. A year ago, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth was describing the same Venezuelan government as “narco-terrorists”; indeed, this was the invented basis for the capture of Maduro and Flores, and the Venezuelan government proclaimed its readiness to defend its territory by any means necessary. Now Hegseth said the attack reflected “the shared U.S. and Venezuelan commitment to take the fight to narco-terrorists and deny them any safe haven in our hemisphere.”Then in early August 2026, following a devastating double earthquake that rocked the country, Venezuela and Israel announced that they agreed to restore consular relations. A senior IDF-led delegation had earlier been brought to Venezuela under the pretext of assisting in disaster relief following the earthquake. The announcement of the reopening of consular relations is seen as a first step toward restoring full, normalized diplomatic relations between the two governments, and the two sides’ UN delegations have now met as well. Venezuela under Hugo Chavez had severed diplomatic ties with Israel in 2009 following a devastating war launched against Gaza, and on the international scene the Venezuelan government had been one of the most consistent defenders of the Palestinian cause.The biggest sign of Venezuela’s reorientation and strategic realignment has been in the economic field. Oil is the material basis and core of the new relationship. Although the U.S. has historically been the main consumer of Venezuelan oil, after years of sanctions, by January 2026 Venezuela’s crude exports flowed primarily to China. By July, U.S. imports had surged to 630,000 barrels per day, nearly six times the January level, with shipments redirected to Gulf Coast refineries, historically designed for Venezuela’s heavy crude. Trade data show Venezuelan exports to the U.S. reached $1.875 billion in the first quarter, with 96.53% of that value from crude.The August 28 oil agreement formalized this shift. The White House reported that North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), owned by businessman Alejandro Betancourt, would receive 100-year rights over 17 oil fields with 65 billion barrels of proven reserves. The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital would hold a 35% equity stake, with preferential rights to purchase 20% of output at cost, veto power over board members, and jurisdiction under U.S. courts.Delcy Rodríguez, by contrast, reported different terms — of a 25-year contract, rather than 100, for instance. Still, she recently described the deal before the UN General Assembly as “one of the greatest ever signed,” thanking Trump “for his willingness to resume the path of diplomatic relations and cooperation.” The fact that the text of a deal so consequential to the fate of both nations has not even been published for their citizens to read and scrutinize, and that such different descriptions of it are allowed to co-exist, shows we are not dealing with a normal trade deal between two sovereign and equal partners.Leaders of the United Socialist Party (PSUV) and the Bolivarian Revolution have repeatedly framed the Venezuelan government’s current position as tactical and necessary to maintain the nation’s independence. Rodríguez told the UN that Venezuela seeks to “breathe freely, exercise its rights as a sovereign nation, without any type of interference,” while also asking for international support for “the changes that Venezuela needs.” There is no doubt that every country has the right to retreat, to normalize relations with imperialism, to seek trade relations with governments they have profound disagreements with, and to operate the best they can in the given “system of states” and correlation of forces. Even the hypothetically most revolutionary government would have to deal with such practical realities. Nor is any trade agreement, made on bourgeois terms of exchange, between big imperialist nations and historically oppressed countries ever going to really be “fair and equal.”But it is now clear these retreats are not temporary and will not be easily reversed, and they go considerably beyond international relations; they are now calling into question the Bolivarian revolution’s hold on power itself. Rodriguez announced at the UN — not in Venezuela — that new elections would be held for a “democratic transition” in the country, and called for closing the era of “internal trenches” and building a “new republic” through “its own institutions, not destruction.” Reportedly, the timeline of such a political reconfiguration was the key agenda point in her in-person meeting with Trump and Rubio.Throughout these last months, the U.S. maintained the capacity to liquidate the entire Venezuelan leadership at any moment. The sanctions regime, though partially relaxed, remained in place, with revenue flowing through U.S.-controlled accounts, audited by KPMG. In other words, Venezuela does not control its own oil revenue. Trump warned Rodríguez that if she did not “do the right thing,” she would “pay a very high price.” For the current leaders of Venezuela, therefore, they understood their choice not as sovereignty versus subordination, but as a managed transition versus total destruction.In practice, the distinction between forced compliance and voluntary collaboration blurs when examining the structural outcomes. The oil agreements transfer effective control over a core industry of Venezuela’s economy to U.S. entities for decades, if not a century (as Trump claims), in addition to oil revenue being effectively under U.S. custody. The legal framework governing these arrangements falls under U.S. jurisdiction. Whether the Venezuelan leadership frames this as coercion or pragmatism does not alter the objective result: the material foundations of Venezuela’s sovereignty have been transferred under the control of U.S. imperialism, which now dictates its oil production and foreign policy.The Venezuelan government’s decision to accept compliance rather than the risks of all-out war reflect, at the global level, the absence of any viable counter-hegemonic force. The USSR is gone. China condemns U.S. actions but cannot provide any military defense guarantee. Russia, engaged in its own conflicts with U.S. imperialism, has provided support but without the material capacity to directly intervene in the Caribbean. Nor does Venezuela control a strategic chokepoint like Iran does with the Straits of Hormuz. The boom in U.S. shale oil, compared to the early years of the Bolivarian Revolution, also deeply weakens Venezuela’s leverage.Within this structural vacuum, and now functionally under the tutelage of U.S. imperialism, what becomes of Venezuela’s socialist project? How can the PSUV, the ruling party, maintain the capacity to mobilize the masses of working people to defeat U.S. plans for transition, if it cannot speak independently from the state in the name of socialism, or as the defender of the country’s sovereignty, against right-wing comprador forces? Having already gone so far down this path, the stage has been set for PSUV to quietly give up its revolutionary horizon altogether, and even go into opposition. Losing political power under these conditions would also endanger the many heroic communes, mass movements and organic leaders that remain as organized bulwarks of the Bolivarian Revolution.On Venezuela’s Intervention at the United NationsWhat remains clear is that the January 3 operation and its aftermath demonstrate the continuing capacity of U.S. imperialism to impose its will when no countervailing power exists, and without new political breakthroughs internationally to come to Venezuela’s aid. The Venezuelan government’s reorientation cannot be placed at their feet alone. The ultimate responsibility of revolutionaries in the U.S. is not to condemn the Venezuelan government and the Bolivarian Revolution but rather to struggle to defeat the imperialist government that imposes these conditions on Venezuela. (LiberationNews)