“Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery until our times, has always been transmitted into European — or later United States — capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centres of power. Everything: the soil, its fruits and its mineral rich depths, the people and their capacity to work and to consume, natural resources and human resources.” — Eduardo Galeano

After the sweeping military operation that abducted president Nicolás Maduro from a “fortress” — as Trump described the events — the president channeled the ghost of the Monroe Doctrine, saying that the United States will run Venezuela for an unforeseen amount of time. He also asserted the United States’ “right” to the Western Hemisphere, declaring that “American dominance will never be questioned again.” In a grandiloquent speech riddled with lies, Trump made it clear that the United States would take control of Venezuelan oil.

The remarks could not be a more open admission of imperialist aggression.

You may be interested in: “Emergency Declaration: We condemn the Imperialist Attack by the U.S. against Venezuela and the Kidnapping of Maduro”

The Monroe Doctrine, proclaimed by President James Monroe in 1823, dictated U.S. foreign policy at the time, warning European powers against further colonization or interference in the Western Hemisphere. It declared the region closed to new colonies and asserted that any such attempts would be seen as a hostile act against the United States. The Roosevelt Corollary was added to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, stating the United States would act as an “international police power” in Latin America. It covered U.S. ambitions with the facade of “preventing European intervention” and in defense of so-called “sovereignty.”

In reality, the Monroe Doctrine was the shape that U.S. domination took over Latin America and the Caribbean; it claimed the subcontinent as its own “backyard” in the twentieth century.

Today, by subordinating the sovereignty of an entire nation to the might of the U.S. military, the Trump administration is reclaiming dominace over the subcontinent and reinvigorating an aggressive agenda towards Latin America and the Caribbean that will only lead to greater suffering for our siblings to the north of the Bravo River.

This offensive in Venezuela and Latin America has been put forward by President Trump just weeks after the publication of the National Security Strategy that focuses on re-establishing economic and political control over those countries under the influence of the United States as the imperialist power faces greater confrontation with China.

Contrary to the period in which the Monroe Doctrine became the official foreign policy of nascent U.S. imperialism, today Trump invokes those years of imperialist ascent in a context of decline. Today, China challenges U.S. dominance worldwide.

The operation to abduct Maduro and assert U.S. control in Venezuela is not a “transition to democracy. It is a blatant neocolonialist assault. Trump’s “America First” rhetoric masks a violent plan to reassert U.S. power, as he openly brags that U.S. oil companies will soon move in to plunder Venezuela’s massive reserves.

In addition to this offensive, Trump also made repeated threats against Colombia, Mexico, and the rest of Latin America. He openly bragged about putting his finger on the scale of elections in Honduras, Argentina, and Chile. The working class must see through the lies of “peace through strength.” This is not, nor has it ever been, about the Venezuelan people — it is about regime change for profit and geopolitical dominance.

We have to fight back. Already, working people across Venezuela are rising up against the United States’ imperialist offensive. Here in the United States, it is urgent that the working class fight against this neocolonialist offensive, and say, “not in our name.” Unions, social movements, and the Left must mobilize together against imperialism; but it must do so independent of Maduro’s government that has undermined, with authoritarianism and austerity, the capacity of the Venezuelan working class to resist the current imperialist offensive. This is evident in the thousands of political prisoners from the Left and working-class sectors in Venezuela who should be on the front lines in the fight against U.S. imperialism. Maduro has been responsible for negotiating with imperialist powers to ease sanctions, but always within the confines of economic subordination, while blocking the working class from building itself as an active class with real power.

The multi-racial working class of the United States has nothing to win in the imperialist attacks on the Venezuelan working class. As Trump himself said this morning, the full strength of U.S. “police power” has been and will be used at home and abroad. He explicitly referenced the invasion of Washington D.C. by the National Guard, supposedly to capture “Venezuelan traffickers that brought crime to our cities.” But everyone knows that the emperor has no clothes — this is a flagrant lie to hide the fact that that Trump’s authoritarian domestic agenda domestically aims to discipline the internal unrest created by the genocide in Gaza, inflation, ICE raids, the release of the Epstein files, and an economy that is working exclusively for the super rich. The Left in the United States, from the DSA to the PSL and every single socialist organization, has to be at the forefront of organizing the fight to stop U.S. imperialism from advancing with a new colonial offensive of our class siblings in Latin America.

Any reform obtained by the American working class while U.S. imperialism assaults the working class abroad is not a step forward but a pyrrhic victory that will go against our capacity to organize against Trump at home. The imperialist victories of our common enemy abroad reinforces its capacity to come for us. There is no room for social-democratic chauvinism. We need a broad movement on the streets to defeat Trump’s attempts to put Venezuela on his knees.

The working class has to mobilize in our workplaces, schools, communities, and in the streets. It must use its full power to shut it all down and demand: U.S. out of Venezuela and Latin America!

The post Trump Brags About Imperialist War in Venezuela and the New “Monroe Doctrine” appeared first on Left Voice.

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