U.S. War Against Venezuela:
Another Imperialist War for Oil

Jan 5, 2026

The U.S. bombing of Caracas and the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores, his wife, in the early morning hours of January 3 was certainly shocking. But it wasn’t a surprise.

Since early September, the U.S. military has escalated its attacks against Venezuela step by step. It began by destroying small boats off Venezuela’s coast, murdering 105 people. Then in late November, Trump announced that the U.S. was closing Venezuelan airspace. The U.S. military followed this up by hijacking two oil tankers, stealing Venezuelan oil. Finally, on December 16, Trump announced a naval blockade of the entire country.

While carrying out these attacks, the U.S. military assembled the biggest war machine in the Caribbean Sea since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. These include the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, the largest and most modern in the world, along with guided-missile destroyers, F-35B fighters, MZ-9 Reaper drones, an amphibious assault group of 15,000 American troops, a nuclear-powered submarine, a special warfare support vessel and on and on.

The U.S. military then used some of its war planes to threaten and intimidate the people of Venezuela and the entire region. The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment—which flies missions for the Navy SEALS, Green Berets and Delta Force—periodically buzzed giant helicopters next to the coast of Venezuela. Gigantic B-52 strategic bombers flew threatening missions throughout the region.

Trump accuses Maduro and the government of Venezuela of “narcoterrorism, human trafficking, murders and kidnappings,” for which Trump plans to present Maduro and his wife in a ridiculous and idiotic show trial in New York City.

In fact, the only reason that Trump has targeted Venezuela is that it refuses to bow down to every demand of the big bad U.S. imperialist power. Under Hugo Chavez, who came to power in 1998, and then under Maduro, who succeeded Chavez in 2013, the Venezuelan regime has used the country’s vast oil wealth, 300 billion barrels in the ground, the largest reserves of oil in the world, to gain a tiny bit of independence from the U.S.

Of course, Chavez and Maduro continued to try to do business with the U.S. oil companies and banks and allow the oil companies to continue to profit. But the Venezuelan leaders tried to prevent the oil companies from completely robbing and plundering Venezuela, as in the past. When the U.S. tried to turn up the heat on Venezuela, the regime even had the temerity to look to such U.S. rivals as Russia, Cuba, Iran and China for support.

For the U.S. capitalists and the government that consider the entire Western Hemisphere to be its very own “backyard”, this show of defiance was completely unacceptable. Under Republicans and Democrats, the U.S. has openly tried to overthrow the regime. When that failed, the U.S. began strangling the economy through trade embargoes and economic warfare, making the population pay through ever worse living conditions, provoking a mass exodus outside the country.

At his news conference on January 3, Trump rejected all of his electoral promises not to get involved in another foreign war. Instead, Trump bragged that the U.S. government, with him at its head, was going to take over Venezuela and install a puppet government for the purpose of stealing its oil.

And—Trump emphasized—he didn’t want to, but he was ready to bring in U.S. troops. In reality, by decapitating the Venezuelan government, U.S. troops had already invaded Venezuela. And, as previous U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan show, this usually results in long and bloody wars, carried out by U.S. troops of occupation.

Republican isolationists like Marjorie Taylor Green, as well as Democratic “socialists,” like Bernie Sanders and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, have already denounced Trump’s disastrous military adventure, like earlier U.S. wars from Iraq to Vietnam.

But these wars are not just the fault of a single leader, like Trump, as disgusting as he is, or a Bush, Obama or Biden. No, they come out of the drive by the biggest imperial powers to impose their domination over the world’s peoples and resources—wars, destruction and death that also produce ever greater profits, for the capitalists, billionaires and bankers the world over.

Working people in this country have every reason to oppose these wars, since we are the ones who pay for them, with our tax money and our blood. But we also have to get rid of the forces that are bringing about these wars, the capitalist economic system run in the interest of the very billionaires and capitalists, who exploit and impoverish us here at home.