The United States did not “lose its way” in Venezuela. That framing assumes a moral baseline from which it somehow deviated. In reality, nothing about the action represented a departure. It followed a pattern that has been rehearsed repeatedly over the last half-century, adjusted only for context, audience, and convenience. What made this moment stand out was not the act itself, but the absence of ritual — the lack of embarrassment, the lack of over-explanation, the lack of pretense.
There was no extended effort to persuade the world that this was a tragic necessity. No elaborate performance of reluctance. The message was spare and unmistakable: the United States will act when it decides the conditions are favourable, and legality will be discussed only if it proves useful afterward.
That is why the warning from a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations landed the way it did. When he said Canada could be “on the menu,” he was not suggesting invasion, annexation, or open hostility. He was pointing to something more structural and more uncomfortable — a return to hierarchy as the organising principle of global power. Allies are no longer simply partners; they are variables. Useful ones. Adjacent ones. Resource-bearing ones. Power is not disappearing. It is clarifying its priorities.
For decades, Western political language has leaned heavily on the idea of a “rules-based international order.” The phrase has survived administrations, crises, and contradictions because it performs an important function. It allows power to describe itself as restrained even while exercising dominance. But rules only have meaning when enforcement is symmetrical — and symmetry has never been the operating condition of global politics.
Across administrations — Republican and Democratic alike — the doctrine has been consistent even when the rhetoric changed. International law is treated as binding when it restricts adversaries, flexible when it restricts Washington, and largely ceremonial when it conflicts with strategic interest. This is not hypocrisy in the casual sense; it is a governing logic. The system does not break its rules. It interprets them selectively.
Seen through that lens, Venezuela was never a legal problem. It was a permissions problem — who is allowed to act, who must justify action, and who is expected to absorb the consequences without recourse.
Venezuela’s role in this story is inseparable from its resources. Possessing the largest proven oil reserves in the world guarantees attention of a very specific kind. Oil has never been neutral, and it has never been merely economic. It reorganises diplomacy, reframes moral language, and quietly narrows the range of acceptable outcomes. Sovereignty becomes conditional when resources are strategic enough.
The involvement of major energy corporations does not require conspiracy to be effective. Companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips do not need to dictate policy directly. They shape the environment in which certain policy choices become inevitable and others become unthinkable. Lobbying, long-term contracts, revolving doors between industry and government, and strategic silence all do their work without drama.
Sanctions weaken economies. Weakened economies are presented as evidence of governance failure. Governance failure becomes justification for intervention. Intervention restores access under new terms. The sequence is familiar because it works, not because it is hidden. Geography changes. The structure does not.
Modern conflict reinforces this logic. War today is less about resolution than persistence. A short, decisive conflict resolves uncertainty too quickly. Prolonged instability, by contrast, sustains budgets, justifies procurement, and keeps strategic options open. Defense contractors do not need wars to be won. They need them to continue.
This is not the result of shadowy coordination. It is the result of incentives aligned across institutions that benefit from continuity rather than closure. When security becomes an industry, peace becomes an inefficiency — not a moral failure, but a logistical inconvenience.
Canada’s place in this conversation is therefore not alarmist. It is structural. Canada is resource-rich, energy-relevant, geographically adjacent, and deeply integrated into the American economic and security ecosystem. In a political environment where influence increasingly replaces partnership, proximity becomes leverage rather than protection.
Trade agreements, energy corridors, Arctic governance, data regulation, supply chains — these are no longer neutral frameworks of cooperation. They are pressure points. Levers that can be pulled quietly, incrementally, and without spectacle. Canada is not being threatened. It is being assessed.
Multilateral institutions continue to operate alongside this reality, but largely as theatre. The United Nations convenes. The Security Council debates. Statements are issued and archived. Yet no serious actor expects these institutions to constrain power in moments that matter. Their function has shifted from enforcement to documentation, from arbitration to narrative management.
When the United States bypasses these bodies, it does not weaken them. It exposes what they have already become.
What distinguishes the current moment from earlier interventions is not aggression but tone. Previous exercises of force arrived wrapped in language designed to reassure — humanitarian concern, democratic restoration, reluctant necessity. Today, the vocabulary is stripped bare: strategic interest, regional stability, national security. This is not escalation. It is clarification.
Venezuela, then, is not the story. It is the demonstration. The demonstration is that constraint is optional and consequences are negotiable when power is sufficiently concentrated. Canada’s warning matters because it acknowledges a truth allies tend to avoid: proximity to power does not guarantee protection. It guarantees relevance.
This is not a crisis. It is a reversion. Empires do not announce themselves; they normalise themselves. They operate until resistance becomes too costly, too fragmented, or too invisible to register.
What has changed is only the honesty.
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