On 3 January, under cover of darkness, the US launched ground strikes on Caracas, kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, National Assembly deputy Cilia Flores. Over 100 were killed in the attack including 32 Cuban soldiers and 39 Venezuelan soldiers who died defending Maduro. Over 40 civilians were killed as bombs dropped on apartment blocks whilst residents were sleeping. This followed months of criminal airstrikes on Venezuelan and Colombian fishing boats and the imposition of a naval blockade.
This is a war for oil. In December, Donald Trump demanded Venezuela return ‘all of the oil, land and other assets’ he alleged were ‘stolen’ from the US under nationalisations in the early 2000s. The US has since seized seven oil tankers that were trading with Venezuela and the first $250m US sale of Venezuelan crude went to Vitol, whose executives donated $6m to Trump’s 2024 Presidential campaign. This is also a war for domination against Latin American integration and against any state that resists imperialism, seeks to control its own resources or proclaims its commitment to building socialism.
The US National Security strategy released in November 2025 explicitly states ‘the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region.’ To this, Trump has added what he has arrogantly termed the ‘Trump corollary’, declaring war on ‘narco-terrorists, cartels… (and) hostile foreign incursion’. The US is threatening the entire region: Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia and Mexico are in the cross hairs.
Incarcerated in New York and facing bogus charges of narco-terrorism and possession of weapons, Maduro and Flores have declared their innocence, proclaiming they are prisoners of war. Maduro reaffirmed that he is the President of Venezuela, making a victory sign whilst in handcuffs – a symbol of resistance that has gone viral. Contrary to the gutter press portrayal of an ‘authoritarian dictator’, huge protests have erupted across Venezuela, day after day demanding the return of their democratically elected president and respect for Venezuela’s sovereignty. Here in imperialist Britain, coverage of these mass mobilisations of working-class Venezuelans has been totally suppressed; popular support for the Bolivarian revolution simply doesn’t fit the narrative of the mainstream media, be it the pro-establishment BBC or the ‘liberal’ Guardian.
Maduro’s deputy, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, was sworn in as acting president. She immediately pushed forward the mass campaign demanding the return of Maduro and Flores, calling for people to continue to take to the streets and putting plans in place to secure the Venezuelan economy.
In the hours that followed, Trump posted a picture of himself titled ‘President of Venezuela’, declaring that US now controls all Venezuelan oil sales. A torrent of claims of betrayal, treason, chaos and division in Venezuela flooded the imperialist media. Countering the sensationalist propaganda, Rodriguez declared ‘we are nobody’s colony’ and ‘we have the right to have diplomatic relations with China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, with all the peoples of the world…We are a sovereign nation… Let the empire know, Vene-zuela’s energy relations will continue to grow.’ In the weeks following, Venezuela has reaffirmed the sovereignty and resolve of Chavismo and the Bolivarian process, with mass shows of unity between the people, the military and the government.
Nevertheless, Trump’s naval blockade, supported by Britain’s armed forces, has forced two Chinese supertankers bound for Venezuela to turn back. Holding the nation at gun point, with the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, still menacing the Caribbean, whether the US will allow Venezuela to independently trade oil with anyone else remains to be seen.
