The United States’ military incursion into Venezuela and the abduction of its President represent a stunning breach of international law and the core principle of national sovereignty. This brazen act of 21st-century imperialism marks a dangerous descent into lawless despotism and demands a fundamental reassessment of Australia’s alliance with the United States.
A dangerous path
This action is not an isolated event, but the violent culmination of a revanchist foreign policy. It revives the 19th-century ‘Monroe Doctrine’ through the unilateral application of military force, erasing diplomatic norms and setting a precedent where any resource-rich nation deemed disobedient may face regime change at gunpoint. The declared aim of controlling Venezuela’s resources confirms this as an act of imperial exploitation, devoid of any genuine democratic purpose. Trump statements for the takeover of Greenland and threatening military action against Colombia and Mexico are further indications of an emboldened aggressive posture. Appeasement strategies on the part of western leaders towards Trump are clearly read as weakness by the US regime and further stimulate the aggression. We don't have to be blind to the faults of the Maduro regime to see that this in no way justifies the blatant breaching of national sovereignty and the arrogant assertion of US imperial interests and political dominance of South America.
Historical echoes and present danger
The parallels to past tragedies are clear: the fabrication of a casus belli, the dismissal of multilateral institutions, and the invasion of a sovereign nation recall the darkest chapters of the Vietnam War. History shows that powers facing domestic decline often turn to erratic foreign adventurism. The world cannot afford an increasingly unchecked superpower, armed with the world’s largest military, acting as a rogue state.
Australia’s complicity and sovereign risk
For decades, our foreign policy has been anchored in an alliance supposedly built on shared democratic values. The actions in Venezuela violently abandon even the pretence of those values. Today, through AUKUS and integrated force posture initiatives, our entanglement is deeper than ever. We are being woven into the operational fabric of a military command that has demonstrated a willingness to commit international kidnapping. For the first time, American troops, submarines, warships, and aircraft will be permanently based in Australia and even the pretence of ‘joint defence facilities’ is being abandoned. This risks making Australia an automatic accessory to future adventurism, substituting loyalty to an ally for fidelity to our own principles and regional peace.
Furthermore, we should not be so naive to think that the US would respect Australia’s sovereignty, if the Australian people were to make the ‘wrong choice’ in an election. If a future government were to resume control of our resources industry or to regulate or control the domestic activities of American multinationals, they would be vulnerable to coercion or even removal. Other major US allies, including Canada and Brazil, have for this reason never tolerated US bases on their soil. We are entering a new era where we are not merely allies but may well lose our capacity to ever defy orders from Washington.
The path forward for Australia
Continuing to provide unquestioning diplomatic cover and integrated military support through AUKUS is not prudent statecraft; it is complicity. It ties our security to the whims of a despot and makes us party to a project of imperial domination.
The SEARCH Committee will be putting out a more detailed analysis of the implications of renewed US aggression. For now, I would like to ask our members and friends to work with other organisations in pursuit of the following:
- Support broad based solidarity actions with the people of Venezuela and all of Latin America.
- Suspension of cooperation under the AUKUS pact, a framework that enables this tyranny and legitimises such criminal adventures.
- Recalibrate our foreign policy towards genuine multilateralism, the defence of all nations’ sovereignty, and the rebuilding of a global system based on law.
The time for passive diplomacy is over. The time for courageous, independent assertion of principle is now. We stand against the appeasement of global despotism, with the people of Latin America against the violation of sovereignty, and we demand our government finally stand for Australia.
Adam Rorris
President, SEARCH Foundation
Schmitt’s ideas were used to support the Nazi strategy to give effect to the concept of Lebensraum (“Living space”) advanced by German political geographer Friedrich Ratzel and others. The imperative of Germany’s need for Lebensraum was a position adopted by Hitler in Mein Kampf. Lebensraum required two complementary strategies: reterritorialisation and deterritorialisation. The former referred to the expansion of territory needed both to ensure regional dominance, and to create new “empty spaces” for Germans; the latter to the need to move “non-Germanised Germans” (eg Slavs, Jews) out of the territory controlled by the hegemonic power – effectively ethnic cleansing. However, the need to occupy new territories was not only concerned with racial purification, it was also concerned with obtaining the natural resources needed for expanding industrialisation and the needs of the military. Hitler considered the current frontiers entirely flexible, saying in one speech that land “has been in a constant state of redistribution for millennia. [I]t would be insane to suggest that …the current state of distribution is set forever”.
The 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) states that the US, after “years of neglect” will “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere… This “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests”. Clearly, the NSS, the actions against Venezuela, threats to take similar actions against Columbia and Cuba, the proposals to expand the US empire by acquiring Greenland (for security and natural resources) and even Canada and Mexico, alongside the massive program of (often violent) “deterritorialisation” being conducted by ICE, have frightening parallels to the Germany of the 1930s. Trump is not Hitler, but were Carl Schmitt alive, he would easily recognise the elements of Großraum in current US manoeuvrings. Taking lessons from history, Australia can only maintain its entanglement with the US political- military-industrial complex at its peril.