EDITORIAL
Trump’s Shakedown of Venezuela

Dec 14, 2025

There is an enormous U.S. battle group stationed in the Caribbean near Venezuela’s coast. It’s Trump’s usual playbook: threaten the extreme, to see what he can shake out of you.

Starting in August, the U.S. military began to move warships and planes into the area, along with amphibious assault ships and submarines. The buildup brought U.S. troop numbers in the Caribbean up to nearly 13,000 by early December, including sailors, marines, special forces. To drive home the point, Trump ordered this billion-dollar military force to destroy a couple dozen small fishing boats. High tech missiles and drones incinerated them, plus the people in them.

When asked what legal authorization backed up these attacks, Trump answered, “Authorization? No, no authorization, we just kill them!” He went on to say, “We’re going to start doing these strikes on land, too. You know land is much easier.”

It was a blatant threat issued against the thirty million people living in Venezuela, most of them near the coast patrolled by the U.S. military.

Concretely, it was also a threat aimed at Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro. To make sure Maduro heard, Trump contacted him by phone, telling him he had only a short time left. Step down from the presidency and leave Venezuela—or else! To back it up, Trump publicly threatened to send in the CIA to “eliminate” Maduro.

It’s a shakedown, pure and simple—with the U.S. military providing the threat hanging over the head of Maduro, and everyone else in Venezuela.

So, what is it that the president of the United States wants to extort from Venezuela?

It’s true that Venezuela has enormous oil reserves, the largest known reserves in the world. It also has important minerals: bauxite, coltan, gold, and rare earth minerals, key to the development of advanced technology. It wouldn’t be the first time that the U.S. government used its military to steal another country’s natural resources for the benefit of U.S. corporations.

But the issue is bigger than just Venezuela and its oil. Like so many other countries, Venezuela nationalized some industries in 2001 as a way to keep a larger part of their benefits inside the country itself. That upset what had been a solid flow of profit feeding a few big corporations and banks in the imperialist countries.

Trump’s crass greediness and bragging put his extortion right out in the open. But the extortion started long before Trump.

The U.S. has been tightening the noose around Venezuela’s neck ever since 2001. Every U.S. president since George Bush has been upping the ante. Sanctions were imposed to prevent Venezuela from buying weapons and medicines; to prevent its government from having its debt underwritten by international banks; to freeze Venezuela’s assets placed in U.S. banks; to prevent Venezuela from selling its oil in international markets, etc.

The Venezuelan people have been collateral damage in the struggle to control the country’s resource wealth. Today, 70% of the population live in dire poverty, without enough to eat, without medicine or medical services, beset by malaria, battered by the collapse of water and electrical systems. Four million have already tried to escape. For many millions more, there is no escape, only grinding poverty. It is a humanitarian crisis, imposed by the U.S. as part of a policy to threaten any regime that would not toe imperialism’s line.

What is happening in Venezuela gives an exact picture of the world capitalism has created.

The standard of living in this country may not be so dire, but it is under attack for the very same reason: capitalism cannot stop pushing to grab more wealth, even as its push tears up the societies over which it presides.

This is our reality—until the working class, resting on its size and its position in the center of the economy, takes control of the situation to throw capitalism and its politicians out with the garbage.