The origin of America's big brother syndrome

In one of the most extraordinary and controversial foreign policy actions of the 21st century, the US carried out a military operation in Venezuela that resulted in the capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flew them to New York to face federal criminal charges.

The surprise assault, described by the White House as a decisive strike against what it calls narco-terrorism, has triggered widespread international condemnation and raised serious questions about the future of Venezuelan sovereignty, regional stability, and the legal basis for such an intervention by the United States.

The action, code-named Operation Absolute Resolve, unfolded in the early hours of Saturday with coordinated airstrikes on multiple targets across Venezuela, including areas around the capital, Caracas, and culminated in the seizure of a sitting head of state by US Special Operations forces. The attack involved dozens of aircraft and commandos presumed to include Delta Force operators and other elite units, according to US accounts, and was executed without apparent authorisation from the United Nations Security Council or the consent of Venezuelan authorities.

Maduro and Flores were secured and transported first to a amphibious assault ship off the Venezuelan coast before being flown to the United States, where they face charges including narco-terrorism, cocaine importation, and related weapons offences.

In a televised address after the operation, President Donald Trump declared the mission a success and signaled that the United States would temporarily govern Venezuela to ensure what he described as a “safe, proper and judicious transition” to new leadership. He pledged to stabilise and “revive” Venezuela’s vast oil infrastructure through American companies, language that immediately raised alarms among critics who see resource control as a recurring subtext in U.S. military interventions.

Trump’s remarks echoed earlier US pressure on Caracas over allegations of corrupt governance and drug trafficking, and he explicitly compared the operation to historic US actions against foreign leaders in the late 20th century.

The dramatic events did not emerge overnight. They are the latest manifestation of a long arc of US foreign policy rooted in doctrines of hemispheric dominance and intervention that date back more than two centuries.

The ideological foundations of American interventionism in Latin America and in other parts of the world were laid nearly two centuries ago. In 1823, President James Monroe articulated what became known as the Monroe Doctrine, declaring that the Western Hemisphere was no longer open to European colonisation and warning that any external interference would be treated as a hostile act against the United States. While framed as a defensive measure against European imperialism, the doctrine simultaneously asserted an exclusive U.S. claim to political and strategic authority over the Americas.

Historians and international relations scholars argue that this doctrine embedded a lasting assumption into US foreign policy: that American power carried not only strategic weight but moral authority. Over time, U.S. interests became conflated with regional stability, and intervention came to be framed as protection rather than domination. This ideological posture, guardianship masquerading as restraint, would later underpin a far more muscular approach to global affairs – the Big Brother Syndrome.

That logic hardened in the early 20th century under President Theodore Roosevelt. Through the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, Washington explicitly claimed the role of “international police power” in the Western Hemisphere, asserting the right to intervene in countries deemed “unstable, indebted, or politically disordered”. The corollary transformed the Monroe Doctrine from a declaratory warning into a doctrine of enforcement, legitimising repeated U.S. military occupations in Haiti, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. Scholars note that this period entrenched the belief that smaller states were incapable of governing themselves without external supervision, and that US force – when applied – was inherently corrective.

Over the decades, this interventionist instinct evolved rather than disappeared. During the Cold War, it was globalised under the banner of anti-communism. The United States supported coups, covert operations, and authoritarian regimes across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, provided they aligned with American strategic interests. Democratically elected governments in countries such as Guatemala, Iran, and Chile were overthrown with US involvement, while repressive allies were sustained so long as they remained ideologically compliant. Analysts have long argued that the language of freedom and democracy often obscured deeper economic and geopolitical calculations.

In Africa, critics observe a similar pattern with devastating consequences. From the CIA-backed removal of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba in the 1960s to decades of Western tolerance for authoritarian rule in resource-rich states, military and covert interventions often coincided with efforts to secure access to minerals, oil, and strategic territory. Contemporary scholars have traced this continuity into the post–Cold War era, where intervention is increasingly justified through humanitarian, security, and governance narratives.

Professor Ronald Chipaike, an international relations scholar, has argued in his writings that modern interventions frequently deploy humanitarian language to mask material objectives, particularly access to strategic resources. In his analysis of the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, Chipaike demonstrates how the United Nations–mandated “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine provided legal and moral cover for a campaign that ultimately secured Western access to Libya’s oil and opened the country to lucrative reconstruction contracts.

According to Chipaike, this marked a shift toward what he terms the militarisation of the “new scramble” for resources – a system in which military force replaces overt colonial rule as the mechanism for controlling strategic assets. Africa, he argues, has been particularly vulnerable to this model. The collapse of Libya, the destabilisation of the Sahel, and the proliferation of armed groups across the region stand as enduring consequences of interventions justified as humanitarian but executed through overwhelming military power.

This analysis closely aligns with the work of author and political economist Naomi Klein, whose concept of “disaster capitalism” provides a complementary lens. Klein argues that extreme crises – whether caused by war, coups, or economic collapse – create conditions in which deeply unpopular free-market reforms can be imposed with minimal resistance. Populations experiencing shock, she contends, are often too disoriented to effectively oppose privatisation, deregulation, and the transfer of public assets into private – often foreign hands. In some cases, crises are not merely exploited after they occur but actively engineered to produce precisely these conditions.

When applied to Venezuela, the combined insights of Chipaike and Klein offer a coherent explanation for the trajectory of US policy. Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves and has long resisted U.S. economic and political influence. Successive American administrations imposed sanctions, recognised alternative political leadership, and pursued criminal indictments against senior Venezuelan officials. In 2020, the US Department of Justice publicly charged President Nicolás Maduro with narco-terrorism and announced multimillion-dollar rewards for information leading to his arrest.

Public statements by US officials have reinforced critics’ suspicions that resource considerations lie at the heart of the confrontation. President Trump repeatedly referenced Venezuela’s oil wealth in remarks surrounding U.S. policy toward Caracas, a rhetorical emphasis that analysts say undercut claims that democracy and human rights were the primary motivations. The pattern mirrors earlier interventions in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan – countries where military action produced prolonged instability while strategic and economic interests were secured through force.

What distinguishes the Venezuelan operation, however, is the leap from sanctions and indictments to the direct military seizure of a sitting head of state. Legal experts note that international mechanisms for addressing alleged crimes by foreign leaders do exist, but they rely on judicial cooperation, multilateral consent, and due process – safeguards that appear absent in this case. Critics argue that the escalation reflects a deeper imperial reflex: when economic pressure and political isolation fail, military force is deployed to reassert dominance and signal consequences for defiance.

For International Relations scholar and analyst Morris Odhiambo, declarations by Trump following the Venezuelan drama are not incidental rhetoric but part of a long-standing imperial grammar in which military force, moral justification, and economic extraction are fused.

Odhiambo argues that U.S. interventions are rarely driven solely by concerns over democracy or criminal accountability; rather, they are structured around the control of strategic resources and the enforcement of geopolitical obedience. In this framing, Venezuela’s oil wealth – among the largest proven reserves in the world – becomes inseparable from Washington’s sudden willingness to discard diplomatic norms in favour of direct coercion.

“President Trump, in his public speech following the capture of Maduro, mentioned oil repeatedly. I counted more than 120 references. This was not about democracy. It was not about human rights. It was about oil. Whatever spin others, including figures like Marco Rubio, may try to put on the situation, Trump himself was explicit. He told us the truth,” Odhiambo says.  

The Venezuelan government denounced the strike as an illegal act of aggression and a violation of national sovereignty, with high-ranking officials demanding proof of Maduro’s wellbeing and accusing Washington of attempting to impose regime change by force. Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez declared herself acting president under constitutional provisions, directly challenging U.S. assertions of authority and mobilising both political and military institutions in response.

International reactions were swift and sharply divided. Several world leaders condemned the U.S. assault as a breach of international law, warning that it could set a dangerous precedent that erodes the already fragile norms governing state sovereignty. China’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning the United States for what it called a “blatant use of force against a sovereign state,” arguing that the action “seriously violates international law and threatens peace and security in the Latin America and Caribbean region.” Other governments and international organisations, including the United Nations, urged restraint and respect for legal frameworks, while some voices within the United States and among Venezuelan opposition figures welcomed Maduro’s removal as a potential turning point for democracy.

Legal scholars have been particularly vocal in questioning the legitimacy of the raid. Under the United Nations Charter, the use of force against a sovereign state is broadly prohibited unless undertaken in self-defence or explicitly authorised by the U.N. Security Council – neither of which appears to apply in this case. Experts argue that the operation may constitute a “crime of aggression,” noting the absence of an internationally recognized arrest warrant and the lack of cooperation from Venezuelan judicial authorities. Critics further stress that criminal indictments, even for serious offences such as drug trafficking, do not in themselves provide legal justification for unilateral military action.

As Odhiambo and other critics observe, legality has often been secondary to power in the execution of American foreign policy. From his and others’ perspectives, international law is frequently invoked selectively – enforced against weaker states while suspended when it constrains U.S. strategic interests. This asymmetry, critics argue, is not a flaw in the system but a feature of a global order shaped by imperial hierarchies rather than equal sovereignty. 

As Maduro and Flores, face legal proceedings in the United States, Venezuela remains engulfed in uncertainty, with competing claims to legitimacy, civil unrest, and regional governments struggling to recalibrate diplomatic relations. Beyond Venezuela, the implications are global. The precedent of forcibly removing a foreign leader raises serious questions about sovereignty, international law, and a world order increasingly shaped by power rather than principle.

As the shadow of the Monroe Doctrine stretches into the 21st century, critics argue that Venezuela represents not an anomaly but a culmination, a modern expression of America’s enduring “big brother syndrome,” forged in the 19th century, militarised in the 20th, and sustained through the strategic management of crisis in the present day. Whether history ultimately judges this moment as a triumph of justice or a dangerous escalation of imperial overreach remains unresolved. Critics, however, warn that once institutionalised, doctrines of intervention are rarely relinquished.