President Obama made no attempt to hide the fact that the intention of the U.S. ruling class is to smash anti-imperialist resistance when, earlier this month, he proclaimed that the revolutionary government of Venezuela posed an “extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and foreign policy. Through a process of fear-mongering, the capitalist ruling class tells the American people that revolutionary governments, heroically won through popular mobilizations, threaten freedom and democracy, when in fact they exist as a beacon of hope for a new society where people truly can live free from oppression.
With military bases in every corner of the globe, the real threat to freedom-loving people is the U.S. government in coordination with the Pentagon, that make up an international terrorist network whose intervention and occupation in other sovereign states give rise to groups like ISIS and deepen imperialist oppression of peoples around the world. The disparity in military strength and scope between the U.S. and Venezuela provides proof that one government is on a path of global domination and the other fights to protect its own national sovereignty.
The defense budget of the U.S. currently hovers around $600 billion. This money, which should go towards feeding, educating, sheltering, and providing meaningful employment for every single person living in the country, instead is used to finance endless war and aggression to maintain hegemony. Social programs that benefit the poor and working class are increasingly being demonized and defunded, while increased military spending is justified by the war-mongers in Congress under the guise of national security.
Under capitalist rule, the only people with security are the CEOs, landlords, politicians and other wealthy elites who have at their disposal the most powerful military apparatus in the history of the world. Yet even with almost 9,000 tanks and a fleet of almost 14,000 aircraft that can be deployed from 20 different U.S. aircraft carriers stationed throughout the world, the ruling class shows just how vulnerable its hold on power is when the government that serves its interests declares Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution to be a threat.
Venezuela’s defense budget is 150 times smaller than that of the U.S., they have fewer than 200 tanks, fewer than 250 aircraft, and no aircraft carriers from which to launch an attack. Where is the threat? The threat is that the American people will discover that there is a socialist alternative to capitalist oppression, in which society revolves around the needs of the people instead of profit—the process promoted by President Maduro’s government in Venezuela.
The real threat
If the American people discovered that a revolutionary police force is being created in Venezuela that is controlled and supervised by “Citizen’s Committees of Police Control,” they would no longer accept the impunity with which U.S. police murder Black and Brown people while terrorizing poor and working-class communities. If the American people discovered that Venezuelans have access to free education, they would no longer tolerate the chains of outrageously high student debt. If the American people were to stand in solidarity with the revolutionary government of Venezuela and fight for a socialist future, there could be no bigger threat to U.S. imperialism, which is rightfully frightened by such a possibility.
