EditEmpire in plain sight: from Caracas to Greenland – the new colonial playbook
Western credibility is undermined at a moment when coalition-building is essential - on Ukraine, climate, trade, and security
The Venezuela episode may not involve colonial flags or governors in pith helmets, but when a foreign power asserts the right to dictate a country’s leadership, administer its economy, and control its most valuable resource, the substance is hard to distinguish from colonial practice, writes Gauri Khandekar.
Gauri Khandekar is a researcher at the Brussels School of Governance, VUB
The language of colonialism never disappeared; it learned new accents – from strategic operations to democracy promotion. Strip away the branding and the logic is familiar – powerful states asserting the right to decide who governs, who profits, and what sovereignty means for countries deemed strategically useful.
That logic has come sharply into view in Venezuela.
The 3 January operation that abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores from Caracas and transported to the United States to face charges – has been presented as a decisive response to criminality and authoritarianism. But what followed goes beyond law enforcement or targeted accountability. It begins to resemble something older: an externally dictated political and economic order, justified by moral rhetoric and lubricated by oil.
Because oil is not a side note here – it is the plot.
Statements and briefings have pointed to plans to claim, manage, or sell Venezuelan oil, with revenues redirected under U.S. supervision. At the same time, Washington has signalled sweeping enforcement measures amounting to a blockade extending far beyond Venezuelan waters.
Capture at the centre, blockade at the periphery, extraction in the middle – this is the anatomy of a protectorate. It may not involve colonial flags or governors in pith helmets, but when a foreign power asserts the right to dictate a country’s leadership, administer its economy, and control its most valuable resource, the substance is hard to distinguish from colonial practice, however modern the packaging.
Europe should pay attention – not only because of Venezuela, but because of the precedent.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western capitals have insisted, correctly, that sovereignty cannot be conditional. Yet it is impossible to reconcile that stance with acceptance of a model in which the United States removes a foreign leader and then announces terms over that country’s oil and governance. We cannot credibly condemn imperial conquest while rationalising imperial administration when it suits our strategic preferences.
Some will argue that Maduro is a dictator and that anything removing him is justified. That argument is emotionally compelling but politically dangerous. International law does not operate through moral exemptions. If sovereignty depends on whether powerful states approve of a leader, then sovereignty becomes a privilege granted by the strong – precisely the colonial idea the West claims to have abandoned.
Others will argue that this is merely sanctions enforcement or anti-corruption policy. But sanctions regimes often function as economic sieges. The U.S. sanctions architecture on Venezuela has long targeted the state oil sector through broad restrictions and selective licensing. When enforcement evolves into an asserted right to physically block exports worldwide or to claim control over national oil flows, it crosses the line from pressure to domination by other means.
None of this is an endorsement of Maduro’s rule. Venezuela’s repression, corruption, and institutional decay are real, and Venezuelans have borne the cost. But replacing one form of unaccountable power with another – external, extractive, and insulated from accountability – is not liberation. It is managerial empire.
And it is strategically self-defeating.
Normalising a model in which regime change is followed by externally administered resource extraction hands authoritarian leaders a potent narrative for plunder. It deepens scepticism across the Global South toward the so-called “rules-based order.” And it undermines Western credibility at a moment when coalition-building is essential – on Ukraine, climate, trade, and security.
The implications extend beyond Latin America. When senior U.S. figures openly discuss acquiring or controlling Greenland – an autonomous territory of a NATO ally – the message is unmistakable: sovereignty is negotiable when strategic assets are at stake. Viewed together, Venezuela and Greenland point to the revival of an old idea: that power confers entitlement.
Europe, in particular, should resist outsourcing its moral reasoning. The EU’s credibility rests on consistency. If borders cannot be changed by force, if governments cannot be installed through coercion, and if national resources belong to the people of that country – not foreign administrators – then those principles must apply whether the target is Moscow or Caracas.
Venezuela’s future should be decided by Venezuelans. Accountability for crimes should be pursued through legitimate international mechanisms and due process – not through spectacles of conquest. And oil – whether under the Orinoco Belt or anywhere else – should not become the trophy that confirms what many already fear: that colonialism did not end. It simply learned to speak the language of democracy.
Caption: Protesters representing local trade unions and civil society groups gather outside the United States Embassy during a ‘hands off Venezuela’ protest in Pretoria, South Africa, 8 January 2026. The protesters call for the immediate release of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores. EPA/Kim Ludbrook
Updated: January 9, 2026 - 07:03
