S3 Ep57: Venezuela: Who Holds the Cards

This episode looks at Venezuela, but it is really about how global politics has been narrowed and who is allowed to matter politically. This is a reactive episode. There are pauses for clarification and moments where ideas are still being worked through. The goal here is to think in public rather than present a settled argument. One part of the episode focuses on Trump’s politics. His language about power and leverage did not create a new foreign policy. It made explicit a logic that had already been taking shape. Trump removed the language of human rights and international norms and replaced it with a direct focus on who has power and who does not.The deeper part of the episode traces how this logic formed. Beginning with the Cold War and moving through the Noriega case and the rise of neoliberal globalization, the episode shows how internationalist institutions weakened under unipolar conditions. As those structures collapsed, anti hegemonic politics increasingly reorganized around sovereignty rather than solidarity.Using Venezuela and Ukraine as case studies, the episode shows how critiques of neoliberal globalization on both the left and the right now operate within the same realist framework. Despite very different intentions, these approaches often sideline class, race, gender, and popular struggles and treat power as the main measure of political relevance.The episode ends by challenging the idea that this way of seeing politics is inevitable. Treating power as the only reality is a choice. Other ways of understanding politics still exist, especially in the voices of people pushed out of these debates. The question is whether those voices are recognized as political at all.For contact, socials, articles, and videos check out the website: https://www.therightpodcast.org/