Trumped Up Attack On Venezuela

The US has a long history of violence against the people of South America. They’ve encouraged coups from Guatamala to Chile, funded terrorists and destroyed economies. Tens of thousands have died because of their actions.

The notorious U.S. Army School of the Americas trained over 60,000 Latin American military personnel, including officers who were involved in torture, massacres and human rights violations.

Trump wants to re-assert US corporate power over South America and is throwing out bullshit lie after bullshit lie to cover his imperialist tracks. As of last week, more than 30 of the 80 ships in Venezuelan waters were under US sanctions and US troops stole an oil tanker.

They took the oil tanker to a US port. There were no drugs on board, just oil which Trump claims was stolen from the US, as if the USA owns any oil produced in Venezuela. It carried 1.1 million barrels of crude oil worth $78 million.

On his Truth Social platform Trump wrote that Venezuela was “completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America”. He added that it would “only get bigger” and “be like nothing they have ever seen before”.

The USS Gerald Ford – the world’s largest aircraft carrier – is now positioned within striking distance of Venezuela. The Pentagon has deployed more than 15,000 troops, F-35 stealth fighters and EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets to the region.

The US military has killed over 100 people by targeting boats they claim are carrying drugs - but they’ve provided no evidence to back this up. Imagine the uproar across the West if Russia had murdered people at sea and stolen oil tankers?

Talk of Venezuelan drugs is the new “weapons of mass destruction” line we were fed to justify the US invasion of Iraq. The USA has a long history of intervention in Venezuela. In 1908, the US backed a coup that installed Juan Vicente Gómez, an evil dictator who ruled for 27 years, opening Venezuela’s oil wealth to the likes of the Rockefellers.

Trump wants to subjugate South America once more to US corporate power. On Friday, Trump announced that US ground attacks in the Caribbean would begin “pretty soon.” Trump’s “National Security Strategy”, released last month says that the United States will “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to… own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.”

The US establishment hopes that they can collapse the Venezuelan economy and install a US puppet that will allow them to steal that nation’s oil. China currently purchases roughly 80% of Venezuela’s oil exports. This is an attack on them.

Last week, the Democratic congressional leadership joined with the Republicans to pass the largest military budget ever in US history - the $901 billion National Defense Authorization Act. Both wings of the US ruling class support more war.

The Maduro government in Venezuela is corrupt but only the Venezuelan workers have the right to criticise that government. The political right in Venezuela want to invite in their imperialist masters and the result would be disaster for all workers and poor poeple in that country.

The so-called Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela saw a left wing government under Hugo Chávez implement masssive reforms. The US army responded by saying: “A few years after Chávez rose to power in 1999, he began implementing a political-strategic plan he called the ‘Bolivarian Revolution,’ which threatened North American rule by promising a Latin American liberation from the Monroe doctrine.”

Chávez funded massive social programs that helped workers and the poor, but it was all funded through oil revenue. This allowed Chávez to offer reform while leaving the capitalist class and their state machine intact. But the rich could use their vast economic power to strangle the economy undermining many efforts at reform.

The Venezuelan rich undermined efforts at reform, to build social housing and the sabotaged the roll out of state run grocery stores. At the same time the lack of control from below saw Maduro’s regime become incorporated into the capitalist state bureaucracy leading to massive corruption.

Maduro wants to work with the Venezuelan rich despite their attempts to overthrow him. He said:

“I would like to send a very clear message to all the businessmen and businesswomen of Venezuela, to all the entrepreneurs, to all those dedicated to trade and economic activity: we have the plan, we’ve laid the foundations, we’ve had great successes in growth, and we should unify ourselves more and more, so that Venezuela continues its path of recovery and the construction of a new economic model. Count on me, entrepreneurs. I count on you.”

To address the country’s economic crisis, Maduro implemented an orthodox neoliberal adjustment plan beginning in 2018. This plan led to massive cuts in public spending, the decimation of workers’ wages and the privatization of state-owned enterprises.

Protests against this neoliberal turn by workers saw Maduro arrest 120 union leaders. The weakness shown by Maduro towards local and international capital has given the sharks a taste of blood and they just want more.

As the French revolutionary St. Just once said: “Those who make a revolution by halves do but dig their own graves.”

Trump wants to destroy the country, the Venezuelan right want to help him do just that. The US would install a dictator and the result would be a mountain of working class bones and the reversal of all reforms that have benefited workers.

Maduro promises opposition to Trump but has already shown his weakness. Only a renewed revolution by workers and the poor can eventually topple Maduro and put the country in the hands of those who’d actually defend it from internal and external enemies.

Here in Ireland we have to point out the hypocrisy of our government and of the EU when they allow Trump to engage in acts of piracy and blatant theft without criticism. The US is a NATO power. Are these the gangsters we’re supposed to remove neutrality for? So we can offer our kids for a future war with China?

The world is becoming far more unstable as corporate competition spills over into military conflict. Only the working class offers a way out. If we can rise.