EDITORIAL
War on Venezuela, War on U.S. Cities

Jan 11, 2026

Overnight January 2nd to the 3rd, hundreds of U.S. troops carried out a spectacular military operation to kidnap one man, the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores. Heavily armed, they were backed up by 150 U.S. air force and naval planes, plus the biggest naval armada ever seen in the Caribbean.

Five days later, one woman was killed in Minneapolis, which had been invaded by 2,000 troops from ICE. Driving her car, Renee Nicole Good found herself caught in the middle of an ICE motorcade. Blocked in, she tried to back up and steer her way out. Her escape was cut short by a masked man who shot her at close range, putting three bullets in her head. The next day, ICE raided a high school, rousting students out of their classes, terrorizing kids.

Two different countries, two different situations, but no matter how different, the two are intimately linked by the U.S. military force involved in each of them.

The U.S. did not go to war in Venezuela over drugs—despite Trump’s excuses. The U.S. invaded Venezuela to put its hands on Venezuela’s oil. Trump even said it later the same day: “We will take Venezuela’s oil.” Twelve hours after the raid, he already had a contract signed for the delivery of 30 to 50 million barrels of Venezuelan oil, which the U.S. government will sell.

This massive show of military might and of unbridled ambition was a demonstration not only to Venezuela’s people, but to the whole world. Trump’s U.S. intends to control all of Latin America, with its mineral wealth, rich agricultural land and productive facilities. Trump even mentioned Greenland—Greenland, clear up in the Arctic circle—"Greenland should be part of the United States.”

So, no, Trump did not send troops into Venezuela to root out drugs—no more than he sent ICE into American cities to get rid of “the worst of the worst,” as he calls the immigrants whom ICE deports. Of the people picked up, only 25% had any criminal record, and most of those were charged only with driving infractions.

No, the people hunted by ICE are not criminals, they are people working, just like the rest of us. The attack on immigrants today, and on anyone who helps them, is aimed at getting us used to the idea that gangs of heavily armed men will patrol our streets. Not to stop the criminals, but to intimidate the rest of us.

Trump uses inflammatory language to describe the immigrants. He sends thugs organized as ICE to control city streets. And he peddles videos of the spectacular confrontations that result, to show what his government is capable of doing.

This shows how far down the road to war we are, how close we are to another Armageddon—as brutal as the previous two world wars, just much more destructive and murderous.

Capitalism ultimately drives us to war. For over half a century, its economy has functioned with the threat of financial collapse hanging over everything. Those who control the wealth of this country cannot make enough profit from producing needed goods and services. They speculate instead. With each new bout of speculation, they pull their own economy closer to collapse.

It’s an old scenario, played out how many times already. And war is written into it, as its final chapter, the end product of capital’s competition for control of the world’s wealth.

Capitalism’s wars inevitably pit the working people of one country against workers of another. When capitalism moves to war, it tries to pit workers inside every country against each other, arbitrarily dividing us by ethnicity, race, age, sex, even by skills.

Our only protection against the vicious drive of capitalism is to fight to bring our own forces together, to oppose the crude jingoism with which capitalism would divide us. Some people are already doing that today. Others have to join in.