How extraction is ending liberation around the world

What happened in Venezuela this week will be debated for years, but its meaning was instantly understood across much of the Global South. The US, under President Donald Trump, launched a direct military operation on Venezuelan territory and announced the capture of President Nicolás Maduro. Legal arguments will follow. Diplomatic statements will pile up. Yet beneath the noise lies a far older story, one that predates modern international law and long predates oil.

It is the story of how empires deal with liberation.

This is not only about Venezuela. It is about a pattern that has repeated itself for centuries: when a people attempt to control their land, their resources, and their political destiny, liberation itself becomes the threat, and the liberator becomes expendable.

In South America, this story begins with Simón Bolívar, “El Libertador.” Bolívar defeated Spanish colonial armies, but he could not defeat the forces that followed victory: Fragmentation, elite betrayal, and foreign interference. In 1828, he narrowly survived an assassination attempt in Bogotá. He died two years later, politically isolated, warning that external powers would continue to manipulate newly independent states. Bolívar’s enemies did not need to kill him on the battlefield. They only needed to outlive his moment.

North Africa tells the same story. In Morocco, Abdelkrim al Khattabi humiliated Spanish and French forces during the Rif War in the 1920s, proving that colonial armies were not invincible. His reward was exile, first removal from his people, then removal from history. Exile, after all, is colonialism’s quiet weapon: It denies martyrdom while suffocating momentum.

In Algeria, Emir Abdelkader led one of the most disciplined anti-colonial resistances of the 19th century. France imprisoned him despite promises of safe passage, then later rebranded him as a “civilised” figure only once he no longer posed a political threat. Liberation is tolerated only when it is no longer liberating.

In Southeast Asia, Ho Chi Minh was not treated by France as a nationalist leader with legitimate claims, but as a criminal destabiliser. This framing, turning political resistance into criminality, became a template later refined through Cold War doctrine and, more recently, through the language of counterterrorism.

Even the Indian subcontinent illustrates the same logic with a painful twist. Mahatma Gandhi was repeatedly imprisoned by the British Empire. He was not assassinated by Britain, but by an extremist from within his own society. Colonialism fractures political cultures so deeply that, after independence, liberation itself can become internally contested. Empires do not always fire the final shot; sometimes they leave behind the conditions that make it inevitable.

Seen through this lens, Venezuela is not an exception. It is a continuation.

Extraction, whether of gold in Sudan, cobalt in Congo, oil in the Orinoco, or data around the world has always required political compliance. When compliance fails, legitimacy must be destroyed. Leaders are recast as tyrants, criminals, or threats to global order. Sovereignty becomes conditional. International law becomes selective. And intervention is presented not as conquest, but as correction.

This is why the Venezuelan operation resonates so strongly across Africa, Asia, and the Muslim and Arab world. It reinforces a fear many states quietly hold: That sovereignty still depends less on law and more on leverage.

For us in the Gulf, this moment carries specific weight.

First, it exposes the fragility of the crumbling rules-based international order. If borders can be crossed and leaders removed without multilateral consent, then mid-sized states must assume that legal protections alone are insufficient.

Second, it reminds resource-rich countries that economic value is never neutral. Oil, gas, minerals, and even data are not just assets; they are pressure points. Without resilient institutions and diversified economies, extraction becomes a vulnerability rather than a blessing.

Third, it elevates the importance of diplomacy as strategy, not symbolism. Countries like Oman have long invested in mediation, neutrality, and de-escalation. In an era where force is again normalised, such diplomatic capital becomes a form of national defence.

Finally, it signals a deeper shift: Liberation in the 21st century cannot rely on heroic individuals alone. Bolívar, Abdulqader al Jazaeri, Abdelkrim, Abdelkader, Ho Chi Minh, Omar al Mukhtar and Gandhi all proved that charisma and courage can break empires, but they also showed that liberation collapses without systems that outlast leaders.

“Killing Bolívar” today does not always mean assassination. It means dismantling the idea that a society can control its resources, write its own narrative, and choose its own path without external permission.

The real question raised by Venezuela is not who governs Caracas. It is whether liberation itself is still allowed to survive in a world where extraction remains the highest priority.

History suggests a sobering answer: Liberation is tolerated only when it no longer interferes with power. The task of our generation is to prove that history is wrong, not with slogans, but with institutions strong enough that no liberator needs to be kidnapped for an empire to feel secure.