Intersocial Constitution of the Exception: Venezuela and the United States, 2024-26

• In Event: The US Empire in the Present

Abstract

In this paper I use tools from global historical sociology to examine relations between Venezuela and the United States in the two years preceding the U.S. military action against Venezuela called Operation Absolute Resolve. In contrast to a lens more typical of international relations in which states are thought of as discrete, unitary actors, a GHS treatment looks instead at intersocial configurations in which an opposition out of power may be more important than a government, and states themselves are complex with the particular interests and projects of actors in power (Go and Lawson 2017). In this case the most relevant actors are the Venezuelan opposition political forces trying to rally international support for their fight against Nicolás Maduro by securitizing Venezuela’s political conflict; and Donald Trump, first as a presidential candidate and then as president, utilizing Venezuela’s political crisis as a medium for his anti-immigration efforts and later his national security strategy. The guiding thread running through the four stages I describe, is the avoiding or undermining the rules-based order and rule of law, through claims to a state of exception (Schepple 2004).

Author

• David A. Smilde, Tulane University