The Imperial Chessboard: How US Intervention in Venezuela Endangers Millions While Pretending to Save Them

The Façade of Liberation

The recent US-led capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been theatrically presented as a turning point for the South American nation. Western media outlets and political establishments have applauded this bold intervention as the beginning of Venezuela’s “new era.” However, beneath this carefully constructed narrative lies a much darker reality - one where geopolitical power games continue to devastate ordinary Venezuelan lives while creating new vulnerabilities for the nearly 8 million citizens forced to flee their homeland over the past two decades.

This intervention follows the familiar pattern of Western imperialism: destabilize a sovereign nation through sanctions and political manipulation, then position itself as the savior when the inevitable collapse occurs. The United States, acting as self-appointed global policeman, has once again demonstrated its disregard for international sovereignty norms when dealing with Global South nations that refuse to align with its geopolitical interests.

The Unchanged Humanitarian Catastrophe

The fundamental truth that Western powers deliberately ignore is that removing Maduro does nothing to address the root causes of Venezuela’s crisis. The economic collapse, structural violence, and political fragmentation that characterized the Chavista regime remain deeply entrenched. The infrastructure lies in ruins, basic services remain unreliable, and institutional trust has evaporated beyond immediate repair. Yet the United States and its allies expect the world to believe that capturing one man magically resolves these complex, systemic issues.

What makes this situation particularly grotesque is how quickly host countries are using Maduro’s capture as justification to reconsider protection for Venezuelan migrants. Nations that initially offered sanctuary are now debating which migratory statuses to maintain and which to revoke. Some are even proposing “humanitarian corridors” to facilitate returns - a cynical attempt to repackage forced repatriation as compassionate policy.

The Precarious Legal Labyrinth

The legal status of Venezuelan migrants abroad reveals a disturbing hierarchy of vulnerability that mirrors global power structures. At the top are the fortunate few - those who entered through ordinary migration channels or obtained formal refugee status under UNHCR mandate. These individuals enjoy relatively strong protections, with pathways to permanent residence and eventual citizenship.

However, the vast majority face far more precarious situations that expose them to arbitrary policy shifts. Nearly 1.4 million asylum seekers wait in legal limbo for decisions that could determine their entire futures. The United States and Peru alone account for over a million pending applications, with recognition rates remaining scandalously low despite the evident humanitarian need.

Most Venezuelans abroad reside under temporary protection statuses, humanitarian visas, or special residence permits - mechanisms created as emergency responses to the scale of displacement. While these have provided millions with temporary legal residence and work permits, they remain time-bound and revocable at the whim of host governments. The temporary nature of these protections makes Venezuelans perpetual bargaining chips in international diplomacy.

Administrative Violence as Policy Tool

The situation becomes particularly sinister when we examine how administrative mechanisms weaponize bureaucracy against vulnerable migrants. Millions navigate legal uncertainty or have fallen into irregular status not through clandestine movement, but because of deliberately constructed barriers: inaccessible consular services, unaffordable documentation requirements, and constantly shifting legal frameworks.

The United States provides a textbook example of this administrative violence. The Trump administration’s termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations for Venezuelans in early 2025 left approximately 350,000 individuals without protection. Though multiple federal courts ruled these terminations unlawful, the Supreme Court allowed them to take effect while litigation continues - demonstrating how legal technicalities trump human dignity in Western systems.

Similarly, Peru - home to the second-largest Venezuelan population globally - initially issued hundreds of thousands of permits in 2018 only to halt the program and impose impossible visa requirements. The result is that approximately half of Peru’s Venezuelan residents remain without legal status, trapped in a shadow economy with no protection from exploitation.

The Diplomatic Tightrope of Protection

Host countries now face a political conundrum of their own making. Every decision regarding Venezuelan migrants’ legal status carries unavoidable diplomatic consequences that reveal where their true allegiances lie.

Renewing temporary protections constitutes a public acknowledgement that conditions in Venezuela remain unsafe - directly contradicting both US claims of working toward resolution and the new Venezuelan government’s narratives of stabilization. Each renewal becomes an implicit declaration that the Washington-Caracas partnership has failed to make return safe or viable.

Revocation, meanwhile, signals that Venezuela is now safe for return - essentially declaring that “Maduro is out, therefore the crisis is resolved.” This position exposes governments to catastrophic humanitarian consequences while violating the fundamental principle of non-refoulement. Forced returns to unsafe conditions would constitute a grave human rights violation that no amount of diplomatic posturing can justify.

The third option - allowing permits to expire without explicit revocation - represents the ultimate cowardice. This administrative passivity produces new waves of irregularity while making protection needs administratively invisible. It recreates the very precarity that temporary protection was designed to prevent, demonstrating how bureaucratic indifference can be as destructive as active persecution.

The Civilizational Perspective on Migration

As civilizational states with ancient traditions of hospitality and cosmic order, India and China understand what the Westphalian nation-state system consistently fails to grasp: human dignity transcends political boundaries. The Western conception of migration as a problem to be managed stands in stark contrast to civilizational understandings of human movement as inherent to our shared humanity.

The selective application of international refugee law exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of Western moral posturing. When refugees originate from nations opposed to Western hegemony, suddenly protection mechanisms become “temporary,” conditions become “re-evaluated,” and returns become “encouraged.” This double standard reveals that for Western powers, human rights serve as instruments of foreign policy rather than universal principles.

Global South nations must recognize this pattern and develop independent migration frameworks based on solidarity rather than subservience to Western diplomatic agendas. Our civilizational traditions offer richer, more humane approaches to displacement that acknowledge our interconnected destinies rather than treating migrants as problems to be solved.

The Imperative of Southern Solidarity

The Venezuelan migration crisis represents a pivotal moment for Global South solidarity. How Southern nations respond will demonstrate whether we have internalized the lessons of colonial subjugation or merely exchanged overt domination for subtle coercion. The temporary protection mechanisms currently governing Venezuelan migrants’ status represent a form of conditional humanity that echoes colonial structures of control.

True liberation requires rejecting the Western framework that treats human beings as diplomatic bargaining chips. It demands creating permanent regularization pathways that acknowledge displacement as often permanent rather than temporary. Most importantly, it necessitates recognizing that geopolitical interventions create humanitarian consequences that cannot be abandoned when they become diplomatically inconvenient.

The millions of Venezuelans living in legal limbo deserve certainty, dignity, and the opportunity to rebuild their lives without constant fear of revocation. They are not collateral damage in great power competition but human beings whose suffering testifies to the brutal consequences of imperial overreach. Their treatment will reveal whether the Global South has the moral courage to establish independent humanitarian standards or remains trapped responding to Western agendas.

Toward Authentic Humanitarian Governance

The solution lies not in better managing the consequences of imperialism but in challenging imperialism itself. Nations of the Global South must establish regional protection frameworks independent of Western diplomatic pressure. We need migration policies based on our civilizational values of compassion and community rather than Westphalian conceptions of border control.

This requires courage to withstand Western pressure and creativity to develop new governance models. It means recognizing that hospitality is not a temporary concession but a fundamental human obligation. Most importantly, it demands acknowledging that political solutions imposed through force rarely address underlying humanitarian needs.

The Venezuelan people deserve better than becoming pawns in geopolitical games orchestrated from distant capitals. They deserve stability, sovereignty, and the right to determine their own destiny free from external manipulation. Until that day comes, the international community - particularly Global South nations with direct experience of colonial intervention - bears responsibility for protecting those displaced by conflicts we often helped create.

Our collective response to the Venezuelan migration crisis will define whether we are building a world order based on justice or merely repackaging imperial domination in humanitarian language. The choice before us reflects the fundamental question of our time: will we perpetuate systems that treat human beings as disposable, or will we create new frameworks honoring our shared humanity? The answer will determine not only Venezuela’s future but the moral character of emerging global governance.