Hugo Rodas Morales on the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ and inter-imperialist struggles
The role of the state is essential for economic imperialism to succeed, says Hugo Rodas Morales. “We cannot look at the world with an ethnocentric gaze and expect to understand it.”
Maria Cristina Secci • January 16, 2026
IL MANIFESTO
IL MANIFESTO
ITALY
Hugo Rodas Morales is a political scientist from Cochabamba, Bolivia, and a professor of International Relations at UNAM in Mexico City, where he has lived since the 1990s. He is the head of the international foundation named after Bolivian socialist Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, assassinated in 1980 by General Meza’s hitmen during a coup d’état.
What is the relationship between military force and political objectives, looking at what took place in Venezuela on January 3?
The analysis of this relationship – although usually neglected by mass media, influenced by the U.S. presidential agenda, or by news agencies – is the foundation for any political explanation. Clarifying the objectives hiding behind the use of force – upstream of which we find what is truly important – is of key importance, because without a combination of historical knowledge and a skilful in-depth look at the politics of the specific situation, you are unlikely to be able to get your bearings when it comes to the logic guiding power. It is clear that the Venezuelan political regime has not changed and that the U.S. aggressors prefer the continuity of Delcy Rodríguez (supported by Chavismo and the Venezuelan armed forces) to the alternative of activist and Nobel laureate Corina Machado – a no-holds-barred supporter of U.S. military intervention, but foreign to the logic of Chavista power.
Analyses keep circulating on social media claiming the United States has “liberated” Venezuela. What is this really about, in your view?
Certainly, it’s not the democratic order in Venezuela that U.S. neo-imperialist policy is interested in; rather, it is interested in casting its intervention in the context of the electoral illegitimacy of the Maduro regime. The military intervention was purely tactical, as were President Trump’s threats of a “second wave” of attacks or of extending them to other countries (Colombia, Cuba – but, tellingly, not Nicaragua). He only seeks resonance effects at the continental level to strengthen his domestic policy: the revamped “Donroe Doctrine,” to be extended to the entire continent.
What can a power like the United States really do if it doesn’t have internal support in the country?
In reality, no nation-state can be controlled remotely without knowing the guidelines or the ways of doing things of local politics. This is why the United States prefers the maintenance of the Chavista state apparatus in Venezuela, despite the fact that it is clearly not democratic and representative. Things become clearer if we take a comparative perspective at the regional level: Venezuela came after Honduras, not before. Maduro is not a more plausible suspect of “money laundering” for drug trafficking than former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced to 45 years in federal prison and graciously pardoned by Trump two days before Maduro was detained, while influencing the Honduran elections to favor the conservative candidate.
After all, Trump himself was favored by Russian electoral interventionism against the U.S. Democrats: we are dealing with two parallel neo-imperialist powers, if we go deeper than the surface level and the declarations of the Ukrainian President applauding the removal of his Venezuelan counterpart. Neither oil nor drug trafficking (the destruction of boats on the Venezuelan coasts) nor “terrorism” reveal the ultimate driver behind U.S. state action, nor do its relations with other global powers like Russia, India or China. What is required is a systemic analysis of economic-political aspects, and this is not going to come from Western politicians or intellectuals. Furthermore, one must also focus on the U.S. President’s discourse and the use of force in the seizure of the Venezuelan President by the State Department (Marco Rubio) and the U.S. elite Delta Force, following CIA operations in Caracas.
Europe’s caution reveals how much of a secondary role it has in the current global order – not to mention the issue of Greenland, where the presence of Danish military forces is relatively negligible. Instead, some truly enlightening insight might come from those inside the central capitalist institutions (the financial ones) or on the margins of contemporary critical theory. An exponent of the first group is the former Yugoslav Branko Milanović, with his Capitalism Alone; while in the works of the Japanese Kōjin Karatani one can read his remarkable revision of the concept of “mode of production,” extended to the strategies of exchange that have regulated world history. In both accounts, it is clear that however extensive the penetration of capitalism or the economic growth of a country, the role of the state remains central, to the point that it is not enough to be an economic superpower to achieve global hegemony (as in the cases of China or India).
Does this mean that explanations both of specific cases and of processes with global influence are now coming first and foremost from the periphery or the margins of a “world without a center,” in any case no longer a Eurocentric one?
A methodological criterion is essential – something that literature had already offered us, when Borges showed that his prose (written outside Europe) was capable of revising the entire Western tradition. Those who think the European Union overcomes the traditional nation-state do not realize that, in reality, that concept is only expanded: Karatani called it an “extended territorial state.” The transcritique of this Japanese author offers an innovative interpretation of both Kant and Marx, as well as what made Greece an exception with respect to all of Asia, and analyzes the way in which current hyper-mercantilism (according to Milanović) leads to inter-imperialist struggles founded on buying and selling in and of itself. The 1970s had political passion as a leitmotif, while the asymmetrical forces of the current era oscillate between genocide and negotiation. We cannot look at the world with an ethnocentric gaze and expect to understand it: here lies the Achilles’ heel of U.S. neo-imperial politics. Whether it comes from “Trump” or anyone else, rather than succeed in governing the world, it acts out blindly against it.Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/conflitto-di-imperialismi-fondato-sulla-compravendita on 2026-01-11
Hugo Rodas Morales is a political scientist from Cochabamba, Bolivia, and a professor of International Relations at UNAM in Mexico City, where he has lived since the 1990s. He is the head of the international foundation named after Bolivian socialist Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, assassinated in 1980 by General Meza’s hitmen during a coup d’état.
What is the relationship between military force and political objectives, looking at what took place in Venezuela on January 3?
The analysis of this relationship – although usually neglected by mass media, influenced by the U.S. presidential agenda, or by news agencies – is the foundation for any political explanation. Clarifying the objectives hiding behind the use of force – upstream of which we find what is truly important – is of key importance, because without a combination of historical knowledge and a skilful in-depth look at the politics of the specific situation, you are unlikely to be able to get your bearings when it comes to the logic guiding power. It is clear that the Venezuelan political regime has not changed and that the U.S. aggressors prefer the continuity of Delcy Rodríguez (supported by Chavismo and the Venezuelan armed forces) to the alternative of activist and Nobel laureate Corina Machado – a no-holds-barred supporter of U.S. military intervention, but foreign to the logic of Chavista power.
Analyses keep circulating on social media claiming the United States has “liberated” Venezuela. What is this really about, in your view?
Certainly, it’s not the democratic order in Venezuela that U.S. neo-imperialist policy is interested in; rather, it is interested in casting its intervention in the context of the electoral illegitimacy of the Maduro regime. The military intervention was purely tactical, as were President Trump’s threats of a “second wave” of attacks or of extending them to other countries (Colombia, Cuba – but, tellingly, not Nicaragua). He only seeks resonance effects at the continental level to strengthen his domestic policy: the revamped “Donroe Doctrine,” to be extended to the entire continent.
What can a power like the United States really do if it doesn’t have internal support in the country?
In reality, no nation-state can be controlled remotely without knowing the guidelines or the ways of doing things of local politics. This is why the United States prefers the maintenance of the Chavista state apparatus in Venezuela, despite the fact that it is clearly not democratic and representative. Things become clearer if we take a comparative perspective at the regional level: Venezuela came after Honduras, not before. Maduro is not a more plausible suspect of “money laundering” for drug trafficking than former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced to 45 years in federal prison and graciously pardoned by Trump two days before Maduro was detained, while influencing the Honduran elections to favor the conservative candidate.
After all, Trump himself was favored by Russian electoral interventionism against the U.S. Democrats: we are dealing with two parallel neo-imperialist powers, if we go deeper than the surface level and the declarations of the Ukrainian President applauding the removal of his Venezuelan counterpart. Neither oil nor drug trafficking (the destruction of boats on the Venezuelan coasts) nor “terrorism” reveal the ultimate driver behind U.S. state action, nor do its relations with other global powers like Russia, India or China. What is required is a systemic analysis of economic-political aspects, and this is not going to come from Western politicians or intellectuals. Furthermore, one must also focus on the U.S. President’s discourse and the use of force in the seizure of the Venezuelan President by the State Department (Marco Rubio) and the U.S. elite Delta Force, following CIA operations in Caracas.
Europe’s caution reveals how much of a secondary role it has in the current global order – not to mention the issue of Greenland, where the presence of Danish military forces is relatively negligible. Instead, some truly enlightening insight might come from those inside the central capitalist institutions (the financial ones) or on the margins of contemporary critical theory. An exponent of the first group is the former Yugoslav Branko Milanović, with his Capitalism Alone; while in the works of the Japanese Kōjin Karatani one can read his remarkable revision of the concept of “mode of production,” extended to the strategies of exchange that have regulated world history. In both accounts, it is clear that however extensive the penetration of capitalism or the economic growth of a country, the role of the state remains central, to the point that it is not enough to be an economic superpower to achieve global hegemony (as in the cases of China or India).
Does this mean that explanations both of specific cases and of processes with global influence are now coming first and foremost from the periphery or the margins of a “world without a center,” in any case no longer a Eurocentric one?
A methodological criterion is essential – something that literature had already offered us, when Borges showed that his prose (written outside Europe) was capable of revising the entire Western tradition. Those who think the European Union overcomes the traditional nation-state do not realize that, in reality, that concept is only expanded: Karatani called it an “extended territorial state.” The transcritique of this Japanese author offers an innovative interpretation of both Kant and Marx, as well as what made Greece an exception with respect to all of Asia, and analyzes the way in which current hyper-mercantilism (according to Milanović) leads to inter-imperialist struggles founded on buying and selling in and of itself. The 1970s had political passion as a leitmotif, while the asymmetrical forces of the current era oscillate between genocide and negotiation. We cannot look at the world with an ethnocentric gaze and expect to understand it: here lies the Achilles’ heel of U.S. neo-imperial politics. Whether it comes from “Trump” or anyone else, rather than succeed in governing the world, it acts out blindly against it.Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/conflitto-di-imperialismi-fondato-sulla-compravendita on 2026-01-11
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