Venezuela: the importance of survival

Long-term resistance to the US attacks on Venezuela must begin by protecting the people’s lives and not squandering them in a senseless sacrifice, argues JOSE A AMESTY RIVERA

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AFTER January 3, 2026, an idea circulating strongly on the left deserves serious discussion: that Venezuela should have responded to US military intervention with open war “to the point of self-immolation.” The phrase evokes dignity and sovereignty, but confusing sovereignty with the sacrifice of a people is a grave error. A conventional war between Venezuela and the US would have meant near-certain defeat and potential national catastrophe. This is not surrender to imperialism – it is distinguishing resistance from political suicide.

On January 3, 2026, the US invaded Venezuela and kidnapped President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Reuters reported the attack and Trump suggested the US would administer Venezuela during a transition. The operation drew international condemnation. But aggression is one thing; declaring conventional war against a vastly superior military power is another. The US possesses overwhelming superiority in aviation, naval power, satellite intelligence, drones, electronic warfare, logistics, and precision weaponry. Venezuela could not match this. Acknowledging reality is not pro-imperialism.

Some speak of “resisting to the death” as if war were a heroic movie. Real wars destroy hospitals, roads, and electrical facilities. They paralyse transportation and jobs, interrupt food supply, and cause mass displacement. Who would self-immolate? Almost never those uttering the slogan from an office – rather, the children of workers, the youth, the peasants, those who have already endured years of crisis.

Recent history offers mandatory lessons. In Iraq, the US quickly won the 2003 conventional war, but occupation and insurgency caused enormous costs – over 940,000 direct deaths, plus indirect deaths from destroyed healthcare and infrastructure. The lesson: war can defeat an army and destroy a society simultaneously.

Libya is more relevant because both countries possess enormous oil resources. Before 2011, Libya produced 1.7 million barrels daily; production collapsed during the invasion, and Gadaffi’s murder did not end conflict – fragmentation, militias, and oil disputes followed. Oil does not protect a country from war; it makes it a strategic target.

Venezuela’s oil requires specialist workers, electricity, pipelines, roads, ports, refineries. Prolonged war would endanger this entire system – those defending sovereignty over oil could destroy the capacity to produce it. Reuters reported Washington sought expanded access to Venezuelan oil and minerals after January 3. Strategic resources must be defended intelligently, not sacrificed in an unwinnable war.

A war would not have been “Chavistas versus gringos.” It would occur on Venezuelan territory, home to over 30 million people – Chavistas, opposition supporters, the apolitical, workers, farmers, retirees, families wanting peace. Would they all die to prove a political position? The left was born to defend life and dignity, not turn people into cannon fodder.

Prolonged war could destroy the state itself. When institutions lose territorial control, criminal gangs, militias, paramilitaries, and drug traffickers fill the void. Venezuela already faces illegal economies and complex borders. War would hardly improve this.

Hypothetically, if Venezuela had fought on: initial stages would see military capabilities destroyed, oil production decimated, displacements increasing. Prolonged resistance based on sabotage could emerge, but Venezuela would descend into chaos. Political resistance could fragment into disputes over territory, smuggling, fuel trafficking, illegal mining, and drug trafficking. What began as a struggle for sovereignty could become a struggle for territory.

Neighbouring countries would face migration waves; China and Russia would try to limit US influence. Venezuela could face either negotiated settlement with international guarantees or dangerous fragmentation – weakened state, millions displaced, oil economy unable to recover. Even if prolonged resistance forced US withdrawal, what would remain? Thousands dead, millions displaced, destroyed infrastructure, devastated economy. This could not be called revolutionary victory.

Sovereignty does not consist solely of having an army. It means food, hospitals, schools, electricity, industries, workers, scientists, farmers, functional institutions, and a sustainable economy – all of this is independence. A strategy destroying these capabilities in independence’s name is contradictory.

Defending Venezuela should protect conditions allowing its people to live, organise, and decide their future. This may require popular resistance, sovereignty defence, denouncing imperialism, international solidarity, and mobilisation. But “to die before yielding” is not a political programme – it is a slogan of desperation. A revolution needing to destroy its own people to prove itself revolutionary has stopped asking for whom it makes revolution.

There is a Latin American left that understands resistance – Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Colombia, Argentina – and knows what facing enormous powers means. Precisely for this reason, we should know human life has political value superior to any slogan.

What is the Venezuelan government doing today? Surviving, holding up, negotiating, buying time – probably a bit of everything. After such aggression, politics becomes a matter of survival. Survival does not mean surrender; resistance does not mean shooting; negotiation does not mean betrayal. A government can preserve institutions, territory, population, economy, oil industry, and international relations while keeping open the possibility for Venezuela to decide its own destiny. What some consider “lack of radicality” could be another form of resistance.

The easy thing would have been to shoot and turn the country into a battlefield. The difficult part is avoiding it – not destroying oil facilities, not provoking mass migration, not handing the country to chaos of weapons, not allowing political confrontation to become war among Venezuelans. This is also resistance – perhaps the most difficult form, because saying “until death” is easier than ensuring millions have food, medicine, electricity, employment, and security.

Government decisions can and should be criticised. But demanding war from outside or within, whose costs would mainly be borne by all Venezuelans, requires caution.

The question should not be whether a government is willing to die. It should be whether the people can continue living, organising, and deciding their future. We do not need martyrs – we need a future. This is the difference between a left that only wants to be correct and one that truly wants to transform reality.

Heroism can produce martyrs. Politics should produce the future. Venezuela does not need to become a gigantic anti-imperialist tomb. It needs to be alive, sovereign, capable of rebuilding – its oil financing education, health, housing, infrastructure; its working class having a future; its youth able to stay because they want to; sovereignty as economic, social, and political reality, not just a banner.

The correct question is not who had more courage, but what strategy would have allowed Venezuela to preserve sovereignty, protect its population, and keep reconstruction possible? If a strategy leaves millions displaced, destroys the economy, paralyses oil production, devastates infrastructure, and turns the country into a permanent war zone, one must say: this is not revolutionary strategy; it is a gamble on disaster and chaos.

The Latin American left must be sufficiently anti-imperialist to denounce foreign intervention, but also sufficiently rational not to turn denunciation into collective suicide. The goal of revolution should be for people to live better, not die with a heroic slogan on their lips.

Iraq, Libya and endless recent wars teach us that winning a battle is relatively easy; rebuilding a destroyed country can take generations. Venezuela does not need a lost generation; it needs to survive. Surviving, in certain historical circumstances, can also be resistance.

Perhaps the most important word today is not self-immolation but patience. Not ignoring problems or justifying every concession, but seeing the forest, not getting lost in trees – understanding that preserving a country’s social, economic, and political forces can matter more than satisfying the immediate need to prove who is more radical. We do not need to prove who is willing to die; we need to prove who can build.

This is an edited version of an article that appeared at tinyurl.com/OrinocoTribune

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