US President Donald Trump’s escalating threats against Venezuela may be easy to dismiss as another of his whims, but they are too closely linked to major conflicts to be considered a regional issue with limited global impact.
Venezuela, along with Ukraine, is becoming a bargaining chip in the game between the world’s superpowers.
Check out the opening chapters of Antony Beaver’s World War II history to learn how seemingly disparate conflagrations on different continents played a role in escalating some of the most horrific massacres in modern history: China’s Nanjing Massacre, Mussolini’s Invasion of Abyssinia, and the Spanish Civil War.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the world is heading into World War III, but the threat is always there. To the extent that the protagonists of Russian-American relations, President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, are currently more inclined to make mutually beneficial deals than confrontations, global deals seem more likely than global wars.
Venezuela is by no means a superpower, but it remains globally important, not only as the country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but also as a political ally of China, Iran and Russia, which the US-led West considers its biggest rivals. Of these three countries, Russia is in the most delicate position regarding Venezuela. A U.S.-led escalation poses risks for the Kremlin, but also potential gains.
The main factor was the unexpected thaw in relations between the United States and Russia during President Trump’s second term.
Since President Putin came to power in 2000, the Kremlin has viewed the United States first as an unreliable partner and then as a full-fledged enemy with ambitions to divide and rule the former Soviet Union.
But when President Trump returned to the White House in early 2025, it suddenly returned to some sort of partnership. Although the United States has largely cut off funding to Ukraine and adopted a largely neutral stance, it still provides vital intelligence to the Ukrainian military. The United States has removed Russia from its list of “direct threats” in the latest version of its National Security Strategy.
As President Trump’s peace negotiations over Ukraine move slowly forward, President Putin has every reason to believe the war will end the way he wants. Despite the histrionic defiance, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy recently signaled that he may agree to withdraw his troops from the northern Donbas region, the toughest of Russia’s demands in the negotiations. This was a further concession he suggested he might accept in 2025, even though the Kremlin has not budged from its negotiating position.
Meanwhile, European Union countries have been unable to agree on a reparation loan that could guarantee stable funding for Ukraine in the coming years. Although last-minute negotiations devised cheaper alternatives, the story showed that Europe’s involvement in Ukraine was reaching its limits.
Considering all of the above, it is hardly the best time for the Kremlin to undermine its difficult but generally good working relationship with the Trump administration over an issue that is remotely related to Russia’s core interests, such as Venezuela.
Yes, Russia will make the expected noise. UN special envoy Vasily Nebenzia claimed that the US was complicit in “aggressive neo-colonialism” by threatening Venezuela. He said China “cynically imposes that order in an effort to maintain its global dominance and right to exploit other countries’ wealth with impunity.”
This comes as the United States openly calls for the reopening of Venezuelan oil companies, which controlled much of the country’s oil industry until it was gradually nationalized in the 1970s.
Russia itself is not uninterested in Venezuela’s wealth. Russian oil companies have joint ventures with Venezuela’s oil monopoly PDVSA, but their history has been obscured, especially by U.S. sanctions.
But Russia will not go out of its way to rescue friendly Latin American governments. Russian support for Venezuela will always be directly proportional to the US pressure exerted on Russia in relation to Ukraine.
The potential collapse of Nicolas Maduro’s government does not mean the end of the world for the Kremlin. Russia has a history of adapting to new political systems that replace traditional allies in countries affected by America’s obsession with regime change. Iraq and Syria are both good examples.
There is also the aspect of cynical political calculation. The geopolitical gains from the United States launching a military attack on Venezuela could outweigh the losses.
That would put Russia and the United States on equal moral ground regarding the Ukraine war. If the United States can influence its will through military invasion in what Americans call “our own backyard,” why can’t Russia do the same in its own country? A US invasion of Venezuela would, in the eyes of many, especially those in the Global South, justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Conveniently for the Kremlin, it would also sow further divisions between the United States and Europe and increase polarization within the United States.
In addition to Venezuela, it would be an ideal situation for the Kremlin if the Trump administration were to pursue its irrational desire to occupy Greenland. It could even pave the way for post-Ukraine rapprochement with the EU-led European region, which is currently the world’s main nemesis.
Russians generally consider themselves guardians of the old order and the ultimate foreign policy conservatives. They see the US-led West as a revisionist force responsible for disrupting the post-World War II order, and see the war in Ukraine as a means to counter that revision.
But if, in their view, there is no going back to the old order, and the responsibility lies with the West, then why not negotiate a new one, one in which the United States does as it pleases in the Western Hemisphere and Russia retains influence over the former Soviet Union.
The ideal scenario for Russia would be for the United States to be mired in Venezuela for years. But if Mr. Maduro falls quickly, that’s okay. Once the dust settles, the outcome could look like a deal that ends the Ukraine war on Russia’s terms in exchange for a U.S.-friendly Venezuela.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
