Since this article was published the US has stepped up attacks and seizure of oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela.
The world is following with horror as Donald Trump makes one announcement after another, gloating over unleashing a barrage of extra-judicial killings in the Caribbean. Under the guise of fighting Venezuelan “narco-terrorists,” the White House Twitter page gleefully declared in all caps “WE ARE HUNTING YOU!” while sharing a video of the US military blowing up a boat, killing all on board.
Even sections of the ruling class have started to raise concerns after the Washington Post reported an incident where the military, after disabling a ship instead of destroying it, carried out a second strike to kill the survivors. Time magazine chronicled the mental gymnastics Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has gone into surrounding the “second strike” incident. On September 3, the day after the attack, Hegseth proudly proclaimed on Fox & Friends, “I watched it live.” On September 28, after the Washington Post report, he dismissed the whole incident as “fake news.” Finally, on December 2, he decided that he did watch the sinking, but only for an hour, and pinned responsibility on Admiral Frank M. Bradley.
The killings are only one part of a massive military buildup directed against Venezuela. In August, the USS Gerald Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, was redirected to the Caribbean. Previously the ship was stationed in the Mediterranean to provide support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. In October, Trump authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela. By the end of November, Trump instructed airlines to consider the airspace above and around Venezuela closed. [On December 12, a JetBlue flight had to take emergency action to avoid a mid-air collision with a US military aircraft.]
The Trump administration’s criminal actions are definitely not motivated by any genuine concern about drugs or terrorism. They’re a naked expression of imperialist sabre-rattling that’s part of a global trend from Ukraine to Gaza to the South China Sea. The working class, in the US and Venezuela, has nothing to gain from this war drive, and an international anti-war movement is urgently needed.
Lies, Hypocrisy & “Narco-Terrorism”
Trump’s claims about fighting “narco-terrorism” are a melding of 1980s “war on drugs” propaganda with 2000s “war on terror” propaganda. Both of these were successors to the “war on communism” during the Cold War as justification for endless war and suspension of civil liberties. Trump declaring the “Cartel de los Soles” a terrorist organization led by Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro flies in the face of evidence (it’s not even a real criminal group), but it serves to provide moral justification for murder and imperialist aggression.
In a press conference defending the killings, Trump said, “Every boat that we knock out we save 25,000 American lives.” Drug overdoses are a serious problem, with the CDC reporting over 80,000 deaths in 2024. But, even if we take Trump at his word that the destroyed boats actually were drug traffickers, Trump’s “25,000 American deaths” per boat destroyed was pulled out of thin air.
Meanwhile, Trump’s anti-drug credentials are called into question by his pardoning of Honduras’s former president Juan Orlando Hernández. Hernández was steeped in drug trafficking, which he used to prop himself in power. But, unlike Maduro, Hernández is a right-wing loyalist to US imperialism, which earns him special favors from Trump.
US Imperialism Reclaims Its Backyard
The Trump administration’s aggression against Venezuela isn’t about drugs, terrorism, or democracy. It’s about reasserting US imperialism. With the decline of the neoliberal era, US imperialism’s status as sole world superpower has given way to an inter-imperialist conflict between the US and China. As US imperialism has rushed to reassert itself, Trump has been the crudest representative of those ambitions. For him, Latin America must sit firmly in the US sphere of influence, and losing ground to China in his “backyard” is unacceptable.
Following his threat of annexing Greenland and retaking control of the Panama Canal, and alongside his attacks on Venezuela, Trump called Colombia’s left-populist leader Gustavo Petro an “illegal drug dealer” and suspended aid to the country. He threatened to raise tariffs against Brazil as political retribution for putting supporters of a far-right coup attempt on trial. He interfered in elections in Argentina and Honduras by delivering or withholding aid on condition that his preferred candidates win.
Beyond protecting US imperialist interests against rival imperialism, Trump is concerned with beating down working-class struggle in Latin America. Historically, Venezuela has been a thorn in the side of US imperialism since the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez. Backed by a wave of popular anger, Chávez carried out significant reforms, fended off a US-backed coup attempt in 2002, and kicked off the “Bolivarian Revolution,” one of the first major social struggles after the collapse of Stalinism.
The Trump administration, especially Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are tied up with Venezuela’s far-right exile community, who are eager to come back to power and reclaim their privileges. Far-right leader and ironic Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado dedicated her Peace Prize to Trump and praised his extra-judicial killings. As much as Machado talks about democracy, she supported the 2002 coup attempt against Chávez.
Unfortunately, rather than empowering the masses who brought him to power, Chávez and Maduro after him relied on wielding the Venezuelan capitalist state apparatus to fend off reaction. Especially under Maduro, the “Bolivarian Revolution” has decayed under the blows of sanctions, inflation, austerity, and democratic backsliding. Without a well-organized working-class challenge, Machado has become the face of opposition to Maduro. Among Maduro’s many crimes is that he’s allowed the far-right coup plotters of the Chávez years to rebrand themselves as democrats.
Under Maduro, Venezuela has seen a major refugee crisis, becoming the second-largest source of migrants across the US-Mexico border after Mexico itself. Many desperate Venezuelan migrants may have illusions in Machado or in the viability of US-backed regime change. But Trump has no interest in their well-being and has used the same “narco-terrorism” propaganda to crack down on Venezuelan immigrants in the US. Only independent working-class struggle can show the way forward—in Venezuela, in the US, and throughout the region.
Build A Mass Anti-War Movement
In 2024, Trump cynically campaigned on the promise to stop “endless wars.” In power he has bombed Iran and is now escalating military confrontation with Venezuela. The confrontation in Venezuela is part of a new theater in a wider inter-imperialist conflict alongside the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere. Stopping Trump requires building a global, working-class, anti-war movement.
Especially after the Washington Post report on the September 2 attack, Trump’s campaign of extra-judicial killings have sparked opposition from Democrats and even some Republicans. This reached the point where Trump threatened Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) with execution for making a video encouraging soldiers to disobey illegal orders.
However, the Democrats are just as implicated in imperialist intrigues as Trump. Hillary Clinton defended the 2009 coup in Honduras that eventually led to Trump’s buddy Hernández coming to power. Trump’s extra-judicial killings are continuing a tradition going back to the Obama and Bush administrations and before.
Stopping imperialist aggression requires a movement independent of the parties of big business. We saw examples of this in the Palestine solidarity movement, from the encampments in the US to the general strike in Italy. In Germany, there’s a growing movement against conscription and militarization. These are the types of struggles we need against Trump’s attacks on Venezuela. Ultimately, we need to fight for socialism, for the common interests of working-class people all around the world, to end the endless drive towards war.
