Dominance Without Hegemony: Trump’s New Imperialism in Venezuela and Beyond

• In Event: US Militarism and Militarization in World Historical Perspective

Abstract

Donald Trump campaigned in 2016 and (to a lesser extent) 2024 on a pledge to end “forever wars” but has instead implemented one of the most aggressively militaristic foreign policy regimes in some time. This paper will examine continuities between Trump and his predecessors but with attention to the novel aspects of Trump’s imperialism, namely his quest to impose dominance without hegemony, that is without any pretense of justification. This will be examined in particular in Venezuela with attention to Trump’s nakedly materialistic statements about wanting to control Venezuelan oil, the complexities of thus (namely Big Oil’s reticence to invest billions in an “unstable” country), and the political and theoretical implications of all this for Latin America, the US, and the world. The paper uses Venezuela as a case study to draw out the many complexities and contradictions of Trump’s new imperialism.

Author

• Gabriel Hetland, SUNY-Albany