The Dark Time of the Leviathans

By Álvaro García Linera – Jan 10, 2026

Since 1945, interstate relations have been governed by three basic principles: a) mutual respect for the territorial sovereignty of states; b) the shared understanding that each country must resolve its political affairs internally without foreign interference; and c) the peaceful settlement of disputes between states (UN Charter, Art. 2). Certainly, on many occasions they were not observed, as with the U.S. invasions of Vietnam, Puerto Rico, Iraq, and Libya; the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Hungary; or the European invasions of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, etc. The great powers, driven by commercial or geopolitical interests, could occasionally violate those rules, but it was a force of destiny around which the ties and legitimacy of state actions were regulated.

With the fall of the USSR in 1989, the “order” was “enriched” by the pillars of ongoing globalization: d) free trade in goods and capital; e) protection of foreign investment (coming from North America and Europe); f) globalized value chains; g) democracy and expansive liberal values. It was about doing business anywhere in the world, but with a dose of theatrical hypocrisy (the so-called “liberal values”) for the sake of legitimizing the system before the subordinate classes. Today that order has exploded into a thousand pieces.

First came the structural flaws of hyperglobalism, which manifested as a systemic contraction of economic growth and the dramatic financial crisis of 2008-2010. Markets do not self-regulate, and leaving them to their own devices is like letting monkeys with knives loose in a kindergarten. Silently, cross-border capital flows began to retreat, as did global trade growth rates (BIS, 2024). Finally, it was the state, considered an “archaic” political artifact, that had to bail out the “deserving” investors by printing public money. In 2020, that “quantitative easing” reached 18% of the GDP of advanced economies (IMF, 2022). In the meantime, Brexit came along, showing that ideals of sovereignty were not mere museum relics but also a different way of organizing the economy. Alarmed, liberal elites began talking about “slow globalization.”

And finally Trump arrived, with his basic but direct language and his cavalry of import tariffs, which ended up upending all the principles and “values” that had been shared until then. He began imposing tariffs on the entire world like someone dealing marked poker cards, then negotiating new, equally marked cards, until he knocked out every participant one by one.

In a short time, all the anti-globalization forces have risen up and are now dominant. Instead of free trade, there is rampant protectionism. In place of free competition, there are state-subsidized industrial policies. Instead of fiscal discipline, public debt has skyrocketed. Global value chains are giving way to a geopolitically regionalized division of labor. Goodbye globalization, at least in key areas of the economy. Welcome to “geoeconomic fragmentation.”

All of this entails a reorganization of the key players in the global economy. If before it was the anonymous markets that redefined investment, trade, and profitability flows, subordinating states to that enterprise, now it will be the states that plan and use their monopoly powers to enable capital to operate and enrich itself. It is still capitalism. Of course. But the latter is a new type of state-protected, capitalized, shored-up, and driven global capitalism.

The new rule of the interstate game that is now being imposed is that there are no rules. In this time of liminal transition, everything is permissible—first and foremost, force and coercion among states to impose on others what governments, and the companies sheltered by them, need. It does not matter whether these companies are national or transnational. What matters is that they are based in a state and will leverage that state’s political, economic, and coercive power to secure domestic credit, subsidies, tariff protections, blackmail other states into tax exemptions, and, of course, occupy their markets. It is a savage order in which states act as unrestrained Hobbesian Leviathans, pitted against one another. The only barrier that they impose on themselves is the one that arises from the limits of their resources and power. Based on that, they realistically gauge their spheres of control and influence.

There are no longer any “values” to adhere to or to invoke in their pursuit. No democracy, no human rights, no justice. Only power. The power to occupy. The power to win. The power to usurp. The power to monetize. The power to humiliate and subdue. And Trump’s preferred power—instilling fear in others. “America First,” regardless of agreements, loyalties, history, peoples, or the individuals who are crushed, trampled, and spat upon on the road to greatness: “drill, baby, drill.”

That is why President Trump does not care about maintaining the military umbrella in Europe. He gains nothing. The US loses money. It is more profitable to sell weapons and gas to the frightened European governments that take refuge in an illusory “international order” based on supplication.

That is why he does not care about Ukraine’s integrity or its accession to NATO. Russia is not an adversary for the US to fear, and Ukraine only matters if the US can seize its lands and minerals and, above all, recover the more than $100 billion that Biden handed over to it. If ceding part of the territory to Russia achieves that goal, it is a good deal.

Tha is why he unilaterally imposes tariffs on the world; forces the OECD to repeal the 15% tax on its US multinationals; and is on his way to annexing Greenland.

That is why Germany is dusting off its old Prussian military helmet, instantly amending its constitution, and unleashing “unlimited public spending” to “make its army great.” And it tells everyone that this is the “new” Europeanism.

That is why, when the US militarily intervenes in Venezuela and abducts President Maduro, it does not even pretend to invoke any international convention. Much less to the UN, which has become an NGO for pious international debates. There is no hypocrisy. There is no justification. There is a simple, pure, and shameless display of state power to confiscate the world’s largest oil reserve. And, by the way, to protect the new petroleum reserves in Essequibo.

January 3 and the Imperialist Rationale Against Venezuela

We have entered a wild international interregnum, governed by the law of force of states (economic and military). This is not a temporary lapse by Trump. It will not end when the US elects a new president in 2028. It is the stormy transition toward a new, stable global order; but it is a transition that will last more than a decade, sowing violence, hatred, and intra-state cannibalism that will leave wounds for centuries.

When the inflection of order takes cruel and violent forms devoid of legitimizing narratives, it can be seen as a symptom of the twilight of a regime of domination. In this case, it is the globalist cycle (40 years) and the US hegemonic cycle (100 years). Every decline in authority exacerbates the desperation of those who benefited from it, leading them to try to halt the inevitable by violent means. It is what the historian Tuchman has called the “bellicose frivolity of senile empires.” However, brutality is also a symptom of the agonizing birth of the new order. It is the recurring “midwife” of history to which Marx referred in the famous Chapter XXIV of Capital, where he describes not only how the modern state is formed but also how the state is an “economic power” that helps bring about every new social form. Violent state intervention is a birthmark of capitalism and, therefore, of all the new long cycles through which the accumulation of wealth and investment is renewed. Rampant state coercion is a hallmark of liminal times. Like the present one.

Amid these naked monstrosities with which the great powers are acting, it is possible to discern the birth of principles of regularity that, in due course, may cement the new international order that will emerge and stabilize over the coming decades. These regularities are:

1. States are no longer merely the support for capital accumulation, as they were under neoliberalism; now they are also part of the command and territorialized reorganization of that accumulation. China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam are successful examples of this. The US and the EU will follow suit, but not in the form of a state-entrepreneur, as the former did, but rather as a state that incubates, protects, and nurtures “its” private companies in its areas of influence.

2. The states will be divided into patron states and vassal states, based on their infrastructural capacity, economic power, political cohesion, and military logistics. The former will delineate areas of control and autonomy for companies based in their territories. The latter serve as suppliers of inputs and exclusivity to the former.

3. Sovereignty is no longer based upon agreements and international treaties. It derives purely from economic strength, solid internal legitimacy, the ability of a state to defend itself, and the capacity to inflict harm on other states. Those who lack these attributes will become vassal states.

4. Areas of influence, whether regional or continental, will be flexible, subject to the pressures of capital radiating outward in search of markets. But the elasticity of borders will not depend on trade agreements, but on waves of tariff wars, geopolitical blackmail, and interference in the internal affairs of states. From an “international order” for markets in which states served as the platform for the free flow of capital, we will move to a “global order” of states that forcibly conquer regional spaces and specific global markets for “their” capital.

5. The internal regime of governmental legitimacy will gradually set aside the globalist liberal ideology to focus on regional security issues, national “greatness,” and sovereignty.

It is a scenario of dominant and submissive states based on geoeconomic priorities. It is terrifying, but real.

(Diario Red)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/SC/DZ