The Venezuelan crisis is less about oil supply than about how power is now exercised in an increasingly unconstrained global system. Even if the US does not need Venezuelan oil, preventing China from deepening its economic and strategic position in the Western Hemisphere is a motivation. Great powers rarely act on absolute need.
They act on relative advantage. Chinese lending, infrastructure investment, digital systems and long-duration contracts in Venezuela create durable influence. From Washington’s perspective, that influence represents a net strategic loss.
Even so, much contemporary analysis misreads how power is exercised. Conflict is often treated as the outcome of careful, technocratic cost-benefit analysis. History suggests otherwise.
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Military actions that succeed are later framed as necessary and stabilised by their initiators. That pattern is consistent. Force delivers non-material returns.
Military success produces status, leverage and perceived dominance. These benefits are rarely stated explicitly, but they matter, repackaged as signalling or credibility. The underlying function is about establishing hierarchy.
This logic also operates domestically. Political movements that emphasise strength, order and group loyalty respond positively to decisive displays of power. Within US President Donald Trump’s political coalition, support for military action is conditional rather than strictly ideological.
It rises when interventions appear quick, controlled and visibly asymmetric. Venezuela therefore functions not only as foreign policy but also as a political instrument. That helps explain why the strategic logic points inward.
With midterm elections approaching, decisive confrontation offers a mechanism for projecting control amid domestic vulnerability. Strongman politics performs best when it can reference a recent success. If the Venezuelan crisis proceeds smoothly, it reinforces the image of executive competence.
If it stalls, an open-ended security situation provides justification for expanded executive authority. Furthermore, the interventions in Grenada and Panama in the 1980s disrupted regional norms but generated limited long-term political cost at home. The difficulty is that electoral outcomes are driven primarily by domestic fundamentals. Inflation, healthcare costs, labour markets and institutional credibility matter far more to voters than overseas deployments.
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