The US Cannot Govern the Western Hemisphere Like It’s 1823, by Jose Alberto Nino - The Unz Review

 The irony is stark. Washington officials warn about foreign powers gaining influence in America’s backyard, seemingly oblivious to how their own interventionist policies pushed Caracas into precisely these arrangements. The more aggressively the United States confronts Russia, China, and Iran globally, the more these powers deepen cooperation with Venezuela. What American policymakers fear as a new Cuban Missile Crisis is rapidly becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, manufactured not by adversaries’ ambitions but by Washington’s own imperial overstretch.

The Anatomy of American Intervention

To understand Venezuela’s current strategic partnerships, one must first grasp the systematic campaign that preceded them. Since 2005, Washington has imposed 12 distinct rounds of sanctions, creating one of the most comprehensive economic warfare campaigns in the Western Hemisphere. The United States currently maintains 431 sanction designations on Venezuelan individuals and entities, having sanctioned 81 individuals and 46 entities.

The humanitarian toll has been catastrophic. The 2017 financial sanctions and 2019-2020 oil bans strangled Venezuela’s export capacity, worsening the humanitarian crisis and triggering a mass migration exodus from the country. John Bolton candidly admitted these sanctions aimed at driving PDVSA’s production as low as possible to crash Maduro’s regime. When Western capital markets vanished under threat of secondary sanctions, Venezuela turned to nations willing to defy American financial hegemony—creating a de facto balancing coalition against Washington......

https://www.unz.com/article/the-us-cannot-govern-the-western-hemisphere-like-its-1823/ 

....The goal should be benign hegemony, wherein the United States maintain sufficient influence in the Western Hemisphere to prevent hostile military threats while respecting the sovereignty and agency of Latin American nations to develop their own political and economic systems. This means accepting that some governments in the region will not align with American preferences, will pursue economic relationships with China, or will maintain diplomatic ties with Russia and Iran. So long as these relationships do not extend to hosting foreign military bases or allowing power projection capabilities against the United States, they fall within the legitimate sphere of sovereign decision-making. More importantly, the United States would also reduce its military footprint abroad by closing its hundreds of foreign military bases and bringing back the over 170,000 active-duty troops stationed abroad. From there, the United States can build a national security strategy focused on protecting the border and protecting shipping lanes in the Western Hemisphere.

Current policy is still stuck on maintaining American primacy, consequences be damned. Washington pursues regime change and comprehensive sanctions against Venezuela not because Caracas hosts Russian military bases—though American policy is creating incentives for precisely that outcome—but because the country possesses vast oil reserves and Venezuela’s government challenges American preferences and maintains relationships with American adversaries. The result is a self-defeating spiral where economic warfare pushes Venezuela into the arms of Russia, China, and Iran, creating the very military threats that would legitimately trigger actions in line with the Monroe Doctrine.

If Washington continues down this path, it may soon face a geopolitical crisis of its own making, one born not in Caracas or Moscow but in the blind corners of its own imperial ambition.