he Jan. 3 United States military operation in Venezuela may prompt a swift and confident response from many commentators: This, we may be told, is a “realist moment”. The phrase travels easily. It sounds sober, unsentimental and mature.
Yet the depth and relevance with which it is deployed should give us pause. In an increasingly uncertain world, making sense of dramatic events is essential, but relying on shorthand theoretical labels may obscure more than it clarifies.
The uncertainty we face today is not limited to shifts in interstate relations. Global politics is unfolding through the interaction of technological acceleration, industrial and supply-chain restructuring and changing state-society relations across regions.
Military power is increasingly intertwined with surveillance systems, energy markets, digital infrastructures and domestic political legitimacy. Therefore, events such as those in Venezuela cannot be understood simply as force crossing borders. They are expressions of deeper transformations in how authority, vulnerability and exception operate in a tightly interconnected system. Explaining them requires analytical care, not conceptual shortcuts.
International relations theories are analytical tools, not moral verdicts or conclusions. Realism, in particular, is a broad paradigm encompassing diverse and sometimes conflicting theories. To label an event “realist” without specifying which causal logic is at work, whether deterrence, balance of power calculation, domestic coalition politics or leader psychology, does little analytical work. It compresses complexity rather than explaining it.
At its core, the realist paradigm rests on the assumption of international anarchy, the absence of overarching authority among formally equal states. This assumption sits uneasily with episodes like Venezuela, where hierarchy, not anarchy, appears to structure outcomes.
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More importantly, such labeling performs a social and political function. Declaring an event a “realist moment” can act as a psychological shield. It reassures us that hierarchy and coercion are simply how the world works. In doing so, it distances us from uncomfortable questions about legality, legitimacy and consequence. Realism, used this way, becomes an anesthetic: It dulls critical reflection at precisely the moment when reflection is most necessary.