2026 has opened with a moment that feels both familiar and unsettling, recalling older eras of great power intervention even as it unfolds in a far more complex and globally interconnected world. The United States operation in Venezuela, culminating in the dramatic seizure of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, has transformed what was once a prolonged confrontation of sanctions, diplomatic hostility and ideological rivalry into an overt display of hard power. For years, Venezuela has existed at the crossroads of domestic political crisis and international strategic competition, its economy ravaged, its people pushed into mass migration, its oil wealth simultaneously enormous and inaccessible. Washington’s move from coercive pressure to military action did not emerge in a vacuum; it was born of decades of mutual distrust, contestation over strategic influence, anger over nationalisation of assets, and a geopolitical tug of war involving Russia, China and Iran. In that sense, the strike represents not simply the removal of a contested leader but a declaration that the United States intends once again to define outcomes in its perceived sphere of influence. It marks the most forceful assertion of American dominance in Latin America in a generation, wrapped not only in national security justifications but also in broader visions of energy control and strategic reassurance to domestic constituencies.
The deeper currents, however, stretch beyond the battlefield or the drama of a single-night operation. Venezuela represents the world’s largest proven oil reserves, estimated at over 300 billion barrels, more than even Saudi Arabia, concentrated significantly in the Orinoco Belt. Yet this wealth has become both a blessing and a curse. Years of mismanagement, political instability, crumbling infrastructure, and sweeping U.S. sanctions reduced output to around 1 million barrels a day, a fraction of its potential, limiting its effect on short-term global oil prices but magnifying its symbolic and strategic importance. The United States couches its action in the language of security priorities, focusing on allegations of narcotics-linked governance, regional instability and migration pressure, but it is impossible to ignore the reality that whoever shapes Venezuela’s political trajectory also shapes the fate of one of the world’s great energy reserves. As U.S. shale production matures and the global energy transition remains incomplete, the temptation to secure a foothold in such a vast reserve is enormous. This intervention also speaks to Washington’s anxiety over growing Russian and Chinese footprints in Latin America, its desire to reassert primacy in a region historically viewed through a strategic lens, and its belief that restoring access to Venezuelan crude could eventually reshape the global energy equation in its favour. Yet military success does not automatically translate into political stability. Removing a leader does not automatically remove the system that sustains him. Venezuela’s future now depends on whether the military fractures or holds cohesion, whether rival power centres emerge, whether violence spreads into civilian spaces, and whether any new order can secure legitimacy domestically rather than only externally.
For the world, the implications are layered and deeply consequential. There are immediate humanitarian risks as uncertainty breeds shortages, displacement and insecurity; there are regional implications as Latin American governments react along ideological lines; and there are global implications as the intervention reopens unresolved debates about sovereignty, international law and the acceptable limits of unilateral force. This episode revives historical memories of previous U.S. incursions in the hemisphere, yet takes place in an era where global politics is multipolar, legal scrutiny is sharper, and strategic retaliation can take asymmetric forms. Russia and China, already invested deeply in Venezuela’s economy and security partnerships, are unlikely to simply watch passively, even if their responses remain calibrated rather than overtly military. Meanwhile, the United States now owns responsibility not only for what it has dismantled but also for what follows. Stabilisation, reconstruction, political transition, accountability, and the longer-term moral burden of intervention will define whether this operation is remembered as decisive statecraft or reckless power. For countries like India, the immediate economic disruption from Venezuelan oil may be limited due to already reduced trade linkages, but the larger geopolitical signal matters profoundly. It represents a moment when force has again been used to reshape another state’s leadership, potentially setting precedents others may one day invoke elsewhere. Ultimately, what unfolds next will determine whether this moment becomes an isolated shock or the opening note in a more turbulent chapter of world politics where power increasingly speaks louder than persuasion, and where nations must constantly navigate between principle, pragmatism and a continually shifting global order.