Global Research - Imperial Illusion and World Reality - By Stephen Sefton Global Research, November 03, 2025

 Global Research 

Imperial Illusion and World Reality

By Stephen Sefton

Global Research, November 03, 2025

Region: Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Russia and FSU, USA

Theme: Politics

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The illusory statements and blatant lies of US President Donald Trump become more and more evident with every meeting and encounter he has. The falsehood, ineptitude and cynicism of US and European leaders is the most obvious symptom of the cultural, spiritual and ideological sickness of the collective West’s ruling classes. For six decades until the great recession caused by the financial crisis of 2008-2009, they were able to offer their populations a standard of living far superior to that of the populations of the majority world. Now reality is changing and they have no idea what to do.

As President Vladimir Putin has explained,

“…the era in which a select group of the strongest powers could decide for the rest of the world is gone, and gone forever.”

Now the various technological, commercial and financial advances of countries in Eurasia and their associated sequels in Africa and Latin America have woven a new global reality with multiple different political-military and socio-economic threads. The impact of this reality has been evident in the successive failures of Donald Trump in his most recent interactions with the governments of Russia and China.

Russia

Russia has defeated the aggressive regime of Nazi sympathizers in Ukraine despite the unconditional support they have from NATO country governments. At the meeting with President Trump in August this year in Alaska, the Russian team believed an agreement had been reached that would allow a complete resolution of the conflict with NATO so as to guarantee the future security of the Russian Federation. Within a few weeks, it became clear that the agreement was just another US hoax. President Trump toys now with the possible delivery of Tomahawk long-range missiles to Ukraine. He canceled a bilateral meeting in Hungary proposed by the US side, and imposed new unilateral coercive measures against the two most important Russian oil companies.

President Donald Trump speaks with Russian president Vladimir Putin in the Billy Mitchell Room at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, Friday, August 15, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

In response, the Russian government has dismissed the relevance of the new measures against its oil industry, continues with the methodical destruction of the Ukrainian army, announced powerful new nuclear-powered weapons and ratified the strategic partnership agreement with Venezuela. They have made very clear the absolute self-sufficiency of the Russian economy, the profound solidity of its military capacity and industrial production, its indisputable technological superiority and its solidarity with allied countries such as Iran and Venezuela willing and able to defend their sovereignty. This reality completely contradicts the demented versions spread in the Western media describing Russia as a country on the verge of military defeat and economic collapse.

Perhaps the most important point to note here is the tremendous technological step forward signified by the development of the nuclear-powered cruise missile called Burevestnik. President Vladimir Putin himself has explained, “Its main advantage lies in the small nuclear propulsion unit. It is comparable in power to a nuclear submarine reactor, but it is a thousand – a thousand! – times smaller… this reactor is up and running in minutes or even seconds, a tremendous achievement.” The implications of this scientific advance for civilian use, especially for aerospace uses, mean a real technological revolution well beyond the reach of West.

China

Along with the incontrovertible reality of Russia’s political, military and technological advantage over the West, the People’s Republic of China has forced the Trump administration to drop its aggressive unilateral tariff measures. Before his recent tour of the East Asian region, President Trump had claimed that he was going to get China and India to stop buying Russian oil in order to pressure Russia to accept a ceasefire in Ukraine. He also assured that he would strengthen the position of the US economy in relation to Asian economies.

Certainly, President Trump in his bilateral meetings managed to consolidate trade agreements with the governments of Malaysia, Cambodia, Japan and South Korea, and formalized framework agreements with Thailand and Vietnam. It was very important for the US economy that its president resolve the extremely conflictive international trade environment caused by his tariff war begun in April this year. For their part, Asian countries managed to limit the scope of tariffs on their exports to the US in exchange for favorable concessions for US products and, in the case of Japan and South Korea, commitments to very substantial investments in the American economy.

President Donald Trump greets Chinese President Xi Jinping before a bilateral meeting at the Gimhae International Airport terminal, Thursday, October 30, 2025, in Busan, South Korea. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

President Trump’s meeting with President Xi Jinping was different. In a notably cold atmosphere, President Xi insisted on the reduction of several US tariffs and the suspension for one year of others. The US government also agreed to suspend punitive port taxes applied to Chinese ships. China has agreed to resume buying US soybeans and the sale of processed rare earths, essential for US industry. So China’s steadfastness in defense of its legitimate interests forced the US administration to retreat, for the time being, from its attempts to extract from China the same concessions they managed to extort from other Asian countries. It remains to be seen how long this relative lull in US trade aggression will last.

In fact, China and India will continue to buy Russian oil. Similarly, Japan has insisted that it will continue to buy Russian liquefied natural gas, because it is essential for its energy security. With the Association of South East Asian Nations, China has deepened its free trade agreement and a few days later president Xi proposed to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation countries,

“We must build an inclusive and universally beneficial future to foster a new dynamism for the inclusive growth of Asia Pacific. We must always put people first and strengthen policy communication, experience sharing and results-oriented cooperation so as to… eliminate poverty together and promote shared prosperity for all people in Asia Pacific.”

The contrast of the aggressive US extortionist stance with president Xi’s vision of cooperation focused on the human person and poverty reduction is strong. There is a direct relationship between the dysfunctional US coercive relationship with Japan and South Korea and the ongoing negotiations of these two countries with China to improve their trade and develop a trilateral currency swap agreement. This mechanism derives from the so-called Chiang Mai Initiative established after the Asian financial crisis of 1998, caused by the predatory behavior ofWestern financial institutions and made worse by the intervention of the International Monetary Fund. The exchange strengthens the capacity of the respective central banks to provide liquidity in local currency necessary to address a possible financial crisis. In fact, this mechanism will complement the tendency of East Asian countries to use their local currencies instead of the US dollar.

Venezuela

To further worsen the trend of failure in its foreign policy towards Russia and China, president Trump’s criminal administration has begun a fascist aggression against Venezuela. At the domestic political level and at the hemispheric level, an eventual outcome with very adverse consequences for the US government is guaranteed. The US force currently deployed in the Caribbean seems to be for establishing a bridgehead somewhere in Venezuelan territory. But such an operation risks suffering severe casualties against the diverse deterrent capacity of Venezuela’s armed forces.

The consensus of experts on the matter is that the combination of Venezuelan radar systems with advanced Chinese communication systems offers a powerful challenge to the control of the electromagnetic spectrum by US forces. Venezuela has collaborated with the Chinese electronic technology company CETC since 2005. The modern JY-27A 3D radar system of this company is now deployed in the country, along with modern Russian systems such as the VHF-band 9S19ME radar and the S-band 64N6, in addition to the excellent, though older, P-18 radar system.

Image: Sukhoi Design Bureau, 054, Sukhoi Su-57 (Source: Flickr / Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

This early warning network feeds information to a formidable force of anti-air and anti-ship missiles, like the CM-90 from Iran, the C-802A from China, the KH31A from Russia and the Otomat MK2 from Italy/France. Venezuela’s air defense missiles include the proven Russian Buk-M2E, Pechora-2M and S300VM, in addition to thousands of Igla-S man-portable anti-air missiles. As well as anti-ship or anti-radar missiles, Venezuela’s Sukhoi-S30 fighter jets carry the advanced Russian R77 air-to-air missiles. At sea, Venezuela’s warships and naval patrol vessels also carry anti-ship and anti-radar missiles.

So, for attacking US air and naval forces, the threat of receiving destructive strikes is real. And even if in the end they managed to establish their ground forces in one or another part of Venezuelan territory, they would face the numerous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) deployed by the Venezuelan armed forces. Venezuela has been developing its UAV manufacturing for more than 20 years and now has several types of national designs as well as models derived from, among others, the Iranian Mohajer and Shahed variants or the Russian Orlan UAV.

All these technological resources are deployed at the disposal of over 120,000 professional armed forces personnel and more than four million well-armed and trained militia members. Taken together, they are formidable enough forces to deter a large-scale ground operation. On the other hand, the destruction of Libya and Syria depended on the bribery of traitorous figures of the military high command, but that kind of betrayal has little chance of working in Venezuela. So it is possible there will be attacks by the US special forces and the CIA against the Bolivarian leadership, perhaps disguised somehow as a popular rebellion. But, just as the yankee-zionist aggression against Iran ended up strengthening support for the Islamic Revolution, so too any attack on Venezuela will strengthen support for the Bolivarian Revolution.

The conditions in the case of Venezuela are very different from other cases of attempts at regime change, like Libya or Syria. Venezuela has already defeated the West’s economic war and powerful countries in the region such as Brazil and Mexico have declared their opposition to the US aggression. Colombia along with many of the Caribbean island nations has expressed political solidarity with Venezuela. The national political opposition is completely discredited and the country is self-sufficient in food production. Above all, the Venezuelan armed forces and a majority of the population are strongly cohesive around a national project focused on the human person and the flourishing of the potential of their families.

While much commentary emphasizes the physical distance between Venezuela and its powerful allies, China and Russia, it’s worth remembering the feat of Nicaragua which, with the support of the Soviet Union, neutralized a formidable armed terrorist force, trained and financed by the US government during ten years of bloody war. Similarly, despite the enormous distances to be crossed, the Cuban Revolution and the Soviet Union ensured the victory of Angola against the powerful armed forces of the apartheid regime in South Africa, even though it was supported by the collective West.

In the same way that Russia and China support Iran, it is certain that they will support Venezuela. As Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has made clear,

“We support Venezuela’s leadership in protecting national sovereignty, taking into account the dynamics of the international and regional situation. We maintain contact with our partners, we are ready to continue to respond appropriately to their requests… We will continue to work “shoulder to shoulder”, looking to the future with calm and confidence. We’ve been through different situations. We are ready for anything.”

It is impossible to know for sure what the final outcome of the criminal fascist aggression underway against Venezuela will be. Everything indicates that it will be adverse in many ways for the US government. The general international consensus is that the foreign policy of President Donald Trump’s administration simply goes from one failed hoax to another. Whereas the characteristic feature of our revolutionary governments is the absolute firmness of our leaders in following sovereign policies for the development of our peoples despite the volatility, despair and aggression of the ruling classes of the collective West.

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This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal, translated from Spanish.

Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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