{"id":57066,"date":"2026-01-12T08:25:32","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T16:25:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=57066"},"modified":"2026-01-12T08:25:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T16:25:32","slug":"john-mearsheimer-on-asking-for-big-trouble-in-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/12\/john-mearsheimer-on-asking-for-big-trouble-in-venezuela\/","title":{"rendered":"John Mearsheimer on Asking for Big Trouble in Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Reprinted from <a href=\"https:\/\/mearsheimer.substack.com\/p\/asking-for-big-trouble-in-venezuela\">John&#8217;s Substack<\/a>:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On 8 January 2025, I was on \u201cJudging Freedom\u201d talking with the Judge mainly about Venezuela and how it fits into Trumpian foreign policy. I made the argument that this is not a case of regime change \u2014 as all the US did was remove the president and replace him with the vice-president \u2014 and it is also not a case of us trying to turn Venezuela into a democracy. This last point explains why the neoconservatives are unhappy with what Trump is trying to do in Venezuela. Trump thinks he can use America\u2019s awesome economic leverage to maintain a stable government in Caracas that will cooperate with us as we exploit Venezuela\u2019s oil resources to our advantage. No boots on the ground here. This is a case of old-fashioned imperialism \u2014 the sort that went away because it does not work in the age of nationalism. Trump and his advisors, especially Marco Rubio, think they have found a new way to make imperialism work. I would bet they fail. Hopefully they will walk away when the endeavor starts to fail and not double down.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Vk7tMiqiGTY?si=-yyofMCDowGz2drg\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reprinted from John&#8217;s Substack:\u00a0 On 8 January 2025, I was on \u201cJudging Freedom\u201d talking with the Judge mainly about Venezuela and how it fits into Trumpian foreign policy. I made the argument that this is not a case of regime change \u2014 as all the US did was remove the president and replace him with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":308,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1054],"class_list":["post-57066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57069,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57066\/revisions\/57069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57066"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=57066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}