The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution

With rapid military escalation and a redeployed ‘War on Drugs’ narrative, the Trump administration appears to be laying the groundwork for an attack on the Venezuelan people.

by Vijay Prashad / November 8th, 2025  

Children play on the beach during a security deployment in Anzoátegui, Venezuela, 19 September 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

Since early September, the United States has given every indication that it could be preparing for a military assault on Venezuela. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research partnered with ALBA Movimientos, the International Peoples’ Assembly, No Cold War, and the Simón Bolívar Institute to produce red alert no. 20, ‘The Empire’s Dogs Are Barking at Venezuela’, on the potential scenarios and implications of US intervention.

In February 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez travelled to Havana to receive the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s José Martí Prize from Fidel Castro. In his speech, he likened Washington’s threats against Venezuela to dogs barking, saying, ‘Let the dogs bark, because it is a sign that we are on the move. ’ Chávez added, ‘Let the dogs of the empire bark. That is their role: to bark. Our role is to fight to achieve in this century – now, at last – the true liberation of our people.’ Almost two decades later, the empire’s dogs continue to bark. But will they bite? That is the question that this red alert seeks to answer.

The Sound of Barking

In February 2025, the US State Department designated a criminal network called Tren de Aragua (Aragua Train) as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’. Then, in July, the US Treasury Department added the so-called Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) to the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s sanctions list as a ‘transnational terrorist group’. No previous US government report, either from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) or the State Department, had identified these organisations as a threat, and no publicly verifiable evidence has been offered to substantiate the claimed scale or coordination of either group. There is no evidence that Tren de Aragua is a coherent international operation. As for the Cartel de los Soles, the first time the name appeared was in 1993 in Venezuelan reporting on investigations of two National Guard generals – a reference to the ‘sun’ insignia on their uniforms – years before Hugo Chávez’s 1998 presidential victory. The Trump administration has alleged that these groups, working with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government, are the primary traffickers of drugs into the US – while providing zero evidence for the connection. Moreover, reports from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the DEA itself have consistently found Venezuelan groups to be marginal in global drug trafficking. Even so, the US State Department has offered a $50 million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest – the largest in the programme’s history.

Members of the first cohort of the Tactical Method of Revolutionary Resistance (Método Táctico de Resistencia Revolucionaria, MTRR) course smile after completing training at the Commando Actions Group in Caracas, Venezuela, October 2025—credit: Miguel Ángel García Ojeda.

The US has revived the blunt instrument of the ‘War on Drugs’ to pressure countries that are not yielding to its threats or that stubbornly refuse to elect right-wing governments. Recently, Trump has targeted Mexico and Colombia and has invoked their difficulties with the narcotics trade to attack their presidents. Though Venezuela does not have a significant domestic drug problem, that has not stopped Trump from attacking Maduro’s government with much more venom. In October 2025, the Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado of the Vente Venezuela (Come Venezuela) movement won the Nobel Peace Prize. Machado was ineligible to run for president in 2024 largely because she had made a series of treasonous statements, accepted a diplomatic post from another country in order to plead for intervention in Venezuela (in violation of Article 149 of the Constitution), and supported guarimbas (violent street actions in which people were beaten, burned alive, and beheaded). She has also championed unilateral US sanctions that have devastated the economy. The Nobel Prize was secured through the work of the Inspire America Foundation (based in Miami, Florida, and led by Cuban American lawyer Marcell Felipe) and by the intervention of four US politicians, three of whom are Cuban Americans (Marco Rubio, María Elvira Salazar, and Mario Díaz-Balart). The Cuban American connection is key, showing how this political network that is focused on the overthrow by any means of the Cuban Revolution now sees a US military intervention in Venezuela as a way to advance regime change in Cuba. This is, therefore, not just an intervention against Venezuela, but one against all those governments that the US would like to overthrow.

A woman holds a rifle during a security deployment in the Petare neighbourhood of Caracas, Venezuela, 15 October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

The Bite

In August 2025, the US military began to amass naval forces in the southern Caribbean, including Aegis-class destroyers and nuclear-powered attack submarines. In September, it began a campaign of extrajudicial strikes on small motorboats in Caribbean waters, bombing at least thirteen vessels and killing at least fifty-seven people – without offering evidence of any drug trafficking links. By mid-October, the US had deployed more than four thousand troops off Venezuela’s coast and five thousand on standby in Puerto Rico (including F-35 fighter jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones), authorised covert operations inside the country, and flown B-52 ‘demonstration missions’ over Caracas. In late October, the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group was deployed to the region. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s government has mobilised the population to defend the country.

A woman from the Peasant Militia (Milicia Campesina) holds a machete during her graduation as a combatant from the MTRR course, October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

Five Scenarios for US Intervention

Scenario no. 1: the Brother Sam option. In 1964, the US deployed several warships off the coast of Brazil. Their presence emboldened General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, chief of the Army General Staff, and his allies to stage a coup that ushered in a twenty-one-year dictatorship. But Venezuela is a different terrain. In his first term, Chávez strengthened political education in the military academies and anchored officer training in defence of the 1999 Constitution. A Castelo Branco figure is therefore unlikely to save the day for Washington.

Scenario no. 2: the Panama option. In 1989, the US bombed Panama City and sent in special operations troops to capture Manuel Noriega, Panama’s military leader, and bring him to a US prison while US-backed politicians took over the country. Such an operation would be harder to replicate in Venezuela: its military is far stronger, trained for protracted, asymmetric conflicts, and the country boasts sophisticated air defence systems (notably the Russian S-300VM and Buk-M2E surface-to-air systems). Any US air campaign would face sustained defence, making the prospect of downed aircraft – a major loss of face – one Washington is unlikely to risk.

Scenario no. 3: the Iraq option. A ‘Shock and Awe’ bombing campaign against Caracas and other cities to rattle the population and demoralise the state and military, followed by attempts to assassinate senior Venezuelan leadership and seize key infrastructure. After such an assault, Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado would likely declare herself ready to take charge and align Venezuela closely with the US. The inadequacy of this manoeuvre is that the Bolivarian leadership runs deep: the roots of the defence of the Bolivarian project run through working-class barrios, and the military would not be immediately demoralised – unlike in Iraq. As the interior minister of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, recently noted, ‘Anyone who wants to can remember Vietnam… when a small but united people with an iron will were able to teach US imperialism a lesson’.

The commander general of the Bolivarian National Police, Brigadier General Rubén Santiago, holds a rifle with a sticker of Chávez’s eyes during a security deployment in Petare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

Scenario no. 4: the Gulf of Tonkin option. In 1964, the US escalated its military engagement in the Vietnam War after an incident framed as an unprovoked attack on US destroyers off the country’s coast. Later disclosures revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) fabricated intelligence to manufacture a pretext for escalation. The US claims it is now conducting naval and air ‘training exercises’ near Venezuelan territorial waters and airspace. On 26 October, the Venezuelan government said it had received information about a covert CIA plan to stage a false-flag attack on US vessels near Trinidad and Tobago to elicit a US response. Venezuelan authorities warned of US manoeuvres and said they will not give in to provocations or intimidation.

Scenario no. 5: the Qasem Soleimani option. In January 2020, a US drone strike ordered by Trump killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force. Soleimani was one of Iran’s most senior officials and was responsible for its regional defence strategy across Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. In an interview on 60 Minutes, former US chargé d’affaires for Venezuela James Story said, ‘The assets are there to do everything up to and including decapitation of [the] government’ – a plain statement of intent to assassinate the president. After the death of President Hugo Chávez in 2013, US officials predicted that the project would collapse. Twelve years have now passed, and Venezuela continues along the path set forth under Chávez, advancing its communal model whose resilience rests not only on the revolution’s collective leadership but also on strong popular organisation. The Bolivarian project has never been a one-person show.

China and Russia are unlikely to permit a strike on Venezuela without pressing for immediate UN Security Council resolutions, and both routinely operate in the Caribbean, including joint exercises with Cuba and global missions such as China’s Mission Harmony 2025.

A member of the Juventud Socialista de Venezuela (Socialist Youth of Venezuela) shows a coin given to graduates of the MTRR course during a security deployment in La Guaira, Venezuela, October 2025. Based on the methods of Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the MTRR course is designed to train people with no prior military experience for possible guerrilla warfare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

We hope that none of these scenarios come to pass and that the United States takes its military options off the table. But hope alone is not enough – we must work to expand the camp of peace.

• Originally published on Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

Congressional Republicans Must Stand Up to the President on Venezuela!

by Ron Paul | Nov 11, 2025 | ANTIWAR.COM

I recall when then-President Barack Obama was planning to send troops to enforce his “Assad must go” policy in Syria, many Republican US Senators passionately argued that the US President must come to Congress for approval before sending US troops into combat overseas. At the time, they portrayed themselves as brave defenders of the US Constitution.

Last week, when the Senate held a vote to remind President Trump that he is required to seek approval from the Legislative Branch before launching an attack on Venezuela, only two Republican Senators stood up to defend the Constitution. Why? Perhaps because a Republican President was now in office.

According to Politico, war-enthusiast Senator Lindsey Graham went so far as to say that Congress can’t “substitute our judgment” for the president’s when it comes to the decision to attack Venezuela.

The Senator needs a refresher course in high school civics. The US Constitution requires Congress, as the branch most directly accountable to the people, to substitute its judgement for the president’s when it comes to warmaking!

We fought a war against George III to negate the ability of a king to take the people to war on his whim. Now, Congress scrambles to abrogate that hard-fought achievement in the name of political expediency.

While the DC foreign policy blob – made up of both parties – is always pro-war, with each election we get a charade that one party or the other is standing up for the Constitution by challenging a president of the other party on war powers.

Why not stand up for the Constitution regardless of who the President may be?

The truth is, these days most Members of the House and Senate hold their heads down, follow their leadership, and enjoy that 97 percent incumbency reelection rate. After all, making waves by standing up for the Constitution can cost you your seat. You might even find yourself in a position where a President from your own party raises millions of dollars to try and get you ousted.

In an excellent recent essay in The American Conservative, George O’Neill Jr. recounts the current round of pro-war lies being bandied about to gin up support for a war on Venezuela. There are “narco-terrorists” threatening the US! Hezbollah is training in the Venezuelan jungles! Maduro is in league with Hamas!

We’ve heard it all before. The sinking of the USS Maine. The “domino theory.” Babies ripped from Kuwaiti incubators by Saddam’s stormtroopers. WMDs. Assad’s gas attacks. And so on.

All lies, and as O’Neill writes, the interventions they spawned have all turned out to be devastating, expensive failures. We’ve gone from six trillion dollars in debt at the beginning of the war on terror to 38 trillion dollars today. The global US military empire cannot continue if we want to keep our country.

Benjamin Franklin famously said “a republic if you can keep it” when asked what kind of government the Framers of our Constitution had created. But the Republic cannot be held together by magic or good luck. “If you can keep it,” means representation by men and women of good moral character who put the interests of their constituents and their country before their political party or the President. And it requires a population willing to stand up to propaganda and politics to elect such good people and hold them to account.

Ron Paul is a former Republican congressman from Texas. He was the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president.

U.S. Military Kills Six More Drug Smuggling Suspects in Two Boat Strikes

Courtesy of the Pentagon

Published Nov 10, 2025 10:25 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

The U.S. military has carried out two more strikes on suspected drug boats in the Eastern Pacific, according to the Pentagon. 

In a statement, the department said that two boats were eliminated, each carrying three male suspects. All were killed in airstrikes in international waters, at no risk to U.S. servicemembers. 

The military has now conducted a total of 19 strikes on suspected drug boats, bringing the total number of deceased suspects to 76 people. Two survivors were rescued after a strike in mid-October and returned to Colombia and Ecuador, their respective nations. 
 
The Trump administration describes the targets as "narco-terrorists" or "cartel terrorists," and claims that the boats are "known to our intelligence" to be involved in narcotics smuggling. Anecdotally, reporters who have interviewed relatives and acquaintances of the deceased boat operators have found that most are low-income individuals with limited economic options. Among the dead are commercial drivers, fishermen, laborers, petty criminals, and at least one local crime boss, according to the AP. 

The Pentagon has not disclosed the identities of those eliminated in the strikes, if any are known. The majority of the deceased remain unidentified, according to MSNBC, consistent with the secretive nature of smuggling enterprises and the remoteness of the waters where they were killed. 

The legality of the strike program has been questioned by political critics, legal experts and even the United Nations' top human rights official. Even if these matters are set aside, there is the more practical matter of efficacy: some smuggling experts question whether the flow of drugs can be stopped with airstrikes on low-level "mules." Even if the attacks make the established boat routes too risky, the loosely-organized South American crime networks have a long history of developing alternatives, like complex container freight strategies and foot traffic.  

"I don’t think it’s going to cause the [Jalisco New Generation Cartel] or Sinaloa cartel to say, ‘Wait, this is too dangerous,'" one congressional official told MSNBC. "These guys feed their rivals to tigers. They are not easily intimidated."

The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution

With rapid military escalation and a redeployed ‘War on Drugs’ narrative, the Trump administration appears to be laying the groundwork for an attack on the Venezuelan people.

by Vijay Prashad / November 8th, 2025

Children play on the beach during a security deployment in Anzoátegui, Venezuela, 19 September 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

Since early September, the United States has given every indication that it could be preparing for a military assault on Venezuela. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research partnered with ALBA Movimientos, the International Peoples’ Assembly, No Cold War, and the Simón Bolívar Institute to produce red alert no. 20, ‘The Empire’s Dogs Are Barking at Venezuela’, on the potential scenarios and implications of US intervention.

In February 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez travelled to Havana to receive the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s José Martí Prize from Fidel Castro. In his speech, he likened Washington’s threats against Venezuela to dogs barking, saying, ‘Let the dogs bark, because it is a sign that we are on the move. ’ Chávez added, ‘Let the dogs of the empire bark. That is their role: to bark. Our role is to fight to achieve in this century – now, at last – the true liberation of our people.’ Almost two decades later, the empire’s dogs continue to bark. But will they bite? That is the question that this red alert seeks to answer.

The Sound of Barking

In February 2025, the US State Department designated a criminal network called Tren de Aragua (Aragua Train) as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’. Then, in July, the US Treasury Department added the so-called Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) to the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s sanctions list as a ‘transnational terrorist group’. No previous US government report, either from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) or the State Department, had identified these organisations as a threat, and no publicly verifiable evidence has been offered to substantiate the claimed scale or coordination of either group. There is no evidence that Tren de Aragua is a coherent international operation. As for the Cartel de los Soles, the first time the name appeared was in 1993 in Venezuelan reporting on investigations of two National Guard generals – a reference to the ‘sun’ insignia on their uniforms – years before Hugo Chávez’s 1998 presidential victory. The Trump administration has alleged that these groups, working with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government, are the primary traffickers of drugs into the US – while providing zero evidence for the connection. Moreover, reports from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the DEA itself have consistently found Venezuelan groups to be marginal in global drug trafficking. Even so, the US State Department has offered a $50 million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest – the largest in the programme’s history.

Members of the first cohort of the Tactical Method of Revolutionary Resistance (Método Táctico de Resistencia Revolucionaria, MTRR) course smile after completing training at the Commando Actions Group in Caracas, Venezuela, October 2025—credit: Miguel Ángel García Ojeda.

The US has revived the blunt instrument of the ‘War on Drugs’ to pressure countries that are not yielding to its threats or that stubbornly refuse to elect right-wing governments. Recently, Trump has targeted Mexico and Colombia and has invoked their difficulties with the narcotics trade to attack their presidents. Though Venezuela does not have a significant domestic drug problem, that has not stopped Trump from attacking Maduro’s government with much more venom. In October 2025, the Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado of the Vente Venezuela (Come Venezuela) movement won the Nobel Peace Prize. Machado was ineligible to run for president in 2024 largely because she had made a series of treasonous statements, accepted a diplomatic post from another country in order to plead for intervention in Venezuela (in violation of Article 149 of the Constitution), and supported guarimbas (violent street actions in which people were beaten, burned alive, and beheaded). She has also championed unilateral US sanctions that have devastated the economy. The Nobel Prize was secured through the work of the Inspire America Foundation (based in Miami, Florida, and led by Cuban American lawyer Marcell Felipe) and by the intervention of four US politicians, three of whom are Cuban Americans (Marco Rubio, María Elvira Salazar, and Mario Díaz-Balart). The Cuban American connection is key, showing how this political network that is focused on the overthrow by any means of the Cuban Revolution now sees a US military intervention in Venezuela as a way to advance regime change in Cuba. This is, therefore, not just an intervention against Venezuela, but one against all those governments that the US would like to overthrow.

A woman holds a rifle during a security deployment in the Petare neighbourhood of Caracas, Venezuela, 15 October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

The Bite

In August 2025, the US military began to amass naval forces in the southern Caribbean, including Aegis-class destroyers and nuclear-powered attack submarines. In September, it began a campaign of extrajudicial strikes on small motorboats in Caribbean waters, bombing at least thirteen vessels and killing at least fifty-seven people – without offering evidence of any drug trafficking links. By mid-October, the US had deployed more than four thousand troops off Venezuela’s coast and five thousand on standby in Puerto Rico (including F-35 fighter jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones), authorised covert operations inside the country, and flown B-52 ‘demonstration missions’ over Caracas. In late October, the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group was deployed to the region. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s government has mobilised the population to defend the country.

A woman from the Peasant Militia (Milicia Campesina) holds a machete during her graduation as a combatant from the MTRR course, October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

Five Scenarios for US Intervention

Scenario no. 1: the Brother Sam option. In 1964, the US deployed several warships off the coast of Brazil. Their presence emboldened General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, chief of the Army General Staff, and his allies to stage a coup that ushered in a twenty-one-year dictatorship. But Venezuela is a different terrain. In his first term, Chávez strengthened political education in the military academies and anchored officer training in defence of the 1999 Constitution. A Castelo Branco figure is therefore unlikely to save the day for Washington.

Scenario no. 2: the Panama option. In 1989, the US bombed Panama City and sent in special operations troops to capture Manuel Noriega, Panama’s military leader, and bring him to a US prison while US-backed politicians took over the country. Such an operation would be harder to replicate in Venezuela: its military is far stronger, trained for protracted, asymmetric conflicts, and the country boasts sophisticated air defence systems (notably the Russian S-300VM and Buk-M2E surface-to-air systems). Any US air campaign would face sustained defence, making the prospect of downed aircraft – a major loss of face – one Washington is unlikely to risk.

Scenario no. 3: the Iraq option. A ‘Shock and Awe’ bombing campaign against Caracas and other cities to rattle the population and demoralise the state and military, followed by attempts to assassinate senior Venezuelan leadership and seize key infrastructure. After such an assault, Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado would likely declare herself ready to take charge and align Venezuela closely with the US. The inadequacy of this manoeuvre is that the Bolivarian leadership runs deep: the roots of the defence of the Bolivarian project run through working-class barrios, and the military would not be immediately demoralised – unlike in Iraq. As the interior minister of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, recently noted, ‘Anyone who wants to can remember Vietnam… when a small but united people with an iron will were able to teach US imperialism a lesson’.

The commander general of the Bolivarian National Police, Brigadier General Rubén Santiago, holds a rifle with a sticker of Chávez’s eyes during a security deployment in Petare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

Scenario no. 4: the Gulf of Tonkin option. In 1964, the US escalated its military engagement in the Vietnam War after an incident framed as an unprovoked attack on US destroyers off the country’s coast. Later disclosures revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) fabricated intelligence to manufacture a pretext for escalation. The US claims it is now conducting naval and air ‘training exercises’ near Venezuelan territorial waters and airspace. On 26 October, the Venezuelan government said it had received information about a covert CIA plan to stage a false-flag attack on US vessels near Trinidad and Tobago to elicit a US response. Venezuelan authorities warned of US manoeuvres and said they will not give in to provocations or intimidation.

Scenario no. 5: the Qasem Soleimani option. In January 2020, a US drone strike ordered by Trump killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force. Soleimani was one of Iran’s most senior officials and was responsible for its regional defence strategy across Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. In an interview on 60 Minutes, former US chargé d’affaires for Venezuela James Story said, ‘The assets are there to do everything up to and including decapitation of [the] government’ – a plain statement of intent to assassinate the president. After the death of President Hugo Chávez in 2013, US officials predicted that the project would collapse. Twelve years have now passed, and Venezuela continues along the path set forth under Chávez, advancing its communal model whose resilience rests not only on the revolution’s collective leadership but also on strong popular organisation. The Bolivarian project has never been a one-person show.

China and Russia are unlikely to permit a strike on Venezuela without pressing for immediate UN Security Council resolutions, and both routinely operate in the Caribbean, including joint exercises with Cuba and global missions such as China’s Mission Harmony 2025.

A member of the Juventud Socialista de Venezuela (Socialist Youth of Venezuela) shows a coin given to graduates of the MTRR course during a security deployment in La Guaira, Venezuela, October 2025. Based on the methods of Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the MTRR course is designed to train people with no prior military experience for possible guerrilla warfare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

We hope that none of these scenarios come to pass and that the United States takes its military options off the table. But hope alone is not enough – we must work to expand the camp of peace.

Originally published on  Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay's website.

Caribbean Leaders Call for Unified Latin American Resistance to US Attacks

The US has now struck 18 vessels and killed 70 people in its ongoing onslaught in the Caribbean and Pacific.

By Michael Fox , 

Truthout

November 7, 2025

People watch the USS Gravely, a U.S. Navy warship, departing the Port of Spain on October 30, 2025. The warship arrived in Trinidad and Tobago on October 26, 2025, for joint exercises near the coast of Venezuela.

MARTIN BERNETTI / AFP via Getty Images

The tiny Caribbean island nation of Barbados — with a population roughly the size of Anchorage, Alaska, or Lincoln, Nebraska — might not be the country one would first imagine taking the lead to stand up to U.S. military actions and ambitions in the region. But as the Trump administration continues to attack boats, first in the Caribbean Sea and now in the Pacific, leaders in Barbados have been vocal.

“As a small state, we have invested tremendous time and energy and effort in establishing and maintaining our region as a zone of peace,” Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said at a conference in late October. “Peace is critical to all that we do in this region, and now that peace is being threatened, we have to speak up.”

Mottley called on other leaders in the region to denounce the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean and the U.S. strikes on more than 18 vessels that, as of November 7, had killed at least 70 people in the Caribbean and Pacific.

U.S. officials say these boats are carrying dangerous drugs like fentanyl and cocaine to the United States. They say the people killed on these boats are drug traffickers. They provide no evidence for these claims, and in fact, administration officials have also admitted that the military doesn’t identify the individuals on the boats before hitting them.

Ben Saul, the UN Special Rapporteur for the protection of human rights while countering terrorism, has called the attacks a “crime against humanity.”

Top DOJ Lawyer Claims Trump Doesn’t Need Congressional Approval for Boat Strikes
A DOJ lawyer told Congress that the strikes — which Trump says are in “self-defense” — don’t put troops in harm’s way.  By Sharon Zhang , Truthout  November 4, 2025

Family members of the victims who have been found say the people on the boats are just fishermen. They accuse the United States of flouting international law to push its military agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“I believe that the time has come for us, therefore, to be able to ensure that we do not accept that any entity has the right to engage in extrajudicial killings of persons that they suspect of being involved in criminal activities,” said Mottley. “We equally do not accept that any nation in our region or the greater Caribbean should be the subject of an imposition upon them of any unilateral expression of force and violence by any third party or nation.”

Mottley is one of many of Caribbean leaders who have condemned the Trump administration’s actions. But there is also division, particularly due to the outsized role of the U.S. in the region.

On October 18, Mottley met with the leaders of the other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member nations. They released a joined statement reaffirming the need for peace, dialogue, and the “unequivocal support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries in the Region.”

“The fact that they’re speaking up is highly significant,” Alexander Main, the Director of International Policy at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, told Truthout. “These Caribbean governments are very reliant on the U.S. in a number of ways, economically, and have been in a vulnerable position, particularly since the passage of Hurricane Melissa in that area where U.S. help is badly needed.”

This week the U.S. State Department said the United States would provide $24 million in assistance to the Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica, following the destruction wrought by the hurricane.

One CARICOM country, however, did not endorse the declaration against the U.S. strikes — Trinidad and Tobago. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has openly supported U.S. President Donald Trump and his actions in the region. She says Trinidad has been impacted by drug violence and Trump’s attacks are trying to make their country safe.

“He is committed to the fight against drug trafficking within our region. My Government will continue to support the US military drug interdiction exercises within the region,” Persad-Bissessar told the Trinidad Express.

The island of Trinidad is just off the coast of Venezuela — only 6.8 miles at its closest point.

The atmosphere in Trinidad is “tense,” Trinidadian journalist Soyini Grey told Truthout.

“We’re not accustomed to this type of war-like language and these actions,” she said. “So, narco strikes in the Caribbean is odd and bodies washing up on shores or citizens being killed — we had two of our citizens killed in, I believe, strike five. So, that has been very disquieting. And then, when we reach out to the prime minister for comment, she’s very evasive.”

Grey says schools were closed in the capital on October 31 and grocery stores were overrun with people trying to stock up when news reports suggested that U.S. strikes on Venezuela were imminent. Grey says the Trinidadian military went on high alert and troops were called to bases across Trinidad.


“U.S. government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial water.”

While the attacks expected in those reports have yet to occur, recent actions from the U.S. besides the boat strikes have still given plenty of reason for an abundance of caution. In mid-October, Trump authorized the CIA to carry out covert action in Venezuela. He told reporters the U.S. was considering direct strikes on Venezuela.

“We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” Trump said.

The United States has amassed an unprecedented number of ships and military assets in the region — reportedly the largest military buildup in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. When the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford — the largest warship ever built — arrives in the Caribbean, there will be over a dozen ships and more than 10,000 military personnel.

The Trump administration has labeled drug groups in the region as “foreign terrorist organizations,” in what legal experts say is an attempt to justify military action. Meanwhile, Trump has accused — again, without evidence — Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro of being a narcotrafficking kingpin. He doubled a bounty on Maduro’s head to $50 million in August.

Maduro has denounced Trump’s threat of military operations in the country and accused Washington of “fabricating a war.”

The Venezuelan government was outspoken against the first boat attack. “But since then, it hasn’t exactly reacted,” Ricardo Vaz, a journalist in Venezuela with Venezuelanalysis told Truthout. “I think the government is really trying to avoid any kind of falling for provocations or unnecessarily escalating the rhetoric.”

For good reason — Trump has shown himself to be unpredictable. And the U.S. government has hit back against Latin American leaders who have denounced its campaign in the Caribbean and Pacific.


“Historically, the only way that Latin America has managed to stave off catastrophic U.S. intervention is to come together as a region, and we haven’t seen enough of that beyond rhetoric.”

In late September, the Trump administration revoked the U.S. visa of Colombian President Gustavo Petro. The revocation came after Petro spoke to protesters in New York City, encouraging U.S. soldiers to refuse orders from Trump. Last month, the United States further sanctioned Petro and his family. Trump has promised to cut off all U.S. aid to Colombia.

Petro has been one of the most outspoken voices against the U.S. military actions in the region, calling the boat attacks “murder.”

“U.S. government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial water,” Petro posted on social media. He named one Colombian man, Alejandro Carranza, who was killed in a U.S. attack, calling him a “lifelong fisherman.”

In mid-October, Petro called on Latin American countries to “unite now to reject and react, beyond mere rhetoric, against any aggression against the homeland of Bolívar and the Latin American and Caribbean territory. Venezuela belongs to Venezuelans.”

“We’ve seen some really promising rhetoric and arguments expressed by Petro, but it’s not enough,” Alexander Aviña, an associate professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University and an expert on the drug war, told Truthout. “Historically, the only way that Latin America has managed to stave off catastrophic U.S. intervention is to come together as a region, and we haven’t seen enough of that beyond rhetoric.”

“I think also Mexico needs to be a lot stronger, more forceful in pushing back against what the U.S. is planning to do in the Caribbean, because eventually, it’s going to boomerang on them,” he said.

That boomerang now seems to be in motion. On November 3, news outlets reported the Trump administration was drawing up blueprints to send U.S. troops to combat drug cartels in Mexico— with or without the support of the Mexican government.

“The United States is not going to come to Mexico with the military,” President Claudia Sheinbaum had previously said in August. “We cooperate, we collaborate, but there is not going to be an invasion. That is ruled out, absolutely ruled out.”

Sheinbaum has also denounced the U.S. boat attacks, some of which have been hitting closer to Mexico.

On October 28, U.S. forces killed 14 people in four alleged “drug boat” strikes in the Eastern Pacific, roughly 400 miles from the Mexican city of Acapulco. Sheinbaum dispatched the Mexican navy to search for survivors.

“We do not agree with these attacks,” she said during her regular morning press conference. “We want all international treaties to be respected.”

But Main says Mexico is in a difficult position.

“Sheinbaum has definitely expressed her strong disagreement with these extrajudicial killings in the region,” said Main. “But they’re about to enter into renegotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement. They’re also negotiating the security cooperation with the U.S. and doing everything they can to avoid the U.S. violating their sovereignty in a significant way.”

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was Trump’s renegotiation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. USMCA rolled out in 2020, but the trade deal goes under review every six years, and analysts say Trump is likely pushing for a hefty renegotiation ahead of the July 2026 deadline.

The Cuban and Brazilian presidents have also condemned the strikes. In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has offered to help mediate between Venezuela and the United States even as his own country is negotiating over its own trade war with the United States, after Trump slapped Brazil with a 50 percent tariff for bringing his ally former president Jair Bolsonaro to trial for plotting to carry out a coup.

Aside from leaders, there is popular movement across Latin America against the lethal U.S. actions in the Caribbean. People have protested in Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela.

But the U.S. military push into the Caribbean comes at a time when the region is far from united. Trump allies like Argentina’s Javier Milei, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, and Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa have staunchly backed the U.S. lethal attacks on supposed “drug boats.”

Bukele and Noboa have alleged ties to drug groups and narcotrafficking.

“The problem is that, unlike the Pink Tide at the beginning of the 2000s, we now we have a South America that is not so ideologically cohesive,” Brazilian International Relations professor Camila Feix Vidal told Truthout, referencing the shift toward left-wing governments emblematic of that era. “So, it will be very difficult to have a regional unity to denounce this type of action.”

“I think that, once again, as we have seen throughout history, this shows that the United States is not reliable, and that it acts by force for its own ends.”

 

What Wider War in Venezuela Would Bring

Russia, and possibly even China, would feel obligated to enhance military support in response to a missile, air, or even drone strike on sovereign Venezuelan territory. Escalation would be almost inevitable.

by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity | Nov 7, 2025 |  ANTIWAR.COM

Reprinted from Consortium News:

ALERT MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: What Wider War in Venezuela Would Bring

Dear President Trump:

We are deeply concerned about where the United States seems to be headed in its Venezuela policy and urge you to demand that the Intelligence Community give you clear, unfiltered, “truth-to-power” analysis, as well as covert action options in Venezuela.

Flying blind into an unprovoked war against a Latin American government, even one weakened by years of U.S. “maximum-pressure” sanctions, risks a conflagration that could draw Russia into the conflict and offers zero probability of establishing a legitimate, pro-U.S. successor government.

We see a classic storm of politicization brewing in the Intelligence Community, to which we devoted our careers, as a result of blatant pressures that it give you the “right” answer – fabricating or exaggerating a pretext for direct military intervention in Venezuela.

The State Department’s cancellation of views that don’t coincide with its own, and the intelligence community leadership’s firing of senior analysts whose classified, honest analysis contradicted unfounded Administration allegations that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro controls the Tren de Aragua gang and is using it to attack the United States have chilled collectors’ and analysts’ willingness to provide you unbiased, neutral, accurate intelligence.

We have seen this before – during numerous intelligence and foreign policy debacles, including the fake allegations about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And we remember the disastrous consequences for the country and its leaders.

There is room for some debate on the rationale for some sanctions on Venezuela. Maduro’s management of elections has been correctly questioned, for example. But U.S. opposition to the changes ushered in by the late President Chávez’s election in 1999 has been, for most of these 26 years, implacable.

The U.S. government, under Presidents from both parties, has imposed sanctions to paralyze the country’s economy; identified, trained, and funded opponents, including some who have resorted to violence similar to that we accuse the government of; and – even more important – has supported several failed attempts to overthrow the Chávez and Maduro Governments (with varying levels of involvement), including a blatant attempt to assassinate Maduro in plain daylight.

The results have been disastrous for U.S. interests.

• Maduro has been better at mobilizing support on the street than at managing the economy, but U.S. sanctions – aimed to destroy an oil industry that accounts for 90 percent of national revenues – have been the overwhelming driver of the exodus of millions of Venezuelans to neighboring countries and the United States.
• Popular exhaustion from U.S. sanctions and, more recently, fear of U.S. military attacks have indeed fueled desperation among some Venezuelan citizens – who might welcome peace even at the expense of a coup – but Washington policies have actually unified Maduro’s leadership team.
• The military officers, who the U.S. apparently is counting on to rise up, fear what U.S. justice and a successor government will do to them. The administration’s designation of Maduro as the capo of the Cartel de los Soles, the existence of which is unproven, and as a “narcoterrorist” as president of a country that produces no drugs and has no direct hand in their transport, is evidence to the military that Washington could eventually make up whatever “facts” it wants to hunt them down too.
• An opposition coalition did well in the last national elections, but the U.S.-favored faction and its leaders have split it so badly that it’s extremely unlikely that they will be able to unite the nation and government. Their rhetoric features pro-democracy slogans, but almost all serious analysts see little evidence that they would have the discipline to resist strong temptations to unbridled power – and revenge.
• U.S. “maximum-pressure” policies and saber-rattling in the Caribbean make us look like bullies throughout Latin America if not the world – a hegemon desperate to show it can act ruthlessly and with impunity in what it considers its backyard.
• The Administration has provided no evidence that the fast boats that it has destroyed were carrying drugs to the United States, while most evidence points to the conclusion that they were not. Although some Latin American governments haven’t concealed their dislike of Maduro, they are embarrassed that the United States resorts only to sticks, including threats of military attack, with no credible prospect of negotiations or carrots. They know history better than we do: What we do to their neighbors is in our arsenal against them eventually – if they ever dare to cross us. That fear makes for false allies.

Threats of coups and military intervention are the most counterproductive.

• Perhaps U.S. intelligence operatives are telling you that they have assets in place who can kidnap or assassinate Maduro in a lightning operation, but we suggest that you demand proof.
• C.I.A. apparently convinced then-National Security Advisor John Bolton that people in the military were ready to launch when U.S.-designated President Juan Guaidó called on them to rise up in April 2019 to complete the “final phase” of overthrowing Maduro. It was a massive failure.
• Caracas and each military command is Maduro’s territory, so anyone claiming to make clean recruitments right under his nose must demonstrate that they actually have.
• U.S. history in Latin America shows, moreover, that U.S.-instigated and supported coups do not lead to stability, democracy, or human rights. The same appears obvious if the overthrow is effected by U.S. special operations personnel and a figurehead is installed.
• Most dangerous, of course, is the prospect of war – a wider and/or “forever” war – with Venezuela and its foreign supporters. We believe that Russia, and possibly even China, would feel obligated to enhance military support in response to a missile, air, or even drone strike on sovereign Venezuelan territory and military and civilian installations. Escalation would be almost inevitable.
• U.S. warships off the coast are not immune to anti-ship coastal missiles. If just one pierced the Navy’s formidable air-defense systems, you may have to decide whether to mount another ill-advised, benighted, Bay-of-Pigs-type operation.
• Despite what others may tell you, this would be a singularly bad idea. We hope you know that in 1961 C.I.A. analysts were not asked for precisely the kind of intelligence assessment we believe you should require of the intelligence community now on Venezuela.
• Keeping C.I.A. analysts in the dark, then-C.I.A. Director Allen Dulles deceived President Kennedy by claiming the Cuban people would overthrow Castro once Dulles’s ragtag forces landed on the beach. Forty years later, one of George W. Bush advisers on Iraq predicted that the war would be a “cake walk”.
• U.S. boots on the ground would put U.S. men and women into an insecure environment, with armed popular resistance, and into another fundamentally political war for which they are ill-prepared. U.S. forces are good at destroying governments and structures but not establishing new ones. Our troops would be bloodied and humiliated – and, in our view, fail again.

We appreciate that individuals in your administration want to “win one” for you and, in doing so, advance their own political credibility.

But 26 years of failed policy toward Venezuela are not a sound foundation for making even bigger mistakes.

For the Steering Group
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

 

• Fulton Armstrong, National Intelligence Officer for Latin America (ret.)
• William Binney, NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center (ret.)
• Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) and Division Director, State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research
• Graham E. Fuller, Vice-Chair, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
• Philip Giraldi, C.I.A., Operations Officer (ret.)
• Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)
• Larry Johnson, former C.I.A. Intelligence Officer & former State Department Counter-Terrorism Official (ret.)
• John Kiriakou, former C.I.A. Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
• Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., U.S. Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003
• Edward Loomis, Cryptologic Computer Scientist, former Technical Director at NSA (ret.)
• Ray McGovern, former U.S. Army infantry/intelligence officer & C.I.A. analyst; C.I.A. Presidential briefer (ret.)
• Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council & C.I.A. political analyst (ret.)
• Scott Ritter, former MAJ., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq
• Coleen Rowley, F.B.I. Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)
• Sarah G. Wilton, CDR, USNR, (ret.)/D.I.A., (ret.)
•  Robert Wing, former Foreign Service Officer (associate VIPS)
• Ann Wri 

  Venezuela’s Oil, US-Led Regime Change, and America’s Gangster Politics

  
  
  The flimsy moral pretext today is the fight against narcotics, yet the real objective is to overthrow a sovereign government, and the collateral damage is the suffering of the Venezuelan people. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is.

  by Jeffrey D. Sachs and Sybil Fares | Nov 6, 2025 | ANTIWAR.COM

  The United States is dusting off its old regime-change playbook in Venezuela. Although the slogan has shifted from “restoring democracy” to “fighting narco-terrorists,” the objective remains the same, which is control of Venezuela’s oil. The methods followed by the US are familiar: sanctions that strangle the economy, threats of force, and a $50 million bounty on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as if this were the Wild West.

  The US is addicted to war. With the renaming of the Department of War, a proposed Pentagon budget of $1.01 trillion, and more than 750 military bases across some 80 countries, this is not a nation pursuing peace. For the past two decades, Venezuela has been a persistent target of US regime change. The motive, which is clearly laid out by President Donald Trump, is the roughly 300 billion barrels of oil reserves beneath the Orinoco belt, the largest petroleum reserves on the planet.

  In 2023, Trump openly stated: “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil… but now we’re buying oil from Venezuela, so we’re making a dictator very rich.” His words reveal the underlying logic of US foreign policy that has an utter disregard for sovereignty and instead favors the grabbing of other country’s resources. .

  What’s underway today is a typical US-led regime-change operation dressed up in the language of anti-drug interdiction. The US has amassed thousands of troops, warships, and aircraft in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The president has boastfully authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela.

  On October 26, 2025, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) went on national television to defend recent US military strikes on Venezuelan vessels and to say land strikes inside Venezuela and Colombia are a “real possibility.” Florida Sen. Rick Scott, in the same news cycle, mused that if he were Nicolás Maduro he’d “head to Russia or China right now.” These senators aim to normalize the idea that Washington decides who governs Venezuela and what happens to its oil. Remember that Graham similarly champions the US fighting Russia in Ukraine to secure the $10 trillion of mineral wealth that Graham fatuously claims are available for the US to grab.

  Nor are Trump’s moves a new story vis-à-vis Venezuela. For more than 20 years, successive US administrations have tried to submit Venezuela’s internal politics to Washington’s will. In April 2002, a short-lived military coup briefly ousted then-President Hugo Chávez. The CIA knew the details of the coup in advance, and the US immediately recognized the new government. In the end, Chávez retook power. Yet the US did not end its support for regime change.

  In March 2015, Barack Obama codified a remarkable legal fiction. Obama signed Executive Order 13692, declaring Venezuela’s internal political situation an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security to trigger US economic sanctions. That move set the stage for escalating coercion by the US. The White House has maintained that claim of a US “national emergency” ever since. Trump added increasingly draconian economic sanctions during his first term. Astoundingly, in January 2019, Trump declared Juan Guaidó, then an opposition figure, to be Venezuela’s “interim president,” as if Trump could simply name a new Venezuelan president. This tragicomedy of the US eventually fell to pieces in 2023, when the US dropped this failed and ludicrous gambit.

  The US is now starting a new chapter of resource grabbing. Trump has long been vocal about “keeping the oil.” In 2019, when discussing Syria, President Trump said “We are keeping the oil, we have the oil, the oil is secure, we left troops behind only for the oil.” To those in doubt, US troops are still in the northeast of Syria today, occupying the oil fields. Earlier in 2016, on Iraq’s oil, Trump said, “I was saying this constantly and consistently to whoever would listen, I said keep the oil, keep the oil, keep the oil, don’t let somebody else get it.”

  Now, with fresh military strikes on Venezuela vessels and open talk of land attacks, the administration is invoking narcotics to justify regime change. Yet Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter expressly prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” No US theory of “cartel wars” remotely justifies coercive regime change.

  Even before the military strikes, US coercive sanctions have functioned as a siege engine. Obama built the sanctions framework in 2015, and Trump further weaponized it to topple Maduro. The claim was that “maximum pressure” would empower Venezuelans. In practice, the sanctions have caused widespread suffering. As economist and renowned sanctions expert Francisco Rodríguez found in his study of the “Human Consequences of Economic Sanctions,” the result of the coercive US measures has been a catastrophic decline in Venezuelan living standards, starkly worsening health and nutrition, and dire harm to vulnerable populations.

  The flimsy moral pretext today is the fight against narcotics, yet the real objective is to overthrow a sovereign government, and the collateral damage is the suffering of the Venezuelan people. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The US has repeatedly undertaken regime-change operations in pursuit of oil, uranium, banana plantations, pipeline routes, and other resources: Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Congo (1960), Chile (1973), Iraq (2003), Haiti (2004), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and Ukraine (2014), just to name a few such cases. Now Venezuela is on the block.

  In her brilliant book Covert Regime Change (2017), Professor Lindsay O’Rourke details the machinations, blowbacks, and disasters of no fewer than 64 US covert regime-change operations during the years 1947-1989! She focused on this earlier period because many key documents for that era have by now been declassified. Tragically, the pattern of a US foreign policy based on covert (and not-so-covert) regime-change operations continues to this day.

  The calls by the US government for escalation reflect a reckless disregard for Venezuela’s sovereignty, international law, and human life. A war against Venezuela would be a war that Americans do not want, against a country that has not threatened or attacked the US, and on legal grounds that would fail a first-year law student. Bombing vessels, ports, refineries, or soldiers is not a show of strength. It is the epitome of gangsterism.

  Reprinted from Common Dreams.

  Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2020). Other books include: Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable (2017), and The Age of Sustainable Development, (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.

  Sybil Fares is a specialist and advisor in Middle East policy and sustainable development at SDSN.ght, Col., U.S. Army (ret.); Foreign Service Officer (resigned in opposition to the war on Iraq)