U.S. Against Venezuela: War By Any Other Name

On October 3, 2025, American forces carried out a deadly strike against a non-military Venezuelan vessel. The strike reportedly killed four people, and is the fourth such action by Trump’s Administration against non-military Venezuelan vessels since September 2.

The United States government’s longstanding campaign of antagonism against Venezuela dates back to 2005 and the rise of the country’s late populist leader Hugo Chávez. But the Trump Administration has been spoiling for war with Venezuela since Trump’s January 2025 inauguration. Still, the progressive escalation from rhetoric to military action marks a new phase in America’s campaign of hostility against the South American country. Trump himself declared that the United States is in a state of “armed conflict” with Venezuela the day before the strike:

“President Trump has decided that the United States is engaged in a formal ‘armed conflict’ with drug cartels his team has labeled terrorist organizations and that suspected smugglers for such groups are “unlawful combatants,” the administration said in a confidential notice to Congress this week.

The notice was sent to several congressional committees and obtained by The New York Times. It adds new detail to the administration’s thinly articulated legal rationale for why three U.S. military strikes the president ordered on boats in the Caribbean Sea last month, killing all 17 people aboard them, should be seen as lawful rather than murder.”
Savage, Charlie, and Eric Schmitt. “Trump “Determined” the U.S. Is Now in a War with Drug Cartels, Congress Is Told.” The New York Times, 2 Oct. 2025.

Despite extensive international condemnation of the U.S. attacks – including a statement by the Kremlin explicitly expressing its support for Venezuela – the Trump Administration has indicated that open hostilities against Venezuela will continue, under the guise of an ongoing battle against so-called “narco-terrorists.”

“The Trump administration has designated several drug cartels and gangs as terrorist organizations, including Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and El Salvador’s MS-13. In the notification to Congress after the Sept. 15 strike, the White House said the drugs smuggled by these cartels kill tens of thousands of Americans each year and constitute an ‘armed attack’ against U.S. citizens. It did not name any specific gangs or cartels. 

‘Although this strike was limited in scope, U.S. forces remain postured to carry out military operations as necessary to prevent further deaths or injury to American citizens by eliminating the threat posed by these designated terrorist organizations,’ the notice read.”
Watson, Eleanor. “Trump Administration Tells Congress the U.S. Is in “Armed Conflict” with Drug Cartels after Venezuela Boat Strikes.” Cbsnews.com, 2 Oct. 2025.

According to reports, the U.S. Department of Justice has drafted a classified memorandum granting the Trump Administration legal authority to continue – and likely expand – such operations with impunity.

The opinion is significant, legal experts said, because it appears to justify an open-ended war against a secret list of groups, giving the president power to designate drug traffickers as enemy combatants and have them summarily killed without legal review.
Bertrand, Natasha, and Zachary Cohen. “Exclusive: Classified Justice Department Opinion Authorizes Strikes on Secret List of Cartels, Sources Say.” CNN, 6 Oct. 2025.

This is an open defiance of due process and international rules of engagement (ROE). It comes on the heels of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempt to re-boot U.S. military strength and morale with a return to what he has described as “warrior ethos.” In his October 1, 2025 address to hundreds of American generals and admirals, Hegseth pledged “No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority of warfighters,” …  the Trump Administration will “untie” the hands of fighters from hitherto troublesome standards of conduct.
Wolf, Zachary B. “For Trump and Hegseth, the “Warrior Ethos” Comes with Ultimatums for Hundreds of Generals and Admirals.” CNN, Oct. 2025.

Trump has long used the issues of crime and drug trafficking as talking points to justify key policies. That includes the construction of a border wall as well as large-scale deportations. But the overt and escalating use of military force against the people of Venezuela is the implementation of a broader vision, shaped largely by Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio.

No senior Trump official has spoken more forcefully about the new campaign of violence against Latin American criminal groups and their allies. And no senior aide to Mr. Trump has as long a history working on Latin America policy.

Over 14 years as a Republican senator from Florida, Mr. Rubio pressed three administrations to go on the offense across the region. The son of anti-Communist immigrants from pre-revolutionary Cuba, he was motivated by his loathing for the Castro government and its allies, notably Venezuela — a stance well rewarded by Florida’s sizable population of expatriates from those countries.

[…]

Mr. Rubio has long sought the ouster of leftist strongmen in the region, particularly leaders of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, whose governments he has called “illegitimate.” He has also helped engineer the administration’s mass deportations of immigrants, including to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Wong, E., & Crowley, M. (2025, September 12). “Rubio Leads Charge in Trump’s New War in Latin America.” The New York Times.

We have analysed that neither Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro nor his predecessor, Chávez, can be accurately described as “communist” or “Marxist.” Indeed, we have criticised them for adopting bourgeois polices instead of communist policies.  We noted that in these previous posts:

Hugo Chavez and Venezuela (2004; re-published August 2024)
Workers Never Ruled Venezuela from the Multiracial Unity blog (August 2024)
The struggle for control of Venezuela’s Oil – A short Marxist history to Venezuelan electoral crisis 2024 (September 2024)
Simon Bolivar – a non-Bolivarian view (September 2024)

But there are other considerations for  Trump, Rubio, and other Trumpite ideologues. Firstly, they remain intent on preserving American hegemony. Not only do they continue to apply old politics, but their tack has become newly sharpened and reinvigorated. This is because they now have to reinterpret the global landscape through the lens of 21st-century geopolitics.  There are two aspects of this. 

First, they are driven by the “need of the day” – to re-tool the USA for the coming new international war for supremacy. This will further pit the USA against China much more openly. In “The struggle for control of Venezuela’s Oil – A short Marxist history to Venezuelan electoral crisis 2024” we pointed out that:

“… the USA is unwilling to ‘cede’ South America, or even merely Venezuela to China. It therefore has its own vested interests to make accommodation in Venezuela – to the forces that can do two things.”

We showed how under Chavez, already a move towards China had taken place. This accelerated in the decades since. We noted that:

“All the candidacies seek to improve relations with the United States, while Maduro’s is developing a parallel strategy of rapprochement with China, Russia and Turkey … 
“Luis Bonilla-Molina”: Las elecciones presidenciales en Venezuela el 28J-2024: una situación inédita”; 28 July 2024; Ibid.

The penetration of China into South America has been fiercely resisted by the USA, and this battle deepens. Venezuela is a major front in that – with tangible raw materials in the shape of oil – to be seized. 

Conveniently, also, the “spectre” of communism allows Trumpite policy to be turned domestically as well, as we have previously discussed:

Today, the popular depiction of communism remains an omnipresent, looming threat against American culture and institutions. It effectively complements the jingoistic, socially conservative ballyhoo of the latter-day forebearers of capitalism, the MAGA movement.
“Of Men and Boogeymen: DeSantis, Trump, and the New Anti-Communist Movement.” MLRG.online, 30 Apr. 2024.

The Venezuelan “threat” is also used to supposedly justify the assault on Chicago by ICE. After this was condemned, the Trump administration claimed with no evidence, it had targeted Venezuelan gang members in Chicago:

“When federal agents stormed a South Shore housing complex in the dead of night, they claimed they were hunting members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Yet the numbers alone reveal how implausible that justification really was.

South Shore is a predominantly Black neighborhood: 92.6% Black, with Latinos making up just 2.6%. Statistically, the idea that a Venezuelan gang with little to no footprint in Chicago would have embedded itself in this community defies credibility. The “gang” narrative appears less like evidence-based policing and more like a pretext for militarized enforcement on a Black community.”
“Why Was a Black Neighborhood Targeted Under the Guise of a Venezuelan Gang?” The Black Wall Street Journal at MSN.com, 2025. Accessed 9 Oct. 2025.

As the same source points out:

“If ICE can use the idea of a distant gang to justify militarized action in a predominantly Black community, then no community is truly safe from politicized enforcement.

“I need everyone to understand what’s happening in Chicago and what could happen in other major cities. ICE is not only targeting undocumented immigrants,” Civil Rights Attorney Gerald A. Griggs told The Black Wall Street Times.
The Black Wall Street Journal, Ibid.

Finally, of course, no discussion of U.S. aggression against Venezuela is complete without acknowledging that the country sits atop the largest known oil reserve in the world. These resources have long been considered to fall within America’s self-declared sphere of interest. A long history exists since the early days of Venezuela’s bid by the national bourgeoisie to wrest the rights over this resource away from USA imperialism. That history is at the heart of even the current new steps of USA imperialism against Venezuela. We reviewed that history in depth in  The struggle for control of Venezuela’s Oil – A short Marxist history to Venezuelan electoral crisis 2024.

Here it is adequate to note how vast the potential supply of oil is:

The proven oil reserves in Venezuela are recognized as the largest in the world, totaling 300 billion barrels (4.8×1010 m3) as of 1 January 2014. The 2019 edition of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy reports the total proved reserves of 303.3 billion barrels for Venezuela (slightly more than Saudi Arabia’s 297.7 billion barrels).

Venezuela’s crude oil is very heavy by international standards, and as a result much of it must be processed by specialized domestic and international refineries.
“Oil Reserves in Venezuela.” Wikipedia, 27 Jan. 2023.

As we noted in the aforementioned item, the Chevron Corporation currently keeps Venezuelan oil flowing – albeit at reduced quantities –  in compliance with two decades of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela. There is little doubt that the Trump Administration and Chevron are positively salivating over a looming large-scale military conflict with Venezuela that would potentially end with the U.S. taking complete control of the nation’s oil reserves.

The United States tries to frame events as a “defensive action against drug smugglers”, a “just campaign against a communist despot”, or an effort to shore up American interests abroad against a mythical invasion of drugs from Venezuela (That is not the source of drugs coming into the USA). But the truth is that the Trump Administration is on a war footing with Venezuela, in preparation for a new coming international war against China. According to a report by the New York Times dated October 8, 2025:

“The Pentagon has deployed 10,000 U.S. troops to the region, most of them to bases in Puerto Rico, a senior U.S. military official said. Troops are also on eight surface warships and a submarine in the region.”
Wong, Edward, et al. “Qatar Pushes U.S.-Venezuela Diplomacy as Trump Focuses on Military Action.” The New York Times, 8 Oct. 2025.

It is the working people of Venezuela who will suffer the ultimate cost of a large-scale conflagration. An October 7 joint statement by five Venezuelan socialist organizations reports that Trump has cut off negotiations with the Venezuelan regime, and there are reports of plans for limited strikes against Venezuelan objectives. 

“The goal of this military deployment is to reaffirm that Latin America is the ‘backyard’ of US capitalism, to renew its dominance in the region in the face of competition from other capitalist powers such as Russia and, above all, China. Through militaristic threat, Donald Trump is bringing back “gunboat diplomacy” to subdue our peoples, and this is what looms over Venezuela and other countries on our continent.”
“Stop Imperialist Aggression against Venezuela. Trump’s Troops out of the Caribbean and Latin America!” Venezuelan Voices, 8 Oct. 2025. Accessed 9 Oct. 2025.

As such, we remain steadfast in our support for the people of Venezuela against U.S. imperialism, and we assert that only the leadership of a Marxist-Leninist party will bring about the necessary change to deter the rise of fascist militarism in America. 

Hands off Venezuela! Allow the people of Venezuela to deal with Maduro themselves! Until then, critical support to the Government of Venezuela against the imperialist provocations of the USA!