The true face of U.S. ‘democracy’: the invasion of Venezuela for oil

The recent escalation of military and diplomatic aggressions by the United States against Venezuela, openly supported by hegemonic media outlets, is nothing more than the continuation of a long history of imperial interventionism in Latin America.

Under the false rhetoric of “defending democracy” and “combating drug trafficking,” Washington has justified an invasion that, in reality, has the sole purpose of appropriating the largest oil reserves on the planet, located beneath Venezuelan soil. This operation does not respond to ethical values or respect for international law, but to a calculated strategy of geopolitical domination and extraction of wealth.

Since Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999, Venezuela embarked on a project of national sovereignty that openly challenged the interests of U.S. corporations and Washington’s political establishment. Chávez nationalized strategic industries, redistributed wealth and forged alliances independent of the Western bloc — that was and will always be the great sin.

After his death, in 2013, Nicolás Maduro continued that legacy, facing brutal economic sanctions, coup attempts and a global media campaign to delegitimize his government. Despite a humanitarian crisis exacerbated by the blockade, Venezuela has resisted with the support of a significant portion of its people and international allies.

While the United States poses as the world’s moral judge, its cynicism knows no bounds.

Recently, Trump ordered the release of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been convicted of drug trafficking after damning evidence of his collaboration with cartels.

This gesture is not an act of justice, but a political maneuver to reward a useful accomplice in the region. How can a country that frees convicted drug traffickers present itself as a defender of the fight against drugs? The hypocrisy is obvious. Curiously, the media have remained silent about this fact.

The real objective of the invasion of Venezuela is not democracy — a concept the United States systematically violates in its own foreign policy — nor regional security, but control of the country’s riches.

Venezuela holds the largest oil reserves in the world, estimated at more than 300 billion barrels, much of it in the Orinoco Basin. These reserves, previously managed in partnership with countries of the Global South and under sovereign energy policies, represent a threat to the energy monopoly of the North.

Now, the U.S. government seeks to hand them over to transnational corporations, particularly to a company linked to the recent winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize — an award suspiciously given amid energy agreements that directly benefit Western interests.

U.S. intelligence agencies and the military apparatus have historically been instruments of destabilization in Latin America, from Operation Condor to the coups in Chile, Guatemala and Bolivia, the inhumane blockade of Cuba, the attacks on 1980s Nicaragua that left thousands dead, and the invasion of Grenada. This is a very small sample that makes clear the strategy has always been the same: sow chaos and then impose an order favorable to their economic elites. The narrative about “dictatorship” or “narco-terrorism” in Venezuela is only a façade. What is really happening is a hybrid war to strip the country of its main natural resource, to the detriment of its people and its self-determination.

It is urgent that the international community, social movements and progressive governments denounce this new imperial offensive. I hope that in Chile the president speaks out forcefully about the invasion and does not remain in cowardly silence.

Defending Venezuela is not defending any particular government, but the inalienable right of peoples to decide their destiny without the threat of invasions, sanctions or coups promoted from abroad. True peace is not built with tanks or embargoes, but with respect, cooperation and justice. And as long as the United States manipulates prizes, frees drug traffickers and sends troops to steal oil, its rhetoric about democracy will remain a bloody farce.

Finally, we must not forget that the aggression of the United States against Venezuela is not an isolated event, but part of a global pattern of imperial domination that is replicated wherever there are resources, resistance or sovereignty to crush.

Just as NATO has served as the armed wing of Western interests — destabilizing Libya, bombing Syria, dismembering Yugoslavia and fueling conflicts in Africa under the pretext of “security” or “democracy,” the United States uses the same script in Latin America: sanctions, disinformation, soft coups and now overt invasion. And, at the heart of this same system of oppression is Israeli apartheid against the Palestinian people, politically, militarily and diplomatically backed by Washington, which enables bombings, forced displacements and land plundering while proclaiming itself a defender of human rights.

In Caracas, in Gaza, in Tripoli or in Belgrade, the logic is identical: those who resist the neoliberal global order and control of strategic resources are punished with violence, blockade and silencing. The true struggle for peace and justice requires unmasking this architecture of domination and showing solidarity with all the peoples who, from different trenches, resist the same enemy.

Juan Carlos Martínez is a poet and professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick.