From a BRICS vantage point, the real energy weapon was never just Russian gas or Chinese rare earths. It was Washington’s grip on sanctions, shipping, finance and the dollar system, used for decades against Venezuela, Iran, Iraq and Russia. With U.S. warships off Caracas and new threats over oil and airspace, Venezuela has become the live test of a split world energy order.
The scandal is not that one secretary of war may have ordered a second missile into a sinking boat. It is that after Vietnam, Iraq, Gaza, Yemen and the drone era, anybody in Washington can still act surprised. This long read traces how the war on drugs, frontier thinking and algorithmic targeting have normalised extrajudicial killing and turned whole populations into expendable categories.
Donald Trump has told airlines and pilots to treat Venezuelan skies as closed, turning a security advisory into a de facto air blackout. Caracas has revoked licences for Iberia and other major carriers, Spanish and Venezuelan passengers are stranded, and Latin American leaders warn that a drug war pretext is tipping toward blockade. The legal reality is murkier than the slogan, but the shock is already real.
Venezuela is not a target chosen for democracy or regional stability. It is chosen because Washington is running out of financial room and geopolitical momentum. With interest payments exceeding defence spending and Ukraine draining Europe’s capacity, the United States now sees Venezuelan oil and minerals as a lifeline. “Southern Spear” is not a strategy. It is the reflex of a system under pressure, reaching outward for collateral to stabilise itself.
Telegraph Online · Long Read The story begins with about eighty poor men in small boats. Since early September, United States Reaper drones and naval assets have destroyed nineteen craft in the Caribbean and...
American and British warships massing off Venezuela mark not a prelude to invasion but a theatre of pressure fleets circling a crisis that looks like war yet stops short of it. With around ten thousand troops at sea, Washington appears to be testing leverage, not launching conquest. Maritime power is being used as policy: signalling, coercion and the threat of precision strikes dressed in the language of counternarcotics.
In the span of two months, U.S. naval forces have turned the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific into a theatre of undeclared war launching at least fifteen lethal strikes on boats alleged to be drug carriers, leaving dozens dead and entire crews vanished at sea. Washington calls it counternarcotics. Caracas, Beijing and much of Latin America call it a return to gunboat power extrajudicial killings in peacetime waters under the flag of law enforcement.
At the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025, Argentina’s President Javier Milei revived his country’s claim over the Falkland Islands at a moment when Britain looks distracted abroad and divided at home.
Latin America is breaking from U.S. dominance as Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico turn to China, Russia and Iran — burying the Monroe Doctrine.
Washington thought sanctions would break Caracas. Instead, they built lifelines with China and Russia and hardened Venezuela’s place in the multipolar order.
BUENOS AIRES — Argentina has grown accustomed to living at the edge of crisis. Inflation has been a permanent companion, the peso a fragile token of trust, and the state an omnipresent but unreliable...
With United States warships patrolling near Venezuelan waters and Caracas conducting large-scale exercises while advancing a new security pact with Moscow, the Caribbean has become the latest stage for a contest over power, sovereignty...
Washington’s Shadow War on Venezuela: Bounties, Battleships, and the Long Siege CARACAS — The gray silhouettes of U.S. warships have reappeared in the Caribbean, a show of force not seen with such intensity since...
By Jaffa Levy CARACAS — President Nicolás Maduro appeared on national television this week flanked by his defense minister and closest lieutenants, warning that Venezuela was facing its most serious external threat in decades....