Venezuela, Maduro, ‘Call of Duty’ and the United States’ soft power

In 2013, Call of Duty: Ghosts, the 10th installment (they are now on the 22nd) of the first-person shooter video game was released. The story presented the Federation—a fictional alliance of South American countries whose capital was Caracas—as a military superpower that becomes the main enemy of the United States. At the time, this narrative choice sparked considerable controversy in Venezuela, where the newly elected president, Nicolás Maduro, considered that the game was associating his country with a global military threat and symbolically positioning it as an antagonist. Clearly, the game remains relevant today due to its storyline and its connection to recent world events.

Conspiracy theorists might argue that the Call of Duty saga participates in predictive programming, a term used to describe the supposed practice of introducing ideas or narratives into cultural products (films, TV series, advertising, music and so on) in order to psychologically prepare the population for future events. But the truth is, it’s perhaps more useful to invoke Occam’s razor: given the thoroughness with which the Activision saga has blended reality and fiction, it was only a matter of time before one of its games predicted a future war or military event.

There haven’t been other controversies comparable to what happened in Venezuela with Call of Duty: Ghosts, but other installments in the series (such as Modern Warfare, Black Ops and Warzone) have generated controversy in other countries or geopolitical contexts. And, of course, it doesn’t end with Call of Duty. Battlefield, Medal of Honor, Rainbow Six… many of these games—or at least some of their installments—adopt a clearly pro-military tone and often collaborate with former members of the special forces (this reporter has interviewed some of them). America’s Army deserves a special mention, as it is a video game developed directly by the U.S. Army as a communication and recruitment tool.

Obviously, this doesn’t end with video games: cinema has followed the same path in films like Top Gun, 13 Hours, Black Hawk Down, American Sniper... or directly with Chuck Norris’ Delta Force (about the elite unit that was in fact responsible for capturing Maduro). If we wanted to get lyrical, we could say that these products represent an intermediate point between pure military propaganda and fictionalized military thrillers, but if we move beyond meticulous analysis, it’s clear that they all share the same underlying structure: transforming complex geopolitical conflicts into spectacles of immediate and frenetic action in which (forcible) intervention by the U.S. is necessary and morally justified by the circumstances. In other words, these kinds of creations are the cultural ambassadors of military power “made in the USA.”

It remains to be seen whether Maduro surrendered covertly or if we are in the presence of the most brilliant military operation in U.S. history, but there aren’t many other options besides these two. And if it’s the latter, it perfectly aligns with the image of strength the United States wants to project to the world with its soft power. In fact, many of the screenshots from the aforementioned games exactly match what is happening now in Caracas: localized attacks with few casualties, elite forces infiltrating silently into hostile territory, and surgical extraction operations. Maduro was removed from a heavily guarded “military fortress” in the heart of Caracas, declared Donald Trump on Saturday. It’s clear we’ll end up seeing a first-person video of bearded men dragging the Venezuelan leader out of bed, because this inevitable visual conception of the conflict has been surgically implanted in the retinas of new generations for years: everyone under 40 knows what it’s like to play a Call of Duty game. The kinetic realization of the game is already a prophetic warning to the world: now we all know exactly what awaits the enemies of Freedom.

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