Tue Oct 21, 2025
October 21, 2025

We reject Donald Trump’s interventionist threat and US imperialism! Defend Venezuela’s sovereignty! No support for Maduro’s government!

The Unidad Socialista de los Trabajadores (Socialist Workers’ Unity, UST) condemns the US military escalation against Venezuela but warns thata defending sovereignty does not mean supporting Maduro’s government.

By: Socialist Workers’ Unity (UST), the Venezuelan section of the International Workers’ League – Fourth International (IWL-FI).

The US government, led by far-right leader Donald Trump, continues to deploy military forces in the Caribbean in Venezuelan territorial waters. These forces include warships, surveillance aircraft, helicopters, and special operations troops, mobilized under the pretext of “fighting drug trafficking.”

This US military deployment has intensified, including attacks on Venezuelan vessels, leaving more than twenty dead so far and without the slightest evidence that they were actually trafficking drugs.

The latest development in this escalation is the announcement, reported on October 15 by The New York Times, that the Trump administration has authorized covert CIA actions in Venezuela, a measure that also “authorizes” the use of lethal force by the US agency on Venezuelan territory and any type of operation leading to the overthrow of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. All of this leaves open the possibility of armed intervention by the United States in Venezuela.

No to US interventionism in Latin America and Venezuela: the pretext of drug trafficking

The United States has a long history of direct and indirect military intervention (support and financing of coups) in Latin America. It is not the purpose of this text to develop in detail the history of these interventions or the arguments used at the time by Yankee imperialism to carry them out (which could be the subject of another article). But it is pertinent to point out that this would not be the first time that the pretext of the fight against drugs and drug trafficking has been used to “justify” armed intervention.

Suffice it to recall the intervention in Panama in 1989–1990 against then-President Manuel Noriega, a military man and former ally of the United States who worked as a CIA informant and who, due to his conflicts with the White House, was later accused of drug trafficking and finally overthrown on January 3, 1990. After December 1989, more than 20,000 US soldiers invaded Panama with the aim of capturing Noriega, leading to a military conflict that lasted nearly a month, leaving more than 4,000 dead, and resulting in the dissolution of the Panamanian military forces.

This, together with the intervention on the island of Grenada in 1983, constitutes the last two direct military interventions by US imperialism in Latin American territory. In other words, for 35 years, the US has not carried out a direct military intervention with its troops on this continent. This does not mean that they have not had interventionist policies, such as supporting the coup against Chávez in 2002, among other attempts and military coups.

So, far from combating drug trafficking, the Trump administration’s intention with this military deployment is to reaffirm that Latin America is the “backyard” of US capitalism in a reissue of the so-called “Monroe Doctrine.” What it seeks is to compete with other capitalist powers such as Russia and, mainly, China, to reinforce its dominance in the region, returning to the path of militaristic threats and attempt a return to the “big stick policy” and “gunboat diplomacy” to defeat the working class and the peoples of our continent and thus impose its political, geopolitical, military, and economic interests. This is the real objective of the interventionist threat against Venezuela.

From the Socialist Workers’ Unity (UST), we express our categorical rejection of this interventionist threat by US imperialism against Venezuela, as well as against any other country on the continent and in the world. We call on left-wing organizations and activists, as well as labor, union, popular, and student activists, to take a stand against any possible military intervention against Venezuela and to reject these pretensions of Yankee imperialism.

It is necessary to defend the country’s sovereignty against imperialism and Maduro

It is clear that with the current military deployment, Trump and his government are not trying to combat and defeat drug trafficking. Their real objective is to interfere by force in Venezuelan political affairs, seeking to reinforce the protection of their economic, political, geopolitical, and military interests in a region that is historically strategic for US imperialism, replacing the current dictatorial regime headed by Maduro with one more convenient to their interests and offering greater stability and governability to deepen the plundering of the country’s natural resources, minerals, and hydrocarbons.

Donald Trump, who has been the main driver of the imposition of sanctions against Venezuela in an attempt to strengthen his imperialist domination in our country, now intends to take the violation of Venezuelan sovereignty to the next level, seeking to reimpose the method of enforcing Yankee interests on the continent through direct military action.

It is necessary that the working class and the popular sectors reject and confront this policy of aggression against our sovereignty, as well as against any country on the continent.

This should not cause us confusion. Our defense of national sovereignty and our rejection of any imperialist aggression and interference does not mean political support for, much less defense of, the Maduro government. On the contrary, we denounce that the Maduro government has been disastrous to our sovereignty, favoring US, Russian, and Chinese imperialist interests.

As proof of this, it suffices to point out that Maduro has been handing over the Orinoco Mining Arc, an area equivalent to 12% of the national territory, rich in gold, diamonds, and other minerals such as coltan used in the manufacture of electric batteries and essential to the technological and military industries, to imperialist transnational corporations, mainly American. A similar situation is occurring in the Orinoco Oil Belt, where the transnational corporation Chevron (whose license to operate in Venezuela was recently renewed by Donald Trump) operates freely, without any obligation to contribute money to the national treasury through the payment of taxes and royalties. Similar agreements are reportedly about to be signed with transnational corporations such as Shell and British Petroleum.

In addition to this, according to The New York Times, sources close to the Venezuelan government’s negotiations with Richard Grenell (US government commissioner for Venezuela) report that Maduro has offered Trump Venezuela’s mineral and energy wealth, terminating exploitation contracts with Russia and China and signing contracts with US companies, guaranteeing a secure supply of oil, for which he would also cut crude oil supplies to Caribbean countries, including Cuba; all this in exchange for allowing him to remain in power.

Therefore, being consistently anti-imperialist today means rejecting and confronting the threats of aggression from US imperialism, denouncing the criminal actions of the Trump administration against Venezuelan vessels, and demanding the withdrawal of US troops from the Caribbean Sea and the vicinity of Venezuela’s territorial waters. But it also means denouncing Maduro as a sellout of the country’s mineral and energy resources, demanding an end to the agreements on the Orinoco Mining Arc and the Orinoco Oil Belt, an end to joint ventures, and 100% nationalization of the oil industry.

Similarly, it is necessary to continue organizing, building, and carrying out mobilizations to defeat the austerity measures that Maduro has been applying for years against the workers and the people of Venezuela, for the rescue of wages (today less than $0.70 per month), for the restoration of violated contractual and legal labor rights, for the restoration of trade union freedoms, for the freedom of political prisoners and the defense of democratic freedoms in general.

Likewise, defending Venezuelan sovereignty means denouncing the recently awarded Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado (MCM), and the bourgeois opposition sector she represents, which, in addition to explicitly supporting a US military intervention against Venezuela, offers US companies profits of $1.7 trillion over 15 years in the event that she and her faction lead the regime change in the South American country.

María Corina Machado, a Nobel Prize winner who supports armed intervention

Recently, the national and international media were abuzz with the news that the Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to the leader of the Venezuelan bourgeois opposition, María Corina Machado. This is nothing more than a demonstration of the political support and backing of Donald Trump’s government and the institutions of the imperialist sector that represent their favorite candidate to lead the regime change.

The argument for awarding her this distinction is her supposed “long history of democratic struggle” and the “restoration of democracy in the country.” However, the truth is that MCM is not the democratic leader as she is portrayed to be; on the contrary, she has a long history of coup attempts. Back in 2002, she supported the coup against the Chávez government, conspiring with then-US President George Bush (responsible for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan) to carry out the coup against a government that, regardless of our differences with it, had the majority support of the population at the time.

Similarly, she has publicly supported governments that have unleashed policies of terror against trade union, popular, student, and indigenous activists, among others, such as that of Álvaro Uribe Vélez, as well as her public and explicit support for Zionism and the genocide it is carrying out against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip. In addition to his repeated expressions of support for a possible US military intervention and calls on the Trump administration to undertake it. As well as a long list of similar actions.

This Nobel Peace Prize is nothing more than a prize from US imperialism and Donald Trump to their faithful servant in Venezuela and the continent. The workers and people of Venezuela cannot have any illusions or democratic expectations or hopes for social justice in a bourgeois and pro-imperialist leader like MCM and the opposition sector she represents, much less in Donald Trump and imperialism.

Let us defeat the imperialist interventionist threat and the Maduro government!

For centuries, US imperialism has stolen the natural, mineral, and energy resources of Latin America and Venezuela, as well as other continents, spilling oceans of blood to achieve its plunder. Today, in its inter-imperialist dispute with China and Russia, it seeks to reaffirm its dominance in Latin America, for which it will not hesitate to return to the old methods of the “big stick,” expressed in direct military interventions; and this is where the current interventionist threat against Venezuela fits in.

However, history shows that unified action and resistance by the masses is capable of defeating this policy. That is why we call on the organizations of the revolutionary and independent left, on the leaders and activists of the workers, unions, popular movements, students, indigenous peoples, peasants, among others, to carry out unified political actions to reject this threat of military intervention against Venezuela.

The call to Venezuelan workers and people must be to reject any democratic or social justice illusions about a US military intervention. History is full of examples showing that no country where US imperialism has intervened militarily has become a “paradise of democracy,” much less have the masses raised their standard of living. On the contrary, what has been installed are puppet governments that are as repressive as or more repressive than the governments that were overthrown, and the masses have continued to suffer hardship.

For this reason, we call for unified political action to defeat the threat of Donald Trump and his troops, demand the withdrawal of US military forces from the Caribbean Sea and the vicinity of the Venezuelan coast, and at the same time continue to build and extend the mobilizations to defeat the anti-worker and anti-popular austerity measures that Maduro is applying against the workers and the Venezuelan people.

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