Closing ranks

The return of power politics as the dominant mode of managing international affairs is no longer a matter of debate. Across regions, some great powers are increasingly resorting to coercion, unilateralism and pressure tactics to defend their interests, often at the expense of international norms and cooperative frameworks. In this context, the Global South faces the strategic choice of fragmentation and negotiating individually with stronger actors, or close ranks and defending its collective capacity to pursue development, sovereignty and autonomy.

The case of Venezuela offers a revealing illustration of why this choice matters. For more than two decades, Venezuela has been subjected to sustained political, economic and diplomatic pressure by the United States, particularly through sanctions, financial restrictions and attempts at political isolation. These measures have been justified under the language of democracy promotion and security, yet their material effects tell a different story. Rather than fostering "win-win" cooperation or supporting development, US-Venezuela relations increasingly resemble a form of anti-cooperation, or the interaction designed not to generate mutual benefit, but to constrain, punish and discipline.

From a strictly empirical standpoint, the US sanctions have sharply reduced Venezuela's access to global markets, especially the oil market, its main source of revenue. Since the introduction of comprehensive financial and oil sanctions between 2017 and 2019, Venezuela has been largely excluded from international credit markets, while restrictions on transactions involving its state oil company have severely constrained export capacity and payment channels. Crude oil production fell from historical levels of over 3 million barrels per day to roughly 1.1 million barrels per day by 2025, drastically reducing fiscal income and foreign-exchange availability. Financial restrictions have further limited the country's ability to receive payments, refinance debt, and import essential goods, as banks, insurers, and shipping firms increasingly avoid Venezuela due to legal and reputational risk. Even where humanitarian exemptions exist on paper, over-compliance by private actors has effectively narrowed trade and logistics channels. The cumulative result has been a shrinking economic space, diminished state capacity, and deteriorating social conditions, including one of the largest displacement crises in the world, with about 7 million Venezuelans living abroad by 2023 — outcomes difficult to reconcile with justifications the US administration has given for its military action in Venezuela and its forcible removal of the Venezuelan leader.

This pattern reflects a broader Cold War mentality that still shapes much of North-South engagement when power asymmetries are pronounced. Cooperation is conditional, hierarchical and reversible, and access to markets and institutions is treated as leverage rather than as a shared benefit. Development is subordinated to alignment, and sovereignty is tolerated only insofar as it does not challenge geopolitical preferences. In such a framework, globalization becomes selective, being open for some, but closed for others.

Faced with this reality, Venezuela did not turn to the Global South out of ideological preference alone, but out of structural necessity. Over the past two decades, its relationship with China has become one of the most significant examples of South-South cooperation in Latin America. Between 2005 and 2020, Venezuela was one of the largest recipients of Chinese policy-bank lending in the region, much of it structured through oil-backed mechanisms that provided access to capital when Western credit markets were effectively closed to it. China also became a critical trading partner and Chinese companies have likewise remained among the few foreign actors still active in Venezuela's energy sector. Besides, bilateral cooperation between Venezuela and China has expanded into infrastructure and telecommunications. Together, these ties did not replace Venezuela's lost access to Western markets, but they expanded its options, illustrating how South-South cooperation can operate through material, transactional and development-oriented channels rather than through political conditionality alone.

Crucially, this cooperation has followed a different logic. While not free of asymmetries or problems, China-Venezuela engagement has been structured around mutual benefit rather than political conditionality. Oil-backed loans provided China with long-term energy security while offering Venezuela access to capital when alternatives were scarce. Infrastructure projects expanded productive capacity. Trade diversified export destinations. Instead of narrowing Venezuela's options, this relationship expanded them, allowing the country to navigate globalization rather than be expelled from it.

This contrast matters because it highlights two competing models of international cooperation. The first model, exemplified by US policy toward Venezuela, relies on pressure, exclusion, and coercion to achieve political objectives, often with severe collateral economic effects. The second model, illustrated by China's South-South engagement, operates through integration, financing, and market access, seeking tangible returns for both sides. One constrains development choices, while the other multiplies them.

In this line, South-South cooperation demonstrates that collaborative ties without punishment, and globalization without political vetoes, are both possible and effective. For many countries in the Global South, this distinction is no longer theoretical, as it shapes their growth prospects, fiscal stability and social outcomes.

As realpolitik reasserts itself globally, the risks for the Global South increase. Powerful states are more willing to bypass multilateral institutions, reinterpret international law, use economic tools as weapons, and in the case of the US resort to force. In such an environment, individual states, especially those with limited structural power, are vulnerable to isolation and coercion. Fragmentation only amplifies this vulnerability.

The Venezuela case is a warning, but also a lesson. Anti-cooperation impoverishes, but in contrast diversified cooperation creates room to breathe. If the Global South is to navigate an international order increasingly governed by power rather than rules, closing ranks is not an act of defiance; it is an act of prudent necessity.

The author is the head of the International Politics academic area at the Metropolitan Autonomous University and a senior fellow on China at the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.