Venezuela:
U.S. Imperial Ambitions on the Road to War

February 2, 2026

The following is taken from a presentation scheduled to be given in Detroit on January 25. The video of the full presentation can be found at War Threats Abroad, War at Home

Let’s talk about Venezuela. When we put out our leaflet for this meeting two and a half weeks ago, the U.S. government had just kidnapped Nicolas Maduro, the president of a sovereign country. The Trump administration had stationed naval warships, air force fighters and bombers and thousands of marines in the Caribbean, a task force that was threatening a war. The U.S. military was blowing up boats that were allegedly carrying drugs.

And today, what is the situation?

Trump used the U.S. military to remove Maduro, saying that he was corrupt, tied to the drug trade, that he was a dictator who was heading a repressive regime of the Venezuelan military, secret police and paramilitary forces that are used against the Venezuelan population. All of which is true. But after removing Maduro, Trump made a deal with Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro’s vice president, to replace him as president. Delcy Rodriguez is also corrupt, also tied to the drug trade, and she is also a dictator, presiding over a repressive regime of the Venezuelan military, secret police and paramilitary forces that are used against the Venezuelan population. And some have reported that Trump cut a deal with Rodriguez before Maduro was even removed.

The Venezuelan people may, at some point, have a say over their own future. But right now, the only thing different in Venezuela is the one face at the top has been changed. Other than that, one dictator has replaced another dictator. Maduro has been removed, but Venezuela has the same corruption, the same repression, the same poverty in the population, and that poverty will get worse as the U.S. takes more of Venezuela’s oil money.

Less than a day after removing Maduro, Trump announced that it wasn’t really about Maduro being a bad guy, it was really about oil. The Trump administration had the U.S. military seizing oil tankers that were leaving Venezuela and then selling the oil and pocketing the money. Trump said that Venezuela, with the world’s largest reserves of oil, was going to be under the control of the U.S., and that U.S. oil companies were going to go in, rebuild the oil infrastructure and begin pumping all that Venezuelan oil.

Except it seems like the U.S. oil companies are really not that interested! When Trump invited the top executives of U.S. oil companies to the White House, the CEO of Exxon said that it would be too expensive right now to invest the money it would take to rebuild the Venezuelan oil industry, there are less expensive places to extract oil, and besides there is a glut of oil on the world market today and they don’t want to have too much oil, which might lead to lower prices and lower profits.

And what about all those boats that the U.S. military was blowing up almost every day, boats that were supposedly bringing drugs to the U.S.? The Trump administration loved to show us live videos of those boats being blown to smithereens. They told us that they were saving lives by keeping drugs out of the U.S. That was always a lie. If there were actually drugs on those boats, they weren’t headed to the U.S. And since the Trump administration removed Maduro, they seemed to have all but forgotten about these supposed drug boats. A couple days ago, there was one boat sunk in the Pacific, and nothing more at all has happened in the Caribbean.

And one more thing about Trump and the drug trade. While he was claiming he was trying to stop drugs, Trump pardoned and let out of prison a big-time drug dealer, who also happened to be a friend of Trump. Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, was convicted in a U.S. court of drug trafficking and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Trump set free this drug kingpin. So much for Trump’s war against drugs!

So, after all this, what really happened in Venezuela? Trump replaced one dictator with another dictator. Trump says it’s about getting more oil, except the oil is not really needed. Trump says it’s about stopping drugs, except it isn’t about drugs at all.

So, what the hell is Trump doing in Venezuela? From where we were a few weeks ago, who could believe where things are today? It seems crazy. Is this just Trump, proclaiming himself to be king of the world?

Yes, this certainly is Trump’s massive ego talking. But there is much more than that. It would be a mistake to believe this is only about Trump.

Trump is the political representative of the U.S. capitalist class, which is the dominant economic and military power in the world. Yes, Trump can act crazy. But if Trump was doing something that was against the interests of this capitalist class, you would see them pushing back against Trump and even getting rid of him. We aren’t seeing anything like that today.

Trump threatened Venezuela, but the U.S. government, on behalf of the capitalist class, has threatened countries in Latin America many times before. And more than made threats. The U.S. government, with the armed intervention of the U.S. military, has enabled U.S. corporations to exploit the natural resources, the agricultural land and the labor of the working people of Latin America for 200 years. The U.S. government, under both Republicans and Democrats, has treated Latin America as its own “backyard,” overthrowing elected governments, installing dictators, and sending in U.S. troops multiple times to protect and increase the profits of U.S. corporations.

Trump may boast that he runs the world. But for many decades, U.S. imperialism has done exactly that.

The U.S. capitalist class is always in competition with capitalists of the rest of the world. The capitalists of every country are in competition against each other for the world’s markets and natural resources and labor to exploit. This competition between capitalists intensifies when the capitalist economy is in a crisis, with no other way to increase their profits other than by taking away from each other.

This competition between the capitalists of different countries and the economic crises of capitalism is what leads to war, wars between countries and world wars.

The capitalist economy is in an economic crisis today. Capitalists cannot make the profit they want by investing in production. The fact that they put most of their money into speculation is a sign of the crisis of capitalism.

World War I and World War II were both results of economic crises and competition between capitalists. Before WWII, before the full-blown world war broke out, there were many aggressions that led to war. The German government sent troops into other countries. The U.S. government blocked Japan from getting oil and tried to economically strangle Japan in competition over the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Alliances between capitalist powers changed, back and forth, as they each sought their own advantage. These were steps along the road to WWII. Does this sound familiar to what is happening today?

We don’t know for sure how the sides in another global war would line up today. But it is very likely a war would set the U.S. against China. U.S. imperialism has been the dominant world power, with the strongest military and economy, since at least the end of WWII. That domination is being challenged today by China. If the U.S. capitalist class wants to be able to continue to dictate to the whole world, that leads them into a war with China. And if China has their economy strangled by the U.S., they might feel they have no choice but to go to war against the U.S. Either way, if the U.S. ruling class goes to a war against China, the U.S. government would not be able to afford to let the other major capitalist powers stay out of this war.

The threats and actions that the U.S. government is taking today in Venezuela, Greenland and elsewhere are steps, along with many other things, that are leading the world into a new global war. Such a war, with all the latest weapons, would be a catastrophe for humanity. Such a war would be even more destructive, and it would mean many times more deaths than the previous world wars.

The wars of capitalism pit the working people of one country against the working people of other countries. They want the workers of the world to kill each other, all in pursuit of more profits for a handful of billionaires.

This cannot be the future we want. But the only way that it is not our future is if the working class in each country engages their own war against their own ruling class. Such a fight can start when the working class begins a fight for our own day-to-day interests, trying to defend our standard of living. Such a fight would run up against the whole capitalist system. But the working class, when it uses all its power, can bring down that system and the working class can build a new society, free from the horrors of war. Maybe that won’t happen before the next world war starts. But the devastation and destruction of war and the suffering of the population can also lead to revolutions led by the working class. This is what happened during and immediately after WWI, in Russia and in other places in Europe. Those workers’ revolutions after WWI show the possibility for a better future for humanity.