Regime Change in Venezuela is America First
Restraint divorced from strategy is not prudence, but abdication.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily align with those of The American Postliberal.
On January 3, 2026, the United States launched a special military operation against the Venezuelan regime and captured its beleaguered president, Nicolás Maduro. In the aftermath, critics on the left denounced the raid as a violation of “international law” and an assault on the “sovereignty” of the communist dictatorship in Caracas.
On the right, some decried the strike as inconsistent with President Trump’s stated “America First” and “pro-peace” foreign policy commitments. A realist analysis, however, shows that the operation was neither. On the contrary, the attack was both an eminently justified course of action and well in line with the president’s broader foreign policy objectives.
The central rationale for intervention in Venezuela was not the promotion of democracy, nor even the disruption of narcotics flows from the region, however commendable those goals may appear.
Rather, the primary threat Venezuela posed stemmed from its deep and longstanding alignment with U.S. strategic rivals—most notably China—which threatened to invite hostile great powers into the Western Hemisphere and granted them meaningful leverage over American interests. From a realist perspective, this external alignment, not Venezuela’s internal political character, constituted the decisive issue.
Chinese influence in Venezuela is extensive and well-documented. As the largest purchaser of Venezuelan crude, China exercises substantial leverage over the country’s oil sector, which sits atop the world’s largest proven reserves. Chinese firms have invested billions of dollars in joint ventures that grant them operational control over key assets, embedding Beijing deeply within Venezuela’s energy infrastructure.
Through partnerships between PDVSA and Chinese state-owned companies such as Sinopec, China has secured long-term stakes in major Orinoco Belt projects, gained control over financing channels, and locked in preferential access to crude shipments.
A significant portion of Venezuelan oil exports to China is structured as debt repayment, effectively binding Caracas to discounted, long-term supply arrangements and sharply limiting its ability to redirect exports elsewhere.
Beyond energy, Chinese entities exert influence over Venezuelan railways and mining concessions and operate satellite tracking facilities, underscoring the breadth and durability of Beijing’s presence.
Crucially, this partnership long predates U.S. sanctions, undermining the claim that American pressure forced Venezuela into the arms of U.S. adversaries. After winning the presidency in 1998, Hugo Chávez deliberately sought closer ties with China and worked to distance Venezuela from the United States on ideological grounds.
Maduro merely inherited and deepened this strategic orientation. Once he completed the transition from a flawed democracy to an outright authoritarian regime, this alignment became effectively irreversible absent regime change.
China’s foothold in Venezuela directly undermines U.S. interests by constraining American strategic freedom of action and amplifying Beijing’s leverage globally. By anchoring itself in the Western Hemisphere, China secures energy supplies insulated from U.S. pressure, weakens the effectiveness of American sanctions, and establishes a durable intelligence and strategic presence uncomfortably close to U.S. territory.
This dynamic, in turn, erodes American credibility and coercive power elsewhere—most notably in the Indo-Pacific—by furnishing China with concrete tools to complicate a U.S. response to aggression abroad. A Chinese presence in Venezuela creates opportunities for asymmetric pressure, including intelligence collection, cyber and signals activity, political agitation, and the implicit threat of escalation in the Western Hemisphere at precisely the moment Washington would seek to concentrate military, diplomatic, and economic resources in East Asia.
In a crisis over Taiwan, for example, Beijing could exploit this foothold to stretch U.S. attention, increase the domestic and strategic costs of escalation, and weaken the credibility of American deterrent threats by forcing U.S. leaders to manage simultaneous pressure close to home.
As during the Cold War, permitting a rival great power to entrench itself in the Americas provides strategic depth that can be leveraged far beyond the region itself—narrowing U.S. options abroad and directly undermining its ability to respond decisively in a major geopolitical crisis.
These considerations demonstrate why removing the Venezuelan regime was firmly within U.S. interests and fully consistent with an “America First” framework. Nevertheless, critics maintain that the strike was illicit because it violated “international law” and undermined the so-called “rules-based order.” According to this view, U.S. disregard for these norms encourages other powers—particularly Russia and China—to do the same.
This argument, however, is deeply naïve. It rests on the false premise that the rules-based order meaningfully constrains state behavior and that U.S. legal restraint is what preserves it. In reality, international law lacks independent enforcement and functions largely as a set of aspirational norms rather than binding constraints.
Major powers do not calibrate their actions based on American legal compliance, but on power, opportunity, and perceived costs. Russia did not invade Ukraine because the United States violated international norms elsewhere, nor does China’s posture toward Taiwan hinge on Washington’s fidelity to abstract legal principles.
States act when they believe they can do so without facing decisive resistance. To suggest that unilateral U.S. restraint deters adversaries is to invert the logic of deterrence: it is not legal self-discipline, but credible power and a demonstrated willingness to use it, that gives rules any practical force.
Appeals to international law also obscure a more fundamental reality: international politics is structured by great-power competition, not neutral legalism. Contrary to liberal institutionalist dogma, sovereignty has never been absolute; it is contingent on behavior and constrained by the interests of stronger states.
When a regime dismantles its own democracy, aligns itself with a rival great power, grants that power strategic access, and allows its territory to be used in ways that threaten regional stability, it forfeits any claim to inviolable sovereignty.
The Cold War offers a clear illustration. When Cuba aligned with the Soviet Union and permitted the deployment of nuclear missiles just ninety miles from Florida, the United States did not acquiesce out of deference to abstract notions of sovereignty. Instead, it imposed a naval quarantine and credibly threatened force to enforce a red line.
Stability was preserved not through legal formalism, but through power and deterrence.
Taken together, the Venezuelan operation underscores a fundamental truth about American statecraft in an era of renewed great-power rivalry: restraint divorced from strategy is not prudence, but abdication.
The United States cannot credibly defend its interests or preserve regional stability if it elevates unenforceable legal abstractions above concrete security threats in its own hemisphere.
By removing a regime that had willingly ceded its sovereignty to a rival great power, Washington reaffirmed a core principle of international order, which is that stability rests not on abstract legality, but on the decisive defense of vital interests.
In this light, the strike was neither reckless nor anomalous, but a rational response to foreign encroachment in America’s backyard, fully consistent with an America First realism grounded in deterrence, hierarchy, and strategic clarity.
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