As US Imperialism Positions for War Against Venezuela, the People Must Prepare to Oppose it!

Editorial

On November 16, the Trump administration declared the so-called “Cartel de los Soles” a “foreign terrorist organization”, while already claiming this “cartel” is one and the same as the Venezuelan government, thus opening further the path for military aggression against the oppressed nation.

US intelligence reports admit this “cartel” does not exist—it is a CIA fabrication from the early 1990s, as exposed in a 60 Minutes report on a DEA investigation into CIA operations to “infiltrate” Venezuelan and Colombian cartels, with the Sun patch being worn by pre-Chavez Venezuelan national guard officers.

As part of US imperialism’s continuing military buildup in the Caribbean and aggression against Venezuela, monopoly media has reported the conclusion of a three-day meeting of the Trump administration and top military brass in mid-November, with imperialist-in-chief Trump telling reporters, “I sort of have made up my mind”—that is, he has “sort of” decided on how to continue the aggression against the oppressed nation, and by extension has chosen the likely path forward for the genocidaires regarding not just the looming attempt at bloody regime change against Venezuela but also the strategic move to shore up the domination of US imperialism in the whole region.

Adding to this the recent arrival in the Caribbean of USS Gerald R Ford—the world’s largest aircraft carrier—a conflagration is imminent, though how exactly this will play out is unclear. The aircraft carrier is a weapon platform for air war, which means genocidal bombing campaigns and perhaps “decapitation strikes” against Venezuela’s President Maduro, government, and military command. Other possibilities include a ground invasion, lackey troop advances, and coup attempts, considering the mass build-up of US troops in the region—the latest count at around 15,000 personnel—and the recent history of attempted coup plots against Venezuela orchestrated by the CIA.

Trump said he is “open to talk” with Maduro—read: he is hopeful to avoid yet another military defeat and what would be in the US a deeply-unpopular and destabilizing bloodbath in the event of land invasion.

These are all possibilities, but what is inevitable is that the imperialists will make trouble, fail, and make trouble again until their final demise.

Monopoly Media Beats the War Drums for Their Masters

Monopoly media, faithful servants of US imperialism, is playing their usual sinister role of manipulating public opinion in favor of the interests of the ruling class. CNN, PBS, and others label the US imperialist aggression against Venezuela with the sanitizing euphemism of “escalating tensions” between the US and Venezuela, draining of color the seas that have turned red with the blood of peasants and fishermen extra-judiciously massacred by US drone and missile strikes.

The euphemism of “tensions” is one we are familiar with when it comes to Gaza, used to give an appearance of natural, mutual strife or de-politicized and random collisions between equal actors to cover up the bloody role of imperialism seeking to maintain or expand super-profits on the one hand and the oppressed people’s just armed resistance on the other.

These wretched prostitutes for the ruling class cook up report after report of Venezuelan immigrants in the US championing regime change, with CNN for instance finding a suitable mouthpiece in a November 16 video to say that “We [Venezuelans] all want the same thing. We just want him [Maduro] out” while also insinuating the US government being “against Latinos” is because Maduro’s rule forced people to emigrate to the US en masse—forgetting to mention the little fact that it is the decades of imperialist, mainly US, ravages of Latin America, that forces the people to emigrate.

The New York Times, meanwhile, published an opinion piece on November 17 calling for the overthrow of Maduro with the threat that, if he does not flee the country, then “he deserves the Noriega treatment”, while even their opposing articles repeat the pro-intervention dog-whistles calling Maduro a “dictator”, an “autocrat”, a “strongman” who stole the 2024 elections while posing the coup-hungry and country-selling “opposition figures” as rightful rulers.

Why Interventionism and Looming War Now?

The reactionization and the decrepitude of imperialism underlies the latest US aggression against Latin America and Venezuela in particular, with the following causes and implications:

– US imperialism seeks to maintain sole hegemonic status and to shore up this status through bellicosity and aggression, attempting to dominate further the oppressed countries particularly in its “backyard” which is strategic for resources, geographic location, and the weight of the masses and their rebellion too.

– Imperialism is in greater decomposition. US imperialism is struggling against other imperialist powers to preserve its domination of Latin America, including Russia and China, but also European imperialists. This is a result of the deepening economic crisis of overproduction, which intensifies competition among the monopolists and gives rise to greater militarization and reactionization of the state and the economy.

– The imperialists attempt to thwart or set back the people’s struggles in the region, including the People’s War in Peru and the agrarian revolution in Brazil, as part of their drive toward domination.

– The reactionization of the state took another step with the failures of the Democratic mafia to shore up the War Powers Act in Congress recently, further opening the door for US imperialism’s strategic pivot to Latin America and away from the Middle East, where it is bogged down by the Palestinian people’s armed resistance as well as the resistance of the peoples of Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. The military pivot to Eurasia and South China Sea or to Latin America is an ongoing debate among the imperialists and their think-tanks.

– US imperialist domination of Latin America has developed from sanctions, threats, and open and brash bribery (Milei in Argentina) to a higher stage—politics by other means—as the imperialists have not and will not succeed in saving themselves.

– Refurbishment of US military bases around the Caribbean. We are not witnessing a singular “regime change” action against Venezuela, but a strategic shift and buildup to a long game of enhancing domination of the region as a whole, prolonged intervention to preserve US imperialist hegemony.

– US imperialists will meet the armed masses in the third world and a corresponding uprising in the US as the masses face repression and economic crisis while the imperialists enrich themselves. This sets the tone for the anti-war movement and greater eruptions of people’s resistance in the US.

– The US imperialists control and influence the biggest drug networks. Coinciding with this, the imperialist wars of intervention will increase the misery of the people through: 1. militarization of the economy and society; 2. increased monopolization; 3. increased drug flows, with increased drug abuse and dependency linked to the miserable conditions of the masses.

– US imperialist aggression is mimicked by the old-state of Colombia led by the opportunist Gustavo Petro as it launches lethal attacks against armed guerrillas in the name of the so-called “war on drugs”—nothing but a show of alignment with US imperialism and subservience to its oppression.

– Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke on November 7 about unleashing the military monopolies without restriction from supposed bureaucratic fetters at the Pentagon. This would include shifting production to “wartime footing”, speeding up production, building drone swarms, increasing aggressiveness, and attempting to learn from Ukraine, Gaza, and Iraq to create an army tailored to fighting people’s forces, i.e., “asymmetric wars”.

– This focus on speed and armament en masse at any cost will mean greater monopolization, greater militarization, and also increased injuries and deaths of workers at and around arms factories through looser regulations and faster work tempos—with instances like the October 10^th explosion at Accurate Energetic Systems (manufacture and storage of war explosives) in Tennessee becoming increasingly frequent as workers are sacrificed at the imperialists’ blood-altar.

– State monopoly capital—secondary to private monopoly capital in the US—also serves to accelerate the trends of monopolization and militarization: “Under the cover of ‘state intervention in economic life’ and ‘opposition to monopoly,’ and using the name of the state to deceive, it cleverly transfers huge profits into the pockets of the monopoly groups by underhand methods” (from “More on the Differences Between Comrade Togliatti and Us, Some Important Problems of Leninism in Modern Times”, quoted in VND-Peru’s article “Regarding the New Trump Tariffs”).

– The Democrat-aligned monopoly media has expressed concern that the Republican mafia strategy is unwise rather than unjust. They dream of the domination of Latin America but without the bad publicity of a war of attrition, and the ensuing storms of people’s uprisings and the developing threat of revolution, which they hope can be warded off if a different tactical approach is taken. For example, the monopoly Politico muses about the “day after” and various concerns about a “more anti-American” government taking power in Venezuela if Trump is not careful after ousting Maduro, or CNN worrying that Maduro may blow up the oil platforms if pushed to the brink by a full-scale invasion.

A war with Venezuela would be a trap for the US imperialists and all their military build-up is a show of their fear and their developing weakness rather than strength. US imperialists are sinking in the quagmire of the people’s resistance within the context of the main contradiction in the world today, that is, the contradiction between imperialism and nations oppressed by imperialism, which makes the third world the storm center of the world proletarian revolution. The imperialists stumble from failure to failure—the Iraqi resistance is not disarmed, Hezbollah is not disarmed, Hamas and the Palestinian resistance is not disarmed.

Counter the Deceit of Pacifism, Persist in the Only Revolutionary Path

Imperialism is sinking and US imperialism sees its sole-hegemonic status as threatened, but it is necessary to counter the snake-tongued revisionist talk of a “multi-polar world” developing, which seeks to sanitize imperialism by posing the “rise” of Russia or China as a positive “counter-pole” to US imperialism, a supposed development bringing more freedom to the oppressed peoples by offering a buffet of options for their lackey regimes between whom to sell their countries to.

The oppressed nations liberate themselves, and instead of championing the cause of rival imperialists against the US, we must raise the call to link the national liberation wars to the proletarian revolution. The “multi-polar world” thesis would have us believe that the task is to keep the peace, to simply hold back the US imperialists’ arms until they are no longer in a position to subjugate the oppressed nations because the competing imperialist powers have become strong enough to be a counter-pole.

War is the continuation of politics by other, bloody means, and opposition to imperialist wars cannot be left to a pacifist movement that maintains “the peace of the bayonets” and condemn a particular expression or symptom of imperialist domination without tackling the cause.

The anti-war movement in the US must respond to the increased assaults on the working class in the US and connect this to opposition to imperialist war, highlighting the common basis. The war is sold to the masses as alms, claiming to stop drugs and the flow of immigrants—which the ultra-reactionaries say is caused by the personality of Maduro, or caused by “socialism”, thus pitting native-born workers against foreign-born workers to line the former up behind imperialist war; this is chauvinism.

In reality, the workers and masses of people in the US have nothing to gain from the US imperialist project of shoring up its threatened hegemony, and everything to gain from supporting the just resistance of the oppressed peoples of Latin America. It falls to the revolutionary forces to raise and propagate the slogans in the heart of the coming anti-war movement: “No to the militarization of society, combat and resist the austerity and terror against the working class, particularly immigrant workers!”, “US Imperialists Out of Latin America!”, and “Long live the armed resistance of the Venezuelan people and all the peoples of Latin America!”

Photo: USS Gerald R. Ford. US Navy Photo

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