The recent abduction of the Venezuelan president, by the United States of America, is not only or primarily, about narcotics, oil, any other particular resource materials or personal grudges or emnities. Elite dementia may have a role here, but not a dominant one. Although many of the above aspects, or even all of them may well be guiding some individuals within the corporate and military spheres of governance in the USA, there is a lot more to it than these issues. Corporate America, like all hierarchical mass societies, based upon the capitalist mode of production, is also in a social, an economic, a financial, a political, a climate and an ecological crisis. So too are the other two big military powers, China and Russia, within the current network of global trade.

We need to remember that Trump (and his revolving team of advisers) are the current spokespersons representing corporate America, and have hinted a number of times at taking over, Greenland, Panama and Canada during his second term in office. These revelations, were too easily dismissed by many pundits as only the meglomatic ravings of someone one not fully up to the job of taking the USA through the current crisis phase of its continuing decline and fall. These anti-Trump personal observations may be true, but in the end it depends on the ‘job’ spec drawn up by the powerful elites that are currently behind him and his team. More of that later.

We should also remember that Russia too is undergoing an economic, financial, social, climate, and ecological crisis and also the elite there hope to solve at least some of those problems by getting control of large areas of land and potentially lucrative strategic minerals within parts of Ukraine, as a first stage of gaining back even more of the territories once controlled by the former Soviet Union. Here again it’s not simply about gaining ownership and control of strategic metal ores, or settling a long held grudge against western powers, although these also feature in some Kremlin calculations. There is more to it than that. And then of course there is China.

It is difficult to say how bad the social, economic, financial, climate and ecological crises are in China, but this hierarchical mass society system also exists in the same interconnected global network as the rest of us and the fact that their production capability is one of the highest in the globe brings it’s own associated problems. Being the worlds leader in commodity exports of all kinds, means that China has a continually pressing need to secure sources of raw materials and places to sell finished goods. For some decades now its ruling elites and their alternating figureheads have promoted a new Silk Road, initiative with Road, Rail, Docks, and Warehouse networks strung along it. Moreover, China also thinks it is no longer big enough to manage the coming crises and has urgent ambitions to repossess Hongkong and Taiwan.

Solving the problems of obtaining reliable cheap raw materials to process into finished goods and finding markets to sell these has always been a recurring problem for the capitalist mode of production wherever capitalism has come to dominate the social production of hierarchical mass societies. This became particularly intense within the hierarchical mass society form when it began its mass production phase after the industrial revolution in Europe. The European solution to this problem of relative overproduction in the 18th and 19th century became known as imperialism and European gunboat diplomacy was used to put pressure on newly formed countries throughout the world to agree to the terms of trade favourable to Britain, France, Germany etc.

However, North America by that period in the 19th century, had also become an industrial power and its mechanized production was producing more than its home market could profitably absorb. So its intellectual strategists came up with a doctrine proposed by President Monroe. The Monroe Doctrine’s strategy was to prevent European capitalist countries from obtaining favourable locations and advantageous terms of trade with those countries developing in the Americas. At the same time the doctrine stipulated that the USA would use its power and influence to ensure that North American industrial and financial capital would continue its 19th century rapid growth and thus see the Americas (considered as their backyard!) as raw material resources and markets for sales. In this way the USA intended to dominate the politics and economic trade in that portion of the global trade – far into the future.

And indeed American Capitalists did dominate the trade and much else in the South and North of the Americas during their ascendency in the 19th and early to mid 20th centuries. Some recent commentators of global affairs having noted the similarity between what President Monroe advocated in the 19th century and what Donald Trump and his advisers are advocating in the 21st century. Some of them are even suggesting that this recent action against Venezuela and threats against Colombia, Cuba and even Greenland is nothing more than a return to the 19th century phenomenon of imperialism. However, I think only considering the similarities between then and now and ignoring the differences between historical events or even historical objects is always far too simplistic.

The differences between a rising USA potential super power in the 19th century, and a rapidly declining superpower in the 21st century are just too great for such a simplistic strategy to be successfully repeated. Also, the differences between 19th century Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, Panama etc., are also now too great for them to just repeat how they succumbed to the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries. The form of diplomatic and military pressure has also changed over the centuries. Boots on the ground in the 21st century to enforce modern foreign dictatorships would face very different forms and durations of resistance than they did in the 19th century. Trump may continue to bluff and threaten those latin and Caribbean populations in the hope that this will ensure their total compliance, just like Putin initially tried to cower Ukraine with his special mission there, but that’s unlikely to work against modern populations.

So the current situation is not witnessing  a resurgence of imperialist expansion in the 21st century, but we are witnessing an aggressive defence of a system in another of its terminal phases of decline. If the capitalist mode of production is likened to a tyrannical dictator over mankind, it would be a dictator in an advanced stage of dementia. Which ironically is not unlike the condition of many of its current political representatives.  True, in any population numbering millions there will be those who will currently applaud what Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping  are doing and will do in the coming months, particularly those among the disgruntled middle class exiles from Latin American countries and the traditional media will amplify their protests and support for Making America Great Again.  That is to be expected. In a way snatching and kidnapping a president is a successful version of the bay of pigs failed US show of strength and the attempt at infecting the underwear of Castro, but that’s no consolation, for both failed against the tiny island of Cuba in the 20th century.

But to repeat; the 21st century is not the 19th century or the 20th and the modern generations are not replicas of their 19th century forefathers and mothers. At the moment these conflicts are primarily between hierarchical regimes, whose agreements are never meant to be binding anyway.  Meanwhile the working class masses are sidelined, defending themselves  or becoming collateral damage in elite regime changes by hostile elite regimes, none of whom are that popular or well respected by their own citizens. So what happens when the disaffected citizens around the globe begin to assert their essential needs for food, shelter, safety and peace remains to be seen, but these non-elite social forces by the billions in the 21st century are not what the millions were in the 19th century. Community defensive tactics will continue to develop.

Modern populations, like in Ukraine and those globally campaigning against the genocide in Gaza or demonstrating that black lives matter, are not proving easy citizens to manipulate or subdue by the currently armed bullies of their own countries, let alone those of other countries. All such elites are themselves extremely unpopular, their state institutions are technically bankrupt and all their countries are in social, economic, financial and political crisis. Unless significant numbers (in the millions) within the target communities become willing to be part of the Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping  Declining World Order, then the big three elites threats and actions are mainly posturing, strutting and blustering. And as yet there are no indications that giving in to the threats of this latest gang of three is even being considered by any ordinary communities, never mind being entertained as a probability.

And really! For those of us who haven’t slept through or been intellectually comatose during the last several decades just need to consider the USA’s record of repeated failed attempts at regime change and population compliance with US instructions. Even when perpetrated against lesser armed citizens masses, such as in Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan etc., these tough guy ‘adventures’ have dismally and disastrously failed. China’s communist governing party, may be able to field a more overwhelming military force than Hongkong or Taiwan can, to regain control over these Mandarin dynasty period throw backs, but even that may not be enough to control these communities if they are not willing to be oppressively embraced by a ‘big brother’ in a modern Chinese form. Of course, the chances of Trumps faction of the US elite succeeding in controlling South America territories are about as good as they were at controlling an unarmed attack by a tiny legless Covid 19 virus, in which, like many other countries elites, they failed to do so – miserably!

The other noticeable difference between the 19th century succesful gunboat diplomacy and an attempt to replicate it by helicopter and special forces parachuting troops in the 21st century, is the almost overwhelming disgust and animosity of most Global populations with the political, military and police force elites in charge of their own respective countries. In the 21st century, there is also no remaining residue of the head-bowed deference and ‘cap in hand’ servitude to ‘authority’ whether in royal, religious or political theatre form, as was once exhibited by most 19th century populations. Furthermore, the socialist/fascist authoritarian solutions to hierarchical mass society intractable problems by German and Italian dictators and their Bolshevik/Stalinist mirror images, had not then been tried and had not then also spectacularly failed.

So now the vast majority of human beings know that political domination in any form, (religious, secular, military, or democratic) under the present hierarchical system is no better than aristocratic domination and that none of these alternative elites will solve either the fundamental contradiction of the hierarchical mass society form, or those of the capitalist mode of production adopted by these hierarchies. Last, but not least, is the growing realisation of most human beings that something is wrong with the environment, including the part of the biosphere in which they live. The climate cycle has become unstable, the ecological balance has been disturbed, the pollution levels have saturated the air, the soil and the water, to such an extent that plastics and toxins have now entered our bodies in the form of microplastics, manufactured hormones and chemical poisons, within our blood stream and in our organs which are nutritionally supplied by it.

On top of this, the vast differences between the top elites wealth and the bottom ranks relative and absolute poverty, has been shown not to be because of any intrinsic species  differences within populations. The top elites in politics, in governments, in industry and in finance are clearly no morally, intellectually, or culturally superior to the citizens they exploit. Looking at them globally, from a humanist perspective they are more to be pitied than admired or feared. Even if most of the digitally or financially funded elites, never entered the Epstein world of obscenities, they have become the unattractive human beings who they are by means of ruthlessly gaming the capitalist socio-economic system in order to gain advantage by shrewdness and heartlessness. The fact that the big three are in competition with each other most of the time does not mean that in order to save their system,  they will not agree to help each from time to time – when its suits them.

Even the non-Epstein tainted royals are just fancy dressed up puppets, wearing fancy unearned medals and expensive costumes, whilst consuming energy, nutritional, and scarce resources in multiple palaces and means of luxury transport, whilst displaying no embarrassment or consciousness of their inapropriatness in a world which is now entering a self inflicted accelerated rate of decline which threatens the whole integrated, interdependent biological structure of life on earth. The fact that  all elites collude over denying their irrelevance and denying their overwhelming contribution to climate change, pollution, global warming, essential species loss, and to impoverishing the poor and precarious citizens, by claiming more social wealth, than they need, and by tax avoidance and other means of denying a share of it to those at the bottom of this hierarchical pyramid living in squalor, illness and poverty, says everything.

I suggest all these latent, pent up and active transformations in the general social consciousness and understanding will mean that wars over bits of land and to gain extra wealth for the already obscenely rich in America, Russia, China or elsewhere is unlikely to be meekly accepted by the vast majority and if they do somehow occur will need to be energetically opposed or transformed into civil wars to change the system. It’s been a ‘long time coming’ (as the blues song goes) but a social consciousness is arising that humanities task is to put a stop to the current self-destructive pattern of human living, which is  upheld and perpetuated by a dominating elite class, and it is the system which needs changing not just the individual character or political persuasion of those ruling us. Of course, there is as yet no general understanding of how bad the biosphere is getting and as yet there is no agreement as to what needs to be done to prevent it. Consequently anyone with an idea and access to AI assisted thesis composition and a means to publish it can broadcast their imaginative solutions.

However, eventually as the socio-economic and climate  crisis deepens, and avoidable ecological  and pollutant catastrophe’s continue to occur, the more bizarre and trivial green ‘surface symptom’ solutions will atrophy and a broad concensus will replace them. I suggest this is not just a possibility but is now a probability, because nearly everyone now knows something needs to be done and that more of the same post war  peace time boom fed oppressions and more of the same wartime devastations are only going to make things worse not better. In the wake of one or more future existential collapses of the hierarchical mass society system, human understanding will develop more directly in response to socio-biological reality of life on earth, and not as it does as yet mostly in response to anthropocentrically focussed, sociological ideology, promoted by established old-school elite intellectuals and their as yet uncritical copyists and pupils.

Roy Ratcliffe (January 2026)