I don’t believe Venezuela is uniquely worse than other countries. I believe it is being judged by a set of rules designed to punish any country that refuses to organise itself around Western capitalist ideology.

I believe the United States and friends have followed a decades-long strategy of disciplining countries that attempt to free themselves from that system, whether through socialism, non-alignment, resource sovereignty, or simply refusing permission. Venezuela is only the latest in a long line that begins with Haiti and Ethiopia, and runs through Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and others.

This is not about democracy. This is about control.

The punishment is in the lie that we can burn oil and not burn ourselves

Venezuela nationalised oil companies. The USA backed a coup against Chavez in 2002. Venezuela's oil production fell. Mayhem ensues. That is cited endlessly as evidence of corruption, incompetence, and state failure. But let’s draw a bigger picture here.

Venezuela sits on some of the largest proven oil reserves on Earth. If those reserves were fully exploited, the planet would be even more fucked than it already is. Climate breakdown would accelerate. Ecosystems would collapse faster. The poorest people would pay the price first.

So Venezuela reducing extraction is framed as economic collapse, when in reality it aligns with what climate science has been screaming for decades: we cannot burn all the fossil fuels we already know about. And that economic contraction is necessary to stop the temperature rising.

And yet, the world does not reward Venezuela for keeping oil in the ground. Instead, it punishes it because the global economy is structurally pro-oil, pro-growth, pro-extraction. The lie is that climate collapse is acknowledged but never allowed to interfere with power or profit.

So Venezuela is declared a “failed state” not because it destroyed the planet, but because it failed to destroy it fast enough and on the right terms.

Between the sea and the lagoon when the tide is coming in

Yes, Venezuela made decisions that didn’t work. Of course it did. But the idea that there were neutral, correct options available is fantasy. Chavez was trying to diversify and reduce dependency on oil and foreign influence, all of which requires time, capital, and access to markets. Venezuela had none of those securely once oil revenues dropped and hostility intensified.

The global system is not designed to support non-aligned diversification. It is designed to reward the sheep and punish the adventurous wolf.

When Venezuela tried to diversify, it did so in a world that:

• demanded fossil fuel revenue,
• restricted access to finance,
• used sanctions like it used bombs,
• punished South–South cooperation,
• and described every economic shock as proof of ideological failure.

Its ties with communist and non-aligned countries helped in some ways and harmed in others. They offered alternatives to Western capital, but they also narrowed options in a system where Western markets dominate everything from trade to finance to legitimacy.

Punishment as policy: history is rhyming

Haiti was punished for abolishing slavery.
Ethiopia was punished for refusing subordination.
Cuba was punished for nationalising and redistributing.
Iran was punished for sovereignty over resources.
North Korea was punished for refusing incorporation.
Venezuela is punished for breaking the oil–capital bargain.

Countries are allowed to be poor, violent, unequal, or authoritarian as long as they are useful. What is not allowed is unauthorised autonomy. So when hardship follows sanctions, isolation, and economic warfare, the suffering is used as retroactive justification:

“See? It doesn’t work.”

The role of diaspora in legitimising intervention

One of the most dangerous and under-acknowledged mechanisms in all of this is the role of diaspora communities.

Diaspora elites are not passive observers. We are actively used to legitimise foreign policy.

When Venezuelans in the United States protest in favour of US intervention, or cheer sanctions, coups, or regime change, their voices are treated as moral evidence. Their testimony is amplified. Their class interests are articulated as humanitarian concern.

Media, NGOs, and even UN bodies then cite those voices as proof of legitimacy:

“Even Venezuelans themselves support this.”

But diaspora politics are not neutral. They are shaped by:

• elite formation in Western institutions,
• class interests threatened by redistribution,
• asset protection,
• ideological alignment with US power,
• and proximity to media and policymakers.

This is exactly what happened with Cuban exile politics. It is what happens with Israeli diaspora lobbying. And it is happening now with Venezuelans.Enabling intervention is not morally distinct from causing it.

Regime change now happens when powerful states simply decide a government no longer deserves sovereignty, and everything that follows is treated as acceptable.

I do not claim I can prove that the United States “controls” the global drug trade..

..but I do claim this: it is implausible that a trade of this scale, profitability, durability, and strategic usefulness exists without high-level state entanglement.

The largest cocaine market in the world sits inside the most surveilled, militarised, financially sophisticated state in history and yet it says that it is rather the victim.

This trade:

• generates vast off-books liquidity,
• feeds financial institutions through laundering,
• justifies militarisation and surveillance,
• destabilises rival regions,
• criminalises surplus populations,
• and sustains a permanent security economy.

To believe this persists purely through incompetence or failure is naïve. In the United States, large-scale harm or illegality that continues over time does so because it is tolerated, managed, or useful to someone with power.

Control does not require a visible command structure. It requires selective enforcement, compartmentalisation, plausible deniability, and outcome certainty. Like Area 51.

Every illegal economy has governance. Every one.

The absence of proof is not proof of absence, especially when exposure would destabilise the world’s largest economy.

Weak men bow to Trump's LOTF tactics

Donald Trump is a convicted felon. The fact that he was not meaningfully punished out of fear of backlash, instability, or “protecting the rule of law” is itself the collapse of the rule of law.

That decision told every authoritarian, every chauvinist, every would-be strongman:

“If you are loud enough, cruel enough, and powerful enough, the system will bend.”

Trump’s return to power is not an anomaly. It is the logical outcome of elite cowardice. If you've not read the book, at least watch the film of The Lord of The Flies, because Trump is channelling Jack Merridew so well that I wouldn't be surprised if he was reading that book every night. Are we all just going to watch until Piggy gets killed again, knowing full well that our refusal to intervene is what makes his death inevitable?

And watching people of varying ethnicities and religious beliefs align with him, simply because he validates their hatred of trans people or queer people, while ignoring the fact that he openly despises them too, is grotesque.

The enemy of your enemy is not your friend. That's a stupid rule to follow.

There is not one way to live

To insist otherwise, and to punish deviation, is authoritarian.

Venezuela is not a warning about the impossibility of alternatives. It is a warning about what happens when alternatives are not permitted. If reducing fossil fuel dependence leads to collapse in this system, then the system is the problem.

Venezuela is not a failed state. It is a state punished for refusing permission in a world that pretends coercion is “market logic” and collapse is “governance failure.” And until we stop lying about that, we will keep watching countries burn and calling it inevitability.