Atilio Borón

Venezuela: The cause of the problem will never be the solution

As a consequence of the recent attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president by unilateral resolution of the White House, academics, artists, and politicians from different countries are calling on the Global South to awaken to the accelerated process of “Palestinianization of the world.”

Venezuela: The cause of the problem will never be the solution

What is happening in Venezuela today is neither an anomaly nor an unexpected deviation from the international order. Nor can it be interpreted as a temporary reaction to a specific government or as an isolated episode of diplomatic tension. It is, once again, the reappearance of a historical logic that Latin America knows with painful precision: that of being treated as a wild frontier, a territory where the rules that govern the “civilized world” are suspended without scandal and violence is exercised as if it were a natural right.

Total economic blockades, confiscation of property, covert military operations, explicit threats of intervention, and kidnappings presented under a new version of the Monroe and National Security doctrines, which more closely resemble the myth of “living space” wielded by the Third Reich a century ago. These are not deviations from the international system: they are part of its historical functioning when it comes to the Global South and Latin America in particular.

What happened on January 3 marks, however, a new threshold. It was not just a reiteration of known practices, but an obscene demonstration of impunity before any law and a confirmation of the current “Palestinization of the world.” The violation of Venezuelan sovereignty, carried out without a declaration of war and publicly presented as a demonstration of power, did not suspend the international order: it declared it dispensable. Where diplomatic euphemisms, legal ambiguities, or humanitarian alibis once operated, there appeared the direct assertion that force alone is sufficient to legitimize itself. What was shown was not an excess, but a pedagogy of domination directed at the entire world. The names of governments change, ideolexics are updated, moral excuses are recycled, but the script remains intact. Latin America reappears as a space available for exemplary punishment, political experimentation, and the pedagogy of fear.

Regional history is too clear to feign surprise. Military invasions, prolonged occupations, coups d’état, proxy wars, economic blockades, sabotage, kidnappings, and systematic media demonization campaigns have accompanied every attempt at political autonomy, social redistribution, or sovereign control of resources for two hundred years. These were never isolated mistakes or correctable excesses, but rather a persistent policy, sustained by a hierarchical conception of the world that reserves full rights for some peoples chosen by Manifest Destiny and permanent exception for others.

Thinking of Latin America as a savage frontier does not imply accepting an imposed identity, but rather denouncing the imperial gaze that constructed it as such. That imperial gaze not only constructs available territories: it also produces human hierarchies. It decides which lives deserve mourning, which acts of violence deserve scandal, and which can be administered as collateral damage. The international order does not limit itself to regulating conflicts: it distributes sensitivity, legitimizes indifference, and organizes silences. That is why aggression does not begin with missiles, but with the normalization of a language that makes the unacceptable acceptable and renders invisible those who are left out of the distribution of rights. It is a view that naturalizes violence towards the global south with the complicity of its local hangers-on, that racializes conflicts and that shamelessly suspends the principles of international law when they hinder strategic interests. What in other territories would be considered a crime, an act of war, or a flagrant violation of sovereignty, here becomes a “measure,” “pressure,” “preventive operation,” or “assistance for stability.” To a certain extent, brutality has become more overt, and the old excuse of “democracy” has lost its usefulness and appeal. What remains is the defense of “freedom,” the freedom of masters and merchants, and the fear and morality of slaves.

In this sense, Venezuela is not an exception but a dress rehearsal. When a power acts in this way and faces no effective sanctions, the message is unequivocal: the exception becomes the rule. What is tolerated today as a singular case is incorporated tomorrow as an operational precedent. International law does not fall suddenly; it is emptied by an accumulation of silences. A scenario where the limits of what can be done without generating a significant reaction from the international community are tested. What is tolerated today as a singular case will be invoked tomorrow as a precedent.

None of this implies ignoring internal conflicts, discussions, profound conceptions of what democracy is or should be, or social debts, an endemic problem in Latin American countries. We cannot deny this, just as we cannot accept that these tensions enable external aggression—in fact, history repeatedly shows that these imperial aggressions and interventions have been the greatest fuel for social conflicts and underdevelopment in these countries. No internal criticism justifies an invasion. No political disagreement legitimizes the collective punishment of a people. Sovereignty is not a reward for virtue or a moral certification granted from outside: it is the minimum threshold for societies to decide their destiny without a gun on the negotiating table.

Faced with this escalation, the response of much of the international community has been silence, ambiguity, diplomatic lukewarmness, and a lack of concrete measures. This is language that does not seek to stop violence, but to manage it. Words that never name the aggressor, that dilute responsibilities and place the harasser and the resistor on the same level. Latin American history teaches us that great tragedies did not begin with bombings, but with words and excuses that made them tolerable. When aggression becomes normalized, violence advances without resistance.

Defending Venezuela’s sovereignty today does not mean defending a government or closing the internal debate. It means rejecting a logic that reinstates war as a legitimate instrument of international order based on the interests of the strongest. It means affirming that Latin America is not anyone’s backyard or front yard; it is not a sacrifice zone or anyone’s wild frontier. And it also means assuming a basic intellectual responsibility: breaking the historical amnesia before it is rewritten, once again, with the blood of others.

Because remaining silent in the face of aggression has never been neutral. When history finally speaks, it is not usually forgiving those who looked the other way. For many, this is unimportant. For us, it is not.

Signed by

Abel Prieto, Cuba
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Argentina
Andrés Stagnaro, Uruguay
Atilio Borón, Argentina
Aviva Chomsky, Estados Unidos
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Portugal
Carolina Corcho, Colombia
Débora Infante, Argentina
Eduardo Larbanois, Uruguay
Emilio Cafassi, Argentina
Federeico Fasano, Uruguay
Felicitas Bonavitta, Argentina
Gustavo Petro, Colombia
Jeffrey Sachs, Estados Unidos
Jill Stein, Estados Unidos
Jorge Majfud, Estados Unidos
Mario Carrero, Uruguay
Óscar Andrade, Uruguay.
Pablo Bohorquez, España
Pepe Vázquez, Uruguay
Ramón Grosfoguel, Estados Unidos
Raquel Daruech, Uruguay
Stella Calloni, Argentina
Víctor Hugo Morales, Argentina
Walter Goobar, Argentina


First Venezuela, and then China (Atilio Borón)

By Atilio A. Borón

The escalation of US aggression against Venezuela seems unstoppable, while extrajudicial executions by US forces accumulate in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Threats are becoming increasingly vocal in Washington, and naval and air blockades are intensifying by the hour. These measures violate the United Nations Charter and international law, but Trump and his henchmen seem determined to do whatever it takes to subjugate the South American nation. It remains to be seen, however, whether with an invasion they want to create their own Vietnam or Afghanistan; in other words, whether they are stupid enough to start another fire, but this time not in distant lands but in the front yard of the United States. European leaders, self-proclaimed defenders of human rights, democracy, and justice, condone with their silence the war crimes already committed by the White House in relation to Venezuela. Other governments, such as those of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, have increasingly voiced their disapproval of Washington’s conduct and reiterated that both countries maintain a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with the Bolivarian government. But in Trump’s chaotic court circle, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a man with a murky background, a privileged recipient of funds from the Zionist lobby and the arms industry, a sworn enemy of the Cuban Revolution and of any progressive leader or government in the region, and a rabid anti-China figure, is relentlessly pushing for “peace through strength.” For Rubio, the attack should not be restricted to Venezuela; rather, the time has come to subdue all countries in the region. Colombia and Mexico are on the list, as are Honduras and any other government unwilling to reduce its contact with any “extra-hemispheric” power to the bare minimum, as mandated by the new National Security Strategy in a euphemism referring to China, Russia, and Iran.

What is at stake in Venezuela today is much more than the theft of its immense oil wealth. It is a desperate attempt to rebuild the now defunct US unipolarism, in which Washington claims the right to be the global policeman – in fact, the global dictator- and the only power capable of imposing a world order, to whose demands the rest of the countries have no choice but to obey. This is an anachronistic, absurd, and profoundly mistaken reading of international reality, but it is the one that currently prevails in Washington. However, if these plans are not neutralized by other actors in the international system, nothing will prevent the United States from trying out the same methodology it is currently using in the Caribbean in other corners of the globe. For example, by openly promoting Taiwanese independence and supporting its eventual independence with the presence of the Seventh Fleet to deter any attempt by Beijing to recover the rebellious province. Or by blocking or even seizing the Strait of Malacca, which is absolutely crucial for China’s foreign trade. This waterway has the highest maritime traffic in the world, as it is the route for China’s commercial exports, as well as for gas and oil imports from the Persian Gulf and minerals and metals from Africa. A relatively recent UNCTAD report stated that approximately half of international maritime trade passes through the Strait of Malacca each year. Both initiatives, sponsoring and supporting Taiwan’s independence or blocking the Strait of Malacca, would be severe blows to the People’s Republic of China. That is why, in this turbulent international political arena, Beijing must send a clear and resounding signal demanding an end to military aggression against Venezuela. And this requires much more than words. The only option, or perhaps the best option without being the only one, is to emulate what the United States has done and impose a comprehensive maritime and air blockade on Taiwan, but without opening fire or shooting at small boats as the United States did. Because what is at stake in Venezuela these days is much more than its oil: it is the new architecture of the international system and its rules, one of which is that no country, no matter how powerful, can attack another and subjugate it by force. Silence gives consent, says an old Spanish proverb. If China limits its protest to official statements, sooner rather than later the United States will throw all its enormous military might behind subduing the only actor in the international system that, as several official Washington documents state, “wants and is able” to establish a new world order. Consequently, China must act without further delay to prevent Hobbesian nightmare of the law of the strongest from reigning in the international system. The blockade of Taiwan is its only card. Not only to defend Venezuela but also to prevent future aggression by the United States against China. History teaches us that empires become more violent and bloodthirsty in their decline. That is why it is imperative to act quickly and put limits on Washington’s imperial arrogance as it is doing these days in the southern Caribbean and in the vicinity Venezuela.

Diciembre 20, 2025.

Ideology and Intervention: A Critical Review of Jorge Majfud’s The Wild Frontier