GOA - At a time when global discourse is saturated with managed outrage and selective morality, certain crises are rendered invisible not because they lack consequence, but because they expose uncomfortable truths about power. Venezuela is one such crisis. Rarely discussed beyond caricatures of authoritarianism or economic failure, it has now re-entered the global stage in a far more unsettling form — as a strategic fault line in an intensifying confrontation between imperial persistence and geopolitical resistance.

What is unfolding is not merely a regional dispute, but a symptom of a global order in decay, where sanctions replace dialogue, military signaling substitutes diplomacy, and nuclear shadows once again loom over international politics.

From the standpoint of critical political economy and realist international relations theory, the Venezuela crisis reveals how deeply unequal and coercive the so-called “rules-based order” has always been.

It also exposes the fragility of Western alliances, particularly NATO, when confronted with the limits of American power and the return of multipolar assertion.

This essay seeks to situate Venezuela not as an exception, but as a warning — one that speaks to the dangers of hegemonic arrogance, the weaponization of suffering, and the catastrophic risks of governing a transitioning world through force rather than justice.

The unfolding crisis around Venezuela has quietly moved beyond the familiar language of sanctions, oil politics, and regime change. What is now emerging is a more unsettling reality: Venezuela has become a strategic pressure point in a larger confrontation between declining unipolar power and an assertive multipolar world.

Recent discussions by realist scholars such as John Mearsheimer draw attention to a phenomenon many policymakers prefer to deny — the return of nuclear signaling as an instrument of geopolitical bargaining, and the growing inability of Western alliances, particularly NATO, to manage the consequences of their own overreach

To understand why Venezuela matters, one must abandon the comforting illusion that international politics is governed by rules, norms, or moral consistency.

The global order has always been structured by power. What changes over time is not the logic of dominance, but who exercises it and how openly. The United States, for much of the post–Cold War era, enjoyed an unparalleled capacity to shape outcomes across continents. That era is now ending, and Venezuela stands at the intersection of this historical transition.

For Washington, Latin America has never been merely a region among others. It has been treated as an extension of domestic security, governed by the assumptions of the Monroe Doctrine even when the doctrine itself is no longer explicitly invoked.

From Guatemala to Chile, from Cuba to Nicaragua, the record is unambiguous: political autonomy in the hemisphere has been tolerated only when it aligns with American strategic and economic interests. Venezuela’s insistence on sovereign control over its resources, combined with its refusal to submit to US-backed regime change, therefore represents not an anomaly but a provocation — one that demands punishment within the logic of empire.

Sanctions have been the chosen weapon. Framed as peaceful alternatives to military intervention, they function instead as instruments of structural violence. Over years, Venezuela’s economy has been suffocated, its access to financial systems curtailed, and its ability to import essential goods severely constrained.

The humanitarian crisis that followed is then cynically deployed as evidence of governance failure, completing a circular logic in which suffering caused by external pressure is blamed on internal incompetence. This pattern is not unique to Venezuela; it is a recurring feature of imperial management in the neoliberal era.

What changes the equation is Russia’s response. Moscow’s engagement with Venezuela must be read not through the lens of ideological solidarity, but through the hard realism of strategic retaliation. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has witnessed a relentless expansion of NATO toward its borders, the dismantling of arms control agreements, and the transformation of neighboring states into forward operating bases for Western power.

Diplomatic protests were ignored; security assurances were broken. In such a context, Russia’s decision to project power into the Western Hemisphere is neither irrational nor unprecedented. It mirrors, almost exactly, the behavior the United States has long normalized elsewhere.

This is where nuclear signaling re-enters global politics. Venezuela does not possess nuclear weapons, nor is it on the path to acquiring them. Yet Russia does, and the strategic assets it deploys — whether naval formations, long-range aviation, or missile-capable platforms — carry an implicit message.

The message is not one of imminent war, but of deterrence: an assertion that escalation will not remain cost-free or geographically contained. As Mearsheimer and other realists have argued, nuclear weapons fundamentally alter the calculus of power. They do not eliminate conflict, but they raise its stakes to a level where miscalculation becomes catastrophic.

NATO’s response to this shifting terrain reveals its growing internal fragility. Publicly, the alliance continues to speak the language of unity and resolve. Privately, it is riven by contradictions. European states face domestic populations increasingly fatigued by war, inflation, and economic insecurity. Energy dependence on non-Western suppliers has exposed the material costs of strategic obedience to Washington.

The war in Ukraine has already demonstrated how quickly moral clarity gives way to political exhaustion. A further escalation involving Latin America risks exposing NATO not as a cohesive security community, but as a hierarchy in which dissent is managed rather than resolved.

The Venezuelan crisis thus becomes a test case for the limits of alliance politics in a multipolar world. The United States still commands immense military power, but power alone no longer guarantees compliance.

Russia’s willingness to absorb economic pain, China’s patient long-term strategy, and the growing assertiveness of regional powers all point to a world in which coercion increasingly provokes resistance rather than submission. Venezuela’s alignment with Russia is less a sign of ideological affinity than of strategic necessity — a survival strategy in a system that punishes autonomy.

There is a deeper political economy at work here. Control over energy resources remains central to global power, even as the rhetoric of transition and sustainability grows louder. Venezuela’s vast oil reserves represent both potential independence and permanent vulnerability. They attract foreign intervention while simultaneously providing leverage against it.

The struggle over Venezuela is therefore not simply geopolitical, but structural: it reflects the inability of the current global system to accommodate resource sovereignty without destabilization.

The nuclear dimension sharpens this contradiction. Nuclear weapons, while rarely used, cast long shadows. Their presence constrains action, but it also incentivizes brinkmanship. When diplomacy erodes and trust collapses, signaling replaces negotiation. Each side seeks to demonstrate resolve, assuming the other will eventually retreat. History suggests otherwise. Great powers rarely intend disaster; they drift toward it, guided by assumptions of superiority and fear of appearing weak.

What makes this moment particularly dangerous is the erosion of institutional safeguards. Arms control regimes have withered. Crisis communication channels are fragile. International law is selectively enforced. In such an environment, the margin for error narrows dramatically. A misinterpreted deployment, a domestic political crisis, or a symbolic show of force can escalate faster than any actor anticipates.

The hypocrisy embedded in Western security discourse further compounds the risk. When the United States stations force near adversaries, it is framed as deterrence. When others do the same, it is branded aggression. This asymmetry undermines any claim to a rules-based order. Rules, after all, that apply only to some are not rules at all; they are instruments of domination. In a world increasingly aware of this contradiction, legitimacy becomes as important as power — and far harder to sustain.

Venezuela, in this sense, is not an outlier but a warning. It exposes the unsustainability of a global system that relies on coercion while denying its own coercive nature. It reveals how the Global South continues to be treated as a terrain for strategic contestation rather than as a collection of societies with rights, histories, and aspirations. And it reminds us that nuclear weapons, far from being relics of a bygone era, remain central to the architecture of fear that governs international relations.

For readers in the Global South, the lesson of Venezuela is neither abstract nor distant. It resonates with histories of intervention, economic strangulation, and imposed political outcomes disguised as concern for democracy.

The return of nuclear signaling in this context should alarm not because it suggests inevitable war, but because it reflects a system increasingly incapable of resolving conflict without threatening annihilation. When power refuses accountability and alliances suppress dissent, deterrence becomes a substitute for legitimacy — and fear becomes the currency of governance.

If Venezuela today stands under the shadow of great-power rivalry, it is because the international system has failed to evolve beyond domination. NATO’s predicament, Russia’s strategic retaliation, and America’s insistence on hemispheric control all point to the same conclusion: the old order is dying, but the new has yet to be born. In this interregnum, the danger is not merely instability, but catastrophe.

Counter currents exist precisely to name such moments — to challenge imperial narratives, to center the voices and lives erased by geopolitics, and to insist that peace cannot be built on coercion.

Venezuela is not asking to be a battleground of ideologies or arsenals. It is asking, like much of the world, for the right to exist without being punished for resisting subordination. Until that demand is recognized, the nuclear shadow will remain — not as a relic of the Cold War, but as a permanent indictment of a world order that has learned nothing and forgotten too much.