In this two-part interview, political organizer and analyst Hernán Vargas, a spokesperson for ALBA Movimientos, examines the current geopolitical moment through the lens of recent events in Latin America, developments that will shape the strategic horizon of the continent in the years ahead.
In Part I, Vargas discusses the shifting global balance of power, the remilitarization of the Western Hemisphere, and the place of Venezuela within a broader international confrontation involving powers such as China, Russia, and Iran. In Part II, he turns to the Bolivarian process, examining sovereignty, the significance of January 3, and the strategic role of communes in Venezuela’s future.
Cira Pascual Marquina: Much has been said about the emergence of a multipolar world and the relative decline of U.S. hegemony, with countries such as China and Russia, along with blocs such as BRICS, playing an increasingly important role. To understand Venezuela’s current situation, it is important to begin with this broader geopolitical picture. How do you understand the present moment?
Hernán Vargas: Over the last few years, left intellectuals, popular movements, social organizations, and left-wing forces have been discussing the idea of a transition in global hegemony. The argument has been that U.S. dominance is gradually weakening and that power is shifting toward other centers, whether China, Russia, Iran, or, more broadly, the wider grouping of countries associated with BRICS.
Many correctly approach this realization with a certain anxiety, because the transition is not a natural process, and it will unleash monsters. It is not like the Earth going around the Sun and, inevitably, after 365 days, a new year arrives—or, in this historical juncture, as if a new hegemonic order could simply be born. Natural laws do not govern hegemony. It is the product of power relations, and power is always contested. That contest can (and has) turned violent. At its core, this is a struggle over power. Different blocs of power are contesting the shape of the world order. There was never any reason to believe that the United States would simply step aside and allow its hegemony to disappear.
What we are seeing now, especially in 2026, is that the United States has correctly assessed its situation and is fully committed to maintaining its historical supremacy. In Latin America, this takes a very concrete form. If you read the new United States National Security Strategy, it openly states that restoring U.S. hegemony requires reordering and relaunching the Monroe Doctrine across the continent. That means regaining control over the Western Hemisphere and excluding rival powers from the region.
Perhaps what many of us did not fully anticipate was the extent to which military force would be placed at the center of that strategy.
For a long time, we lived with the myths of modernity. After the Second World War, we were told that humanity had moved beyond the great wars, that the United Nations and other institutions had established rules that governed relations among states. Yet the closing decade of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st have shown quite the opposite. Increasingly, those frameworks are no longer what determines international outcomes. The wars against Venezuela and Iran in 2026 shattered that narrative once again.
Today, the United States is acting according to its own rules. On January 3, it sent a message not only to Venezuela but to the entire continent: it remains the most powerful military force on the planet, and it is prepared to use that force. It did so in Venezuela, but the message was intended for everyone else.
CPM: You have argued that Latin America is experiencing a new phase of imperialist military control. What do you mean by that?
HV: January 3 was the most visible expression of what I consider a military takeover of the continent. I believe Latin America is under imperialist military control, and that is an enormous problem that we have not yet fully acknowledged.
The most dangerous illnesses are often the ones that have not been diagnosed. If you don’t know you have cancer, you can’t treat it. I think Latin America’s popular movements, social organizations, and left-wing political forces have not yet fully grasped the reach of the situation. Most of us continue to operate within national frameworks. The Colombian left tends to see the struggle through a Colombian lens, the Venezuelan left through a Venezuelan lens, the Peruvian left through a Peruvian lens, the Brazilian left through a Brazilian lens, and so on.
But the struggle unfolding before us is taking place on a much larger scale. We are facing a planetary offensive. What is happening is not primarily Colombian, Venezuelan, Brazilian, or Mexican. We are witnessing a continental and global reorganization of power, and many of our political analyses have not yet caught up with that reality.
The imperialist offensive has very concrete manifestations. There is a growing military deployment throughout Latin America, especially in the Caribbean. We are not only talking about warships and military bases. We are talking about an entire infrastructure that combines conventional military force with automated and semi-automated systems, including new forms of surveillance, intelligence gathering, and control, made possible by technologies such as artificial intelligence. At the same time, hundreds of people are being extrajudicially killed at sea, and these crimes largely pass unnoticed and unchallenged.
While many popular and political organizations have not fully grasped the significance of this shift, governments seem to have done so, each responding on its own. You can see it in the behavior of progressive governments throughout the region.
Take Colombia. Gustavo Petro has become increasingly cautious in both his discourse and his actions. He is very careful about his relationship with the United States. At the same time, Washington regularly reminds him that Colombia is not simply governed by whoever occupies the presidency. The United States has maintained military infrastructure and mechanisms of control there for decades, and they remain untouched.
If we look at Cuba, Venezuela was the country that most consistently supported the Cuban Revolution over the last twenty years. However, once Venezuela found itself under overt military pressure, it lost the capacity to provide that support in the same way. Other governments were not prepared to assume that role either. Brazil, meanwhile, has been extremely cautious in its dealings with the United States. Mexico, which had often taken strong positions in defense of Cuba, ultimately decided not to enter into a direct confrontation with Washington over oil supplies.
I don’t mention these examples as a criticism of progressive governments. On the contrary, they demonstrate that, at least at the governmental level, there is already an understanding of the new military reality. They recognize the correlation of forces that now exists in the hemisphere and are acting accordingly.
More than anything, that tells us that January 3 was not an isolated event. It was part of a broader process in which military force has become a central instrument for reasserting U.S. control over the continent.
CPM: You argue that this process goes beyond Venezuela. What does it look like across the continent?
HV: One thing we have to understand is that military force now operates as an overarching form of control over processes that were already economic, political, and cultural. Twenty years ago, the proposal was the Free Trade Area of the Americas. It was an economic and political project aimed at strengthening U.S. hegemony in Latin America. Today, what we are seeing is something different. It is no longer a proposal. It is no longer a project that is being debated.
Military power has moved to the center of the strategy. One expression of this is what the United States calls the Shield of the Americas. What matters here is that it was not presented as a treaty, a negotiated agreement, or a framework requiring discussion among sovereign states. The U.S. government simply issued a proclamation describing how it believes the hemisphere should function.
The stated objectives include the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism, as well as military cooperation, training, and coordinated security operations throughout the continent. It also seeks to exclude rival powers from the region, particularly China and Russia.
What is striking, however, is that this was not a matter of governments gathering to negotiate a common policy. Washington announced a doctrine, and it expects governments to fall into line with the United States or else. That tells us something important about the current balance of power in the hemisphere.
We are already seeing concrete expressions of this new phase. In Venezuela, our president was kidnapped under fabricated narcoterrorism charges. In Bolivia, the language of security and criminalization has increasingly been used against Evo Morales and the country’s most important left-wing political force. In Mexico, we have seen growing pressure framed through the discourse of the war on drugs. Similar dynamics have appeared in Colombia as well. The specific circumstances differ from country to country, but the underlying logic is the same.
These developments should be understood as warning signs. They are not isolated episodes; they are the first expressions of a broader process that seeks to reorganize the hemisphere under U.S. hegemony through a combination of military, political, and security mechanisms.
CPM: This brings us back to Venezuela, which cannot be understood in isolation. How do developments involving Iran, China, Russia, and the BRICS countries fit into your analysis of the current moment?
HV: There was a period when some people on the left argued that the major powers had reached a kind of tacit understanding. The idea was that Russia would maintain influence in its sphere, China would have its own space, and the United States would retain control over the Western Hemisphere.
Whether or not that interpretation was ever fully accurate, one could still fit Venezuela into that framework. Venezuela possesses one of the world’s most important energy reserves, but it also emerged as a geopolitical actor. It built alliances throughout Latin America aimed at reducing dependency, developed relationships with countries outside Washington’s orbit, and established ties with emerging centers of power such as China, Russia, and Iran. At the same time, it sought to use its energy resources in ways that supported an alternative political project both within Venezuela and beyond it.
From the perspective of the United States, that made Venezuela a target. It was not only a question of controlling energy resources. It was also about neutralizing a country that had become a point of articulation for alternative political and geopolitical projects.
What is truly alarming is that the attack on Venezuela was not the end of the story. If Venezuela could still be interpreted as part of a struggle over control of the hemisphere, Iran points to something much larger. What followed in Iran suggests that we are witnessing a broader offensive aimed at reasserting U.S. power on a global scale.
What the attack on Iran suggests is that the offensive extends far beyond Venezuela. I think countries such as China, Russia, and Iran have a clearer understanding of the gravity of this moment than many of us in Latin America do. They may have different interests and priorities, but they are confronting different fronts of the same conflict. What is increasingly evident is that we are not dealing with isolated crises, but with a broader effort to reassert U.S. power on a global scale.
What is particularly revealing, however, is that BRICS has generally presented itself in cautious terms. It has not openly defined itself as a project aimed at overthrowing U.S. hegemony. Yet despite that caution, it has increasingly been treated as a strategic threat. That tells us something important about the nature of the current confrontation.
For me, it is impossible to separate what is happening in Venezuela from what is happening in Iran. Both are connected to a broader effort to reassert U.S. power on a global scale. Just as Venezuela cannot be understood apart from developments in Latin America, neither can it be understood apart from the wider struggles unfolding across the Global South.
That is why I believe we are facing a global offensive that extends far beyond any single country. Venezuela is one front in that confrontation, but it is not the only one.
Shaking the World: Reports from Revolutionary Venezuela is a biweekly column by Cira Pascual Marquina for MR Online, offering frontline analysis of imperialism, popular power, and revolutionary struggle in Venezuela.