By Marcel Rajecky
The United States is amassing forces capable of a full scale invasion off the coast of Venezuela.
This military build up – the largest in the region for decades – includes ten major warships, a fleet of support vessels, and 4,500 sailors, roughly half of whom are trained for a land invasion. These forces will shortly be joined by its largest aircraft carrier and five more destroyers.
This build up of forces follows a US bombing campaign, targeting small boats in the Caribbean and killing 43 people, mostly from Venezuelan and Colombian ports.
As all abusers they pose as victims. Trump justifies these killings, and the preparations for an invasion, as legitimate acts of self-defence against the illegal drugs trade. Venezuela and Colombia, he claims, are both ‘narco-states’, and those on the small boats are ‘narco-terrorists’.
And the accusation is sufficient; none of these charges will be proven as such in a court of law, or those killed proven guilty of any crime at all.
The real terrorist and trafficker is the United States. In the 1980s, with the full knowledge of the CIA, they allowed the right-wing Nicaraguan Contras to transport and sell drugs into the country in order to fund their operations against the left-populist Sandinista government.
In comparison to other Latin American states, Venezuela is a minor trafficker and a practically irrelevant producer of cocaine.
The real motivation of the United States’ actions is to overthrow the Venezuelan government. First elected in 1999, the United Socialist Party (PSUV) managed to reduce poverty and improve healthcare and housing.
Since then, Hugo Chavez himself and current president Nicolas Maduro have rolled back many of their social programmes which made this possible, but their reform that most enrages the US remains: the state ownership of the country’s vast oil reserves.
Therefore the United States has attempted to overthrow the Venezuelan government using military coups, crippling economic sanctions, and support for right-wing paramilitary groups.
An invasion would be a continuation and escalation of this policy.
The US wants to totally reshape the region, which is why it is also threatening Colombia, placing sanctions against Brazil, and assisting Javier Milei’s re-election campaign in Argentina.
For each country in Latin America that finds itself in the imperialists’ crosshairs, there is also a cowardly and parasitic bourgeoisie willing to betray its own people. The opposition in Venezuela – including the recent Nobel ‘Peace’ Prize winner Maria Corina Machada – would likely welcome a US invasion.
It would be a mistake, however, to presume that Maduro and the PSUV will take the necessary steps defend the country. Indeed, their support rests upon a so-called Bolibourgeoisie, a corrupt layer of people made rich under the regime, which has been systematically removing the benefits and basic services that the working class won in the first years of Chavez rule.
What is therefore required is simultaneously an anti-imperialist defence of Venezuela, and through this defence to work towards a socialist revolution. The forces that will do this will be the social and political organisations and movements, particularly those of the working class.
The goal of this should be a complete break with US and all imperialist powers, and a total expropriation of the bourgeoisie.
In the United States, socialists will need to support mobilisations against the build up of forces in the Caribbean, and forge an anti-war movement. After all, Trump’s plans in the region are inextricably connected to his plans for the US. He wants to steal from the American workers to fund his war campaign, and he wants to use military victories to force workers to accept worse working and living conditions.
Action must also be taken from workers in other Latin American countries, building solidarity campaigns which make it impossible for the leaders to equivocate in the face of US aggression. They should also demand the closure of US military bases and the expulsion of their soldiers from their countries.
If the US succeeds in Venezuela, it will continue its policy of endless war, perhaps next in Colombia. Its defeat, however, would be a huge victory for all forces fighting for national liberation and for those resisting Trump’s rule at home.
