US attack on Venezuela, a symptom of a declining empire?

The multiple crises and contradictions of the global system have created a geopolitical reality that is spiraling out of control.

A succession of political and military events, unthinkable for years or decades, overwhelms the headlines, news segments, and opinion pieces of the media every day.

We are entering, with full force, that chiaroscuro defined by Antonio Gramsci, in which monsters emerge during that interlude between the death of the agonizing old world and the new one that is slow to appear.

2026 begins tumultuously with the attack on the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela by United States troops and the kidnapping of its constitutional president, Nicolás Maduro Moros, and his wife, Cilia Flores.

Imperial ambitions are driving this escalation in the Caribbean against the backdrop of demands for control of energy resources, the progressive decline of the dollar as the global reserve currency, and the media's diversion of serious internal problems in American society, including the release of the Epstein files, with accusations of pedophilia against prominent politicians, including current President Donald Trump.

Although some see what happened on January 3rd in the South American nation as a demonstration of unchecked force and power, it is quite the opposite, staging a symptom of the race against time for a declining world power that is floundering on several fronts.

Domestically, the economy is not performing as the current White House administration would like: tariffs are not having the promised effect, industries and manufacturing are not returning from abroad, and the growing government debt exceeds 38 trillion dollars.

The United States needs cheap energy like it needs food in the face of the rise of artificial intelligence and large data centers, and a supposed reindustrialization, tempered by a fuel shortage that forces it to go to the market daily to buy seven million barrels of oil, hence the need to secure Venezuela's crude oil reserves, which are the largest in the world.
The intense political polarization between Democrats and Republicans, migration conflicts, drug addiction, abuses by paramilitary groups like ICE, the high cost of living, and the erosion of the material conditions of the so-called middle class are reshaping a scenario in which a growing number of analysts are commenting on the danger of civil war.
For Trump, the passage of time is not on his side with the upcoming midterm congressional elections in November 2026, when polls predict the loss of the Republican majority in both houses and, therefore, greater difficulties in advancing his political agenda.

Faced with its urgent needs, the empire is opening several fronts: Ukraine, Iran, the turbulent Middle East, to which Venezuela and Greenland are now added; in a frontal or covert struggle on several levels with other powers like Russia and China to wear them down and achieve strategic objectives.

Donald Trump and his administration now openly disregard international law, not only through the illegal capture of the president of a sovereign nation and the use of force, but also through the announced withdrawal from 66 international treaties.

This indicates the discarding of rules and institutions that once guaranteed their hegemony, when they no longer serve their purposes. In the media landscape, news stories, mostly false and lacking any verification in the military, political, or economic spheres, are disseminated as part of establishing narratives aligned with the interests of the U.S. government amidst the cognitive warfare waged against the rest of the world.

Given the unfolding events in Venezuela, it is advisable not to rush to assert the veracity of betrayals at the highest levels of Chavismo when there is no conclusive evidence to support such claims, and the facts reaffirm the opposite in a country where the power structure remains intact, without regime change or loss of sovereignty.
History will have the final say. Strategic prudence and patience in communication are essential to avoid falling into traps and narratives, unverifiable to date, that serve Western propaganda.

Desires are one thing, reality quite another. This is also a battle for the senses where sowing doubt and confusion is unwise.

For the Latin American region and its peoples, with the revitalization of the Monroe Doctrine and interventionist declarations from Washington D.C., the only alternative left is to seek their own identity based on the thought of Simón Bolívar and José Martí, so as not to be crushed by the seven-league giant.

As the National Hero of Cuba stated in his article "The Protest of Thomasville," published in the newspaper Patria: “Neither nations nor men respect those who do not command respect. (…)

They, jealous of their freedom, would despise us if we did not show ourselves jealous of ours. They, who believe us defenseless, must see us at all times, ready and manly.

Men and nations go through this world prodding their fingers in the flesh of others to see if it is soft or if it resists, and we must make the flesh hard, so that it pushes away the audacious fingers.

We must speak to them in their language, since they do not understand ours.”

We are witnessing a moment of momentous change in which the conscience of the peoples and politicians of this mestizo continent, from the Rio Grande to Patagonia, will dictate a future, bright or not, marked by the choices of sovereignty or tutelage.