For Your Own Good - a psychopath's guide to Venezuela

Where I’m from, everyone knows this: there is hardly a South American country the US hasn’t violated. They’ve done it all; from clandestine operations, to funding and arming insurgents, proxy involvements in coups d’état, installing dictators friendly to US corporate appetites, all the way to outright military bombing and invasion.

I was born in Uruguay, South America.

What happened on Jan 3^rd 2026 had an old and familiar feel to it. Another turn of a time-worn carousel.

The US incursion into Caracas was not just another notch on a demented President’s gun-belt. It was business as usual.

So when liberal-minded American commentators clutch at their pearls, bewailing how the ‘leader of the free world’ could so trample international law, how he could conduct extra-judicial assassinations of people in boats, invade a capital city and kidnap a president and his wife … I have to say: ‘What exactly are you surprised at?’

Not that this absolves South Americans of their share of responsibility for local instabilities and corruptions. But the notorious CIA has made an art form of exploiting, inflaming and inciting domestic political quarrels for America’s tactical advantage and economic gain. In fact, US power grabs have reached into every continent, way beyond what it considers its ‘own backyard’.

Pierce the amnesia and adduce the USA’s track record, and you’ll see Trump’s latest escapade is hardly an outlier. When it comes to regime change, the US has a staggering CV. History issues a grim warning for smaller nations: “Get in the way of American corporate interests, and the ‘leader of the free world’ will show you what he really thinks of democracy or international law”.

Once upon a coup

The full catalogue of American invasions is long and macabre. Known all too well in the East and South, it is the list we studiously avoid looking at in the West - like an embarrassing family photo stashed at the bottom of a shoe box. This list clashes painfully with our preferred image of ‘America the hero’; a sepia truth from the days of our grandparents’ wars. America as the ‘defender of freedom’ has proven to be a most stubborn and tenacious myth. But the myth struggles to hold on against the mounting weight of fact.

I wonder if schools teach children the story of Queen Liliʻuokalani, when she tried to nationalise the Hawaiian sugar industry in 1893 for the benefit of her people. Only to have American sugar barons back a coup against her, removing her until the US swallowed Hawaii as its 50^th state.

Not long after, pretending to support independence movements in the Spanish colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and The Philippines, America rode in, ringing a liberty bell – only to seize control of the Philippines for 48 years, devour Puerto Rico, pocket Guam and implant a permanent military base in Cuba.

American power-brokers must have been pleased with their work. The foreign coup d’état henceforth became a US trademark; their weapon of choice to protect the overseas interests of its multinationals. That story begins with bananas – literally! - the cash crop of the infamous United Fruit Company (UFC). Any nation with the temerity to restrict or duly tax US corporate ownership of fruit plantations – or telecommunications or transport industries for that matter – would feel the full brunt of America’s might. For banana money, the US financed violent coups and installed new leaders - in Nicaragua (1909), Honduras (1911), Guatemala (1954) and the Dominican Republic (1961).

The CIA was getting good at this! 1964: another coup, touchingly named: ‘Operation Brother Sam’ - this time in Brazil. Land reforms and limits on foreign profits? We won’t have it. In goes a military dictator simpatico to … ‘Uncle Sam!’. Just like one big happy family.

Chile’s turn came next, in 1973. Out with democratically elected Allende, in with friendly dictator Pinochet - who duly rewarded US mining and telecommunications companies with most favorable conditions. They were on a roll now. During the 1980s the US funnelled billions to a military junta in El Salvador. That these proxy regimes left an atrocious legacy of brutal repression, torture, disappearances and wholesale murder is of no concern to the corporate-CIA partnership.

Proving that no job is too small, Grenada, population 95,000, endured its own invasion by American troops in 1983. One of USA’s proudest victories.

Just a breather, and then they sailed off to Panama (1989), to invade and to capture their President. (File that idea for later!) Well, he was after all a drug-trafficking bad hombre. At least that’s the feel-good part of the story. But no trip to Panama is complete without installing a new President who guarantees the US freedom of navigation through the canal. That canal. The one Trump wants to own now.

In South America, when we talked about los yanquis, it was not with affection. The January 3^rd invasion of Venezuela was the latest verse in a very long song.

Then Sam heads East

So, if they’ll coup d’état your arse over bananas, how will they react when you try to nationalise your own petroleum? OK, now the US gets really pissed off. That’s precisely what the hapless Mohammad Mosadegh, Prime Minister of Iran, found out when he came up with the wild idea of keeping Iranian oil for Iranians. Obviously not a reader of South American history, Mosadegh was evicted in 1953, the result of a coup orchestrated by the CIA – this time working closely with their pals in MI5. The inconvenient Mosadegh was imprisoned and replaced by the hand-chosen, brutally repressive Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Who of course, welcomed American oil companies with open arms. And most importantly, who agreed to trade in petrodollars.

That was not the last time – far from it! – that the US, with the aid of the CIA (by now coup virtuosos) would intervene to ensure that world trade in oil can only be done in US dollars (the petrodollar system). Cut to the Gulf War (1990-1991) and its sequel, the Iraq War (2003). Hussein was a nasty character for sure, but that was never the point. His real misdemeanor was to try to introduce an alternative to the American petrodollar trading system. The US invasion was a huge boon for the circulation of US petrodollars - plus netting extremely lucrative contracts for US firms. What a bonus.

Never one to read the room, Lybia’s Muammar Qaddafi was next to take a shot at a petrodollar alternative. And he planned an African Development Bank to boot. This was an unacceptable threat to Western economic hegemony in the region. By now, you know the drill. Come 2011: invasion, Qaddafi is despatched – a long-standing plan of the US and its allies. Yes, there was an anti-terrorism motive in the mix. But into the bargain, the operation assured the petrodollar remained uncontested. It would seem terrorism gets extra attention when it is sponsored by oil-rich renegades.

And on it goes. Similar story in the Congo, 1960. In Chad during the 80s. And that’s not counting the American-led coup attempts that failed: Syria in 1957 and 2012. Indonesia in 1958. Laos in 1960. The botched 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. Operation Mongoose: the failed campaign to remove Fidel Castro. At least they tried.

A hop down under

I was 10 years old when my family migrated to Australia, just in time to avoid the CIA-backed military dictatorships that engulfed Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and many other South American nations. Almost everyone alive today in those countries knows someone who was tortured, incarcerated or murdered by the pro-US military regimes. But even Australia was not far enough away to escape US meddling. The CIA had its fingers in the extraordinary dismissal of our Prime Minister in 1975. In accordance with signature CIA method; someone else pulled the trigger (in this case Sir John Kerr, Australia’s Governor-General), while the spooks watched from backstage.

Gough Whitlam ended Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war and was moving to nationalise the mining and minerals resources industry so the benefits would accrue for Australians rather than foreign shareholders. Exactly the kinds of no-no’s that attract CIA attention. Whitlam’s unconstitutional sacking remains an unhealed scar in Australia’s national psyche.

Completing the world tour

So, to the kidnapping of Maduro. His crimes? Drugs? What a joke! Human rights? Ask ICE how much Trump cares about Venezuelans. Maduro’s crime wasn’t to be a dictator – Trump loves those. Maduro’s offense was to be the leader (legitimate or otherwise) of a country that began to nationalise its oil and gas industry in 1976. Adding insult to injury, he refused to trade in petrodollars. Nuh-uh, America doesn’t like that. It should be clear by now that the character and rap sheet of the villain of the day is entirely irrelevant to the casus belli. Often, the pretext has been a whopper of a fabrication. Weapons of Mass Destruction yesterday, bananas before that, fentanyl today.

My empathy goes to Venezuelans who feel frightened and violated by Trump’s assault. At the same time, I understand those Venezuelans who are overjoyed at Maduro’s removal. He has been a repressive and ruinous dictator. But their celebrations will end early. Recall how Iraqis danced with joy when Saddam Hussein was taken out, how they cheered when his statue was toppled. And recall what happened afterwards.

I wish I could be optimistic for Venezuela right now. Their moment of relief will pass, and then what? Can they rebuild a democracy? Their liberator from the north does not seem inclined to leave them alone. When the dust settles, he will come for his pound of flesh, demanding, expecting what’s in the ground.

But the larger share of my lament concern is reserved for the yanquis. Here’s why.

The psychology of dominance

“Domination is a sickness that destroys the bearer”

Think of a nation addicted to ‘greatness’ as a macro facsimile of the psychopathic individual. The metaphor sticks; both follow the same rules.

The psychopath is defined by his charisma, his grandiosity and his fearlessness. Always, the refrain of the psychopath is: “I do this for your own good”. His grand promises of riches, thrills and protection mask his true designs. Thus he wins the admiration of many, the love and trust of those who can’t decode his narcissism.

When we invite the psychopath to be in charge, to hold the reigns of influence, the power we have given him eventually twists his mind. His decline follows a pattern. Like an unchecked tumour that blooms into full metastasis, his confidence becomes mania, his hubris becomes madness. Invariably, the psychopath’s enterprise ends in awful tragedy for the ‘hero’ – leaving a trail of destruction for the believers, the investors, the sycophants and the lovers. Not uncommonly, the end involves a suicide. The process is deeply disturbing to watch, an appalling spectacle. The crumbling tower, the imploding ponzi scheme, the bursting bubble, the star’s ignoble end. The psychopath’s undoing tends towards high drama, like a jumbo jet skidding off the tarmac in a ball of flames. I have seen this so often; in my private practice, in my personal life. History is saturated with this tale. It echoes through the ages; same dynamic, different robes.

Contrary to shared – and now discredited - myths about ‘alpha’ people and about ‘natural pecking orders’, humans are not designed to maintain power over others. We are socially and neurodevelopmentally built for relationships among equals, and for fluid and transparent leadership by consent. The lust for power over others is a trauma symptom, a distortion of our development. And with time, holding on to ascendancy will drive any of us crazy. Like every addiction, clinging to power poisons us, makes us ugly, erratic, impulsive and reckless. Domination is a sickness that destroys the bearer.

The same is true for empire-aspirants. The nation that falls in love with greatness, that seeks dominion, that cannot bear to be anywhere but at the top of the heap, is a faithful metaphor for an individual suffering with a psychopathic personality. A nation in full psychopathic bloom travels the same pathway unwittingly marched by every psychopath towards their own ruin. Every empire has crashed, gone down in flames, along the same lines as every toxically charismatic figure of history.

That’s what is unfolding for the USA right now, in real time. Trump and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 weren’t just predictable: they were inevitable. America’s neoliberalism - being the economic rationale for institutionalised narcissism – has been growing and penetrating every institution since the 1970s. It is now at stage four.

Like a freeway pile-up in slow motion, we are watching a nation driven mad by its own glory, its addiction to ‘greatness’, entering predictable steps in the sequence of self-destruction.

A time of unveiling

The Venezuela invasion is not a story about liberation. It’s a story about illusions, and how vulnerable we are to those. It’s a story about a mythology unravelling, about collective debriefing from a societal trance. Growing up in the West, we learned that we are the purveyors of freedom. It’s in our stories and our songs, massaged into every child’s mind. Venezuela asks us to think with a little more nuance than that.

What was America’s latest military exercise for? It was for control of the world’s most anachronistic resource. Power is blinding and that’s how it fails in the end. Obsessed with “drill-baby-drill”, Team Trump has pathologically ignored the shifting tides of change. While they blow their budget pillaging their neighbour, global EV sales are smashing through multiple tipping points. Renewable energy is booming world-wide and battery technology is pole-vaulting over every obstacle. Some of the most rapid uptake is happening across developing nations in Asia, South America and Africa. The energy revolution is ploughing ahead and exceeding every forecast, as the fossil fuel era peaks, soon to fall off a cliff. Trump and Co are drilling for yesterday’s news; this is a loser’s business model. He’ll be left holding yesterday’s glop while the rest of the world races to harvest the sun, wind, tides and geothermals - for free. Infinite resources that belong to everyone.

Trump is alone, hoarding his ‘Black Gold’, his ‘Texas Tea’. He has bet his nation’s future on a bygone advantage, on a nostalgic gamble, the dominance strategy of yesteryear. As always, psychopathy ends in pathos.

It can be a life-saving act for a dominator to loosen his grip on the helm, and learn to be one of the crew. The USA faces a choice to cede its unipolar global dominance gracefully, and let itself become a strong but humble nation, equal among friends – and for always: loved for its wonderful and unique cultural contributions. The other choice augurs a rancorous, bitter and damaging crash, a systematic self-destruction and finally a tragic abandonment by a world tired of America’s antics and already learning to move forward without it.

Around the world, we have danced to American music, laughed and cried at American films, been transformed by American cultural innovations and benefitted from American enterprise. The rich and wonderful ecotone that is American culture has been a foundry of gifts for humanity - the last thing the world needs is its demise. Can this nation find humility? Humans - and nations - can embrace real paradigm-shift – but it tends to happen at one minute to midnight. May the USA’s descent from its historic peak be one of renewal, reconciliation and reconstitution.