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US-Venezuela conflict
OpinionWorld Opinion
Albert Bakhtizin
Opinion
Albert Bakhtizin

US’ Venezuela raid shows geopolitics is now a contest between economic blocs

To win the geopolitical contest, a country needs ample resources, a self-sustaining production system – and the backing of a wider economic bloc

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An activist, wearing a cutout mask depicting US President Donald Trump and tied with a rope, kneels next to a container with the words, “My Oil”, in an rally to condemn the US military action in Venezuela, in Seoul, South Korea, on January 5. Photo: Reuters
Albert Bakhtizin
Albert Bakhtizin is director of the Central Institute of Economics and Mathematics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a member of the academy and a professor at Lomonosov Moscow State University.
The latest developments in Venezuela are interpreted as part of a broader US strategy to secure access to major oil resources. They are much more than that: the US raid signals a transformation in the global economy wherein a country’s power is increasingly determined not by its political actions, but by its capacity to embed resource wealth within a self-sustaining production system.
These deeper processes did not begin today, but rather around 2008-2009 when, according to an integrated national power index developed by the Russian Academy of Sciences, China overtook the United States as the world’s leading power, a gap that has widened since.

Venezuela ranks among the world’s top countries in terms of natural resources. Militarily, it sits somewhere in the middle of global rankings – its military component is ranked 32nd out of 193 countries in the academy’s index – sufficient for domestic control but inadequate for deterring external pressure. Economically, however, its position is close to the bottom, as its economic system has proved unable to convert its resource wealth into sustainable economic power.

The national power assessments also suggest only two fully fledged systemic cores have effectively formed in today’s world: China and the US. In both, resources, the economy, finance, technology, human capital and military capacity are combined into relatively self-sustaining systems.

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