Respond to imperialist attacks and threats with workers’ mobilisation, international solidarity and the struggle for a genuine socialist alternative in Venezuela and throughout Latin America.
André Ferrari, Liberdade Socialismo e Revolução (ISA in Brazil)
(This article was first published on 3 November 2025)
Donald Trump’s second term has reignited some of the most aggressive and truculent elements of US imperialist policy towards Latin America. Speaking bluntly, US Secretary of War Peter Hegseth announced in an interview with Fox News, referring to the region: ‘With President Trump, we are going to reclaim our backyard.’
Hegseth criticised the Obama and Biden administrations for allowing rival powers, such as China, to advance in the region, threatening US hegemony. In the recent past, US interference in what its ruling class has always considered to be its Latin American ‘sphere of influence’ has been disguised by more discreet and covert rhetoric. Obama even cynically announced the end of the “Monroe Doctrine” which, since the 19th century, had preached ‘America for Americans’ in order to reject the influence of other powers in the region. Joe Biden, for his part, went so far as to say that Latin America was not the US’s backyard, but its front garden, as if that were much better.
Economic and political subordination to imperialism, with the US playing a leading role especially since the 20th century, is a structural part of Latin America’s peripheral and dependent capitalist development. The struggle against this subordination, combined with the struggle for the social and political emancipation of workers and oppressed peoples in the region, has always marked the history of Latin America, with its unfinished revolutionary processes, unstable political regimes and episodes of counter-revolutionary reaction supported by imperialism and local elites.
In addition to this structural subordination, the new offensive of US imperialism under Trump in Latin America has manifested itself in the trade war, tougher economic sanctions on several countries, political pressure on governments, and open encouragement and support for the worst of the extreme right in the region. But this offensive took on a qualitatively more serious character when Trump mobilised warships to the southern Caribbean, off the Venezuelan coast, and began to carry out military actions against vessels in the region under the pretext of combating drug trafficking. Trump did this along with explicit verbal threats of direct military intervention in Venezuela.
To date, there have been 16 deadly attacks on vessels in the Caribbean, near Venezuela, and also off the Colombian Pacific coast, killing at least 64 people so far. There are two survivors (one Colombian and one Ecuadorian) and possibly a third from a recent attack. The attacks took place without a court order, without any legal basis, and without any proof of allegations that the people killed were working for drug cartels, despite all of Trump’s cynical propaganda saying that these attacks, by preventing drugs from entering the US, have “saved thousands of lives”.
The escalation of US threats and actions in Latin America has mainly come since August, when Trump signed a secret executive order (decree) authorising direct military operations by the US armed forces in Latin American territory under the pretext of combating what they call ‘narco-terrorism’.
Since then, the US has sent ten warships to the Venezuelan coast in the Caribbean, including three destroyers, an amphibious assault ship, a missile cruiser and a nuclear-powered submarine, as well as around ten thousand soldiers. More recently, Trump ordered the world’s largest and most modern aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, to be sent to the Caribbean. It is expected to travel from the Mediterranean Sea, near the conflict-ridden Middle East region, to the Caribbean, highlighting the importance Trump attaches to military action in Latin America.
In early October, just before Trump and Hegseth met with the entire US military leadership at the Pentagon, the US president made statements raising the possibility of a military intervention on the ground in Venezuela, supposedly to combat drug cartels. Trump later openly revealed that he had authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations within Venezuelan territory.
Shortly thereafter, Trump responded to criticism from Gustavo Petro by accusing the Colombian president of being a drug trafficker and repeated against Colombia the threat of direct intervention he had made to Venezuela. In the Venezuelan case, President Nicolás Maduro is formally considered by the US to be a drug cartel leader, and in August, the reward for any information leading to his capture was raised to 40 million dollars.
Amid the clash with Gustavo Petro, Trump also threatened to impose new tariffs on Colombian exports to the US. This tariff increase for Colombia has not yet been confirmed, but it represents a significant threat. Colombia is one of the few countries in South America that still has the US as its main trading partner, accounting for about 27% of its exports. Trump’s announcement of tariff increases earlier this year had already caused a crisis in relations between the two countries, with Petro seeking alternative markets for Colombian exports and promoting the country’s accession to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The false pretext of the ‘war on drugs’
Trump’s policy of waging war on ‘narco-terrorism’ is an important part of his domestic propaganda in the US and, at the same time, a pretext for pressuring, threatening and even intervening in other countries. There is nothing new about this stance. After being launched by Nixon in the early 1970s, the so-called ‘war on drugs’ in the US took on a more decisive geopolitical character under Reagan in the 1980s, intensifying in the 1990s under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
In Latin America in particular, the ‘war on drugs’ has replaced the ‘communist threat’ that previously served to promote and justify interventions, coups and military dictatorships in the region. The ‘war on terror,’ especially after the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, was also instrumentalised for imperialist purposes, particularly in the Middle East and Central Asia. The combination of drug trafficking and terrorism in Trump’s aggressive rhetoric in Latin America, while also maintaining an element of ‘anti-communist’ demagogy, fulfils the same role today.
The social and public health effects of drug use in the US, particularly in light of the growth in the use of opioids such as fentanyl, are real and should not be underestimated. Similarly, drug trafficking by large drug cartels in many Latin American countries represents a nightmare of violence, pain and suffering for millions of people in the region.
But decades of the ‘war on drugs’ promoted by US imperialism and its lackeys in Latin America have been utterly incapable of solving the problem, having only exacerbated the situation of violence, repression, mass incarceration, racism, human rights violations, corruption and attacks on the national sovereignty of countries in the region.
With Trump’s encouragement, the fight against so-called ‘narco-terrorism’ has become a banner for the entire Latin American far right to defend and promote authoritarianism, repression and violence in their countries. The example of Bukele in El Salvador and those who try to follow him, such as Noboa in Ecuador, serves as a reference for far-right propaganda in several countries in favour of a heavy hand in repression and authoritarianism.
The recent massacre of more than 120 people (black and poor) in a single day in the Alemão and Penha complexes, large favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, by police forces under the command of Governor Claudio Castro, is a direct result of the murderous and ineffective logic of the ‘war on drugs’. The issue of crime and urban violence is being manipulated by the Brazilian far right in an attempt to recover politically after the setbacks it suffered with the arrest of former President Jair Bolsonaro and the negative effects of the tariffs imposed on Brazil by Trump. Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, son of Jair Bolsonaro, even argued that the US should drop bombs off the coast of Rio de Janeiro in the same way it is doing in the southern Caribbean.
In Colombia, the far right is trying to use the same tactics to build a viable electoral alternative to whatever ‘progressive’ candidate is supported by Gustavo Petro in the 2026 elections. Colombia’s history is marked by the role of drug trafficking and the corruption and repression linked to it, which are structural elements of the country’s dependent, peripheral capitalism which is incapable of absorbing even the most minimal social reforms.
The so-called “Plan Colombia”, implemented by the US since the 2000s in agreement with Colombian governments that were lackeys of imperialism, is a prime example of the ineffectiveness of the “war on drugs”. The emphasis on extreme militarised repression, the forced eradication of coca cultivation affecting small farmers and causing damage to the environment and health due, for example, to the use of glyphosate (a carcinogenic substance), has not come close to solving the problem.
In a speech at the UN shortly after taking office, Gustavo Petro said that the ‘war on drugs’ had failed and ended up causing a veritable ‘genocide that cost the lives of a million Latin Americans.’ Despite the fact that he has not actually managed to promote a structural transformation and an effective alternative to capitalism in his country, Petro’s characterisation reflects reality.
With regard to Venezuela, it is clear that Trump’s objectives are openly political and aimed at the overthrow of Nicolás Maduro and the current Venezuelan political regime. Unlike Colombia, Venezuela does not play a significant role in drug trafficking to the US. The UN World Drug Report 2025 estimates that only 5% of the cocaine produced in Colombia attempts to leave that country via Venezuela, with the vast majority leaving via the Pacific.
Venezuela as a target of US imperialism
The signs that US imperialism has chosen Venezuela as a priority target at this time are evident, even though Trump’s vacillating stance on this and other issues has led to confusion and misinformation.
At the beginning of his second term, Trump established negotiations with the Venezuelan regime through special envoy Richard Grennel, who met with Maduro at the Miraflores Palace and, with a more pragmatic stance, declared: ‘diplomacy is back’.
As a result, Venezuela began receiving planes carrying deportees from the United States, and the regime released six American citizens who had been imprisoned in Venezuela on terrorism charges. Negotiations were also held on whether to continue licences for American oil companies, such as Chevron, to operate in Venezuela. These companies tried to pressure US authorities to take a more pragmatic stance towards the Venezuelan regime.
After that, however, the tougher stance represented by Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, began to prevail, culminating in the most recent actions and threats. If any diplomacy had returned, it was gunboat diplomacy. Rubio’s priority has always been regime change in Venezuela, either from within or outside the institutions, through extreme external pressure, causing divisions in the Venezuelan state apparatus (including the armed forces) and favouring the ultra-right internal opposition.
This line is close to the coup policy that Trump tried to implement in 2019, during his first term. At the time, the US recognised the then president of the Venezuelan National Assembly, the right-wing Juan Guaidó, as the self-proclaimed president of the country. At the same time, they confiscated all Venezuelan assets in the US, imposed harsh sanctions and promoted a political, economic and diplomatic siege on Venezuela.
At that time, Trump even raised the possibility of a military incursion into Venezuelan territory in support of a coup d’état, with the help of far-right governments in neighbouring countries, such as Bolsonaro’s Brazil and Ivan Duque’s Colombia. The plan, however, failed.
Despite the erosion and fragility of Maduro’s regime, the government managed to maintain control of the armed forces (through concessions and privileges but also intense repression of potential dissidents), the state bureaucracy and the (always unstable) support of sectors of the bourgeoisie, especially those that were formed and strengthened around the regime (the so-called “boliburguesía”). Another key factor is that the historical social base of “Chavismo” among the poor and the working class, even though dissatisfied with Maduro and unhappy with the social and economic crisis, continued to reject the far right as an alternative.
Then, with Biden as US president, a more pragmatic stance began to be tested out in the face of the failure of the coup policy, the worsening situation of Venezuelan refugees, and also the new scenario created by the war in Ukraine and its repercussions on the oil market. Around the “Barbados Agreements”, some of the sanctions were suspended and US imperialism had expectations that it could promote a change of government without an institutional rupture, through the far-right opposition in the elections. But this expectation soon fell apart. The announcement of a new victory for Maduro in the July 2024 elections was not recognised by the US.
With Trump’s return to the presidency, those who advocate a more pragmatic line have been losing ground to more aggressive and interventionist policies. But even among the representatives of the hardline wing of imperialism, there are fluctuations and debates about how far to go, including the question of a direct military attack or intervention in Venezuela.
How far will the attacks on Venezuela go?
Attacks on vessels off the Venezuelan coast are likely to continue in the coming period. They serve as propaganda within the US and to put pressure on Maduro, promoting the idea that his regime is unsustainable and thus favouring dissidents and the far-right opposition. They also serve as a show of force by the US in the Latin American context, but also in the face of adversaries in the inter-imperialist dispute with China and its allies.
Despite the threats and aggressive rhetoric, a ground invasion is not the only possible or even a likely path for US imperialism at this time.
The last time the US used troops to invade a Latin American country was in Panama in December 1989, in an operation led by George Bush (senior), with the aim of overthrowing his former ally and former CIA collaborator, Manuel Noriega. The justification for the invasion was Noriega’s connection to drug trafficking, but it is clear that control of the Panama Canal was at the heart of the matter. The US wanted to ensure that the transition process that would return formal control of the Canal to Panama did not pose any risk to its actual control and influence.
The invasion of Panama by US troops was not supported by the UN or even the OAS (Organization of American States) and was carried out from US military bases in the country. Military and political installations, airports and other non-military buildings were bombed, followed by ground attacks. It is estimated that around 3,000 people died in these attacks and in the incursions by US troops into working-class neighbourhoods.
A few hours after the invasion, the candidate who would have won the elections rigged by Noriega that same year, Guillermo Endara, was sworn in as the new president at a US military base. Noriega eventually surrendered a few weeks later, in January 1990. The political situation in Panama then normalised but under US tutelage.
The similarities between the case of Panama in 1989/90 and Venezuela today exist and refer more to the modus operandi of US imperialism in these situations (accusations of links to drug trafficking, allegations of electoral fraud, CIA involvement, etc.). But they do not go much further than that. Today’s Venezuela and Noriega’s Panama represent different scenarios.
Firstly, the strong military, political, economic, etc. presence of the US in Panama made it much easier to achieve its objectives quickly and efficiently. In Venezuela, direct military intervention would be more difficult and the outcome uncertain, despite the overwhelming military superiority of the US and the weaknesses of the Venezuelan regime. The lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq show how complex these invasions are and how they can turn into a quagmire from which it is difficult for the aggressor power to extricate itself.
Beyond the purely military elements, there are social and political factors that would carry enormous weight in the event of a US invasion. As much as Maduro is worn down and has to resort to repression as a way to stay in power, he still has a reserve of support, and there is also enormous rejection among broad social sectors critical of Maduro of the idea of direct interference by US imperialism.
A US invasion of Venezuela would not be an operation lasting a few days or weeks, as it was in Panama. Even if the plan is a quick incursion to capture Maduro and some members of the government, it would not be so easy to do so and disassociate oneself from the consequences that an intervention would generate.
This would likely provoke internal resistance and commotion throughout South America, with even broader repercussions. A situation of civil war and armed resistance against foreign occupation would have a direct impact on neighbouring countries, such as Colombia. This would put pressure on the governments of the region and further polarise the political scene. Not to mention the humanitarian consequences of such a scenario, with a new wave of refugees from the crisis and war, for example.
Furthermore, there is currently no public support in the US for another invasion by US troops, as a result of the failures and high costs of operations in the Middle East and Central Asia. It is important to note that Trump’s propaganda has emphasised his role as a peacemaker and his opposition to ongoing wars (actually aiming to maintain a focus on preparing for confrontation with China).
While the landing of US troops on Venezuelan territory does not seem to be the most likely scenario, this does not rule out – quite the contrary – indirect attacks or air strikes, without putting boots directly on the ground. It is worth remembering that Trump himself recently promoted such actions in the bombings of Iran in the so-called 12-day war.
The launch of missiles and bombs via drones over Venezuelan territory is a real possibility depending on the escalation of the conflict. Its objective would not necessarily be to prepare for a ground invasion, but to destabilise the regime, reinforce the feeling that there is no future for Maduro, and thus encourage dissent and pave the way for a coup and a new government headed by the far right.
The pathetic awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the far-right leader, coup plotter and lackey of US imperialism, Maria Corina Machado, is used as a way of lending respectability to potential alternatives to power in Venezuela, despite the divisions within the Venezuelan right and its completely degenerate character.
Maduro’s policies do not serve the resistance to imperialism
In the face of US attacks and threats, Nicolás Maduro publicly presents himself as a hero of the resistance against imperialism. He tries to use the symbolic elements that have historically been built by Chavismo, even though they have little basis in reality today.
Symbolically, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, the government’s strongman, appeared publicly on TV with a book on Ho Chi Minh’s military thinking, conveying the idea that they are effectively preparing for resistance. In reality, the Maduro government’s hallmark is the reversal of the gains of the revolutionary process, which was triggered mainly by the popular uprising that defeated the coup attempt against Hugo Chávez in 2002.
Maduro did not confront the sanctions and attacks of imperialism and the deep economic and social crisis by deepening the revolutionary process in an anti-capitalist and socialist direction, overcoming the limits of the period when Chávez was in power. On the contrary, he promoted setbacks, made concessions to foreign capital, sought to forge an alliance with big national capital, guaranteed privileges for the high civil and military bureaucracy, sacrificing the people and the working class with cuts, extremely low wages and no pay rises, privatisations, and repressed any form of resistance and popular struggle that escaped his control.
When dealing with Trump specifically, alongside a rhetoric of resistance, Maduro in practice tries to convince imperialism that his government can guarantee what Trump wants – oil, minerals, rare earths and openness for big foreign capital to profit on Venezuelan soil.
According to the international press, Maduro has offered to open all existing and future oil and gold projects to US companies and give them preferential contracts. In addition, he has committed to diverting the flow of Venezuelan oil exports from China to the United States and reducing his country’s energy and mining contracts with Chinese, Iranian and Russian companies.
Regarding these intentions of the Venezuelan regime, Trump stated that ‘Maduro had offered everything because he does not want to mess with the US.’ In this sense, Maduro is competing with Maria Corina Machado and the far-right opposition over who would give more concessions to US capital.
This is already the case with concessions to Chevron and other US companies in Venezuela. Sunergon Oil has just started operating in the Orinoco Oil Belt, one of the largest in the world. Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world – 18% of all known global reserves. It also has the eighth largest proven natural gas reserves in the world. In addition, it is rich in minerals, rare earths, lithium, nickel, etc.
The recent resurgence of the conflict over the Essequibo region – historically claimed by Venezuela and now part of Guyana – has not been resolved, and tensions remain in the air over this dispute over a region that is also extremely rich in oil and strategic minerals.
This wealth, combined with strategic geopolitical and geoeconomic calculations in the context of the dispute with China, is a fundamental part of the motivation behind US imperialism’s actions in relation to Venezuela.
Faced with Trump’s threats, the government began to mobilise the so-called militias, which, it claims, can gather around 4.5 million volunteers. The military training of volunteers, however, is still far from reaching these numbers. Much of Maduro’s efforts in the last period were not to prepare for actual resistance, but rather to deepen internal repression in order to contain criticism, dissent or opposition, including left-wing opposition to his pro-capitalist policies.
Maduro tends to deepen repressive measures and tighten the political regime. The new decree declaring the country in a ‘state of external commotion’ is equivalent to a state of emergency and gives Maduro more powers, allowing him to adopt political, economic and military measures, restrict civil rights, etc., in the name of national defence and without consulting the National Assembly.
Mass mobilisation, political independence and an anti-imperialist socialist alternative
It is not through concessions to foreign capital and repression of the workers’ movement that resistance to the attacks and threats of US imperialism can be victorious. Nicolás Maduro’s regime is incapable of carrying this resistance through to the end.
Only the working class, acting independently, can do so, using its methods of struggle and raising a programme of socialist transformation of society capable of inspiring the working and oppressed masses not only in Venezuela, but throughout Latin America and among the working class in the US.
In this process, the Venezuelan working class will be able to rescue their best and most combative revolutionary traditions, learn from the mistakes and limitations of the past, and thus build a socialist and revolutionary alternative to what the Maduro regime and its base in the bureaucracy and sectors of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie represent. It is the Venezuelan people who must settle accounts with Maduro and the ultra-right, without imperialist interference from either side.
It is necessary to raise the slogan of organising committees of struggle for the working class and the poor and oppressed people that are independent of the government, capable of organising resistance to imperialism and government attacks, and also capable of preparing armed self-defence in the face of an imperialist invasion.
In the face of external attack, foreign companies, particularly those with US capital, and key sectors of the country’s economy must be nationalised and placed under the control and management of the workers. It is necessary to end the privatisation policy on Venezuelan oil and mineral resources. Along with this, it is necessary to stop paying the foreign debt and divert these resources to the interests of the majority of the people with wages, jobs, housing, health and education. It is also necessary to defend workers’ control over the entire defence apparatus in the country.
In this process, mobilisation and solidarity among Latin American countries and within the United States is essential. Rejection of US intervention in Venezuela must be a banner raised by the workers’ movement around the world.
It is necessary to reject any illusion regarding the bloc of countries around China and Russia as a supposedly more moderate imperialist alternative and counterweight to the US.
We must not exchange one boss for another, but rather believe in the enormous potential for resistance and transformation that Latin American unity on socialist and revolutionary political bases can generate – something unthinkable in alliance with any of the imperialist camps.
Unity of action against imperialist aggression must take place without giving up class independence and the defence of a socialist alternative. The coming period in Latin America will be marked by resistance and mobilisation against new and old far-right governments and the struggle against imperialist aggression. We must be prepared for these decisive battles by building a socialist, anti-imperialist and internationalist alternative for the working class.
