By Madi Jobarteh
The aggression of the United States against Venezuela is nothing new. It fits squarely within a centuries-old pattern of imperial domination, regime change, destabilization, and coercion that Washington has consistently deployed against states that challenge its political, economic, or strategic interests.
History shows that when a government resists U.S. hegemony, it is only a matter of time before Washington attempts to overthrow it, assassinate or kidnap its leaders, destabilize its institutions, strangle its economy, or employ a combination of all these methods.
From Haiti in the 19th century, through Grenada in 1983, Chile in 1973, Cuba since 1959, to Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, and now Venezuela, the pattern is unmistakable. Sovereignty, international law, and democratic choice are rendered meaningless when they collide with U.S. imperial interests.
Well before Maduro’s case, on 20 December 1989, the United States launched a full-scale military invasion of Panama to remove President Manuel Noriega, citing drug trafficking, threats to U.S. nationals, and the defense of the Panama Canal treaties. He was tried in a U.S. federal court and sentenced to prison.
On 29 February 2004, President Jean Betrand Aristide was also forced by the US, Canada and France to leave Haiti aboard a U.S.-chartered aircraft and taken first to the Central African Republic. Since then, these countries have never known democracy nor peace as it is the case wherever the US interferes and invades.
This violent record is not confined to Latin America. Across the globe particularly in the Global South, the United States has pursued the same destructive course. Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and others stand as grim reminders that it makes little difference whether a targeted government is democratic or authoritarian. International law does not matter. Human rights do not matter. What matters is the relentless pursuit of dominance and control over resources, markets, and geopolitics at immense human cost.
Yet it must be stated clearly that this is not uniquely an American phenomenon. Rather, it is the continuation of a Western tradition of conquest and violence spanning more than 500 years, led by Europe. Since agents such as Christopher Columbus invaded the Western Hemisphere, and other imperial agents from Alvise Cadamosto and Diego de Azambuja, to Marco Polo, Cecil Rhodes, Henry Morton Stanley, Frederick Lugard and T.E. Lawrence widely known as Lawrence of Arabia and others entered Africa, Middle East and Asia as the vanguard of European conquest, the world has been trapped in a continuous cycle of violence, dispossession, and domination.
Their expeditions were not innocent journeys of discovery but calculated incursions that paved the way for slavery, colonial occupation, cultural destruction, and the systematic plunder of peoples and resources, the consequences of which continue to destabilize societies across the Global South to this day.
Through slavery and colonialism, European monarchies in Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, and London unleashed devastation on entire civilizations. African kings and leaders were overthrown, kidnapped, exiled, or assassinated. Communities were destroyed, palaces looted, people enslaved, and resources stolen at will. Military bases, slave forts, railways, and ports were erected not for development, but to extract labour, minerals, and wealth in total disregard of human dignity.
This lawlessness was formalized at the Berlin Conference of 1884 –1885, where Europe arrogantly carved Africa into artificial states, an act whose catastrophic consequences continue to afflict African societies today.
The Venezuelan crisis is therefore not an aberration. It is a replica of the same Western aggression that produced settler-dominated states across the Americas, apartheid-era South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and colonial constructs in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The imposition of Israel and the fragmentation of Middle Eastern societies follow the same imperial logic.
The real tragedy, however, lies in the continued failure of Global South elites to confront this historical reality. Mis-educated by colonial systems, compromised by corruption, and driven by selfish gain, many leaders and intellectuals continue to weaken their own societies in exchange for crumbs from the West: aid, visas, appointments in international institutions while oppressing their own people.
This cowardice is evident in the timid statements by the Africa Union and ECOWAS that claim solidarity with Venezuela yet cannot even mention the United States by name, for fear of provoking retaliation. Such silence is not neutrality but submission.
Until the political and intellectual elites of Africa and the wider Global South liberate themselves from slave mentality, corruption, and fear, Western imperialism will continue on its unchecked exploitation, destabilization, and destruction of African, Asia and Latin American societies with impunity. The danger is not merely continued domination, but the re-emergence of colonialism and slavery in new forms.
History is clear. The question is whether the Global South will finally learn from it. Time will tell.
