THE US MOTIVES FOR ACTIONS IN VENEZUELA
I think that the European and American mind, for reasons that are archaic, considers war being limited to military form, whereas any external imposition of costs upon the demonstrated interests of a people is an act of war.
The west for historical reasons born of our empires and the monarchies before them practices a unique concept of war that is not shared by the rest of the world. A very narrow definition of war.
You can read (in this order) John Keegan’s A History of Warfare (1993) and Martin Van Creveld’s The Transformation of War, and close with Douglas Peifer’s Warfare and Culture in World History. All delve into the cultural differences in warfare. Yet it was napoleon who canonized the concept of total war.
Today war is conducted by military means, by political means, by economic means, by ideological means, by religious means, and by informational means … and of course by seditious means. Drugs are a means of warfare for profit, just as piracy was a means of warfare for profit.
So it’s actually you that doesnt understand the scope of war.
Nations do not take actions for just one reason. Instead one act satisfies multiple demands. And Venezuela served multiple US national interests.
With one act:
1) Interrupt the narco-terrorist state’s organization.
2) Set other states harboring narco-terrorists on notice (Mexico in particular)
3) Reduce the number of illegal latino immigration to the USA. (Around a third of V’s population have left.)
4) Aid the repatriation of Venezuelan refugees and mitigate the humanitarian fallout.
5) Bolster regional coalitions to isolate residual authoritarian networks (e.g., in Nicaragua and Cuba).
6) Restore the Monroe doctrine denying competitors access to this hemisphere (China, Russia, Iran). Including setting Cuba ‘on notice’. This expands the previous US means of exiting china from the Panama Canal influence.
7) Deny Venezuela their attempt to capture their neighbor’s Guyana’s oil fields. (preventing a repetition of iraq vs kuwait)
8) Prevent the capture of both Venezuela and Guyana’s oil fields by Russia, Iran, China (‘Axis of Evil’). The USA is oil-autarkic (independent – we don’t need any) but the USA can control 45% of the world’s oil, thus preventing russia (and others) from raising world oil pricess – or, continuing to drop the price, thus bankrupting Russia. And China has no oil so it must import all of it. Thus constraining their hostile ambitions.
9) Facilitate a democratic transition and restore rule of law to unlock Venezuela’s energy sector for U.S.-aligned investment.
10) Neutralize hybrid threats like disinformation and cyber interference from regime holdouts or proxies.
Killing Somali Pirates, Venezuelan Drug Dealers, or The Pirates of the past, or immigration warfare, or using military against ideological warfare(the marxist sequence) or religious warfare (islam) or punishing china for economic warfare, or retaliating against europe for it’s free riding and taxing our products[ or the russian threat to Europe. These are all incentives for war. There is no difference. All impose costs upon our people.
*We no longer are policing the world, so we are no longer limited to police actions – these are now military actions.*
NOTES:
Keegan’s A History of Warfare (1993) is arguably the seminal work here, where he explicitly frames war as a cultural artifact rather than a mere extension of politics (contra Clausewitz’s famous dictum). He argues that different societies conceptualize and wage war in fundamentally distinct ways: for example, contrasting the ritualized, honor-bound combat of ancient Greeks or medieval knights with the more pragmatic, state-directed violence of modern Europe, or the terror tactics of steppe nomads like the Mongols. Keegan stresses that culture determines how war is fought—who participates, what rules (if any) apply, and even its aesthetic or spiritual role—making cross-cultural comparisons central to understanding its evolution. It’s less about “differences” per se and more about war as an expression of human diversity, which makes it a foundational text for this angle.
Van Creveld takes it even further with his dedicated book The Culture of War (2008), which explores war’s enduring cultural allure across history and societies. He examines how cultures glorify (or demonize) violence through myths, games, art, and gender roles—think Viking berserkers versus samurai bushido, or modern drone warfare’s detachment from the “sport” of battle. Van Creveld warns that armies cut off from their society’s “war culture” (e.g., post-Vietnam U.S. forces grappling with anti-war sentiments) are doomed to underperform, and he contrasts Western rationalism with more fluid, adaptive approaches in non-Western contexts. If you’re after explicit cultural differences in war’s meaning and practice, this is the bullseye—it’s more thematic and contemporary than Keegan’s sweeping history.
