In early 2026, the Trump administration's "Operation Absolute Resolve" in Venezuela, a show of force that effectively captured Venezuelan President Maduro, shocked the world. This decapitation strike, though taking place on the distant South American continent, served as a stark warning to China on both strategic and military levels. It was not merely a purge of America's backyard, but also revealed that great power competition had entered a "jungle era" devoid of rules, forcing China to deeply rethink its existing global strategy and defense red lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Military equipment generation gap and the urgency of "anti-decapitation"<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Operation Absolute Resolve, the U.S. military demonstrated overwhelming all-domain operations capabilities. Most notably, the Venezuelan military's long-standing reliance on Chinese and Russian defense systems resulted in their instantaneous failure in actual combat. A report by the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank, indicated that Venezuela's Chinese-made JY-27 anti-stealth radar and Russian-made Buk-M2E air defense missile system completely malfunctioned in the face of powerful U.S. electronic warfare (EW) suppression and cyberattacks, failing to provide any effective early warning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a harsh test for China's military industry. It cruelly reveals that export-oriented (and even some domestically used) weapons suffer from serious anti-jamming and survivability deficiencies when facing the US military's top-tier electronic warfare capabilities. Simply having a numerical advantage can no longer compensate for the enormous technological gap in information warfare and electronic warfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A deeper crisis lies in the vulnerability of the command and control (C2) system. The core of this US operation was "decapitation," meaning disrupting the enemy's military by severing the chain of command. This inevitably raises questions about the situation in the Taiwan Strait. The Chinese military must realize that strengthening the underground and redundant nature of command posts, as well as the wartime survivability of the highest leadership, is of paramount importance in national defense. Faced with the normalization of conventional decapitation threats, China may even need to re-examine its "no first use of nuclear weapons" policy to maintain strategic ambiguity and deterrence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The limitations of economic ties and the fragility of asset security<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n On the diplomatic and strategic level, Venezuela's collapse brutally demonstrates the futility of the "peaceful development theory" in the face of power. The Asia Times estimates that China has approximately $10 billion in loans and massive oil investments in Venezuela, and the two countries are hailed as "all-weather strategic partners." However, when US special forces arrived, these deep economic ties failed to provide any substantial security protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the US taking over Venezuelan oil fields and implementing an "oil blockade," China faces an extremely high risk of debt default. The US-backed proxy government has even hinted at reviewing or severing oil contracts with China, posing a threat of "odious debt." This profoundly demonstrates that pure economic expansion is extremely vulnerable without strong military projection and security guarantees. In traditional US spheres of influence such as Latin America, economic influence cannot automatically translate into a geopolitical shield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regional fragmentation and the reconstruction of strategic pivots<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Faced with the reactivated and radicalized Monroe Doctrine by the United States, South America has failed to form a unified anti-American front. Instead, out of fear of becoming the next target or for self-interest, countries have chosen to be subservient and compliant. Regional organizations such as CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) have become completely ineffective, marking the end of Latin America's cycle of independence and autonomy, and the region has once again become a passive chessboard in the great power game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this situation, China must adjust its Latin America strategy. The illusion of simply relying on international law to protect its overseas assets has been shattered. To counter pressure from the United States, China is extending cooperation beyond purely economic and trade areas to more sensitive security and intelligence domains. For example, China has strengthened intelligence cooperation with Cuba, utilizing its geographical location to deploy signals intelligence (SIGINT) facilities\u2014an asymmetric strategic countermeasure intended to make the United States feel threatened in its "backyard." Simultaneously, China has proposed five major initiatives encompassing "unity, development, civilization, peace, and people-to-people connectivity," attempting to politically integrate Latin America into its vision of a "community with a shared future for mankind," serving as a long-term stronghold against unilateralism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Embracing a diverse world based on strength<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Trump administration's actions and its large-scale withdrawal from international organizations formally signaled the division within the West and the dual-track nature of the global governance system. The world is moving towards a diversified\u683c\u5c40 (geopolitical landscape) based on strength rather than rules. In an era dominated by "naked power," China must accelerate its military modernization to address survival issues in a highly electromagnetic confrontation environment; simultaneously, it must accelerate the construction of a parallel international system centered on itself (such as the BRICS mechanism and the New Development Bank) to cope with the increasingly volatile and rule-less "jungle era." The changes in Venezuela are not only a tragedy for one country but also a historic turning point that reshapes the bottom-line thinking of great power competition.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In early 2026, the Trump administration's "Operation Absolute Resolve" in Venezuela, a show of force that effectively captured Venezuelan President Maduro, shocked the world. This decapitation strike, though taking place on the distant South American continent, served as a stark warning to China on both strategic and military levels. It was not merely a purge of America's backyard, but also revealed that great power competition had entered a "jungle era" devoid of rules, forcing China to deeply rethink its existing global strategy and defense red lines.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3441,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[115],"class_list":["post-3440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-affairs","tag-115"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/raypoon.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/raypoon.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/raypoon.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raypoon.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raypoon.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/raypoon.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3442,"href":"https:\/\/raypoon.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3440\/revisions\/3442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raypoon.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/raypoon.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raypoon.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raypoon.hk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}