No War in Venezuela, No More Imperialism

7 January 2026
By Ray Acheson

(Photo credit: Armando Sotoca | Unsplash)

On 2 January 2026, the US government launched an unlawful military assault on Venezuela, killing at least 80 people during airstrikes on Caracas and kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Since then, the Trump regime has said it will “run” Venezuela and has threatened the interim President that she will “fare worse” if she doesn’t cooperate with the US government. Several US officials have made it clear that this attack is about seizing Venezuela’s oil—whether or not oil companies even want it. As the US ambassador to the UN said at the Security Council, “You cannot continue to have the largest energy reserves in the world under the control of adversaries of the United States.” 

This brazen assault on sovereignty and international law comes after a haphazard attempt to manufacture consent for war on Venezuela over the past year. The US government accused Maduro of being the head of a “narco-terrorist” state, has illegally bombed fishing boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean for the past few months, unlawfully captured a Venezuelan oil tanker and stole the oil, and condemned hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants in the US to torture in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. All of this disregard for domestic and international law, violation of human rights, and spectacle of cruelty led up to the military assault on Caracas and kidnapping of Maduro.

These actions also build upon decades of US interventions, coups, occupations, election interference, and intentional destabilisation in Latin America and the Caribbean. In that sense, it is nothing new—but the naked admission that this about oil and power indicates a decided turn away from what White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller described as “niceties”. He asserted, “We live in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. By definition, we are in charge.”

This follow’s Trump’s announcement in his January 2024 inauguration speech that Manifest Destiny is back. This philosophy asserts that the United States has a god-given right to capture territory and subject its will onto others. The new US National Security Strategy, released just a few weeks before the assault on Venezuela, has explicitly declared that the Trump regime is resurrecting the Monroe Doctrine and sees the Western Hemisphere as its “backyard” where it can act with impunity. Throughout the first year of his second term, the Trump regime has issued repeated threats against numerous other countries in the region, notably Colombia, Mexico, Cuba, and Canada, as well as countries beyond the region, including Iran and Greenland. In each case, either the political leaders of these countries have stood up against US aggression or the country has land, minerals, or other “resources” the United States wants. As Garret M. Graff wrote in WIRED, the defining legacy of this administration is “upsetting the world order for the short-term opportunity to enrich an inner circle of family, cronies, and hangers-on.”

The brash recommitment to imperialism and overt colonialism represents a threat to all people of the world. Emboldened by and building on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the United States’ own imperialist debacles of the past (Iraq, Afghanistan, Viet Nam, etc.), the Trump regime’s attack on Venezuela and stated intentions toward other countries will have a profound impact on international law if it goes unchecked.

Solidarity of people across borders is essential to forging a new world order that works for the wellbeing of the majority of people and for the planet and not just for the profit of a few. And while nation-states exist, they must also form new alliances to challenge the naked power and aggression of regimes like the United States, Israel, and Russia. Governments that rely on international law as a shield and that remain committed to human rights, human security, and ecological survival must take action together. 

The international system was built by and for the powerful, and those same actors are now taking this system apart in favour of a violent hellscape that serves their fantasies of “superpower” domination. It’s time for the rest of the world to build power in other ways, through collaboration, cooperation, and solidarity.

RCW urges the international community to:

• Condemn the US attacks on Venezuela and engage in Boycott, Divest, and Sanction actions against the US government and relevant companies;
• Uphold international law, including the prohibition on the use of force;
• Reject militarism and invest instead in building a new international order of social justice, human rights, and ecological wellbeing; and
• Remove the structural incentives for oil-driven aggression by urgently phasing out fossil fuels.