Last week, in a dramatic escalation of its confrontation with Venezuela, the United States seized a tanker ferrying $90 million worth of oil from the high seas. The unprecedented action was described as “international piracy” by Venezuela, but the US has sought to justify its tanker seizure on the high seas based on its own domestic laws that has imposed sanctions on the vessel as being part of an oil shipping network supporting the Hizbollah and the Islamic Republican Guards Corps.This happened even as the US has gathered a military force for a possible intervention to remove President Nicolas Maduro as the President of Venezuela. Trump has now threatened to attack installations on land after months of bombing alleged drug smuggling boats near Venezuela. The target here is control of Venezuela, which has the largest oil reserves in the world. Considering that these actions have little sanction in international law, they can only be seen as an exercise in American imperialism in its neighbourhood, reminiscent of its historical policy there.2025 has seen a dramatic escalation in the US approach to Venezuela. Relations between the two countries have been strained for the past decades mainly on account of political differences, human rights issues and control of important energy resources. The US does not recognise the legitimacy of Venezuelan elections and has imposed an array of sanctions on Caracas targeting the oil sectors and regime personnel.Trump has also said that he has authorised covert CIA operations in Venezuela. He also tried the method of a direct phone call to Maduro offering him and his associated amnesty if they agreed to leave office. The seizure of the oil tanker was a signal that the US was readying to use its might to deny the Maduro government its key life-line – oil revenue. Some 90% of the country’s export income comes from oil.Last week saw the US entering the endgame of its military buildup in the Caribbean. The Gerald R Ford carrier strike group has been in the Central Caribbean for a while, now it has been joined by strike assets from the US CENTCOM and INDOPACCOM. Flight operations are being carried out closer and closer to Venezuela and the rumour is that “Maduro will be out by Christmas.”Neither in the case of the tanker, nor the use of military force, is the US following international law. As for Maduro’s removal, the US claims that he heads a government which is supported by cartels pushing drugs into the United States. It is on this basis that the US has been carrying out strikes against Venezuelan fishing vessels as well. It is well known, though, that it is cartels in neighbouring Colombia and Mexico that are responsible for the drug smuggling into the US, not Venezuela. In any case, the US undermined its own allegedly tough posture on drugs by pardoning Honduras’s ex-president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 45 year sentence for running his country as a narco-state that moved over 400 tons of cocaine into the US. He has also pardoned others like Ross Ulbricht, Larry Hoover, Garnett Gilbert Smith and others for drug related crimes.The ship seizure off Venezuela is also not the only instance of its kind. Last month, a US special operations team boarded a ship several hundred kilometres from the coast of Sri Lanka and seized military-related articles headed to Iran from China. The US again cited its long-arm jurisdiction, claiming that it was aimed at blocking Iran from rebuilding its military arsenal. In recent years, the US has seized several cargoes of weapons and oil belonging to Iran.The arrival of the Trump government with its self-conscious focus on the Western Hemisphere has changed things. For Latin American countries, it has revived memories of US imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th century that featured military interventions, economic domination, political manipulations and de facto protectorates over Cuba, Panama, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua. Beginning with the Spanish American war (1898), it led to the US control of Cuba and Puerto Rico. The Roosevelt Corollary (1904) asserted the US right to intervene as police power in the hemisphere. It backed US investment and used military might to protect assets.It manifested itself in multiple invasions of Cuba between 1906-1922, aided the secession of Panama from Colombia (1903) for canal rights, occupied and controlled the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), and occupied Haiti (1915-1934), There were also frequent interventions in Honduras to support US favoured governments and protect banana interests, Nicaragua interventions in 1909, 1912, interventions in Mexico.While earlier interventions were driven by economic interests, in the Cold War, they were cloaked in the ideology of fighting leftist regimes such as in Cuba (1960) and the Dominican Republic (1965). The CIA orchestrated coups in Guatemala (1954), the Bay of Pigs invasion (1961), the coup in Brazil in 1964 and the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. The US continued this policy in the 1980s by its support to the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Venezuela was not immune to the process and in 2002, saw a coup attempt to overthrow Hugo Chavez.The next stepThe next step may not be a military invasion of Venezuela, but the imposition of an oil embargo. The US has sanctioned Venezuelan oil, but a vast fleet of ghost tankers use flags of convenience to carry out their operations. But an actual enforcement, could bring the country to its knees.A land invasion is a possibility, though whether the US has the stomach for it is not clear. Though massive, the US flotilla in the Caribbean does not have the kind of forces that could establish control over a large country like Venezuela. So, the US could carry out air strikes on land targets, which includes cyber operations and electronic jamming to disable Venezuela’s sophisticated air defence systems. This could be followed by air attacks on Venezuelan military’s command and control facilities and energy infrastructure. Its aim would be to bring down the Maduro government.What is not clear is how the Venezuelan military would respond to the US intervention. If it chooses to fight back, it would complicate the situation. The US could remove the Maduro regime, but it is unlikely to stay around to replace it with a viable political administration. In any case, an American-designated successor like Maria Corina Machado, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, would be seen as foreign imposed in a deeply nationalist country. A power vacuum could lead to contending military and political factions. A long war would have spill-over effects in the region. Besides a severe humanitarian crisis with refugee flow, there would also be a disruption of global oil prices.As has been pointed out, Trump has put the Western Hemisphere as the foremost among America’s National Security priorities. In the “Trump Corollary,” the US asserts that it will enforce the Monroe Doctrine of 1819. Besides declaring that they will not only not allow “non-Hemispheric competitors” to put threatening capabilities in the region, but also “to own or control strategically vital assets.” This is aimed at China, which has made significant inroads in Latin America by investing in critical minerals, ports and EV manufacturing, renewable energy and space. But the Venezuelan venture suggests that the US will also not allow even the countries in the region to control their own strategic assets. Everything must serve American interests.Manoj Joshi is a distinguished fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.