Neo-Colonialism in the 21st Century: The Political Economy of U.S. Intervention in Venezuela (2026) and the Global South

The 2026 United States intervention in Venezuela represents a paradigmatic case of contemporary neo-colonialism, marked not by territorial occupation but by financial coercion sanctions regimes, diplomatic isolation, and narrative engineering. This study interrogates the political economy foundations of the intervention by integrating Political Settlement Theory (PST) with Neopatrimonial and Rentier Political Economy (NPE/RPE). Drawing on qualitative political-economy methodology and extensive secondary data, including high-impact scholarly literature, multilateral institutional reports, diplomatic communiqués, and global media. The paper argues that U.S. intervention was neither an aberration nor a humanitarian necessity, but rather a structurally conditioned outcome of hegemonic interests interacting with Venezuela’s fractured political settlement and rentier-dependent economy. The findings reveal that elite fragmentation, rent erosion, and institutional vulnerability created permissive conditions for external coercion, while the intervention itself reproduced classic core periphery dynamics long identified in dependency and world-systems theory. The study further demonstrates that the Venezuela case exemplifies a broader Global South pattern of “intervention without invasion,” raising urgent questions about sovereignty, global governance, and developmental autonomy. It concludes by advocating Global South counter hegemonic coordination, economic diversification, de-dollarisation, and institutional reform as strategic responses to 21st-century neo-colonial domination.