Thomas Plunkett
The Bolivarian Republic has always had the ire of Washington. Amidst renewed saber-rattling—extrajudicial drone strikes on “narcos,”[1] amphibious landing drills in Puerto Rico,[2] and carrier group deployments in the Caribbean[3]—Washington’s jus ad bellum: electoral illegitimacy and narco-corruption,[4] are symptoms. The deeper issue is alignment. Venezuela exited the American sphere-of-influence twenty-six years ago and Washington has desired to reestablish control in the region. The renewed push invites an investigation into why a state like Venezuela remains in the constant crosshairs of American hegemony.
Counter-hegemonic states[5] must engage in coercive modernization and economic nationalism to escape dependency.[6] This necessarily challenges global extractive structures, inviting revanchism: financial isolation, regime destabilization, and information warfare.[7] To resist, such states often prioritize economic and social rights (ECS) over civil and political rights (CPR), fueling authoritarianism claims. A recursive loop emerges: siege incentivizes repression, justifying further siege, self-reinforcing ad infinitum.[8] This is the siege-state paradox.
Western narratives decontextualize these dynamics, casting economic collapse as internal failure, rather than the outgrowth of juridical throttling.[9] Popular discontent is reframed as regime opposition, and regime response as senseless autocratic abuse. Thus, siege is a strategic win-win for the imposing state. Impose intolerable conditions to foment outrage, resistance, retaliation and induce collapse—or capitulation.
The siege-state paradox isn’t merely a condition of sanctions or exclusion.[10] It’s a systemic architecture of containment. States don’t need to be toppled in one fell swoop, only degraded through a technocratic war of attrition. SWIFT revocations, IMF exclusions, asset freezes, sanctions, NGO pressure campaigns, and pointed media narratives function as instruments of regime decapitation.[11] This isn’t a coup in the Pinochetian sense, but a slow coup, operationalized through human rights exceptionalism and market discipline.
The crux of the asymmetry is which states are allowed to set their own priorities when organizing their hierarchy of rights. Who is integrated into western hegemony, and who is labeled a “rogue” state?
Hegemonic actors treat CPRs as the telos of a society.[12] ESCs are tolerated only when they reinforce, rather than threaten, liberal market access. States that reverse this hierarchy—prioritizing land reform, housing, energy sovereignty, or cultural defense—are pathologized. Their electoral irregularities, military consolidations, or restrictions on speech aren’t evaluated as security measures under siege, but as disqualifications from sovereignty itself.
That’s the double-bind: survival tools become justification for delegitimization.
This resembles what scholars identify in Leninist and post-Leninist statecraft;[13] fortress governance under conditions of encirclement, external coercion, and the constant risk of regime subversion, in what scholars describe as “defensive developmentalism.”[14] Counter-hegemonic regimes, isolated and besieged by sanctions, lawfare, or narrative delegitimation, are compelled to become a fortress. Elections risk foreign influence via opposition funding or diplomatic weaponization,[15] turning democratic processes into avenues for imperial incursion.[16] Militaries are purged to preempt coups, often themselves externally encouraged. National industries and resources are seized before foreign capital can extract or securitize them. Masses—especially rural or informal populations—are absorbed into statist or ideological infrastructure to consolidate legitimacy and capacity.
This logic repeats in many peripheral states, with fatal ends in many: Allende, Mosaddegh, Sankara—leaders who prioritized ESC, redistributed land or petrodollars, and preserved political pluralism.[17] Their moderation condemned them.[18] What they lacked wasn’t virtue, but insulation.
This is why the greatest threat to the liberal bloc is not authoritarianism—it’s successful alternatives.[19] A “bad” state isn’t one that violates rights, per se, but one that survives despite doing so outside hegemonic norms.[20] The issue isn’t illiberalism—it’s viable post-liberalism without approval from the hegemony. Put simply, liberalism is a surplus condition and illiberalism a scarcity condition; the operative variable is a state’s structural relation to capital.
States that immunize against siege—militarily, economically, epistemically—become intolerable. External pressure often produces deliberate structural precarity.[21] As intervention scholars note, fragmentation has often been tolerated or facilitated when regional integration threatens external influence.[22] Within this structure, “socialism-in-one-state” becomes a potential contagion.[23]
Western observers often ask: “But don’t these regimes also repress their own people?” The answer is yes, often they do. But asking that question without interrogating the architecture of imperial siege naturalizes hegemonic violence while criminalizing its effects.
We aren’t required to support, let alone celebrate, repression, but we should understand why from within systems of pressure. Until we do, judgment isn’t bound in justice as an abstraction, it’s at best slanted ideology which perpetuates narrative warfare. The asymmetry in why Western states center CPR and non-western states manifest as illiberal needs a systemic analysis, not a simple moral heuristic that defaults to western-centric ideals without interrogating why Western regimes and non-western regimes prioritize the way they do.
What makes Venezuela intolerable to American hegemony isn’t any particular irregularity in its elections, nor authoritarianism itself.[24] It’s that Venezuela attempted to exit its orbit. In this context, elections become traps. Besieged regimes face two poisoned choices: accept externally amplified opposition[25] (risking regime loss via liberalization) or reject it and invite intensified sanctions, lawfare, and narrative criminalization.[26] Both paths reinforce hegemonic discipline.
For states engaged in survivalist resource nationalism, electoral legitimacy is secondary to sovereign insulation. Why should a regime committed to breaking U.S. dominance conform to electoral standards set by the very bloc that funded Guaidó[27] and celebrated intervention in Libya?[28] When prominent Western elites openly trivialize coups against non-aligned states, the logic of entrenchment cannot be dismissed simply as authoritarian pathology.[29] Contextually, this looks like survival rationale.
This isn’t about democracy or narcotics,[30] but manufacturing legitimacy for opposition forces whose support may stem less from ideological rejection of Chavismo and more from economic impoverishment imposed by the siege itself. Interpreting popular dissatisfaction with Maduro’s regime as validation of liberal opposition is to potentially mistake economic suffering for lapsed support of the Bolivarian revolution and its anti-hegemonic principles generally. As the adage goes: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Siege-state governance isn’t solely a product of Western aggression. But that aggression is an accelerant. International law claims neutrality regarding protection of sovereignty and rights[31], yet the selective invocation of doctrines like jus ad bellum, CPR prioritization, and lawfare through sanctions reveals a structural asymmetry.[32] We shouldn’t indict regimes for outgrowths of attempts to exercise the recognized right to sovereignty. We must ask, “do we believe in self-determination, or not?”
[1]See Ben Finley, U.S. Aircraft Carrier Arrives in the Caribbean in Major Buildup Near Venezuela, PBS NewsHour (Nov. 16, 2025, at 11:31 EST), https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-aircraft-carrier-arrives-in-the-caribbean-in-major-buildup-near-venezuela (reporting U.S. military escalation near Venezuela and, as of Nov. 17, 2025, at least 20 drone strikes resulting in at least 80 casualties); Regina Carcia Cano, Trump has accused boat crews of being narco-terrorists. The truth, AP found, is more nuanced, Associated Press (Nov. 7, 2025), https://apnews.com/article/trump-venezuela-boat-strikes-drugs-cocaine-trafficking-95b54a3a5efec74f12f82396a79617ea (discussing disputed characterizations of those killed in U.S. strikes and noting residents’ claims that the men, while engaged in drug trafficking, were not cartel leaders or “narco-terrorists”).
[2] See Cailin Duffy, 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit Conducts Military Training in Puerto Rico, U.S. Marine Corps (Sep. 3, 2025), https://www.iimef.marines.mil/News/Article/4291860/22nd-marine-expeditionary-unit-conducts-military-training-in-puerto-rico/ (describing amphibious landing and expeditionary drills conducted near Vieques and Roosevelt Roads); Charlie D’Agata, U.S. Reopens Shuttered Puerto Rico Naval Base as Caribbean Military Buildup Continues, CBS News (Nov. 15, 2025), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-reopens-shuttered-puerto-rico-naval-base-caribbean-military-buildup-continues/ (reporting expanded U.S. naval and Marine Corps staging activity in Puerto Rico).
[3]See Claire Ribando Seelke et al., Cong. Rsch. Serv., R44841, Venezuela: Background and U.S. Relations 4-10, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44841 (July 28, 2022) (summarizing U.S. military posturing in the Caribbean, including naval deployments and narco-terrorism allegations); U.S. Southern Command, Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group Enters Caribbean Sea (Nov. 16, 2025),
https://www.southcom.mil/MEDIA/NEWS-ARTICLES/Article/4332637/gerald-r-ford-carrier-strike-group-enters-caribbean-sea/ (detailing carrier strike group movements and counternarcotics operations in the Caribbean basin).
[4] See Claire Ribando Seelke, Cong. Rsch. Serv., IF10715, Venezuela: Overview of U.S. Sanctions (June 4, 2025) (describing U.S. assertions that Venezuela’s elections lack legitimacy and that senior officials are implicated in “narco-corruption”; Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of Just., Nicolás Maduro Moros and 14 Current and Former Venezuelan Officials Charged with Narco-Terrorism, Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Criminal Charges (Mar. 26, 2020), https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/nicol-s-maduro-moros-and-14-current-and-former-venezuelan-officials-charged-narco-terrorism (detailing criminal charges and narco-terrorism allegations used by the U.S. in its discourse toward Venezuela); Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of State, Terrorist Designations of Cartel de los Soles (Nov. 16, 2025),https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/11/terrorist-designations-of-cartel-de-los-soles
[5]See Robert Vitalis, White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations (2015) (tracing the postcolonial and Global South origins of counter-hegemonic state formation); Michael L. Ross, The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations (2012) (discussing how resource-rich states often adopt anti-hegemonic or autonomy-seeking political orientations).
[6] See Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (1962)
(introducing the concept of “coercive” or state-driven modernization in late-industrializing states);
Michael L. Ross, The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations (2012) (explaining how resource-rich states such as Iran, Venezuela, and Libya pursue assertive economic nationalism to resist external control).
[7] See Thomas J. Biersteker, Sue E. Eckert & Marcos Tourinho, Targeted Sanctions: The Impacts and Effectiveness of United Nations Action (Cambridge Univ. Press 2016) (finding that targeted sanctions frequently generate political destabilization, humanitarian harm, and information campaigns that contribute to regime pressure); Dursun Peksen & A. Cooper Drury, Economic Sanctions and Political Repression: Assessing the Impact of Coercive Diplomacy on Political Freedoms, 10 Hum. Rts. Rev. 393 (2009).
[8] See Dursun Peksen & A. Cooper Drury, Economic Sanctions and Political Repression: Assessing the Impact of Coercive Diplomacy on Political Freedoms, 10 Hum. Rts. Rev. 393 (2009) (finding that economic sanctions systematically increase state repression by reducing state capacity, heightening elite insecurity, and incentivizing coercive survival strategies).
[9] See Francisco Rodríguez, Sanctions and the Venezuelan Economy: What the Data Say, Viewpoint – LATAM Economics (June 2019), https://venezuelanalysis.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Sanctions-and-Vzlan-Economy-June-2019.pdf.
[10] See U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury, Venezuela Sanctions Program and Related Guidance (2023),
https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-information/venezuela-related-sanctions (providing an overview of U.S. sanctions authorities and mechanisms applied to Venezuela); Idriss Jazairy (UN Special Rapporteur), Rep. on the Negative Impact of Unilateral Coercive Measures on the Enjoyment of Human Rights, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/39/54 (Aug. 30, 2018) (explaining that sanctions often impose the heaviest burdens on civilian populations rather than political elites).
[11] See U.S. Dep’t of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, Venezuela Sanctions Program and Related Guidance (2023), https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-information/venezuela-related-sanctions (detailing asset freezes, sectoral sanctions, and financial prohibitions applied to Venezuela); Bloomberg News, Venezuela Requests $5 Billion from IMF to Fight Coronavirus (Mar. 17, 2020), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-17/venezuela-requests-5-billion-from-imf-to-fight-coronavirus (reporting the IMF’s rejection of Venezuela’s emergency financing request due to disputes over recognition of its government); European Parliament, Resolution of 18 July 2019 on the Situation in Venezuela, 2019 O.J. (C 108 E) 96, (describing European-led financial restrictions, including SWIFT-related cooperation, as part of coordinated efforts to isolate the Maduro government); Thomas J. Biersteker, Sue E. Eckert & Marcos Tourinho, The Effectiveness of United Nations Targeted Sanctions: Findings from the Targeted Sanctions Consortium (Nov. 2013) (documenting that UN sanctions generate significant indirect economic and humanitarian impacts, and rely on signaling and stigmatization strategies that impose political pressure on targeted regimes).
[12]See Siracusa Principles on the Limitation and Derogation of Provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/1985/4 (1985) (affirming the centrality of civil and political rights within the ICCPR framework and articulating narrow conditions under which states may limit or derogate from them); Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (2018) (arguing that the global human rights regime has historically privileged civil and political rights as the primary markers of legitimate governance, relegating economic and social rights to a subordinate status).
[13]See Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (2005) (describing how Leninist and post-Leninist states adopted defensive consolidation strategies under conditions of external siege and ideological encirclement); Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (2001) (examining Maoist statecraft as a response to persistent strategic isolation and coercive pressure, producing governance practices oriented toward self-reliance and security consolidation).
[14] See Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia (2007) (discussing “defensive developmentalism” as a strategy by which states under external encirclement pursue accelerated modernization, centralization, and institutional hardening to preserve autonomy); James L. Gelvin, The Modern Middle East (Oxford Univ. Press, 4th ed. 2016) (tracing the emergence of defensive developmentalism as a regional response to imperial pressure and the threat of political subversion).
[15]See Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua (Nicar. v. U.S.), Judgment, 1986 I.C.J. 14, ¶¶ 106–115, 202–209 (holding that foreign funding, training, or support for opposition groups constitutes unlawful intervention into a state’s internal political affairs); Claire Ribando Seelke, Cong. Rsch. Serv., IN11024, Venezuela: U.S. Recognition of Interim Government (2019) (documenting U.S. financial, diplomatic, and organizational support for Venezuelan opposition actors, including recognition-based strategies that affected domestic electoral dynamics).
[16] See Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua (Nicar. v. U.S.), Judgment, 1986 I.C.J. 14, ¶¶ 205–209 (holding that external funding, training, or organizational assistance to domestic opposition groups constitutes unlawful intervention into a state’s internal political processes); Claire Ribando Seelke, Cong. Rsch. Serv., IN11024 , Venezuela: U.S. Recognition of Interim Government (2019) (detailing U.S. coordination with opposition groups and institutional pressure campaigns that reshaped Venezuela’s political landscape).
[17] See Mark J. Gasiorowski, The 1953 Coup d’État in Iran, 19 Int’l J. Middle E. Stud. 261, (1987)
(analyzing the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh following nationalization of the Iranian oil industry and the expansion of redistributive economic policies); Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (The New Press, updated ed. 2013) (documenting U.S. covert operations and diplomatic pressure preceding the 1973 coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende after programs of land reform, social redistribution, and public-sector expansion); Brian J. Peterson, Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa (2021) (examining Sankara’s land reform, anti-corruption campaigns, and ESC-driven development policies, and the external pressures contributing to his 1987 assassination).
[18]See Stephen G. Rabe, The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America (OUP USA, 2d ed. 2015) (documenting the overthrow and assassination of moderate, reformist leaders in Latin America whose redistributionist policies and political pluralism were perceived as incompatible with U.S. strategic and economic interests).
[19] See Stephen Hopgood, The Endtimes of Human Rights (2013) (arguing that the modern human-rights project reflects and protects a liberal hegemonic order, rendering non-liberal political and economic models structurally illegitimate regardless of their democratic or social outcomes).
[20] See Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (2004) (examining how global political discourse constructs “good” actors as those aligned with Western security and ideological priorities, while casting autonomous or resistant actors as inherently suspect or “bad” regardless of their internal practices); Robert Vitalis, White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations (2015) (tracing how international legitimacy has historically been tied to conformity with Western political and ideological norms).
[21] See Alena Douhan (Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights), Visit to the Bolivian Republic of Venezuela, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/48/59/Add.2 (Oct. 4, 2021) (finding that sanctions and other coercive measures intentionally produce shortages, institutional strain, and economic fragility that undermine a state’s capacity to function autonomously); G.A. Res. 46/210, Economic Measures as a Means of Political and Economic Coercion Against Developing Countries (Dec. 20, 1991) (condemning the use of coercive economic measures designed to destabilize developing states and interfere with their sovereign decision-making).
[22] See Alex de Waal, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power (2015) (showing how external actors have supported or tolerated political fragmentation in the Horn when regional integration threatened their influence); Mahmood Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (2009) (explaining how empowering local factions has functioned as a tool for external powers to shape outcomes and impede cohesive regional governance).
[23]See Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (1997) (explaining that the doctrine of “socialism-in-one-state” emerged as a strategy of survival and autonomous development under conditions of geopolitical isolation and external siege); Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (1993) (showing how U.S. containment strategy viewed successful alternative political-economic models as strategic threats to American predominance).
[24]See Bruce W. Jentleson, American Foreign Policy: The Dynamics of Choice in the 21st Century (W. W. Norton 5th ed. 2013) (explaining that U.S. foreign policy applies governance standards selectively, tolerating authoritarian allies while scrutinizing non-aligned states).
[25] See Claire Ribando Seelke, Cong. Rsch. Serv., IN11024, Venezuela: U.S. Recognition of Interim Government (2019), (describing the diplomatic, financial, and organizational support provided to opposition actors, and how international recognition reshaped domestic electoral dynamics).
[26] See Claire Ribando Seelke, Cong. Rsch. Serv., IF10715, Venezuela: Overview of U.S. Sanctions (June 4, 2025) (describing escalations in financial and sectoral sanctions following disputed elections and government rejection of opposition-led transition frameworks); Alena Douhan (Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights), Visit to the Bolivian Republic of Venezuela, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/48/59/Add.2 (Oct. 4, 2021) (finding that refusals to adopt externally promoted political transitions prompted intensified coercive measures, including asset freezes and expanded secondary sanctions).
[27] See Claire Ribando Seelke, Cong. Rsch. Serv., IN11024, Venezuela: U.S. Recognition of Interim Government (2019) (detailing U.S. diplomatic recognition, financial assistance to opposition-aligned institutions, and coordination with Guaidó’s interim government framework).
[28] See Barack Obama, Remarks on Libya and Responsibility to Protect, The White House (Mar. 28, 2011), https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/03/28/remarks-president-address-nation-libya (presenting the Libya intervention as a humanitarian and democracy-promoting operation endorsed by the international community).
[29] See Douglas Rushkoff, ‘We will coup whoever we want!’: the unbearable hubris of Musk and the billionaire tech bros, The Guardian (Nov. 25, 2023), https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/25/we-will-coup-whoever-we-want-the-unbearable-hubris-of-musk-and-the-billionaire-tech-bros (reporting Elon Musk’s deleted tweet stating “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” in response to criticism of U.S. involvement in Bolivia and its lithium resources).
[30] See Fernando Casado Gutiérrez, The Myth of the “Cartel of the Suns”: Drug Trafficking, Organized Crime and Politics in Venezuela (2020) (evaluating allegations regarding the “Cartel de los Soles” and concluding that claims of a unified, state-directed narcotics organization lack evidentiary support); Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (2004) (examining how narratives of criminality and disorder have historically served as justificatory frameworks for U.S. intervention in the region).
[31] See Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (2018) (arguing that the modern human-rights project presents itself as politically neutral while structurally privileging liberal rights frameworks); Makau Mutua, Savages, Victims, and Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights, 42 Harv. Int’l L.J. 201 (2001) (critiquing the ideological foundations of purported human-rights neutrality and Western normative assumptions embedded in the regime).
[32] See Siracusa Principles on the Limitation and Derogation of Provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/1985/4 (1985) (establishing restrictive derogation standards for civil and political rights); The Limburg Principles on the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/1987/17 (1987) (articulating more flexible limitation standards for economic and social rights).