Thousands of U.S. troops on board a flotilla of warships are headed towards the waters off the coast of Venezuela in a blatant and unprovoked act of aggression. This is a dangerous new development in the Trump administration’s war-mongering foreign policy that threatens the well-being of people across Latin America as well as the working class in the United States.
The troop deployment is an outrageous threat that no independent country would tolerate. And it is part of a broader militaristic foreign policy adopted by the Trump administration, despite Trump’s ridiculous claims to be a great peace-maker.
Trump has repeatedly shown a propensity for one-off attacks that “make a statement” about U.S. military dominance but fall short of an open-ended war. In his first term, this was on display in his 2017 missile attack against Syria and his 2020 assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani – and again in June when he bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. These massive violations of the sovereignty of nations did not escalate into all-out war but that was far from assured. Any kind of incursion into Venezuelan territory, assassination attempt or a provocation that leads to a clash at sea will compel Venezuela to defend itself, and this could set off an uncontrollable chain of events that leads to massive suffering and death among Venezuelans and the U.S. troops who are sent to do Trump’s dirty work. China and Venezuela also have a very high-level, formal strategic relationship – which would give any U.S. intervention huge global implications.
The Pentagon says that the troops are being deployed as part of “counter-narcotics” operations. This comes shortly after news broke that the Trump administration secretly ordered the U.S. military to engage in operations against drug cartels, and after the administration doubled their bounty for the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro to $50 million.
The fantasy dreamed up by U.S. politicians and the corporate media is that President Maduro leads a drug trafficking operation called the “Cartel of the Suns”. No one has ever presented any concrete evidence that the organization exists, let alone that it is led by the Venezuelan head of state. The allegation that Maduro is the leader of a drug trafficking cartel is the equivalent of the allegation that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction – a ridiculous lie backed up by absolutely no evidence used to justify military action against a long-time target of U.S. empire.
Another pretext for an attack could be the territorial dispute between Venezuela and its neighbor Guyana. During the colonial period, the Dutch, Spanish and British empires fought over control of the Essequibo region. After Venezuela won independence, Britain – then the colonial ruler of Guyana – orchestrated an unfair international “arbitration” process in 1899 that awarded the territory to themselves. Now-independent Guyana retains control of much of the territory, but Venezuela has never accepted this and has taken steps to bolster its legal claims of sovereignty over the Essequibo – while at the same time ruling out any military action.
Exxon, backed by the U.S. government, has recently made moves to exploit the oil resources off the coast of the Essequibo in what Venezuela considers its territorial waters. If U.S. naval forces are used to back up Exxon’s offshore drilling in this context, the situation could easily spiral into open fighting as the dominant empire of the 21st century cynically exploits the divisions caused among formerly colonized people by the dominant empires of the 19th century.
Stop the new Monroe Doctrine!
Trump’s provocation off the coast of Venezuela is a modern-day expression of a policy first formulated in 1823 called the Monroe Doctrine. While it was framed as opposition to European meddling in the western hemisphere, especially after the addition of the “Roosevelt Corollary” in 1904 the doctrine was used as a license by the U.S. government to carry out military intervention anywhere in Latin America whenever the interests of Wall Street were threatened. This policy defines the Trump administration’s approach to relations with Latin America, and Venezuela is not the only target.
Since Trump took office, there have repeatedly been leaks to the media about a debate inside the administration over whether or not to conduct drone strikes and special forces raids in Mexico on the pretext of targeting drug trafficking organizations. Actually addressing the drug crisis requires cooperation among nations, not invasions. The Mexican government has consistently favored this type of cooperation, but firmly opposes any unilateral military action against its territory – as any independent country would.
The threat of these strikes in Mexico, and the troop buildup in the Caribbean, are really about asserting the supposed right of the Pentagon to bomb and kill people wherever and whenever they choose. If Trump actually wanted to combat drug trafficking, he could start by arresting executives at the big pharmaceutical companies that started the opioid crisis, like the Sackler family.
The U.S. troop deployment in the Caribbean also menaces Cuba. The Trump administration has escalated economic warfare against the island to new heights of cruelty, causing widespread suffering among the people to punish them for daring to construct a socialist alternative. The stepped-up military presence near Cuba adds to the pressure that the managers of U.S. empire hope will cause a political crisis inside the country.
The billionaire class and their enforcers in the Pentagon high command want to control Latin America in order to loot its natural resources, exploit the people and dominate their markets. Venezuela’s massive oil reserves, which have been publicly owned and used for the benefit of the people since the beginning of the country’s socialist revolution, are an especially coveted prize. Working class young people should not be sent to kill and die for the profits of corporations like Exxon, and our tax dollars should not be wasted on a military machine used to bully and blackmail other countries.
