GUEST BLOG: Ian Powell – Nicolás Maduro kidnapping, US imperialist expansion & implications for New Zealand

There is much to understand from the dramatic kidnapping (abduction is perhaps a better word) of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores last weekend by the United States armed forces, combined with the military attack on the country’s capital Caracas.

This understanding is greatly helped by the comments of the US’s first elected insurrectionist and convicted felon (fraud and sexual assault) president, Donald Trump, at and following his inauguration for his second term nearly 12 months ago.

William McKinley: ‘first American imperialist president’ and role model for Donald Trump

Trump singled out the US’s 25^th president, William McKinley, who was first elected 1896 but assassinated early into his second term, for praise. Some of this praise was because of his promotion of tariffs.

But it was also because McKinley is regarded as the first imperialist American president. He went to war with Spain and China to claim colonial spoils. Annexations included Puerto Rico and the Philippines (where over 200,000 Filipinos were killed).

Far and hard right politics, fascism and narcissism

For context, the current US government under Trump’s leadership is a mix of far and hard right politics.

I have discussed this in a previous post (3 November) describing how the far right is successfully cannibalising the mainstream rightwing internationally (including its implications for Aotearoa New Zealand): Far right and hard right.

Residing within the far right is fascism. Considering Trump and some of his cabinet members and key staff to be fascists is a very reasonable conclusion to draw.

Narcissism was named after Narcissus, a Greek mythological figure who fell in love with his own reflection

One of the characteristics of many fascists is narcissism; a personality disorder recognised as a mental health condition; an excessive preoccupation with oneself and one’s own needs, often at the expense of others.

Blend narcissism and fascism (or even wider far right beliefs) together and you have an absence of empathy and indifference to harmful consequences of their actions on others.

Even intelligent people within this subset find their narrow paradigms shut out to consideration of the tactical and strategic errors (own goals) that might arise out of their decision-making.

Recommended reading and watching

There has been much public commentary on the violent assault on Venezuela and the kidnapping/abduction of its president and ‘First Lady’. Three have stood out for me.

Owen Jones: empirically based passion

One is British leftwing journalist, commentator, author and activist Owen Jones. He speaks with lively empirically based passion. In his Battlelines publication (Substack, 4 January) he didn’t pull his punches: Global anarchy.

Professor Steve Ellner: he and Ricardo Vaz dig deep

The second commentary digs deep. It is a 31-minute interview by Venezuelanalysis(4 January) with Caracas based analysts Steve Ellner and Ricardo Vaz: An imperialist war crime.

I strongly recommend watching it. In addition to the military violence and abduction, they address Trump’s declaration that Washington will take control of Venezuela’s oil and effectively run the country, warning that the operation constitutes an unlawful use of force.

They also refer to the extrajudicial killings on Venezuelan fishing boats at sea as violations of international law and Venezuelan sovereignty.

Professor Helen Yaffe provides historical and current political contexts

The third is a recommended read of an online article (6 January) by Helen Yaffe, Professor of Latin American Political Economy (Glasgow University): What is the US doing in Venezuela.

As well as describing the dramatic events, Yaffe puts them in both their historical and current political contexts.

The absurd: Maduro’s machine gun

Trump’s justifications range from the absurd to the manufactured to the overstated. But one justification is absolutely on the mark. His narcissism is ironically beneficial at least from the perspective of analysis.

Trump’s narcissism from absurd to manufactured

In openly exposing that that this is all about naked power Trump and his coterie don’t care that he can be easily caught out over fabrication and inconsistencies. If one believes that they are all-powerful, why should they care!

The absurd justification for the legal case against Nicolás Maduro is that he had a machine gun in his possession.

Putting aside the fact that the risk of what might happen (foreign military abduction) did actually occur, arguing this in a country where machine guns are easily and lawfully accessible; really!

The manufactured: narco-trafficking

The biggest fabrication, arguably exceeded the US government’s false ‘weapons of mass destruction’ claim used to justify the disastrous invasion of Iraq over two decades ago, was to blame Venezuela, Maduro in particular, for the US fentanyl epidemic. It even called it a ‘weapon of mass destruction’!

Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores victims of fabricated accusations

Consider the following facts that completely discredit Trump’s fabrication:

1. In its March 2025 report the US State Department identified Mexico as the sole source of fentanyl entering the United States. United Nations investigations into fentanyl distribution also don’t identify Venezuela as a producer, let alone a supplier.
2. Trump claims that Maduro leads a so-called Venezuelan ‘Cartel of the Suns’ that traffics narcotics, including fentanyl, into the US. In fact, this is a politically manufactured fantasy. There is no such organisation as has just been acknowledged in the last few days by the US Department of Justice.
3. In 2024 Honduran ex-President, Juan Orlando Hernández, was convicted in a US court and sentenced to 45 years for conspiring to smuggle over 400 tons of cocaine into the US. Last November Trump pardoned this narcotrafficker.

The overstated: oil

Many believe that the US invasion is all or primarily about oil. Certainly Trump’s own words and actions encourage this belief. After all, Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

However, since Trump’s sanctions targeting its oil sector back in 2017, Venezuela’s exports to the US have plummeted. Instead China has become its biggest importer.

Last November Trump released a US National Security Strategy for Latin America. It declared that “Restoring American energy dominance (in oil, gas, coal, and nuclear) and reshoring the necessary key energy components is a top strategic priority”.

However, while important, oil profiteering is not the prime driver of the US assault on Venezuelan sovereignty. Although Venezuela has huge oil reserves, it is heavy oil which is more difficult to fully process.

Instead its oil reserves are a consequence of a wider geopolitical agenda sometimes called spheres of influence. While intricately linked, US oil sanctions are more a weapon than a driver of the imperialist assault on Venezuela.

The on the mark justification

Where the United States’  justification was on the mark comes from Donald Trump’s above-mentioned praise for the first ‘American imperialist president’ William McKinley.

Misrepresentation of President James Munroe and Munroe Doctrine

Consistent with this praise, through misrepresentation, Trump has drawn upon what is known as the ‘Munroe Doctrine’.

This Doctrine was named after President James Monroe who was the United States’ fifth president (1817-1825). Munroe was both an original Founding Father of US independence and the last Founding Father to serve as president.

The Munroe Doctrine was issued in 1823, less than 50 years after US independence was declared and 34 years before its constitution was approved. It was a young developing country; not that long ago itself comprising 13 different British colonies.

The Doctrine was a policy of limiting European colonialism in the Americas but not to replace it with American colonialisation because it lacked both the inclination and means to achieve this. It was more aligned in principle with non-colonial states in the region.

However, Trump is reinventing the Doctrine to extend US colonial power throughout the Americas. This is what the above-mentioned National Security Strategy is all about.

The attack on Venezuela is an endeavour (among other things) to:

• impose U.S. hegemony in Latin America;
• exploit Venezuela’s natural resources (oil, gas, critical minerals, and rare earth elements) as part of an attempt to build a new supply chain in the western hemisphere;
• cut off Latin America’s ties with other countries, particularly its biggest competitor China;
• threaten other left-wing  or progressive governments in the continent;
• destroy the project of regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean; and
• sabotage ‘Global South’ unity over supporting Palestine and other liberation struggles.

Where to next

I have deliberately not discussed related issues such as the nature of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela along with the longstanding United States hostility towards it beginning in the latter part of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and the entrenched and violent far right opposition to it.

I have also not discussed the impact of the sudden drop in oil prices in 2014, the impact of accelerating US economic warfare (sanctions) since 2015, and the controversy over last year’s presidential elections.

Far right extremist Maria Corina Machado ‘thrown under the political bus’ by Donald Trump  

As an aside these elections in my view were imperfect but legitimate. Further, Trump has been explicit – he isn’t interested in ‘restoring democracy’ or ‘democratic transition’; nor does he rate the alternative Venezuelan far right led by Maria Corina Machado stating that she didn’t have the support to run the country.

These exclusions are because I don’t want to distract from the greater priority being regional and global seriousness of the US’s military aggression (including abductions) towards the sovereignty of Venezuela and its people.

Venezuelans mobilise in Caracas against US violent aggression and abductions (Venezuelanalysis, 6 January)

The US’s aggression is part of a wider plan to extend US domination across the Americas and beyond consistent with its above-mentioned National Security Strategy which, in turn, is based on a misrepresentation of the anti-colonial 1823 Munroe Doctrine.

Even Greenland is on Trump’s takeover list (The Guardian, January 2026)

Trump has explicitly signalled Cuba, Mexico, and Columbia as the next likely targets. Brazil and Uruguay can’t be ignored either. Even Greenland is expressly on his list.

Quite simply, the sovereignty of most Latin American and other more vulnerable countries that don’t comply with the US’s narcissistic far right (including fascist) leadership’s agenda are at risk.

What about New Zealand

New Zealand is in a difficult position. The Government’s public response has been underwhelming although not as bad as the sycophantic United Kingdom government.

Prime Minister Luxon’s response to US Venezuelan invasion and illegal abductions (Hubbard, The Post)

Luxon’s government, with Winston Peters as foreign minister, has been slowly weaning New Zealand away from its international neutrality position to one increasingly closer to that of the United States.

The extensive exposure of this blatant and violent US display of power-grabbing makes public justifying this policy shift much more difficult.

Robert Patman, Professor of International Relations (Otago University) discusses this in The Conversation (5 January): NZ faces a foreign policy reckoning.

Much more direct is Bryce Edwards’ piece published by the Democracy Project  (7 January): NZ’s timid stance.

As the narcissism of fascism and the far right continues to push the parameters of their power, an already unsafe world is becoming increasingly more dangerous and our government’s response suggests increasing sycophantic timidity.

Ian Powell was Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, the professional union representing senior doctors and dentists in New Zealand, for over 30 years, until December 2019. He is now a health systems, labour market, and political commentator living in the small river estuary community of Otaihanga (the place by the tide). First published at Political Bytes