The Oligarchy Expands. The Real Story of Venezuela.

“Venezuela isn’t just a foreign policy decision. It’s a case study in the next stage of oligarchy.” - Christine Merser

We went into a sovereign country. We removed the person in power. We announced to the world that we intend to run that country ourselves. That is not stabilization. That is not law enforcement. That is an act of war and the annexation of another nation into our own. The resources of that country will become ours, not theirs, and the government that emerges will operate under our authority.

This is why Venezuela is different. The United States has overthrown governments before, and even that history is troubling. But in the past, we kept up appearances. We called it support. We called it democracy building. We installed leaders who looked local, kept their flag, and pretended that sovereignty still existed. This time the performance has been dropped. The message is simple and unadorned. We will run it. Our companies. Our priorities. Our profit.

What we are watching is the next stage of something I wrote about earlier, December 2024, about Oligarchy and its expansion into government. Read it here. A small circle of oligarchs expanding their reach. Economic power consolidates. Political power bends toward it. Military authority is used to secure it. The circle widens. Incentives become global. Decisions take place above governments rather than within them.

Look at the sequence. The president publicly said that major oil executives were informed about what was coming. He spoke openly about American oil interests playing a role in the future of Venezuela. Executives denied advance knowledge. Congress then acknowledged that it had not been briefed beforehand. Statements were issued. Concerns were expressed. And then nothing. It has felt as if Congress simply stood there, shaking its head while the action moved beyond it.

That order matters. Industry first. Congress later. The public last.

This was an invasion tied to an economic plan. The path leads directly to Venezuelan oil. To American corporations rebuilding, managing, and extracting from those reserves. Under our current tax structures, much of that profit can be organized in ways that minimize what is paid back into the American public purse. The military carries the risk. The taxpayer underwrites the power. Private companies take the reward. The country that has been invaded loses control over its most valuable resource.

This is how oligarchy grows. Slowly. Through normalization. Through language that softens reality until people stop questioning what has already happened. If Venezuela becomes the template, other places will be viewed not as nations but as opportunities. Resource regions. Strategic assets. The world mapped like a balance sheet.

Meanwhile, Russia withdrew from the Venezuelan picture before the invasion and then condemned the invasion afterward. Whatever the deeper strategy may be, one thing is clear. The geopolitical ground is shifting. New rules are forming quietly, while the public is asked to accept outcomes as if they are inevitable.

Congress has not acted like a constitutional counterweight. It has behaved like a spectator. Press conferences instead of power. Commentary instead of consequence. When that becomes the norm, democracy contracts.

The next phase will reveal how far this new model extends. Who is placed in charge. Who directs the transition. Who decides how resources move and who benefits. If leadership is drawn from the same industries positioned to profit, then the merger of corporate authority and state power will no longer be theoretical. It will be visible. Heads of state will function more like chief executives. Nations will operate more like corporations. And the benefits will flow upward to a small group of men who sit above borders, not within them.

There is a human cost to all of this. Venezuelans will live with decisions made far away from them, over land and resources that once belonged to them. Displacement, economic upheaval, loss of agency. And here at home, ordinary Americans will find themselves living in a country where their taxes fund force while their voices carry less weight over how that force is used. When power centralizes, everyday lives get smaller first.

This is not simply about Venezuela. It is about a model of power that is maturing. A world where sovereignty is negotiable, where military force clears the path for corporate control, and where democratic oversight arrives, if at all, after the fact. A world where oligarchs do not merely influence governments. They move past them.

We are being told a story about law, order, and security. What is actually happening is the enlargement of a ruling circle that answers first to capital and only second to citizens. If we fail to name it clearly, it becomes precedent. Once it becomes precedent, it becomes policy. And when it becomes policy, the country we believed ourselves to be fades quietly into something else.

This is annexation. This is economic control dressed up as strategy. This is the next chapter in the rise of oligarchy. And unless we recognize it while we still can, we will discover that the line was crossed long before anyone admitted it out loud.