Opinion – Venezuela and the Cost of Abandoning South American Collective Defense

Download PDF

Jan 5 2026

Ruletkka/Depositphotos

The Venezuelan crisis is often framed in Northern scholarship as a binary struggle between authoritarianism and democracy or as a peripheral arena of the so-called Second Cold War. Such framings appear persuasive at first glance, yet they obscure deeper structural dynamics that become visible when the crisis is examined from a South American perspective. The crisis reveals the erosion of a regional project designed to preserve autonomy in defense and security. What is at stake is not only the fate of a regime, but the dismantling of an institutional architecture that once allowed the region to manage its own crises.

The unilateral military operation carried out by the United States on 3 January 2026, which resulted in the capture of Nicolás Maduro, crystallized this process. That intervention did not emerge in a vacuum. It became possible because South America had already dismantled the political instruments capable of containing escalation and preventing the externalization of regional crises. The normalization of direct military intervention marks a qualitative shift in the regional security environment and exposes the costs of privileging ideological alignment over institutional solidarity.

The internationalization of the Venezuelan crisis is neither inevitable nor simply the result of domestic authoritarian drift. It is the outcome of deliberate regional choices, especially the abandonment of the Union of South American Nations and its Council of South America Defense. By trading institutional constraint for short-term ideological convergence, South American governments surrendered control over their immediate strategic environment and reopened the door to extraregional intervention.

South American efforts to construct autonomous security arrangements long predate contemporary ideological divides. Early projects of regional coordination were driven less by opposition to the United States than by strategic necessity. Initiatives such as the Congress of Panama in 1826 emerged from fears of European reconquest in the aftermath of independence. At that moment, the United States was perceived not as a threat but as a potential partner in a hemispheric defensive arrangement.

The original interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine reflected this expectation. Many Latin American elites understood it as a collective shield against external powers rather than a mandate for subordination. The underlying logic was cooperation instead of dependency, a preference for working with Washington rather than working for it. This logic eroded over time. By the early twentieth century, the doctrine had been transformed into a justification for unilateral intervention, later institutionalized through the Organization of American States. Hemispheric security became progressively aligned with Northern priorities, narrowing the space for regional agency.

The creation of the Council of South America Defense in 2008 marked the most advanced attempt to reverse this historical pattern. It reflected a conscious effort to translate historical lessons into institutional practice. The council was not conceived as an ideological project, but as a pragmatic mechanism to foster trust, transparency, and shared strategic understandings among South American defense establishments. Its objective was not collective defense against regional adversaries, but the construction of a security culture capable of managing crises without external tutelage.

A central premise of the council was the shared perception that the primary threat to South America originated outside the region. Instability within South America was considered dangerous mainly when it created openings for extraregional intervention. The council was therefore designed to deny legitimacy and access to foreign military involvement by institutionalizing dialogue, confidence-building measures, and peer restraint. Through sustained interaction among defense ministers and military officials, the council functioned as a community of practice that gradually normalized transparency and cooperation. This process strengthened regional coordination while preserving peripheral agency through selective engagement with external powers. Autonomy was pursued through institutional density rather than isolation. This process also allowed for a consolidation of South America as an autonomous regional security complex.

This institutional architecture began to unravel after 2016, when regional cooperation became increasingly subordinated to ideological polarization and short-term domestic calculations. UNASUR was abandoned, the defense council rendered inoperative, and ad hoc groupings such as the Lima Group emerged in its place. The strategy of diplomatic isolation, closely aligned with Washington’s policy of maximum pressure, failed to produce political change in Venezuela. Instead, it dismantled the mechanisms that had previously allowed South America to manage political divergence autonomously. This shift was often framed as an ideological revanche against previous regionalist projects.

The consequence was the rapid internationalization of the Venezuelan crisis. In the absence of regional mediation, Venezuela was reframed not as a South American political problem to be addressed collectively, but as a security threat to be neutralized by extraregional powers. This shift represents a process of strategic regression, in which the region reverted to being an object rather than a subject of international politics. As documented in studies on crisis and collapse, institutions like PROSUR acted as a “hollow shell” that lacked technical density. Furthermore, the threat of becoming a Venezuela became a domestic tool for polarization. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro and other leaders used the Venezuelan crisis to mobilize their bases, ensuring that foreign policy served internal ideological battles rather than regional stability.

The Venezuelan crisis now unfolds within the broader dynamics of intensified great power rivalry, which has reshaped the global strategic landscape and reduced the margin for regional maneuver. The rivalry between the United States, China, and Russia has elevated Venezuela’s strategic relevance due to its energy resources and symbolic value. The absence of a regional defense framework has amplified these dynamics and reduced South America’s capacity to shape outcomes. Fragmentation carries tangible costs. Without coordinated defense mechanisms, the region faces growing difficulty in protecting strategic assets such as the Amazon, the South Atlantic, and critical mineral reserves. Negotiating individually with major powers places states in structurally weaker positions and reinforces patterns of geopolitical regression.

The Venezuelan crisis illustrates with particular clarity the costs of privileging ideological alignment over institutional solidarity. By dismantling UNASUR and the Council of South America Defense, South America abandoned a political technology designed to contain escalation and prevent the externalization of regional crises. The most tangible consequence has been the reintroduction of unilateral military intervention by the United States as a credible and normalized option. This development undermines the foundations of an international order formally grounded in sovereignty and the prohibition of the use of force.

Reversing this trajectory requires a recalibration grounded in Active Non-Alignment. This approach rejects automatic alignment while affirming agency through selective engagement and institutional reconstruction. Applied to defense, it implies rebuilding a non-partisan regional architecture capable of absorbing political divergence without externalizing conflict. Such a recalibration faces significant obstacles. South American integration remains deeply dependent on the ideological orientation of governments in office. Active Non-Alignment is therefore not an abstract ideal, but a strategic necessity rooted in historical experience and contemporary constraints. It offers a framework for restoring agency in a regional order increasingly shaped by external pressures.

Reclaiming the Spirit of 1826 does not mean replicating past institutional forms. It means restoring the logic that autonomy is achieved through institutions and collective action rather than ideological alignment. Without rebuilding regional defense cooperation, the Venezuelan pivot risks consolidating itself as a durable symbol of South America’s marginalization in the global order.

Opinion – Venezuela and the Cost of Abandoning South American Collective Defense

Further Reading on E-International Relations

Please Consider Donating