Hands off Venezuela, no to Trump’s gangster invasion. Join the protests, condemn the US’s kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro
Donald Trump has declared that US forces have “captured” Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro after airstrikes on the Latin American country. It is a brazen and nakedly imperialist attack to overthrow the Venezuelan government, unleash violence and make Latin America a playground for US corporations.
He said the US “carried out a large-scale strike against Venezuela” and “captured and flown out of the country” Maduro and his wife.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio says Maduro, who had a $50 million bounty on his head, will stand trial.
At a press conference today, Trump stated he will “run” Venezuela” for now, and that “We’re going to make sure that country is run properly.”
After being a critic of the unpopular “forever wars,” the invasion of Iraq, and nation building, Trump is now adopting that strategy in the Western hemisphere, and said “we’re not afraid of boots on the ground.”
The air strikes on the capital Caracas and kidnapping of Maduro are a significant escalation in Trump’s plan to reassert US control of Latin America. His administration has been building up US forces in the Caribbean under the guise of targeting “narco boats” and demanding “regime change” in Venezuela.
The US has tried to force regime change in Venezuela since Maduro’s predecessor, socialist Hugo Chavez, was elected in 1999. This included a notorious coup attempt in 2002 that was defeated through mass mobilizations in less than 48 hours.
The US has intervened elsewhere in Latin America, backing coup attempts and reactionary forces. But this is the first direct military intervention since George Bush Senior removed Manuel Noriega, once the US puppet dictator in Panama, in 1989.
What’s behind the escalation?
This aggressive act is one suggested in Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) published in December.
Here, the White House outlined a new strategy to combat the decline of US hegemony, its ability to dominate the world.
The document spoke about how “the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself”. It said that it was “dropping America’s misguided experiment of hectoring” states in the Middle East “into abandoning their historic forms of government”.
But it didn’t mark some end to US imperialism—far from it. It was a shift to more openly predatory imperialism and a renewed focus on dominating what’s known as the Western Hemisphere—the Americas and Greenland.
So the National Security Strategy spoke about a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. First declared in 1828, it said that Latin America was part of the US sphere of influence and warned European imperialist powers to stay out.
Today, the US warned, “We want a Hemisphere that is free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets.”
Oil Reserves
Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves on the planet. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated 303 billion barrels worth of crude, or about a fifth of global reserves. After the US seized Venezuelan tankers last month, Trump quipped of the oil “we’re going to keep it.” He recently complained that Venezuelan nationalization had “stolen” oil assets from the US, and in the press conference today he said US oil companies will be reorganizing Venezuela’s oil infrastructure.
That partly builds on previous US administrations. General Laura Richardson, who headed US Southern Command between 2021 and 2024, said, “Our competitors know that, our adversaries know that this region is so rich in resources it’s off the charts rich.
“60 percent of the world’s lithium is in the region, you have heavy crude, you have light sweet crude, you have rare earth elements.
“You have the Amazon which is called the lungs of the world, you have 31 percent of the world’s fresh water here in this region. And there are adversaries that are taking advantage of this region every single day right in our neighborhood.”
The main competitor of the US is China, which has built close economic ties with Latin American states including Venezuela. While the National Security Strategy massively played down the US focus on China, the inter-imperialist competition between them still shapes policy.
The US hopes that regime change in Venezuela would stamp its control across the continent and send a chill through all those who want to challenge it.
Rights During Wartime
Trump’s saber rattling about drugs, and now illegal invasion and intervention of Venezuela can also be seen in the context of the growing moves towards authoritarianism at home.
We are not living under fascism or the one-person dictatorship Trump would like, but Trump’s executive branch is consolidating power, the war on immigrants is normalizing aggressive Federal intervention at home, and Trump is rhetorically demonizing his political enemies. All this is being resisted, especially in defense of immigrants, and even the courts have ruled against Trump’s deployment of the National Guard. Many in Trump’s circle have talked of enacting the Insurrection Act. This is easier in time of war, and the nationalist fervor Trump is pushing.
In US history, escalated attacks on the left, immigrant workers, and basic human rights have been connected with wartime measures, from the WWI red-scare to the internment of Japanese Americans in WWII, to Vietnam era COINTELPRO.
Venezuela
Venezuela was a beacon for the left, progressive movements and resistance to imperialism in the 2000s.
Chavez came to power in 1991 amid a popular resistance to neoliberalism. In 1989, the Caracazo Uprising saw a wave of resistance among workers and the poor to a “structural adjustment package” demanded by the IMF loan shark.
However, while Chavismo undeniably brought improvements for poor and working class Venezuelans, it never actually abolished capitalist rule, and the Venezuelan ruling class never accepted the legitimacy of Chavez or workers and the poor having a say in politics.
But even after Chavez was elected, there was still a high degree of popular mobilization and organization. This defeated the US-backed coup and Venezuelan bosses’ attempts at sabotage, such as the oil bosses’ lockout that threatened to crash the economy in 2003.
Due to the limits of Chavez’s “21st century socialism”, many of its gains were unable to survive far past his death in 2013, and Maduro has only been a faint echo of his predecessor. In place of the personal charisma—rather than robust structures of workers’ power—that held Chavismo together, an unaccountable bureaucracy and corruption grew around the ruling PSUV party, while ordinary Venezuelans faced a growing social crisis.
This demoralized and demobilized the PSUV’s working-class base compared to the height of the “Bolivarian process” in the 2000s.
Demonstrations
In the US many of the emergency demonstrations will be built by groups whose politics support Maduro uncritically. These mobilizations should still be supported, by socialists, anti-war campaigners, and others. We can agree with them on the need to oppose US imperialism, in general and in this case, while strongly disagreeing with the idea that the Venezuelan regime is a model of socialism.
There can be no equivocation and hand-wringing on the left and in the labor movement. American military intervention is never altruistic. The overthrow of Maduro at the hands of the US will only set back the fight for liberation in Venezuela and across Latin America.
The kidnapping of Maduro and his wife is a war crime and a prelude to vicious attacks on people in Venezuela.
The main enemy is at home—in the White House and Pentagon. American imperialism is a bipartisan project, and we can’t sit back and rely on Congressional Democrats to rein Trump in. Take to the streets: show solidarity with people in Venezuela resisting US imperialism, maintain the right to protest, and condemn Trump’s gangster invasion.
Adapted by Marx21 US editorial board from article by Tomáš Tengely-Evans in Socialist Worker, UK: https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/hands-off-venezuela-no-to-trumps-invasion/
Marx21 US 