The US military raid on Venezuela on 3 January this year was neither the first intervention by a major power in the internal affairs of a medium or small state and nor will it be the last. The reference here is not limited to the US, and the discussion is not confined to Latin America. Instead, the issue concerns the global political landscape in its entirety.
However, if we are to begin addressing this subject, the American interventions in Latin America are a good place to begin, particularly as the recent American military intervention in Venezuela has brought this issue back to the forefront.
The ideological and geopolitical framework used to justify American interventions in Latin America started with the Monroe Doctrine issued by US President James Monroe in December 1823. According to this, the US rejected any external intervention in the political affairs of Latin America and said it would consider any such intervention to be a threat to its national security.
Although the Doctrine was initially directed against the European colonial powers, it subsequently became the guiding principle of American policy towards Latin America as a whole.
For decades, the Monroe Doctrine was invoked to justify American military interventions in the Latin American countries, which Washington regarded as its backyard.
In the recent case of Venezuela, for example, there were many analyses from American and non-American experts linking the US military intervention to the fact that 90 per cent of Venezuelan oil and its products were being sold to Russia, China, and other countries that the US views as worldwide competitors, if not adversaries.
The American interventions in Latin American affairs in the post-World War II era were linked to what Washington considered to be direct threats to its strategic and economic interests. The interventions varied both in the tools employed and in the forms they took.
However, American interventions in the affairs of medium or small states have not been confined to Latin America, particularly during and after the Cold War. One of the most prominent examples was the 1953 military coup jointly orchestrated by the US CIA and the UK MI6 intelligence agencies to remove Mohamed Mossadegh, Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, from office after he nationalised Iran’s oil industry.
This example is frequently cited today in the light of recurring US threats of intervention, including military intervention, in Iran.
A move from the US to other major powers that have intervened in the affairs of medium or small states shows that this pattern of behaviour has not been confined to the US. Instead, it has also included other major powers whenever they have deemed such interventions to be necessary to protect what they have perceived to be their national interests, whether strategic, economic, or ideological.
During the Cold War, the former USSR carried out several interventions in the internal affairs of countries in Eastern and Central Europe whose governments had joined the Soviet camp after World War II.
In terms of direct military interventions, Moscow intervened unilaterally in Hungary in 1956 and collectively in Czechoslovakia in 1968 under the umbrella of the Warsaw Pact in accordance with the Brezhnev Doctrine that granted the latter countries the right to intervene in any of the pact’s member states should its political system be threatened either internally or externally.
The USSR also intervened through political pressure and supported the involvement of Warsaw Pact armies in domestic political processes, as occurred in Poland in 1956 in confronting Polish leader Władysław Gomułka and in 1980 in response to the rise of the independent Solidarity Labour Movement.
These Soviet interventions negatively affected the popularity of the USSR among revolutionary and progressive forces around the world. In Europe, the phenomenon of Eurocommunism emerged that sought to maintain a distance from Moscow, and in Europe and in many other parts of the world the New Left appeared, together with the Frankfurt School, which advocated the search for “Marxism with a human face.”
At the same time, global acceptance grew of Maoist China’s accusation that the USSR was in fact a “hegemonic” power.
Although the European colonial powers were compelled to withdraw from the countries of the Global South that they had occupied and exploited for decades as a result of the pressure of national-liberation movements and international public opinion in the post-World War II world, they also sought to prevent the establishment of independent national governments that would be committed to preserving sovereignty and dedicating national wealth to socio-economic development.
They thus attempted to intervene in the affairs of their former colonies, either directly or indirectly, with three examples being considered here.
The first example concerns Belgium. Although Belgian colonial rule over Congo-Kinshasa (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) ended in 1960, Belgium viewed the policies of the new national government led by prime minister Patrice Lumumba as threatening its economic interests and Belgian companies.
As a result, Belgium conspired to organise and support a separatist movement in the Congolese province of Katanga in order to drain and distract the national government. It also orchestrated Lumumba’s arrest and assassination in 1961 to safeguard its economic interests.
The second case concerns Britain’s role in its former colony of Ghana, formerly the Gold Coast. After the country’s independence in 1957, the policies of Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah sought to curb Western influence in his country, particularly the control of Western corporations over its natural resources.
Both the US and the UK perceived this as a threat to their economic interests. While Nkrumah was on a visit outside the country in 1966, the CIA and MI6 jointly orchestrated a military coup that overthrew his government.
The final example concerns France’s actions towards its former colony of Burkina Faso. After Burkina Faso’s independence from France in 1960, its leader, Thomas Sankara, adopted policies of self-reliance, anti-imperialism, debt refusal, social justice, and resistance to French dominance over the Francophone African states.
France regarded these policies as a challenge to its political and economic influence in the country. Accordingly, it supported a military coup in 1987 that overthrew Sankara’s government, and the Burkinabè leader was killed.
Thus, the motives of the major powers have remained essentially the same despite changes in terminology and variation in form. They do not hesitate to intervene in the affairs of medium or small states, while seeking to provide justifications that try to cloak such interventions in legal terms.
In reality, however, the true objective is the protection of their interests or the pursuit of their strategic goals.
The writer is a diplomat and commentator.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 26 February, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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