The United States has launched a full-frontal attack not only against Venezuela, but against all of Latin America — and even against the basic concept of sovereignty.

Donald Trump ordered the US military on January 3 to bomb Venezuela, to kidnap its constitutional President Nicolás Maduro, and to send him to New York to be tried in a show trial on politically motivated charges.

This brazen assault on Venezuela is part of a larger US imperialist offensive in Latin America as a whole. The Trump administration has openly invoked the 202-year-old colonial Monroe Doctrine, and has updated it for the 21st century, proudly dubbing it the “Donroe Doctrine”.

By attacking Venezuela, the US empire seeks to accomplish several goals:

• Impose US hegemony in Latin America (with the colonial Monroe Doctrine).
• Exploit Venezuela’s natural resources (oil, gas, critical minerals, and rare earth elements), as part of a new supply chain in the western hemisphere.
• Cut off Latin America’s ties with China (as well as with Russia and Iran).
• Threaten other left-wing governments in the region (especially Cuba and Nicaragua).
• Destroy the project of regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean (in organizations like the ALBA and CELAC).
• Sabotage Global South unity (given Venezuela’s support for Palestine, Iran, African liberation struggles, etc.).

The US empire wants to control Latin America’s natural resources

The US empire’s broader plan was spelled out clearly in the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy.

The document showed how the US seeks to forcibly impose its hegemony in the entire western hemisphere, reviving the colonial Monroe Doctrine (now known as the “Donroe Doctrine”).

The goal is for US corporations to control all of the region’s strategic natural resources, including critical minerals and rare earth elements.

It is by no means a coincidence that Venezuela has the world’s largest reserves of oil. Although today the US is the top oil producer on Earth and a net exporter of oil, it is still heavily reliant on importing heavy crude. Much of that comes from Canada, but Venezuela’s heavy crude is an alternative source.

Trump has been explicit about the fact that he wants US corporations to take over Venezuela’s oil industry, so the US can meet its heavy crude needs.

In a press conference held after he bombed Venezuela, Trump claimed that the US government will “run the country”, adding, “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money”.

“We’re in the oil business”, the US president stressed. “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground”.

A new US-controlled supply chain for critical minerals, cutting out China

In addition to enormous reserves of oil and natural gas, Venezuela also has significant deposits of gold, critical minerals, and rare earth elements.

The US government has made it clear that it wants to create a new supply chain in the western hemisphere that cuts out China, to prepare for future conflict with Beijing. It hopes it can use Latin America’s critical minerals and rare earths to do so.

This is also a major reason why Trump wants to colonize and pillage Greenland, which has 25 of the 30 materials considered “critical” by the European Union.

In the 2025 National Security Strategy, the Trump administration asserted that US corporations must control Latin America’s “energy infrastructure” and “critical mineral access”, stressing that it is “strengthening critical supply chains in this Hemisphere” in order to “reduce dependencies” and “detrimental outside influence” — an obvious reference to China.

Trump administration officials recognize that most manufacturing is not actually coming back to the US (where the number of manufacturing jobs has been steadily falling for decades, even under Trump), so they admit in the National Security Strategy that they want to “near-shore manufacturing” to Latin America. US corporations hope to exploit low-paid Latin American workers to make their products, cutting out China.

This is also why a new US-dominated supply chain in the western hemisphere is needed: not only because the US military-industrial complex needs to remove China from the supply chain for the weapons that it is making to prepare for a potential future war with China; but also because Washington wants to economically decouple from China, and thinks Latin America can help it do that.

Latin America’s strategic infrastructure

Moreover, the US empire seeks to control all of the strategic infrastructure in the region.

The Trump administration brazenly threatening Latin American countries to force China to sell any investments it has in infrastructure projects.

Trump already forced Panama to pressure the Hong Kong company that owned ports surrounding the Panama Canal, CK Hutchison Holdings, to sell them to Wall Street giant BlackRock.

It is likely that the US will also target Peru’s Port of Chancay, one of the most important ports in the region, which was built by China. Trump’s Latin America advisor, Mauricio Claver-Carone, suggested, “Any product passing through Chancay or any port owned or controlled by China in the region should be subject to a 60% tariff”.

There has even been discussion in Washington of potential measures to force Latin American governments to impose restrictions on Chinese investment in the region.

US intervention in Latin America in the Second Cold War

The 2025 National Security Strategy shows how the Trump administration is obsessed with trying to force the countries of Latin America to cut off their ties with China. This is Cold War Two.

In his first trip abroad as secretary of state, Marco Rubio went to Panama, where he forced the country to withdraw from China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Trump administration is massively increasing US pressure on other countries in the region to withdraw from the BRI.

Likewise, Trump blatantly meddled in Honduras’ election in 2025 and backed an electoral coup d’etat. (Trump also pardoned and released from prison one of the world’s worst drug traffickers, the US-backed right-wing former dictator of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández — which shows how the Trump administration doesn’t actually care about drug trafficking, but is simply using it as a cynical excuse to attack and destabilize the independent governments in the region.)

The right-wing Trump ally who will now run Honduras on behalf of the US, the oligarch Nasry “Tito” Asfura, has vowed to formally break diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic of China and recognize Taiwan separatists.

The US also wants to use Honduras as a base of operations for attacks on the Sandinista government in neighboring Nicaragua.

After bombing and occupying Venezuela, Trump and Marco Rubio want to wage similar imperialist regime-change wars on Cuba and Nicaragua. Rubio has dedicated his entire career to overthrowing their socialist revolutions. It is a political crusade for him.

In fact, in a press conference that Trump and Rubio gave after bombing Venezuela and kidnapping President Maduro, they openly threatened Cuba and Colombia’s left-wing President Gustavo Petro.

The Trump administration’s goal is simple: to impose right-wing US puppet regimes in every country in Latin America, which will obediently serve the interests of Washington and Wall Street, and sell off their assets to US investors.

Two important elections are coming up in 2026 in countries with left-wing governments: Brazil (in October) and Colombia (in May). It is guaranteed that the Trump administration is going to meddle in those elections to try to put in power obedient right-wing US puppets (like Javier Milei in Argentina).

Trump is also threatening to bomb Mexico, which has an independent, non-aligned government led by left-wing President Claudia Sheinbaum (who is one of the most popular leaders on Earth, with a consistent approval rating of around 74%).

Mexico has strongly opposed these US threats, saying they would be an attack on Mexico’s sovereignty. But the US empire doesn’t care a bit about sovereignty.

From the Monroe Doctrine to the Donroe Doctrine: the 2025 National Security Strategy

To further understand the US empire’s plan for Latin America, it is important to look at the details of the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS).

This document identified the western hemisphere as the most important region for US foreign policy. The Trump administration declared that it wants a western hemisphere that “remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains”, in which the US has “continued access to key strategic locations”.

The NSS stated in no uncertain terms that the “United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere”.

In a press conference that Trump gave a few hours after bombing Venezuela and abducting President Maduro, he echoed this rhetoric. Praising the Monroe Doctrine, Trump said, “We’ve superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the Donroe Doctrine”. He added, “We are reasserting American power in a very powerful way in our home region”.

In the 2025 NSS, the Trump administration pledged to “deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere”. This was an obvious reference to China.

It said Washington will “identify strategic points and resources in the Western Hemisphere”, adding, “The U.S. Government will identify strategic acquisition and investment opportunities for American companies in the region”.

The NSS made it as clear as day that what Washington seeks is hegemony. It declared (emphasis added):

The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity—a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region. The terms of our alliances, and the terms upon which we provide any kind of aid, must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence—from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined.

The Trump administration did not even try to hide the fact that does not care about the sovereignty of countries in Latin America, and is more than willing to violate it.

“We want other nations to see us as their partner of first choice, and we will (through various means) discourage their collaboration with others”, the NSS said.

The document articulated a cold war-style, Manichean division of the world: “The choice all countries should face is whether they want to live in an American-led world of sovereign countries and free economies or in a parallel one in which they are influenced by countries on the other side of the world”.

The ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine

The 2025 National Security Strategy stated that the US empire “will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine”.

This was a reference to the “Roosevelt Corollary” proposed by arch-imperialist Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt in his 1904 State of the Union address, when he stated the following (emphasis added):

Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.

…

Our interests and those of our southern neighbors are in reality identical. They have great natural riches, and if within their borders the reign of law and justice obtains, prosperity is sure to come to them.

…

In asserting the Monroe Doctrine, in taking such steps as we have taken in regard to Cuba, Venezuela, and Panama, and in endeavoring to circumscribe the theater of war in the Far East, and to secure the open door in China, we have acted in our own interest as well as in the interest of humanity at large.

What is striking is how the targets of Teddy Roosevelt’s imperialist aggression in 1904 — China, Venezuela, Cuba, and Panama — are some of the same targets of Washington today.

Trump has brought back Teddy Roosevelt’s imperialist “Big Stick” doctrine and gunboat diplomacy. With its “Trump Corollary”, the US government is stating that it believes it has the right to militarily intervene anywhere in Latin America and the Caribbean, whenever it wants. It is an explicitly imperialist policy that seeks to deny the nations of the region their rights to independence, sovereignty, and self-determination, which are enshrined in international law and the UN Charter.

The Trump administration’s attack on Venezuela is part of a larger imperialist assault on Latin America, and the Global South more generally.

The overt savagery and cruelty of the US empire likewise demonstrate how superficial, puerile, and ridiculous the “democracy” rhetoric of Western officials and pundits is, when they accuse besieged Global South countries like Venezuela of supposedly being “authoritarian”.

It is impossible for the countries of Latin America (and the Global South as a whole) to practice democracy when the world’s most powerful and deadliest empire is constantly interfering in their elections, attacking them, imposing sanctions on them, and sponsoring coups.

True democracy is impossible while imperialism exists.

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