Trump Seizes Venezuelan Oil Tanker, Threatens Colombia “Could Be Next” Target For Regime Change
Photograph Source: Jujovar2010 – CC BY-SA 3.0
“It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”
– Former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton, Trish Regan Prime Time, Fox Business Report, January 28, 2019
President Donald Trump triumphantly announced on November 10 that the U.S. Coast Guard had seized a large oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, while failing to identify it by name or specify where it had been intercepted, typical omissions for the “very stable genius.” This is but the latest news accompanying the massive U.S. military build-up in the Caribbean, which includes aircraft carriers, fighter jets, landing ships, and thousands of U.S. troops. At the same time, Trump threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro that he “could be next”–presumably a threat of regime change–after Washington launches a military attack on the Venezuelan government, which Trump says is imminent.
The attack against Venezuela’s principal revenue source has nothing to do with drug trafficking–military operations abroad are the least effective method of combating drugs–but rather, reflects an imperial desire acted on by the last five U.S. administrations to expel the Bolivarian Revolution from power and install a puppet regime in Caracas that will hand over the largest oil reserves on the planet to Western corporations.
This lust for hydrocarbons, which should have been subdued some time ago in order to deal with growing climate breakdown, has gone full force with the second coming of Trump and his determination to extract and burn off as much oil as possible while eliminating even the most modest efforts to ameliorate the climate crisis. In July, for example, the Trump administration eliminated a regulation limiting toxic emissions from cars and power plants, and a week ago rolled back automobile fuel efficiency standards. This will aggravate the ecological crisis by increasing fuel consumption and carbon-dioxide production.
One can reasonably wonder whether the ongoing attacks on Bogota and Caracas are actually part of a Washington plan to take possession of existing cocaine-trafficking routes and open up new ones, for example, through “liberated” Venezuela. After all, the White House and its intelligence agencies have a well-established record of working with governments that publicly take a hard rhetorical line against drug-trafficking in order to hide their own criminal involvement in it, as occurred with Felipe Calderon in Mexico and with the Colombian paramilitaries under Alvaro Uribe (when Colombia enjoyed lavish U.S. support). In the Calderon case, even the U.S. concedes that strongman Genaro Garcia Luna (secretary of public security under Calderon) was directing narco-trafficking while also heading the agencies tasked with combating it.
As noted by Luis Hernandez Navarro in the Mexican daily La Jornada, the rising prospects of Uribe governing Colombia again through a figure-head following next year’s elections give the Trump administration an incentive to close the noose around Venezuela, the last untoppled domino Washington needs to achieve complete control of the narcotics trade in Central and South America.
At the same time, Hernandez notes, the open contempt for Latin American and Caribbean sovereignty reflects Trumpian confidence in being able to perpetrate whatever atrocities Washington needs to with impunity, a self-assurance that appears to be grounded in reality given the lack of consequences to more than two years of wholesale slaughter in Palestine by Israel with full U.S. support.
Furthermore, Hernandez goes on to point out, the presence of right-wing and extremely right-wing governments allied with Washington in Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Trinidad, and Tobago smooths the probable path to power of a Pinochet-aligned group in Chile, as well as the threat of resurgent Uribe-ism in Colombia, all of which emboldens Trump to indulge calculated imperial abuse of a divided region unable to overtly resist it, whether it takes the form of illegal sanctions, acts of piracy like the recent seizure of the oil tanker, or bombardments and massacres.
Such policies are hardly the recent invention of an aberrant Trump regime, but rather, trace back to the unsuccessful 2002 U.S.-sponsored coup d’etat against Hugo Chavez, an effort that was aborted (but never renounced) when masses of poor people (the Bolivarian base) surrounded the presidential palace and successfully demanded Chavez’s release from captivity. Since then, and always in the name of freedom, democracy and human rights, the U.S. has unleashed sanctions, media slander campaigns, color revolutions, oil embargoes, assassination attempts (against president Maduro), robbery of currency reserves and infrastructure, threats of invasion, and attempted military coups against Bolivarian rule, including armed clashes between Colombian and Venezuelan forces, and once even recognizing a puppet government of its own choosing (Juan Guaido).
These actions have caused great damage to Venezuela and immense suffering to its people, taking the form of millions of dollars in lost oil income and the displacement of millions of Venezuelans, who have migrated to other countries in order to survive. Meanwhile, the oligarchs of old live the high life in great palaces in Miami and Madrid waiting for Washington to restore their lost privileges.
They may have a long wait. All prior efforts to effect regime change in Caracas have run up against what appears to be an immovable object: the unity of the National Bolivarian Armed Forces, which has emerged from twenty-seven years of revolutionary effort designed to make Venezuelan sovereignty invulnerable to compromise, whether by manipulation or outright conquest. To date there isn’t the slightest indication of an internal fissure anywhere in its considerable armor.
An important part of this unity has been the development of a new military doctrine known as Comprehensive National Defense, which confronts the U.S. military threat with three unyielding components: (1) strengthened military power; (2) deepened civilian-military union (people and army); and (3) increased popular participation in national defense tasks.
The pre-revolutionary Venezuelan armed forces were fragmented in divisions and brigades. Hugo Chavez organized the country in regions, and insured that in each region there was a military structure with all the necessary components: Army, Navy, National Guard, popular militias, and the people. If one region comes under attack, it now has the capacity to defend itself alone. There is no need for Caracas to move in units from somewhere else.
In addition to this redundant self-sufficiency, Venezuela enjoys complete unity of purpose and frequent contact between the government and the troops. President Maduro visits all the barracks personally, showing up at dawn. He freely shares with the troops, runs with them, and does military exercises with them. Many militia members have been Chavistas since childhood, forming unbreakable bonds of loyalty to each other and the Bolivarian Revolution. They will not be easily dealt with. As Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello observes: “For the friends of Chavismo the popular militias are a diamond; for the enemies they’re the worst possible news.”
Foreign military intervention in Venezuela is enormously complicated, and not just because of civilian-military unity. Venezuela is a large country of nearly thirty million people. It has weapons, manpower, determination, and land capable of sustaining prolonged popular resistance. It has modernized its weaponry, buying from China, Russia, and Iran, while also forging an alliance with those countries. In addition, it is blessed with geographical diversity measuring almost a million square kilometers, including extensive mountain ranges, dense jungles, and the long Orinoco River basin. It has 4208 kilometers of coastline, a 2341 kilometer border with Colombia, and a 2199 kilometer border with Brazil. And the popular barrios of Caracas are rat-holes.
None of Venezuela’s neighbors will lend themselves to being platforms for imperial war exploding in their midst.
Obviously, U.S. firepower can inflict enormous damage, but power without legitimacy is just another name for impotence.
Sources.
Luis Hernandez Navarro, “Venezuela, the Day After,” La Jornada (Spanish), December 9, 2025
Luis Hernandez Navarro, “Trump: the Context of the Aggressions,” La Jornada (Spanish), December 11, 2025
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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