What is happening in Venezuela is not a transition, nor a temporary intervention. It is the reassertion of colonial power in its most recognisable form. Control over oil, trade, and political authority is being transferred out of Venezuelan hands and reorganised to serve American interests. This opinion article argues that the United States is constructing a system of rule that mirrors classical colonial arrangements. The language may be modern, but the logic is not. The word colonialism applies here with full historical and political precision.

Introduction

Some events arrive without spectacle. They do not declare themselves as turning points, yet with time, they reveal a reordering of what power looks like, and how it speaks. In recent days, that shift has come into view. Last week, the President of the United States shared that Venezuela would begin purchasing only American-made products, using funds generated through a newly arranged oil agreement. Medicines, agricultural goods, industrial equipment — all sourced from the United States. The announcement followed the military removal of Venezuela’s head of state, an act carried out without international consensus and met with widespread condemnation. Now, Venezuela’s path after Maduro begins along terms already chosen, structured around the priorities of another government. No genuine choice was ever presented at any point to Venezuelans.

This article aims to show that the future trajectory of American intervention in Venezuela will be shaped by three interconnected mechanisms of control: first, the management of its natural wealth, where Venezuelan oil — long the foundation of its economic identity — is being rerouted into American hands; second, the restructuring of its economic relationships, where trade and markets are reconfigured to funnel goods, profits, and dependency toward another centre of power; and third, the consolidation of political power beyond Venezuelan reach, where the contours of governance are being shaped by the imperatives of American elites.

These mechanisms do not advance the wellbeing of ordinary people in the United States. They do not promise redistribution of wealth in ways that would lift working communities there, nor do they restore Venezuelans to meaningful agency over their own affairs. Instead, all signs point toward a project shaped around the priorities of corporations and elites, where their influence will be consolidated through the control of resources, markets, and political direction. It is through these dynamics that what is now taking shape can only be understood as a colonial project.

Who Owns the Ground Beneath Venezuela

Trump has repeatedly stated that the United States will “run” Venezuela as it guides the country through a transition, and his comments have left little doubt that he envisions this involvement lasting well beyond a brief interlude. At a press conference following the U.S. military operation that removed Nicolás Maduro from power, Trump declared that the United States would take responsibility for Venezuela’s governance “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” a phrase he used without specifying a clear endpoint.  In subsequent interviews, Trump suggested that this period could easily extend into years. When asked whether such oversight might last three months, six months, a year or longer, Trump replied, “I would say much longer,” hinting that American involvement will outlast any immediate crisis and function as a sustained managerial presence. He stated that the United States would oversee Venezuelan affairs, with particular emphasis on the oil sector, framing it as a process of reconstruction in which American firms would assume a central role.

Venezuela holds the largest proven crude oil reserves in the world — a fact that long defined its position in global energy markets and once offered a fragile form of economic sovereignty. Under Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian rule, that sovereignty was already compromised. The state that managed the oil industry was undemocratic and deeply hierarchical; the wealth it extracted rarely reached the population equitably. But the resources remained under national control. The exploitation was Venezuelan. The decisions, however flawed and undemocratic, were made within the country. Now, this changes once again. The oil that once flowed under decisions made in Caracas, however opaque or inequitable, will now be routed through Washington.

It is oil that unmistakeably stands at the heart of the American intervention in Venezuela, and by now, that reality has become widely understood. The Trump administration may continue to gesture toward narcotics enforcement, using it as the official legal basis for Nicolás Maduro’s arrest and the central charge he is expected to face in American courts. But this framing only offers a useful procedural narrative, especially for certain MAGA audiences, but it does not define the logic that has guided the intervention itself. Trump himself has consistently shifted the focus away from narcotics and toward control over resources, centring the discussion on the reconstruction and operation of Venezuela’s oil industry. He has spoken of American companies taking the lead, of revenue flowing through U.S.-supervised accounts, and of long-term involvement in directing production and trade. Oil has shaped both the scale and duration of U.S. involvement, functioning as the strategic core of the entire project.

For instance, this becomes clear in Trump’s visible anger toward ExxonMobil, whose hesitation regarding the long-term viability of the arrangement reflects concern over his capacity to manage a project of this scale, especially one grounded in a colonial logic that has failed in previous attempts. However, it needs to be clear that this hesitation should not be read as a kind of principled resistance coming from a major oil company. It simply reflects a lack of faith in Trump’s ability to execute what they would otherwise welcome. There is something incredibly ironic in the image of a corporation like ExxonMobil — long willing to operate in warzones and authoritarian states — hesitating not because the plan is imperial, but because the emperor appears unfit.

Taken together, these facts form a clear picture. When all indications point toward the same conclusion and Trump clearly states his reasons as being control over oil and involvement for American companies, there is every reason to take that at face value. This marks a full departure from the habits of past administrations, which often concealed such ambition beneath appeals to a supposedly fair liberal order, invoking norms and shared values as a way to legitimise intervention. Trump just discards that performance entirely, leaving little space for ambiguity when assigning the United States the right to decide when another country’s future can begin, simply because it has the power and the desire to do so. There is no longer an effort to persuade the world of its moral authority — only the clear assertion of will. Thus, the colonial project in Venezuela, as Trump has unapologetically stated, is about natural resources.

The Making of Dependency

Colonialism rarely takes without offering something in return. The offer itself, however, carries its own cost. In place of plunder comes the ledger; in place of force, the contract. Once the wealth of a land is secured, the next step is to shape what it consumes. Venezuela now finds itself entering this phase of domination. With American officials directing the country’s oil revenues and overseeing its reconstruction, a new kind of marketplace is being carved. The old routes of commerce bend inward toward a single supplier.

One of the foundational economic logics of colonialism was the institutionalisation of asymmetrical trade. Colonies, under European mercantilist policy, were envisioned as components of a commercial system whose ultimate aim was the enrichment of the metropole. The mercantile framework, dominant from the 16th to the 18th centuries, conceived of wealth in terms of bullion accumulation — gold and silver. From this flowed a strict doctrine: colonies were to supply raw materials to the centre, and in return, consume its manufactured goods. This closed circuit ensured a constant trade surplus for the imperial core while systematically suppressing the productive capacities of the periphery.

Trump’s trade philosophy has long prioritised the pursuit of national trade surpluses, a view deeply rooted in the mercantilist tradition. While early European mercantilists measured national wealth in their reserves of gold and silver and the ability to accumulate these metals, modern equivalents have evolved. Today’s wealth is denominated in control over financial systems, digital infrastructure, strategic industries, and the direction of global capital flows. It is less visible and certainly more technical, but the ability to control such forces is no less imperial. For the U.S., power lies in its command over the systems through which global life is organised — finance, infrastructure, key resources, and war. The substance of accumulation has become more abstract, but the method of establishing dominance through asymmetrical access and enforced dependence remains  consistent.

It is in this framework that Trump views trade deficits as political failures rather than simple outcomes of international trade. Trump’s repeated insistence that the United States must “win” at trade reflects an understanding of economic relations as hierarchical. For instance, from his first term onward, Trump treated trade deficits as indicators of national decline. In his point of view, to buy more than one sells is to surrender autonomy. This belief, while divorced from contemporary economic consensus, fuels Trump’s transactional and competitive worldview in which trade relationships must always tip in America’s favour. For example, his 2025 tariff formula — based on the size of another country’s trade surplus with the United States — perfectly illustrates this aspect of Trump’s trade philosophy.

That Trump loves his tariffs is well known, and many of his critics are right to question their effectiveness. If history teaches anything about tariffs, it’s that they rarely solve more problems than they create. Recent developments in Venezuela, however, point to a different logic altogether. Tariffs are one form of economic conflict, but what is unfolding in between Washington and Caracas follows a far more coercive logic that evokes the mechanics of historical colonial relations. In a public statement, Donald Trump announced that Venezuela would be “purchasing ONLY American Made Products” with proceeds from the new oil deal, listing goods such as agricultural products, medicines, and energy infrastructure. He framed this as a “wise choice” and praised the commitment to doing business with the United States as Venezuela’s “principal partner.” The language may suggest some kind of cooperation, yet the structure it describes mirrors the monopolistic trade relationships that defined colonial economies.

This rationale is in alignment with the classic mercantile formula, as the colony supplies the metropole with strategic commodities — in this case, oil — and is then obligated to recycle the resulting revenue through purchases from the dominant power. Consequently, domestic producers are displaced, alternative suppliers are excluded, and developmental autonomy ceases to exist. Such systems have historical precedent. For instance, Britain’s imposition of textile imports on India during the colonial period deliberately undermined the subcontinent’s own manufacturing base, preserving London’s industrial advantage. Furthermore, Americans need not look far to understand this dynamic. The original colonies were denied the freedom to trade or produce independently, their economies structured to serve British capital.

In Venezuela’s case, the same economic choreography is being rehearsed, with oil revenues flowing through foreign‑controlled channels rather than into a nationally determined budget, and returning only in the form of externally imposed goods and services for consumption. The supposed partnership, in practice, functions as a managed dependency mechanism in the long run. It is not the restoration of Venezuela’s economy that is being prioritised, but the projection of American power and the elites it exists to serve. It is more than clear that Trump does not seek to integrate Venezuela into a pluralistic global economy. His intentions are to secure a controlled bilateral channel through which oil exits and American goods enter.

Rule Without Representation

Trump has stated that the United States will “run” Venezuela for an extended period, possibly for years, indicating that control over the country’s oil industry and political direction is expected to continue indefinitely. The word itself deserves attention. To run a country is to assume authority over its future, its institutions, and the lives shaped by both. In democratic systems, such authority ordinarily grows from representation, from the consent of those who live under its consequences. Here, it emerges elsewhere. Decisions that will define economic policy, political reform, and institutional design will be formulated in offices whose occupants do not share the daily conditions of the society they administer.

This transformation alters the meaning of sovereignty itself, marking a moment in which power in Venezuela, already strained by years of internal crisis, becomes fully detached from any obligation to answer to its own population and begins instead to reorganise around an external vision of governance. Elections may well be announced, placed forward as symbols of progress or normalcy, but their structure and permissible outcomes will reflect decisions already made, shaped by foreign frameworks and carried forward by figures carefully selected to ensure continuity with American interests.

Americans, if they still remember the origins of their own political tradition, should feel a familiar disquiet when confronted with the image of a foreign power governing a people with no voice in its councils and no seat at its tables. The foundational premise of the American Revolution stems from a deeper philosophical refusal to accept that authority could be exercised at a distance, that decisions concerning the life, labour, and future of a people might be made by those who neither shared in their conditions nor answered to their judgment. It was the injustice of command without representation, of policy without accountability, of extraction without consent, that stirred rebellion in the colonies and lent force to the cry that power must be bound to the people it governs.

Yet that very principle, once celebrated as the foundational moral stance of the American Revolution, now finds itself discarded with the ease of a slogan long emptied of use. “No taxation without representation”. The very logic that once moved thirteen colonies to rebellion now becomes the logic that must be denied. To call this American, in any meaningful or historical sense, is to forget the conditions that gave rise to the republic itself. And perhaps that forgetting is not accidental, but essential — for no system that now seeks to rule without representation can afford to remember the moment when people last rose to say they would no longer be ruled in such a way. Yet even this erasure does not complete the picture, for the paradox runs deeper still. The same nation that was born in rebellion against distant rule soon convinced itself that its own expansion was not domination, but destiny.

Manifest Destiny, as a doctrine, provided the ideological mechanism through which the tension between liberty and conquest could be managed. It framed the growth of the republic as the extension of civilisation. The result was a political form that allowed the United States to conceive of itself as both anti-imperial and expansionist, grounded in resistance to foreign domination while pursuing a model of rule that subordinated other populations to its own strategic and economic interests. The contradiction between these historical strands continues to shape American foreign policy through a tradition that absorbs tension rather than resolving it, folding the pursuit of global dominance into a national narrative built on virtue, and treating exceptionalism as both a license to act and a belief that American power carries its own self-justifying logic.

What Trump is unleashing in Venezuela is the fundamental condition of domination, one that organises authority without accountability and completely ignores any kind of consent. It is not the presence of foreign flags or uniforms that defines subjugation, but the reorganisation of institutions around interests that do not originate in the society they govern. In this sense, Venezuela is simply being restructured around American imperatives, and the logic that underpins this is neither improvised nor exceptional. It draws from a long lineage of power that defines legitimacy as something conferred from above. The American Revolution recognised the dangers of such arrangement, and what now reemerges in Venezuela is the very configuration it sought to dismantle.

Who Is Meant to Win

Empires have long defended their reach by pointing to the failings of those they conquer. The argument is old: when a society is beset by hierarchy, corruption, or disorder, it invites intervention because it allegedly requires guidance or civilisation. That logic has not disappeared; it has merely taken new forms. In the case of Venezuela, it is easy to find a convenient target in the Maduro government — its repression, abuses, and deeply unequal control over national wealth have been extensively documented. The underlying assumption becomes that any outcome must be better than what came before.

But history offers a different lesson. The presence of exploitation does not license the imposition of new masters. Long before the rise of modern colonialism under the Iberian empires, many societies already experienced inequality, internal conflict, and concentrated power. These conditions were not introduced by colonial rule — but neither were they corrected by it. On the contrary, colonial systems intensified existing hierarchies by layering foreign domination atop local structures of control. Mechanisms of accountability that once operated within these societies, already imperfect, were weakened, displaced, or absorbed into distant imperial bureaucracies. What followed was the presentation of civilisation as justification, alongside the redirection of resources to imperial centres and the consolidation of authority in the hands of those appointed to rule on their behalf.

Even within the imperial metropoles, the ideals used to justify expansion were completely disconnected from their own social reality. The great European empires that carved up the world did not come from societies of perfect harmony. Britain was still structured along feudal lines when it began its overseas expansion, with its own hierarchy deeply skewed toward landholding elites while peasants and labourers faced exploitation at home. The French Revolution itself was a response to systemic poverty and political exclusion. Even during the height of the so-called civilising mission in the 19th century, France remained a society of harsh class divisions and repeated revolts — the Paris Communes, the revolutions of 1848, the Dreyfus affair, just to name a few.

Thus, it is clear that the essence of such empires was not the result of a stable, enlightened centre reaching outward out of benevolence, but the projection of a fractured one, extending its power elsewhere even as it failed to meet demands from within. Colonial empires export mechanisms of exploitation that it depends upon at home. Expansion introduces new rulers, but preserves familiar hierarchies. Inequality continues under a different name, and the promised transformation gives way to extraction and control. This is why such interventions tend to fall short of their promises, both for the working classes of the metropole, already worn down by the daily struggle to secure a livelihood, and even more so for the populations subjected to conquest, whose economies are set on paths that serve distant elites and leave little space for autonomy.

It is a dangerous fiction to believe that the rewards of imperial projects will ever trickle down to those far removed from the circles that make such decisions. Profits will be consolidated at the top, and costs displaced onto others. To imagine that this time will be different, that Venezuelan oil will somehow fund affordable housing or provide access to basic healthcare in the United States, is to engage in a fantasy untethered from history or logic. The machinery of empire is not built to lift the poor. It is built to extract, to discipline, and to transfer wealth upward. The belief that a government unwilling to secure basic material conditions at home would redistribute foreign oil revenues to its working population is detached from reality.

And if inequality defines life in the imperial core, it brutalises life in the colony. There, the burden is heavier and the consequences more immediate. The people of Venezuela will not receive liberation nor gain a fairer access to their wealth. They will not be asked to participate in rebuilding their economy after Maduro. They will be told what progress looks like and who will profit from it. Their consent is not required and their compliance is expected. The colonial mercantilist structure being imposed all but guarantees long‑term stagnation. A society rebuilt around externally managed extraction does not develop diversified industry, resilient institutions, or democratic accountability. Decisions about investment, employment, and production will be made with foreign priorities in mind. Venezuelan labour will be cheap, replaceable, and politically marginal. Venezuelan industry will remain secondary and ultimately dependent. The economy will be shaped to serve demand elsewhere.

Any attempt to reclaim autonomy risks retaliation. Trump’s promise of “transition” thus becomes a trap where stability is conditioned on obedience, and sovereignty becomes something that must be earned back on terms set by another power. In other words, real sovereignty is nothing but a dream. Nor does this structure create incentives to improve governance for ordinary people. It is an illusion to think that corruption in Venezuela will eventually disappear due to foreign control. It will simply relocate and expand through a new hierarchy of power. This happens because foreign control simply produces a new order, not a cleaner one, and authority will begin to gather around those who prove useful to it. Intermediaries rise — contractors who secure lucrative deals, security forces trained to enforce compliance, and local elites who present themselves as reliable brokers of American demands.

Conclusion

The story unfolding in Venezuela does not belong to the past, and it certainly doesn’t require the maps of old empires or the figures of viceroys to understand what is happening. There are moments in history when power sets aside its justifications and presents itself in its barest form, when domination moves forward without the need for disguise. This situation offers no ambiguity or complexity. Venezuela now operates without political agency, shaped and directed by an external agenda that treats the country as a vessel for American plunder. Thus, I argue that even going so far as to describe Trump’s vision for Venezuela as a metaphor for colonialism does not capture its reality, because what is unfolding represents a clear and unmistakable contemporary manifestation of those same dynamics. The tools may have changed, but the architecture of power remains familiar. It extracts, reorganises, and disciplines. If this is what empire looks like today, then its presence must be named.

But nothing in this is permanent. The grip of empire is not inevitable. Every project of power requires belief — belief that it will bring security, that it will generate prosperity, that its fruits will reach those not invited into the rooms where it was conceived. So the question presses forward to the millions working and struggling across the United States: do you truly believe that this colonial project, built to deliver resources to corporations, has been designed with your interests in mind? Do you believe that this time, oil revenues will reappear as affordable housing, public healthcare, or fair wages? There is a long tradition of promises made on the backs of distant conquests, and an equally long record of who collects the profits. The wealth extracted from Venezuela will flow upwards, as it always has.

And beyond all calculation of cost and benefit lies a far more elementary truth: the people of Venezuela are not objects of policy but subjects of history. They carry in their own lives, languages, and struggles the same capacity for agency that every nation claims for itself. No matter the rhetoric of assistance or the language of reconstruction, Venezuelans have the right to decide their own destiny, to elect leaders they choose, and to determine how their resources are used. This is why the argument against the colonial project in Venezuela cannot rest solely on whether Americans benefit materially. It must rest on a recognition that justice is owed to people everywhere.