2026: The Great Betrayal

Politics stopped interesting me a long time ago. Probably because today's politics has turned into a decadent spectacle that glorifies stupidity and has turned failure into a normalized constant, an anesthetizing routine that repeats the same tragedies with different masks.

However, I must point out that one aspect of politics still seems absolutely fascinating to me: when politics is forging history day by day, in real time, right before our astonished eyes. I am passionate about history, and history is not just the dusty past of books or the dates memorized in school: history happens every day, every hour, every second, in front of us, while we drink coffee and check our phones.

The year 2026 had barely begun and we were already witnessing monumental stupidity and a diplomatic failure wrapped in triumphalist flags. A United States intervention on Venezuelan territory resulted in a complete failure in terms of international law, although it was sold in the media as a historic victory. It is clear that the apparent "success" of the American intervention came from corrupting infiltration at the highest levels of the corrupt Chavista power structure, not from any brilliant military strategy or moral superiority. In the end, it was corruption, not strategy. Money, not principles.

We did not witness the fall of a nefarious regime as they promised us. What we saw was the classic human sacrifice to appease the bloodthirsty gods of power. The Chavista high command, infiltrated and intervened by the CIA, shrewdly negotiated to preserve power in exchange for a calculated and perfectly choreographed sacrifice: Nicolás Maduro. The Chavista regime remains intact in power, operating with the same repressive machinery, now directly subordinated to the United States.  

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss", as The Who prophetically sang decades ago.

Now the second in command of the Chavista regime, Delcy Rodríguez, remains in charge, with Washington's approval, of the great farce that naively made millions of Venezuelans believe that the regime had fallen, that freedom had finally arrived. The Chavistas will continue to live parasitically off the State and brutally repress the people, now under direct orders from the United States, with the same apparatus, the same methods, the same institutionalized violence. What real benefit can there be for the suffering Venezuelan people if exactly the same oppressive regime continues, just changing masters?

It is called authoritarian regionalism. Death to globalization, long live authoritarian regionalism and the new fragmented order. The United States slams its fist on the table and unilaterally declares its "Donroe Doctrine" (a sad mixture of the historic Monroe Doctrine and the Donald Trump Doctrine): America for the United States. From Greenland to Argentine Patagonia, the entire Western Hemisphere as a private preserve.

The Trump led United States strategically negotiated handing over the rest of the world entirely in exchange for keeping the entire American continent under its absolute sphere of influence. They leave Asia in China's hands, cynically abandoning Taiwan to its fate, betraying decades of strategic alliance. They leave the Middle East in the hands of the Israel Saudi Arabia axis, washing their hands of the perpetual conflict. The United States also abandons Europe, however, Europe's future does not fall into the hands of any clearly defined superpower, but into a highly dangerous geopolitical limbo.

The strongest countries in Europe, United Kingdom, Germany and France, will have to fiercely dispute control of the European continent from the expansionist claws of Russia, without the American military backing that sustained peace for 80 years. Russia will take a calculated step back in Asia and the Middle East to aggressively focus on Europe, recovering its old imperial obsession. Will Europe once again be divided between West and East, as it was during the dark years of the Cold War? History seems to repeat itself in a spiral, like a curse we cannot break.

The American intervention in Venezuela is not a step forward toward the promised democratic progress. It is a gigantic step backward that gives Russia carte blanche to continue massacring Ukrainian civilians with impunity and cowardly abandons Taiwan to the hands of an expansionist China and its insatiable appetite. The world may naively think there was a triumph in Venezuela, but in reality it was a failure that will worsen the situation in Ukraine. Everything is still connected… for now.

The United States tacitly acknowledges the inevitable arrival of the Asian era, although it will never admit it publicly. Trump is more interested in nostalgically taking the United States back to the romantic era of 1950s manufacturing, even though the techno feudal kings, Musk, Thiel, Altman, Bezos and Zuckerberg, will inevitably seek an underground alliance with China and India, betraying their own government's nationalist policies in order to keep accelerating. They want Trump to be merely a stepping stone toward the United States, Inc. The rapprochement will probably be stronger with India, which will become the new China in a few decades, with its enormous young population, growing technological power and a middle class hungry for consumption.

Mexico is a particularly revealing and disturbing case. For 70 years it successfully disguised itself as a "revolutionary" democracy, when in reality it was a perfect dictatorship subordinated to the United States, with presidents recognized as direct CIA agents. How different will Delcy Rodríguez be in Venezuela? The so called regimes "born of the Revolution" have always been a theatrical farce and a masterful simulation, perfected over decades.

The current Mexican regime pretends to be part of 21st century socialism and publicly aligns itself with Cuba and Venezuela, using revolutionary rhetoric for the masses, when in reality it fully subordinates itself to the United States in everything that truly matters. It seductively flirts with a populist base, proudly displaying rhetorical sympathy with the progressive left and China, but in the end obediently aligns with Washington's wishes, meekly imposing tariffs on Chinese exports when ordered to do so.

The Mexican establishment skillfully uses the disguise of progressive leftism while servilely subordinating itself to Trump's United States, abandoning any real ideological principle. It is a regime ideologically close to conservative Republicans and viscerally rejects liberal Democrats. It is a regime at the service of Trump's Washington, since that is where it obtains its political and economic survival.

Today, the favorite to succeed in power within the establishment is Omar García Harfuch, the so called "super cop," viewed with great favor by Washington and its security agencies. It is clear that the establishment will cynically encourage the naive romanticism of its populist bases, fervently preaching the left at rallies and conferences, while strategically pushing Harfuch forward to please the United States and guarantee continuity in power.

The Mexican establishment is capable of betraying itself over and over again as long as it keeps Washington happy, sacrificing any ideological coherence. It is even willing to appoint Harfuch as candidate, which is nothing more than continuing the line of "strong men," iron fist, as former Mexican president Felipe Calderón or Nayib Bukele in El Salvador did. Militarization disguised as citizen security. What the establishment fiercely criticized for years will now be its strategic bet for the future.  

"Meet the new boss..." once again, in a cycle that seems never ending.

History continues to be built every day, every minute, every second. And every day it accelerates more and more exponentially, vertiginously, almost incomprehensibly. The world keeps spinning and accelerates in an almost chaotic, unpredictable, out of control way. We are living in real time the violent reconfiguration of the world order, the traumatic end of the era of globalization and the violent, bloody birth of a new fragmented authoritarian regionalism.

Welcome to the new Cold War, version 2.0: faster, more chaotic, more unpredictable, more dangerous. Where alliances break in 72 hours, where principles are negotiated for spheres of influence, where peoples are sacrificed on geopolitical altars while the powers divide the world like a cake.