UK
Richard Burgon MP: No to Trump’s war in Venezuela – Hands of Latin America
By Richard Burgon MP
We are in a very dangerous moment – one that requires us all to speak out loudly against a new era of Trump-led wars in Latin America.
Donald Trump has amassed the largest US military build-up in the Caribbean in decades, just off the coast of Venezuela.
This includes the largest warship ever constructed and fifteen thousand US troops deployed in the region. We have seen illicit US killings with the bombing of small boats. We have seen the seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker – and Trump imposing a blockade on Venezuela. Trump is now threatening land attacks. It could not be more serious.
The threat against Venezuela is clearly very real — but we also need to see this as just the first step in Trump’s wider strategy in the region.
Trump’s National Security Strategy, published last week, has sparked real alarm across the world. In Europe, he made clear that the plan is to install far-right parties in power.
But one region is more clearly in his crosshairs than any other: Latin America.
Trump’s Strategy is explicit — Latin America will once again become the United States’ backyard. For Trump, a region of 700 million people will be treated as nothing more than a US colony. The Strategy states that the US will “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence” in the region. Let’s be clear, that means US control over Latin America’s geography, resources and security.
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. But this is not just an oil grab. It is also a power grab to control the entire region.
Trump’s plans would represent a total reversal of the last quarter-century of Latin American history.
In the 21st century, a series of progressive governments — known as the Pink Tide — were elected with a focus on sovereignty over national resources and using those resources to invest in healthcare, education and public services.
Those Governments have prioritised regional integration, trading with one another for mutual benefit rather than being dominated by the United States, and they have expanded trade relations with the wider world, from Europe to Africa to China.
None of this is acceptable to Trump. That is what he wants to bring to an end. He wants to remove every single barrier to US domination and control of Latin America.
But the people of Latin America — like people everywhere — do not want to be controlled in the interests of a superpower. So, when Trump openly states that domination is his aim, we must be extremely alarmed about what could follow.
Trump’s agenda would have to be imposed through military interventions, through the installation of puppet governments, the rolling back of democratic freedoms, and the restriction of basic human rights.
We must remember what the United States did in the 1970s and 1980s under Operation Condor. US-backed military dictatorships in South America oversaw the torture and murder of many tens of thousands of political opponents.
Likewise, US-backed death squads in Central America carried out massacres and forced disappearances that left over 200,000 people killed or missing.
All of that was a key step in imposing economic control and carrying out the neoliberal experiments that Thatcher and Reagan later brought here.
Already this century the US has carried out a military coup (later defeated) in Venezuela and imposed sanctions responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, according to independent figures there. Now they are escalating further.
So, the danger is real, and we must say clearly: no to war on Venezuela, and no to a new era of US wars in Latin America.
Our task now is to build the widest possible movement — in our trade unions, our communities, and in our Parliament — to stop any military intervention in the region. I have tabled a parliamentary motion on this, and you can count on me to join you in building the broadest possible movement for peace, for sovereignty, and for the right of all peoples in Latin America to determine their own future.
- This article is a published version of the speech given by Richard Burgon MP at the Emergency Online Rally: No to Trump’s War on Venezuela hosted by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign on 15 December 2025. You can watch it here.
- Richard Burgon is the MP for Leeds East, the Secretary of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs and a regular contributor to Labour Outlook. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
- You can read and add your name to the Emergency Statement: No to Trump’s war on Venezuela here.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
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In his administration’s latest act of war, Donald Trump has ordered a naval blockade of Venezuela. Its stated goal is to cut off all oil revenue to force the illegal overthrow of an independent government. This is a siege designed to cause economic collapse and a humanitarian crisis as a precursor to all-out war by the United States.
This aggression is about controlling Venezuela’s oil and reversing its political independence. It follows a pattern of U.S. intervention in Latin America, where governments that resist U.S. control are targeted for regime change. The recent killing of more than 83 fishermen by the U.S naval flotilla in the Caribbean and the illegal seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker already show the Trump administration is violently escalating this conflict. Trump has made his colonial intentions clear by stating U.S. plans to steal Venezuelan land, oil, and minerals.
The people of the United States have overwhelmingly opposed military intervention in Venezuela. This war, like the war on Iraq, is built on false pretenses and imperial ambition. We must organize and mobilize to stop this blockade and prevent a wider war. No war on Venezuela!
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