The goal is to eliminate the idea of socialism

Yusuf Tuna Koç

With Trump bombing Venezuela last week and kidnapping Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores to bring them to the US, discussions have arisen that a new era is beginning for the whole world. The US's barbaric implementation of the phrase ‘the Western hemisphere is ours,’ emphasised in its National Security Strategy, while trampling on international law and lacking any legitimate basis, has raised many concerns about the future direction of the world.

The most talked about issue is that the US is resorting to more weapons as it loses its hegemony. As a Chinese proverb says, ‘if there are big shadows of small people somewhere, it means the sun is setting there.’ Today, Trump's shadow is reaching Latin America, the living representatives of the Bolivarian revolution, with special forces and F-35s.

Today, many different views are being discussed regarding the US focusing on Latin America, particularly Venezuela. The weakening of US global hegemony, regional competition with China, efforts to eliminate the socialist experiment, hegemony over energy resources...

We discussed all this and more with Indian socialist Vijay Prashad from the Tricontinental Institute.

Why has the US now shifted its focus to Latin America, what is the goal of the so-called ‘Donroe Doctrine’, is it just about oil or is it related to the hegemony struggle with China?

I think the best thing about the US is that they don't lie about what they are doing. They also publish a strategy document every year about what they are going to do. The national security strategy document published by Trump is extremely transparent; it was announced just a few weeks ago. It stated that the world order has changed, and it is important that they acknowledge this. They also stated that they are returning to the Monroe Doctrine with Trump's addition, declaring that the Western Hemisphere belongs to them. This means they will implement the Monroe Doctrine with all the means at their disposal. What we need to understand, essentially, is why they are emphasising the Monroe Doctrine. I do not think this is coincidental. Because the Monroe Doctrine, published in 1821, targeted Latin American independence and the struggle against Simon Bolivar and San Martin. What James Monroe tried to do in 1821, Trump is now trying to do, and they are doing relatively well. They believe that Bolivarianism, revived by Chavez, must be eliminated. This can only be achieved by removing the governments in Venezuela and Cuba. Because right-wing governments are already advancing in other countries. We see this in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. The right will also return in Colombia and Brazil. So what remains? Venezuela and Cuba. These two countries are sources of inspiration for the Latin American left. If the left can be eliminated in these two countries, if Venezuela can be humiliated, there will be no need to even change the government. If you can break a country's honour, you can destroy the left morally. The left will have no symbol left, no place to meet. Caracas is a meeting point, and this is very important. Chávez was able to bring the left together with the revenue from oil. Conferences and actions were organised. All this will disappear, the Latin American left will lose its centre, and the entire continent will fall under US control. That is the main issue. It is not just about the theft of oil. It is about preventing oil from being used to build the Latin American left and to oppose US hegemony in its own hemisphere.

So the issue is about eliminating the centre and symbol of an ideology.

I believe the issue here goes beyond economics; it is more about politics. More precisely, it is not economics in the traditional sense. If Venezuela were not a wealthy country, it would not have the means to strengthen the left. If it were a poor country, none of these meetings would have taken place. Therefore, they are interconnected.

Many analysts interpret the Venezuela issue in the context of the US's hegemonic struggle with China. However, Trump said they would continue to sell oil to China. This raises the following question. China is a productive power. Today, the US's advantage will be determining the price of oil sold to China. Therefore, whether it is Venezuelan oil or the lithium triangle, even if control remains with the US, China continues to be the hegemonic power in global production. Is it possible to hold China back solely through control of resources?

I live in Chile. Chile's largest trading partner is China. If the US tells the current far-right government that it can no longer sell to China, who will buy Chile's minerals? The US does not have the industrial capacity to purchase these raw materials. Consequently, the Chilean government would collapse for political reasons. In other words, the US cannot prevent sales to China; it is impossible. This is the fundamental contradiction. This is the contradiction the US must grapple with; controlling prices is not the issue. These contradictions pose problems for the US administration as much as they do for everyone else. There is no solution to this. These contradictions drive history forward and ensure the continuation of class struggles. From Washington's perspective, the only way to resolve this contradiction is for the US to increase its productive capacity and become a buyer of these raw materials. If it cannot do this, raw material and service sales will continue to flow to China. The same applies to iron ore. There is significant iron production in Latin America. If China is not there, who will continue to buy this iron?

What do you think will happen in Venezuelan politics from now on? Delcy Rodriguez made an important speech, saying that they will continue to use oil for the benefit of the country and continue the revolution that has been built. What can we expect in the country's politics in the near future?

Rodriguez is Maduro's old comrade. They were together when the Socialist Union was founded. She is a Marxist-Leninist, not someone who will shy away from a fight. But it must be understood that Venezuelans are facing such a shocking situation for the first time in a long time. You know, Latin America has never been bombed before. Panama was bombed, but that was in Central America. There have been many coups, but Latin America has never been bombed before. It's also different from the bombing in Iraq, where 150 warplanes were waiting in the air. How many warplanes does the Turkish army have?

Probably around 200¹

Imagine using almost all your warplanes. 150 planes waiting in the skies over Venezuela at the same time is an unprecedented, unbelievable situation. The whole country is in shock, there is serious fear. Trump is saying he will bomb again. He says either you give 50 barrels of oil or I will bomb again. It is a terrible threat. We must be sensitive to this too.

Delcy Rodriguez does not want Venezuela to become another Gaza. The US and Israel have shown the world what they are capable of. No other country can do this. We must be aware of this. If you are the leader of millions of people, you cannot act irresponsibly with their lives. Some on the left are asking why Venezuela is backing down. You cannot take a step forward by gambling with the lives of your own people.

NO MORE ACCUSATIONS AGAINST MADURO

After Trump kidnapped Maduro, he did not consider bringing Machado or Guaido to power. I think this situation is an important sign of the lack of popular support for the government in Venezuela or, conversely, the lack of a base for the opposition.

This is also interesting. Guaido is already politically finished. But the Machado example is more interesting. Of course, it can be said for both of them that it doesn't make sense to sell your country to the US. If you are going to betray your country, don't do it for the US. I'm saying this for their own good. Betray for an actor you can trust. Machado is now a Nobel laureate. She should be happy with that. She can earn thousands of dollars speaking all over the world. She can speak at corporate meetings. She won't starve. But she can't be the President of Venezuela. Because I think the US has realised that Maduro may have actually won the last election. That's a very interesting confession. If they say Delcy Rodriguez can continue, it means in a sense that the party really won the election. They have also backed down from the cartel allegations. They have admitted that the cartel they claimed Maduro led does not actually exist. Now, they do not seem to be accepting the only allegation they have left, that of election fraud, since Rodriguez is continuing. So what will they accuse Maduro of now? Owning a gun? That is not within the US's jurisdiction. You can own whatever weapon you want while living in Turkey; how can the US object to that? Maduro is the head of the Venezuelan army; you could say he already has a huge army. What can you do about that?

From weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons in Syria, to the claim that there are automatic weapons in Venezuela...

So what does this mean? People read the accusations and laugh.

As you say, if there are no accusations of narco-terrorism, then the legal framework for the cross-border operation outlined by the US no longer exists. On what basis will Maduro continue to be held? It seems they will hold him solely as a show of force.

There is also a problem here. They claim that this attack is not an invasion but a security operation. Because if it is an invasion and you are capturing the leader of a country, that is a violation of the head of state's immunity. That's why they say no, this is a police matter. In fact, this gives Israel the right to go and arrest Mahmoud Abbas. I am saying this so you can see what kind of danger this creates. A very dangerous precedent is being set right now with Venezuela. Why couldn't the Indian government kidnap the Vice President of Bangladesh? If there is no presidential immunity, they can take him away. What the US is doing is extremely dangerous in terms of international law. They are already withdrawing from all international agreements, the Paris Agreement, etc. But beyond that, they want to destroy the multilateral system.

LIBERALISM IS DEAD, LONG LIVE NATOISM

As you said at the beginning, Trump is currently trying to destroy the Bolivarian revolution and the idea of socialism. But I think that's not all that is being destroyed. It seems that liberalism, the so-called rule-based order, has also been completely abandoned. German President Steinmeier claimed that the US is threatening the world order. So yes, perhaps they are destroying the Bolivarian revolution, but they are also taking the liberal world order with them.

First, I would like to ask, when did we first hear about the rules-based international order? It must have been during the Biden era. Perhaps from Anthony Blinken's mouth. Whenever they start losing control of the world order, they talk about the rules-based order. Now they have lost control of many things, so they have decided to completely eliminate the multilateral order. They think it is shackling them. So now China and Russia are talking about the UN Charter, the multilateral order; we are in a highly ironic time.

What is liberalism today, for example? It is dead. Where is European liberalism? I cannot see it. What I can see is NATOism. The NATO ideology. Build a big army, wave a big stick. That is NATOism. This is the hegemonic ideology in Europe today, not right or left. They talk a lot about the right, but today the issue is not the right, it is NATOism.

There are many analyses suggesting that the US, as an imperialist centre, is increasingly relying on military power because its hegemony is weakening. Both the fronts opened in recent years and the US narrowing its focus to Latin America reinforce these interpretations. What are your thoughts on this?

To be frank, the main question is what kind of power source you have. The US's main source of power is its military. They spend over a trillion dollars a year. They don't produce goods or services; they have been destroying their production capacity for the last few generations, but their military power remains intact. Their information power also remains intact. For example, yes, BirGün does proper journalism, but let's look at the rest of the Turkish media. They don't go beyond publishing the briefings provided by the US. Their information and military power is therefore incredible. However, their economic and social power is weakening. But if we look at it from a military and information perspective, look at how people view the genocide in Gaza, for example. Or how many people believe that genocide is really being committed against the Uyghurs.

THE SOLUTION IS NOT MULTIPOLARITY BUT NON-POLARITY

Finally, I want to talk about China. Similar things were said about Putin; when the Assad government was overthrown by jihadists, there were comments that Russia had sold Syria. Now, similar things are being said in the context of China and Venezuela. Perhaps we can talk about a weakening of power in an imperial sense, but is it possible to say that we are truly approaching a multipolar order, that the hegemony of China or another actor is increasing, or is there a future ahead of us where the US continues to slaughter the whole world?

I believe that the concept we can use to understand what is happening in the world is not multipolarity. Instead, we can talk about the new modernity of the Global South. When we talk about a multipolar world, we need to talk about poles, but China is not a pole; it wants to establish relations with everyone, it believes in multilateralism, it does not want to be a pole, it does not have a NATO mentality. Multipolarity imposes the NATO logic on developing countries. They do not approach developing countries with the NATO mentality. However, it is clear that we are in a new phase, which may be weak or strong; it is currently weak. It could become stronger. This is a dialectical process. People may want the idea of unipolarity to disappear, rather than multipolarity to emerge, and for multilateralism and UN international law to be implemented. We are not close to this either. First, the new modernity of the Global South needs to be strengthened. Its communication capabilities need to be enhanced. China is still an unknown quantity for the world; it is said that they impose multipolarity, but this is not true. China's worldview is not well known to many. We do not have sufficient understanding of the Global South. If we asked someone in the US where the capital of Turkey is, what would they say?

At best, Istanbul, probably Iran or Iraq...

How many people know the capital of Nigeria? These may seem trivial, but the issue is an information war. The Global South may be weak at this stage, but it can grow stronger.

South Africa taking Israel to the International Court of Justice, for example, was a powerful move. So this balance is not final, it is in flux. But just as we don't want Turkey's global influence, we don't want China's either. The Indians don't want it. The far-right Indian Minister of the Interior said we don't want to be part of the NATO mentality. Think about it. I believe this is also China's view.

I think one reason all discussions come down to China vs. the US is that the transfer of power, of hegemony, whether from one pole to another or from one pole to the rest of the world, still requires a power struggle; even a simple shift in consciousness requires a real power struggle.

Therefore, such a power struggle is only possible through international class struggle. For example, even an election in Turkey is part of the international class struggle; it is not just about Turkish politics. A workers' and peasants' government in Turkey could influence the class struggle throughout the world.

1- The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) really does have 200 F-16s.

Source: TUSAŞ

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Hedef sosyalizm fikrini ortadan kaldırabilmek, published in BirGün newspaper on January 11, 2026.