The Trump administration’s military escalation against Venezuela continued this past Friday with the Pentagon confirming the sinking of yet another vessel in the southern Caribbean and the threat by Trump to annihilate the country with nuclear weapons.
“Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth proudly announced in a video release that four passengers aboard the small boat were killed when it was struck by multiple missiles, part of a brutal and public spectacle of modern state terror.
This marked the fifth incident in recent weeks in which unarmed vessels alleged to be carrying drug traffickers have been attacked without warning, resulting in the deaths of at least 21 civilians. Investigations have revealed that many, if not all, of the victims were fishermen or migrants from coastal communities, far from posing any genuine threat to the US. Julie Turkewitz of the New York Times reported testimony from the wife of one victim, a fisherman from Venezuela’s Paria Peninsula, who “left one day for work and never came back.”
Hegseth took to the social platform X to declare the strikes would “continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!” implying an open-ended military campaign.
Speaking at Naval Station Norfolk on Sunday, Trump thanked the Navy for “blowing cartel terrorists the hell out of the water,” adding ominously, “we did another one last night,” apparently mistakenly referring to Friday’s strike.
He then shifted the battlefield focus, stating, “They’re not coming by sea anymore … now we’ll have to start looking about the land because they’ll be forced to go by land.”
These chilling remarks are aimed foremost at preparing or provoking the overthrow of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whom Washington accuses of leading the “Cartel of the Suns”—nonexistent, according to most experts. Addressing Maduro, Trump declared in a belligerent tone: “Every tyrant and adversary on the planet knows their choice is very simple: it’s leave America in peace, or be blown up in fire and fury never seen before,” echoing his nuclear threats from 2017 against North Korea.
Reinforcing this threat, the Pentagon recently tested a nuclear-capable Trident cruise missile in the Caribbean, underscoring mounting preparation for possible large-scale confrontation.
This explicit targeting of an entire nation signals the depths of imperialist barbarism in which mass murder is normalized as a policy tool. The willingness to contemplate the wholesale destruction of millions in Latin America parallels the genocidal campaign pursued under US auspices in Gaza. Such threats are not merely isolated rhetoric, but rather integral to an escalating framework of state terror aimed at crushing any resistance to America’s ruling oligarchy.
The significance of this buildup cannot be overstated. The southern Caribbean has become a flashpoint in the ongoing world repartition by rival great powers.
The Trump administration and the bipartisan foreign policy establishment in Washington view Venezuela—with the world’s largest proven oil reserves—and the vast natural resources and labor force across Latin America as a critical imperialist prize akin to Hitler’s Anschluss of Austria. This is seen as a stepping stone in Trump’s broader global strategy to wage war against Iran, Russia, and most decisively, China.
Russia has publicly condemned last week’s attack, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov affirming in a call with his Venezuelan counterpart “full support and solidarity with the leadership and people of Venezuela.” China, Venezuela’s top oil buyer and creditor, had already protested earlier US strikes last month and remains deeply invested, recently announcing a $1 billion oil well project there.
In an unprecedented development, the White House sent a memo to Congress last week declaring that the United States is engaged in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels. This pseudo-legal declaration is part of Trump’s bid to arrogate to himself sweeping war powers, bypassing Congressional authority and muddling traditional distinctions between domestic law enforcement and military wartime operations, contravening the Posse Comitatus Act.
This latest maneuver opens the door to the use of military force both within US cities and abroad under the premise of combating drug trafficking.
Already, the Trump administration had sought to claim that migration is inseparable from the penetration of drug cartels into US soil as a pretext for a police state crackdown against immigrants, which is the spearhead of the attack on all democratic rights.
The Democratic Party’s response has been muted, largely limited to questioning the lack of Congressional approval while endorsing the expansion of the so-called war on drugs. The top Democrat in the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jack Reed, explicitly supported the war against drug cartels as a pretext for the violent reassertion of hemispheric hegemony.
Military analysts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimate that a ground invasion of Venezuela would require a minimum of at least 50,000 troops, far outnumbering the approximately 5,000 currently deployed to the southern Caribbean. Even so, the existing Navy and Air Force assets provide the strategic scaffolding for a rapid escalation. “With the assets in place today, US forces could conduct air or missile strikes against Venezuela from a sanctuary offshore—albeit diverting resources from the Indo-Pacific,” CSIS experts write.
The deployments—costing hundreds of millions daily—create an inevitable momentum to make use of these forces. US officials cited by the Washington Examiner recognize that the pricey buildup in the region is already enough to seize control of key strategic assets like ports or airfields.
Coupled with punitive tariffs—such as the staggering 50 percent imposed on Brazil after the conviction of Trump ally Bolsonaro for a military coup attempt—this campaign constitutes a full-scale offensive by US imperialism to prepare fascist repression and reassert control over Latin America.
Trump’s memo to Congress represents a declaration of war against the working class across the Americas, including the United States. This offensive raises the need for a renewed effort to unite workers across the Americas through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees in a revolutionary struggle against all capitalist classes, their political hirelings and union bureaucracies.
