In the Name of Freedom: What the Far Left Ignores. by Prof Wilfred Uji
Published on January 10, 2026
In the Name of Freedom: What the Far Left Ignores
The decision and the act by President Donald Trump to isolate and neutralize the President of Venezuela without necessarily declaring a war on the country, or being at war, has been denounced by the far left radicals both in the United States as well as across the world.
Ideological politics, the divide between the left and the right, interms of rights and expectations , is beginning to fast play out before the global audience recruiting folliwership in different directions as well as reactions.
The United States has expansionist ambitions in Latin America since the era of the Monroe Doctrine where it is the exclusive reserve of the nation to protect her interest in that hemisphere.
The Doctrine of Containment under President Truman further consolidated the gains of the Monroe Doctrine to ensure the non expansion and success of socialist communist regimes in Latin America.
The United States understands what it means to have neighbors with a shared common interest against the backdrop of the expansion of hostile neighbors from a far.
Far hostile neighbors such as China and Russia, have the same territorial preservation instincts that protects their hemisphere from the incursion and expansion of hostile neighbors. In the Far Pacific and across the Balkans, China and Russia upholds the principle of non interference of their respective hemisphere by external forces.
This idea and thinking has been the defining point for the war between Russia and Ukraine as well as the conflict between China and Tawain.
The state of Isreal in the Middle East understands the doctrine of policing the boarders of neighbors inorder to create a Buffa De militarized Zone for effective strategic geo politics.
In doing so, it requires that puppet states can sometimes be created or abeted just to provide some kind of platform to ward off external forces.
The world has seen that in the recent declaration by Isreal to recognize the state of Somaliland for pure geo strategic security reasons.
The world is dangerously playing around with the ideas of human rights and rules of engagement of international relations while extremist groups exploit the loop holes for a global advantage.
The United States of America is at the core center of the debate of human rights and the fundamental rules of international engagement, what is right and what is wrong based on the norms and principles of the international system factored in the United Nations and other global agencies.
Radical Extremist Groups such as Hamas , Hizzibolah, Taliban and the Islamic State understands the weakens inherent in the international doctrine of rights as well as the confusion inside America, these groups have exploited both confusions and debates to their advantage in staging some of the most bizarre human atrocities ever in human history.
These groups often hiding behind, and exploiting the shield of state sovereignty and domestic immunity and freedom of a modern state, maneuver out of international sanctions or external interventions into their domestic affairs all in the name of a sovereignty or being domestised in local politics.
In Nigeria for instance, the Nigerian government has long exploited the framework of state sovereignty and domestic immunity to shield off and disguise the terror activities of the Boko Haram, the Islamic State as well as militant Fulani herdsmen.
Until recently, following international pressure from the United States, Nigeria has been a lame duck in the war against terror groups that has displaced millions of people into refugee camps throwing the nation into a humanitarian disaster.
Nations of Latin America have a shared symbiotic relations with the United States that dates back to the years of Spanish Colonization of the New World Society.
The evolution of modern states in Latin America has been a constant changing phenomenon based on the dynamics of the American people.
For instance, several states of the United States of America such as Texas and California were excised from Mexico to become part of the United States.
Columbia as well as Venezuela were deals to seal up the British colonization of the United States and Canada.
In one way or the other, there are strings of agreements and articles of understanding that binds the Latin American Nations with the United States of America.
One of the biggest exports of the Latin American Nations is the exports of drugs and narcotics but more importantly, the growing exports of oil.
Since the 1980s , there has been a growing influence of the expansion of China across the Latin American countries with both strategic economic and geographical implications for the United States of America.
While China fast expands in Latin America on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, China and Russia has consistently maintained an aggressive policy of containment against United States expansion in the far Pacific Oceans through constant military drills to wards off Americas presence.
China and Russia maintains the same posture using radical countries like Iran and Yemen in the Gulf of Aden to fight off United States economic and security concerns in the Middle East.
Inside America, Democrats and Republicans are locked up in a vicious heated debate on how to respect sovereignty right of a nation, non domestic interference, issues of human rights based on international principles and practices, while China, Russia as well as radical political Islamic groups, expands imperial tentacles, destroy civilizations across Africa, decimates population across the world, above all, relegates the United States as the appendage of China and Russia in world politics and international relations.
There is no doubt that these are the defining issues of World War III, namely, radical islamic terrorism, the politics of who control global oil resources and wealth and the concerns geo strategic politics and security.
How nations of the world including Nigeria align themselves within these trajectories, will shape and define the global configuration in the unfolding Third World War scenario.
Nations across the world are being recruited into the unfolding scenario of World War III, either deliberately or ignorantly.
This informs my own perspective of doing this piece and write.
Is there a threat of radical extremist political Islam or the threat strategic geography of the Sahel and the Gulf of Guinea to the survival of Nigeria.
The answers are obvious but I do know many Nigerians, most especially the nations ruling political class prefer to play the ostrich with these issues. Nigeria is under a near state collapse under a weak leadership that is beginning to experience the disintegration of the nation.
It is arising from the weak leadership structure and their poor response to the security and economic challenges of the nation that most people sees hope and redemption in a Pax Americana. There is no justification for a Pax Americana both in Venezuela and perhaps Nigeria, if the political leadership can deliver on good governance and strategic security.
Above all, the bi polar bellicosity between the United States, China and Russia has far reaching effects on how Nigeria is recruited into the global economy.
The world should remember that President Donald Trump had a long industrious background as a capitalist business man who believes in the ideas of Western Liberal Capitalism. It is on the basis of these ideas and values that the American people voted him into power.
Trump has his version of human rights and rules of international engagement but more importantly, the vision to consolidate on the ideas of Lenin's theory of the highest stage of capitalism.
Uji, Wilfred
Comments
January 10, 2026
Prof, history has been unflinchingly consistent when it comes to humanity’s insatiable impulse to control, dominate, and subordinate others. From empire to empire, era to era, this tendency has neither disappeared nor softened; if anything, it has merely mutated—changing language, tactics, and ideological clothing while retaining the same underlying logic of power. Against this historical backdrop, I largely agree with your central thesis, particularly your realism in situating global politics outside the romanticism of ideological purity.
International relations, as you rightly argue, is driven far less by moral absolutism than by power, proximity, security interests, and the preservation of spheres of influence. History repeatedly shows that nations which fail to internalize this logic often become laboratories for external experimentation rather than authors of their own destiny.
Where Africa’s tragedy becomes even more pronounced is in the structural weakness occasioned by its fragmentation. The fractured relationships among the 54 African states have made it remarkably easy for external powers—whether the United States, China, Russia, or even the Arab giants—to keep “playing chess” with individual African countries rather than confronting Africa as a consolidated geopolitical force. Unlike Latin America, which at least shares historical, economic, and strategic linkages with the United States, Africa negotiates from a position of chronic disunity, mutual suspicion, and competing elite interests.
This disunity has rendered the continent perpetually vulnerable to divide-and-rule tactics perfected by imperial and neo-imperial powers. While China, Russia, and the United States think in terms of hemispheres, buffers, and long-term strategic depth, Africa continues to think—and sadly act—within narrow national silos imposed by colonial cartography. The result is that African states become proxy arenas where external powers test influence, extract resources, and recruit local elites into global rivalries that ultimately do not serve African peoples.
Had Africa overcome this imposed fragmentation through genuine political and economic unification—as consistently advocated by sincere Pan-Africanists like Kwame Nkrumah—questions of a Pax Americana, Pax Sinica, or Pax Russica would be far less consequential. A unified Africa with a common currency, coordinated foreign policy, and shared military doctrine would fundamentally alter the global balance of power. No external actor would so easily isolate, sanction, or destabilize an African state in the manner Venezuela has experienced under Maduro.
Nigeria’s situation is particularly instructive. As Africa’s most populous country and one of its largest economies, Nigeria ought to function as a stabilizing continental anchor. Yet, as you rightly note, weak leadership, poor governance, and an incoherent security strategy have pushed the country perilously close to state fragility. In such conditions, external “solutions” begin to appear attractive—not because they are just, but because domestic leadership has failed to deliver legitimacy, security, and prosperity.
The lesson from Venezuela, therefore, transcends Trump, Maduro, or ideological contests between left and right. It is a warning to weak states operating within a ruthless international system. When governance collapses internally and alliances remain weak externally, sovereignty becomes negotiable. Nigeria—and indeed Africa—must recognize that moral arguments alone do not protect nations; power, unity, and strategic clarity do.
Until Africa resolves its internal contradictions and learns to speak with one voice, its states will continue to be recruited—deliberately or ignorantly—into the unfolding architecture of a potential Third World War shaped by energy politics, extremist violence, and great-power rivalry. The antidote is not blind alignment with any global bloc, but the long-delayed project of African unification, strategic self-awareness, and leadership grounded in competence rather than denial.
In that sense, your intervention is both timely and necessary. It reminds us that the gravest danger confronting Africa is not external ambition alone, but the internal weakness that persistently invites it.
Uchenna Umez
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