Al Mayadeen | November 29, 2025
The US is facing renewed scrutiny after reports emerged that US forces carried out a second strike on a disabled boat in the Caribbean, extrajudicially killing people who survived an initial missile attack.
Accounts published by the Washington Post, CNN, and earlier by The Intercept indicate that the September 2 attack unfolded under a direct instruction from War Secretary Pete Hegseth to ensure no one on the vessel remained alive.
Citing individuals familiar with the mission, the Washington Post reported that personnel were told “the order was to kill everybody.” The strike formed part of a wider campaign targeting boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that Washington claims were transporting narcotics through international waters. Publicly released figures compiled by AFP suggest that at least 83 people have been killed since these operations began, though the administration has not provided evidence substantiating its allegations against the vessels.
Illegal orders
According to the Washington Post, US forces saw two people clinging to the burning wreckage after the first strike and then hit the vessel again. Following this episode, internal rules were revised to require rescuing any survivors. CNN noted that it remains unclear whether Hegseth had been informed about survivors before the follow-up attack.
Hegseth, addressing criticism on social media on Friday, insisted that “current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both US and international law” and dismissed reports on the incident as “fake news,” though he did not mention the September strike specifically.
The Justice Department has meanwhile maintained that the campaign complies with the laws governing armed conflict. The Pentagon has told lawmakers that the United States is engaged in an “armed conflict” with Latin American drug cartels and has categorized suspected smugglers as “unlawful combatants.”
War crimes
The allegations have triggered political backlash in Washington. Democratic congressman Seth Moulton wrote on X that the “killing of survivors is blatantly illegal” and warned, “Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder.”
The revelations surface amid controversy over a video released this month by Democratic lawmakers reminding military personnel that they may refuse illegal orders, a message that prompted Donald Trump to brand them “traitors.”
International pressure is also mounting. UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk urged the United States to examine the legality of the strikes, stating that there is “strong evidence” they amount to “extrajudicial” killings.
John Mearsheimer | November 22, 2025
The Monroe Doctrine is DEAD. Russian warships in Venezuelan waters just shattered 200 years of American hemispheric dominance. Prof. John Mearsheimer breaks down how Washington’s own policies created this historic shift.
John Mearsheimer | November 23, 2025
Russian hypersonic anti-ship missiles are now targeting U.S. Navy warships in the Caribbean. Prof. John Mearsheimer reveals how America’s own sanctions policy created this deadly threat in our own hemisphere.
Sputnik – 23.11.2025
The US has deployed more assets to the Caribbean than are needed for drummed-up counter-narcotics operations, yet still nowhere near enough for an attack on Venezuela, says Venezuelan lawmaker Juan Romero, a member of parliament from the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
From a strictly military standpoint, the US operation is “far too small for a broader offensive,” Juan Romero told Sputnik.
Romero argued that Venezuela—unlike Grenada or Panama, which the US invaded in 1989—is a vast country with an extensive coastline, making any attempt to establish control extremely difficult.
He added that pinpoint strikes on targets inside Venezuela, similar to US and Israeli actions against Iran, would do nothing to solve the problem of holding the territory afterward.
In response to the US military buildup in the Caribbean, he said the Venezuelan government has activated a comprehensive territorial-defense system, claiming eight million combat-ready fighters in addition to 250,000 regular army troops.
“To invade Venezuela, the US would have to pull in soldiers from its African, European, and North American commands—not just Southern Command,” Romero said.
Romero also noted that the current operation—mixed in its results and involving the blowing up of several boats allegedly used to transport drugs—is extremely expensive, costing the US some $50 million a day.
The US has justified its military presence in the Caribbean as part of the fight against drug trafficking, without providing any proof.
Donald Trump continues to keep open the possibility of military action against Venezuela, saying he would “probably talk to” Maduro but emphasizing that he was “not ruling out anything.”
Meanwhile, airlines like Iberia, TAP, LATAM, Avianca, GOL, and Caribbean have suspended operations after the Federal Aviation Administration warned of “heightened military activity” in Venezuelan airspace.
Reports have suggested an imminent new phase of the US operations soon.
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – November 18, 2025
Washington’s new militarized campaign against Venezuela, framed as a drug war, is in reality a risky attempt to blunt China’s rising influence in Latin America—and it may only accelerate the region’s shift away from the United States.
Trump vowed to end America’s endless wars. Yet he is now starting another and doing it in Latin America, the very ground where US power is already slipping. The administration’s militarised “drug war” against Venezuela is less about cartels than about toppling Maduro to blunt China’s rise in the hemisphere. But it’s a gamble that exposes Washington’s deeper weakness: the US no longer has an economic playbook to compete with Beijing’s money, markets, and infrastructure. And Latin America knows it.
America’s Worry
It’s not about drugs. Washington has a long history of using the “war on narcotics” as cover for covert operations, and in Venezuela today, the real source of alarm is China. Beijing has become Caracas’s most dependable lifeline, underwriting more than US$60 billion in loans, running oil-for-credit schemes, building joint ventures, infrastructure, and even a satellite ground station, all coming together to cement a long-term strategic presence. In 2024 alone, bilateral trade hit US$6.4 billion, with China importing US$1.6 billion in Venezuelan oil and minerals and exporting US$4.8 billion in manufactured goods.
Venezuela is far from an outlier. Across Latin America, Sino-regional trade surged to US$518 billion, with direct investment totaling US$14.7 billion, creating a sprawling parallel economic architecture of ports, refineries, mines, 5G networks, and credit lines that regional governments now treat as indispensable. Even though the US still dominates the region in cumulative FDI—over US$1 trillion—China is rapidly eroding American influence, winning leverage not through ideology or coercion, but through markets, capital, and sustained economic engagement.
For Washington, this is not commerce; it is geopolitical encroachment that directly pushes against the so-called Monroe Doctrine, turning the US “backyard” into a zone where Washington’s influence is not decisive anymore. The Monroe Doctrine, declared by President James Monroe in 1823, held that the Americas were under US influence and off-limits to outside, i.e., European, interference. Over time, it became the foundation of Washington’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere. Today, China’s deep economic and strategic footprint in Latin America is quietly—but surely—undermining that century-old principle, challenging US control in its own backyard.
Yet instead of matching Beijing’s patient economic game, the US is increasingly relying on force—missiles, warships, and military threats—to reassert influence in its own hemisphere. In Venezuela, that approach is especially dangerous: every escalation risks doing exactly what Washington fears most, driving Latin America further into China’s orbit and underscoring the stark reality that America no longer wins with markets.
The zero-sum American Mindset
That China is the real target is not irrelevant. China’s successes are seen, in a zero-sum manner, as Washington’s loses. It was always known, although it gets little mention in the ongoing US official discourse about Venezuela. Perhaps the US does not wish to complicate its ongoing trade talks with China to ‘end’ the trade war that Washington has lost. However, elements of the current US administration had already made clear, even before capturing power in the latest presidential elections, that China cannot be allowed to expand its presence in the region.
In 2024, The Economist spotlighted China’s “dramatically” growing footprint across Latin America—a shift that seems to have triggered alarm bells in Washington. The US Secretary of State (and National Security Advisor) Rubio had warned, even before assuming his current positions, that America “can’t afford to let the Chinese Communist Party expand its influence and absorb Latin America … into its private political-economic bloc.” Yet, he lamented, many regional leaders have merely shrugged. Now, Rubio appears determined to turn up the pressure—and he’s starting with Venezuela.
Beijing’s inroads stretch far beyond Caracas. Earlier this year, left‑leaning Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva joined a Latin American summit in Beijing, signaling his willingness to coordinate on key geopolitical issues, including backing China’s position on Ukraine. At the same time, China quietly opened its first major deep‑water, “smart” port in Latin America: the $3.5 billion Chancay megaport in Peru, operated by COSCO and equipped with unmanned cranes, 5G networks, and driverless trucks. Xi Jinping praised the port as a “new land-sea corridor” linking Latin America and Asia. According to Chinese state media, Chancay can cut shipping times between Peru and China by nearly 12 days while reducing logistics costs by 20%. Diplomatically too, Beijing is undeterred. When pressed on US interventionism, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian retorted in September that Latin America is “no one’s backyard,” an explicit rebuke to American regional dominance. Accordingly, in November, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning condemned Washington’s “excessive force” against boats in the Caribbean and insisted that “cooperation between China and Venezuela is the cooperation between two sovereign states, which does not target any third party.”
The Possibility of Backfire
America’s strategy therefore can—and will—backfire. It will only make regional states more open towards Beijing and more apprehensive towards the US (interventionism and unpredictability). At the 2025 China–CELAC Forum, Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia, called for a “dialogue of civilizations” and said China and Latin America should forge a new model of cooperation—not one imposed by external powers. This sentiment exists across Latin American states, including, for instance, Brazil.
What Washington must understand is that China’s patient, capital-driven strategy, combining trade, investment, infrastructure, and diplomacy, has created a durable foothold that the US cannot simply displace with missiles or threats, although it can introduce temporary disruptions only through a military approach. Still, every escalation in Venezuela risks cementing the very outcome Washington fears: a hemisphere where American influence is conditional and secondary. If the US hopes to reclaim strategic authority, it must first confront the uncomfortable truth that power in the 21st century is won with markets, credit lines, and long-term partnerships, not just force. Until it does, the Monroe Doctrine will remain a relic, and Latin America a proving ground for China’s quiet but decisive ascendancy.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs
By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | November 14, 2025
Since September, the presidential administration of Donald Trump has been directing the United States military to blow up boats and kill their occupants in the Caribbean and Pacific, claiming to be thus countering Venezuela government supported “narco-terrorism.” At the same time, it has been building up a large US military force off the Venezuela shore. And the Trump administration has made clear that these actions go hand in hand with seeking to achieve its goal of removing Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro from office.
It looks like the US government is pursuing a regime change effort against the South America nation. But, the American people do not seem to be happy with this situation. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted November 7 – 12, Americans are rejecting both the ongoing US military action against the boats and the threatened US military action to overthrow Maduro.
In a Friday Reuters article discussing the poll results, Jason Lange and Matt Spetalnick detailed that only 29 percent of polled Americans answered that the US government should “kill suspected drug traffickers abroad without judicial process” — what is occurring with the US military’s serial blowing up of boats and killing of their occupants. Even fewer polled Americans — 21 percent — answered that the US government should “use military force to remove Venezuela’s president.” Substantially more polled Americans — 51 percent and 47 percent respectively — declared their opposition to the ongoing US military campaign to blow up boats and the potential use of US military force to remove Maduro from office.
By Jacob G. Hornberger | The Future of Freedom Foundation | November 13, 2025
In federal criminal cases, U.S. District Judges issue the following types of instruction to jurors:
“The indictment is not evidence of any kind. It is simply the formal method of accusing a person of a crime. It has no bearing on the defendant’s guilt or innocence, and you must not consider it in your deliberations except as an accusation. You must not assume the defendant is guilty just because he or she has been indicted. The defendant begins this trial with a clean slate.The burden is entirely on the government to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
In other words, an indictment carries absolutely no evidentiary weight whatsoever. It is simply an accusation. It is not proof. It is not evidence. The jury is prohibited from considering it when deciding guilt or innocence.
This principle applies to any person accused of violating federal criminal statutes.
President Trump and the Pentagon have now attacked and killed more than 70 people on the high seas in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean near South America. They justify these killings by claiming that the victims are engaged in a violations of U.S. federal drug laws.
But the fact is that Trump’s and the Pentagon’s claims are nothing more than informal accusations. In fact, their informal accusations don’t even amount to a formal accusation set forth in a grand-jury indictment. That’s because a grand jury cannot issue an indictment unless it sees evidence that establishes that there is “probable cause” that the accused committed the crime. With Trump’s and the Pentagon’s informal accusation, no such burden of proof is required.
Therefore, if a jury is prohibited from using an indictment to convict a person who the feds are accusing of having violated U.S. drug laws, it stands to reason that U.S. officials are prohibited from killing people based simply on their informal accusation that the person has violated the law.
In fact, with the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, our American ancestors expressly prohibited the federal government from depriving any person of life without due process of law. It has been long established that due process in a criminal case means, at a minimum, two things: (1) being formally notified of the specific charges that the defendant is accused of violating; that’s what a grand-jury indictment is for; and (2) a trial where the government is required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt with relevant and competent evidence that the person actually did commit the crime. The accused, if he elects, can have a jury, not the judge, decide whether or not he is guilty.
There have always been some Americans who hate these provisions. They prefer how things are done in nations run by totalitarian regimes, where the government wields the omnipotent power to kill or punish anyone it suspects of having committed a crime — without having to go through the difficulty and expense of formally accusing people and according them a trial.
Nonetheless, like it or not, that is our system of government, and it remains so unless and until the Constitution is amended to end it.
What about the fact that it is the military that is carrying out these killings? No matter the exalted position that the national-security establishment has come to play in America’s federal governmental system, it doesn’t alter the constitutional principles at all. All it means is that the military is operating in the role of a policeman who is enforcing a federal criminal statute.
For example, suppose that Trump’s military troops that are occupying various U.S. cities begin enforcing federal drug laws by arresting people and then turning them over to the DEA for incarceration and prosecution. The military would simply be operating in a police capacity, not in a war situation.
It’s no different with those killings in the Caribbean. The military, which, by the way, is legally prohibited from enforcing drug laws inside the United States, is simply operating in a police capacity when it is enforcing U.S. drug laws on the high seas. It is essentially standing in the stead of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
What about Trump’s and the Pentagon’s claim that the U.S. is at war and, therefore, it’s okay for soldiers to kill the enemy in war. Clearly that claim is a ruse designed to justify their extra-judicial killings. The concept of war involves conflicts between nation-states, not enforcement of criminal statutes. There is no war between the United States and Venezuela, Columbia, Mexico, or any other Latin American country.
After all, if Trump’s and the Pentagon’s ruse was valid, it would entitle them to use the military to kill drug-war suspects here inside the United States under the claim that enemy drug forces have invaded and occupied the United States and are waging “war” against the United States. In fact, their ruse would enable them to use the military to kill anyone they wanted who they claimed had violated any federal criminal statute.
What about Trump’s and the Pentagon’s claim that the victims are also being accused of violating federal terrorism statutes and, therefore, that it is okay to summarily kill them? Again, it’s just another ruse to justify the extra-judicial killing of people who are accused of violating U.S. criminal laws. After all, terrorism itself is a federal criminal offense. That’s why there are criminal prosecutions for terrorism in federal district court. Trump and the Pentagon are bound by the same principles in federal criminal cases involving terrorism as they are with cases involving alleged federal drug offenses. They are required to secure federal criminal indictments and accord the people with trials, where they bear the burden of proving that the defendants really are guilty of terrorism (or drug offenses) before they can kill them or punish them.
One more point worth noting: The troops carrying out these killings are obviously loyally and blindly obeying orders to commit an illegal act. That’s because, as I have long pointed out, their loyalty is to their commander-in-chief, notwithstanding the oath they take to support and defend the Constitution.
Trump, the Pentagon, and the troops are clearly engaging in illegal conduct with their extra-judicial, unconstitutional drug-war killings. The problem is that given their omnipotent power within America’s federal governmental system, neither the Congress nor the Supreme Court or anyone else will — or can — do anything to stop them.
Sputnik – 11.11.2025
WASHINGTON – US senior Special Operations officers in a briefing last month did not provide a comprehensive explanation why the Trump administration needed a massive military presence in the Caribbean for strikes on a few small boats allegedly used by drug cartels, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing sources with the knowledge.
At the moment, there is no public information from the Pentagon on what the military is using to conduct the strikes, but the sources told CNN that MQ-9 Reaper drones are used for US attacks on alleged drug boats, as well as AC-130J gunships and fighter jets.
The sources told CNN that the Pentagon officials also could not provide an exact amount of taxpayers’ dollars spent on the counternarcotics campaign. However, administration officials have stated that each strike costs up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, the report said.
A significant part of all deployed US naval assets worldwide have been located in US Southern Command since last month, and even more US military assets are about to be placed in the Caribbean, the report added.
Earlier this week, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said that the United States conducted strikes on two drug trafficking vessel in the Eastern Pacific, killing six people.
To date, the US military has conducted 19 strikes, destroyed 20 boats, and killed 76 people as part of a counternarcotics campaign, CNN reported.
In late October, the Trump administration held a briefing in the US Congress to lay out its legal justification for the strikes on Venezuelan ships. However, only Republicans were invited to the briefing, causing negative responses and vast criticism among Democrats.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres believes that US attacks in the Caribbean contradict international law, and so does UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.
Neoconservative strategists aren’t talking about the day after…
José Niño Unfiltered | November 3, 2025
As American warships patrol Caribbean waters and F-35 fighters prowl Venezuelan airspace, hawkish voices in Washington paint an enticing picture: A swift military operation to topple Nicolás Maduro, similar to the easy interventions in Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989). It’s a dangerous fantasy that ignores three decades of failed Venezuelan policy and fundamentally misunderstands the catastrophic difference between those brief police actions and what a Venezuela invasion would entail.
The comparison is essentially that of a neighborhood skirmish to a regional war. Venezuela is roughly 2,650 times larger than Grenada and 12 times larger than Panama, with 243 times more people than Grenada and 12 times more than Panama. The appropriate historical parallels aren’t Grenada or Panama—they’re Iraq and Afghanistan, multi-trillion-dollar quagmires that killed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of civilians while advancing no genuine U.S. interests.
What regime change boosters consistently ignore is what happens the day after Maduro falls. They focus obsessively on knocking out Venezuela’s conventional military—no walk in the park, but an attainable feat—while studiously avoiding the nightmare that follows: A multi-factional civil war among heavily armed irregular forces, refugee flows dwarfing the current crisis, and a protracted insurgency that could justify further U.S. intervention and spiral into a broader conflict that could attract irregular leftist forces from the region.
As far as historical analogues are concerned, Grenada was a tiny 344-square-kilometer volcanic island—smaller than many American cities. Despite hilly terrain, the entire country could be secured quickly because of its minuscule size. Panama at 75,420 square kilometers was larger but still a narrow isthmus focused around the Canal Zone, where U.S. forces already had extensive military presence and insider knowledge based on decades of American influence in Panama.
Venezuela covers 912,050 square kilometers—featuring the Andes mountains in the west, vast central plains (llanos), dense Amazon jungle in the south, and 2,800 kilometers of Caribbean coastline. This geographic complexity creates countless opportunities for asymmetric warfare, with mountainous terrain favoring defensive operations, urban centers ideal for guerrilla resistance, and jungle regions providing sanctuary for irregular forces.
Unlike Panama where U.S. forces had extensive familiarity from decades of base presence, or Grenada, where the entire operational theater was one small island, Venezuela’s diverse terrain would require controlling vast territories to prevent insurgent sanctuaries. U.S. military planners have no established presence, no intimate geographic knowledge, and would face the same challenges that gave American forces fits in Afghanistan’s mountains, Iraq’s urban centers, and Vietnam’s jungles.
Venezuela hosts one of the most complex networks of armed non-state actors in the Western Hemisphere. Start with the colectivos—far-left paramilitary groups numbering 8,000 individuals operating in 16 states and controlling approximately 10 percent of Venezuelan cities. These aren’t poorly armed street gangs; they possess AK-47s, submachine guns, fragmentation grenades, and tear gas—much of it supplied directly by the Venezuelan government.
Colombian guerrilla organizations have also established a significant presence on Venezuelan territory. The National Liberation Army (ELN) maintains operations in 13 Venezuelan states. According to a report by Colombian media outlet Connectas, the ELN has armed cells in roughly 10 percent of Venezuela’s more than 300 municipalities. The group controls territory in the Venezuelan states of Zulia, Táchira, Apure, and Amazonas—the four states bordering Colombia—and also operates in Barinas, Bolívar, and Delta Amacuro, with a presence of roughly 1,000 fighters in Venezuela and 6,000 members in total.
Segunda Marquetalia, dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) who rejected Colombia’s peace accords, operates with an estimated 1,000 members. Other FARC dissident factions add approximately 2,000 more fighters. These groups maintain Marxist-Leninist, anti-imperialist ideologies and view the United States as the primary threat to revolutionary movements. Combined, these irregular forces are in the tens of thousands with substantial weapons, territorial control, and operational experience.
It should be stressed that Venezuela’s official military doctrine has been explicitly designed around asymmetric warfare against a hypothetical U.S. invasion since the Chávez era. The strategy assumes initial conventional defeat followed by sustained guerrilla resistance—making occupation costly and politically unsustainable.
Nevertheless, Venezuela won’t just roll over without a conventional fight. Venezuela is the number one purchaser of Russian weaponry in Latin America. It boasts mobile Russian S-300VM and Buk-M2E air defense systems (described as “by far the most formidable in Latin America” by Military Watch Magazine) and KH-31 anti-ship missiles. Additionally, Venezuela boasts 24 Su-30MK2V Flanker fighters (approximately 21 operational) capable of carrying anti-ship missiles and critically, components of Russia’s C4ISR system—integrated digital warfare networks previously shared only with Belarus.
Most significantly, Russia signed a comprehensive 10-year strategic partnership with Venezuela in May 2025, ratified in October 2025, covering more than 350 bilateral agreements on security, defense, and technology. Russian cargo aircraft have recently been landing in Caracas with additional military supplies. In October 2025, Maduro requested Russian assistance enhancing air defenses, restoring Su-30 aircraft, and acquiring missiles. The Iranians have also cooperated with Venezuela on the development of drone technology and sanctions evasion assistance.
This great power backing has no parallel in Grenada (where Soviet/Cuban support was minimal during the invasion) or Panama (where Manuel Noriega’s late attempts to seek Cuban/Nicaraguan support proved futile against American forces.
The ultimate challenge for the United States comes the day after when Venezuelan forces, colectivos, militias, and allied guerrilla groups retreat to mountainous regions, jungles, and southern plains. From there, armed groups would be able to conduct asymmetric attacks on U.S. forces and any post-Maduro government, creating multiple overlapping resistance movements.
A 2019 U.S. Army analysis concluded Venezuela presents a “Black Swan” hot spot significantly more complex than the 1989 Panama operation, noting Venezuela has “115,000 troops, in addition to tanks and fighter jets” and “thirty million people, about 20 percent of whom still support the Maduro government,” with leaders having “been preparing for asymmetrical warfare for more than a decade.” In contrast, the study noted that “[Manuel] Noriega’s Panama had only fifteen thousand troops—of which, only 3,500 were soldiers.” The study highlighted that “there is no chance that countries in the region would participate in an effort to topple Maduro.”
It’s also worth noting that Cuba has deep penetration of Venezuela’s security apparatus through secret agreements signed in May 2008 that “gave Cuba vast access to the Venezuelan military and wide freedom to spy on and reform it,” according to the Havana Times. Approximately 5,600 Cuban personnel work in Venezuelan security sectors, including 500 active Cuban military advisors. Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) has been described as “almost a branch of the G2—the Cuban secret service—in Venezuela.”
This integration helps explain Venezuelan military loyalty despite economic collapse and has proved key in protecting the South American nation from U.S. covert operations. The Cuban intelligence network provides early warning of dissent and mechanisms for neutralizing opposition forces and other fifth columnists. For U.S. planners, any intervention would effectively fight not just Venezuela’s military but Cuba’s sophisticated intelligence apparatus with decades of experience countering U.S. operations.
Before contemplating another Latin American adventure, Washington should review its track record. Historian John H. Coatsworth documented that from 1898-1994, the United States intervened to change Latin American governments at least 41 times across 100 years, averaging once every 28 months.
The results? The 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion failed catastrophically, strengthening Fidel Castro. The 1980s Contra War in Nicaragua killed approximately 30,000 Nicaraguans, yet Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who lost the presidency in 1990, eventually returned to power in 2007. Ortega has currently ruled as an authoritarian president, exactly what the United States tried to prevent through the proxy war it facilitated during the Reagan era.
Beyond Latin America, the United States’ second invasion of Iraq cost over $2 trillion and killed 4,500 U.S. troops while creating conditions for the rise of ISIS and rival Shiite militias across the nation. The United States’ nation-building experiment in Afghanistan cost $2.3 trillion and killed 2,461 U.S. troops, only to see the Taliban return to power after 20 years.
Perhaps most striking is how overwhelmingly Venezuelans themselves reject foreign military intervention. September 2025 polling found 93 percent of Venezuelans oppose foreign military intervention, with only 5 percent supporting it. October 2025 polling showed this increased to 94 percent opposition.
This creates a paradox: Polling demonstrates 64 percent to 90 percent of Venezuelans wanting some form of democratic transition yet 93 percent to 94 percent reject foreign military intervention. When presented with peaceful alternatives, 63 percent have supported a negotiated settlement to remove Maduro, making negotiation by far the most popular option.
The Venezuelan opposition itself is deeply divided, with prominent figures like two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles—who remains in Venezuela—explicitly rejecting intervention. “Most people who want a military solution and a US invasion do not live in Venezuela. They don’t even understand the consequences of it,” Capriles said in an interview with the BBC. In an interview with The New York Times, he posed a pointed question: “Name one successful case in the last few years of a successful U.S. military intervention.”
As far as stateside is concerned, 62 percent of Americans also oppose invading Venezuela, with only 16 percent supporting such action, per YouGov polling.
Here’s what neoconservatives don’t discuss: Knocking out Venezuela’s conventional military is attainable. U.S. technological superiority would likely produce a relatively swift conventional victory. But then what?
A decapitation strike removing Maduro wouldn’t stabilize Venezuela—it would detonate it. Consider the armed actors positioned to fill the vacuum such as the colectivos with heavy weapons controlling urban neighborhoods; ELN fighters with decades of guerrilla experience; Segunda Marquetalia combatants; thousands of other FARC dissidents; and remnants of defeated military units retreating to mountains and jungles.
The result will likely be a multi-factional civil war. Various armed groups would compete over oil, gold, and minerals. Colectivos would defend urban territory. ELN and FARC dissidents would establish rural sanctuaries. Criminal organizations would exploit the ensuing chaos. The 20 percent of Venezuelans supporting Maduro ideologically would provide a substantial resistance base.
Such a conflict would trigger a massive refugee crisis. Venezuela has already had nearly 8 million people flee since 2015. Military intervention triggering civil war could produce millions more refugees, destabilizing Colombia, Brazil, Trinidad, Guyana, and the entire Caribbean basin. Moreover, many of these refugees would wash up on American shores—a prospect Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his cheap labor-addicted Republican cohorts in Florida would embrace with open arms.
Any U.S.-backed government would face prolonged insurgency, requiring sustained American military occupation, not the swift operation regime change boosters promise, but years or decades of counterinsurgency. Ironically, this could be dangerous even for María Corina Machado or whatever U.S. puppet is installed, as pro-regime forces remain heavily armed and motivated, while countless other militants will start carving out their own statelets nationwide. Not exactly an ideal climate for a prospective U.S. client regime to operate in.
Perhaps most underestimated would be backlash among Latin America’s radical Left. Since the end of the Cold War, leftist movements have been relatively pacified because the United States hasn’t taken direct, kinetic action in the regime. But when Marines enter the mix, this will galvanize nationalist sentiment throughout the region.
The ELN maintains strong ideological affinity with Venezuela’s state ideology of Chavismo and sees itself leading the struggle against American imperialism. Colombian guerrillas already recruit Venezuelans. U.S. intervention would dramatically accelerate recruitment. One could see foreign fighters form international brigades to fight American forces and the puppet government they try to prop up.
Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro already condemned U.S. strikes as “acts of tyranny.” Full-scale invasion would trigger denunciations across the region, breathe new life into dormant anti-American movements, and create a generation of Latin American leftists radicalized by direct confrontation with U.S. military power. External actors like Iran, Russia, and China—who all have their own set of grievances with the United States—would pounce on this chaotic environment to further inflame tensions and poke Uncle Sam in the eye.
Comparing Venezuela to Grenada or Panama is fundamentally misleading propaganda. Those were brief police actions against micro-states in political chaos with minimal armed opposition, limited territory, no great power backing, and some regional support.
After 30 years of escalating intervention—coups, sanctions, economic warfare—Maduro remains in power while Venezuela has deepened ties with Russia, China, and Iran. The humanitarian crisis has worsened. Multiple coup attempts strengthened authoritarian control.
The historical record is unambiguous: U.S. military interventions consistently fail to achieve stated objectives. Initial conventional victories give way to protracted insurgencies, state collapse, refugee crises, and strategic disasters costing trillions. Venezuela would be worse because of its size, geography, complex array of armed actors, ideological polarization, and strategic importance to U.S. adversaries such as Russia, China, and Iran, who are all itching to get back at the United States.
Neoconservative strategists are engaging in dangerous wishful thinking. They promise a swift operation followed by grateful Venezuelans welcoming democracy. Reality would be years of counterinsurgency, multi-factional civil war, massive refugee flows, regional destabilization, and a strategic quagmire.
Invading Venezuela won’t be a walk in the park. It would be a quagmire defining American foreign policy for a generation. After 30 years of failure, perhaps it’s time to try something radically different: Diplomacy, engagement, and respect for sovereignty. The alternative is catastrophe, something Donald Trump’s “America First” movement never voted for.
Al Mayadeen | November 4, 2025
With the largest US military concentration in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, a new Foreign Policy (FP) report warns that Washington’s announced campaign against narcotics trafficking in the region masks a far broader strategic objective.
The removal of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and, by extension, pressure on Cuba by cutting off Venezuelan oil supplies.
The report says roughly 10 naval vessels and some 10,000 troops, including a carrier strike group led by the USS Gerald R. Ford and elements of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, are now positioned in the region, a posture that raises the prospect of direct military action against Venezuelan government targets and carries grave implications for Havana.
It is worth mentioning that the White House has framed recent operations as an intensification of counter-narcotics efforts, with senior US officials labelling traffickers as foreign terrorists and authorizing strikes on vessels alleged to be part of the trade.
Foreign Policy argues, the campaign’s political logic extends beyond drugs; the removal of Maduro would, in this account, enable a US policy aimed at severing Caracas’s lifeline to Havana and thereby accelerating a long-standing Republican objective of overthrowing the Cuban state.
“We are going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We are going to kill them,” the report quotes President Donald Trump as saying, adding that “The land is going to be next.”
US posture and military options
Foreign Policy highlights the presence of elite US units offshore and suggests a range of possible options available to Washington.
From intensified covert activity and targeted raids to airstrikes intended to coerce elements of the Venezuelan military. The report deems a full-scale invasion unlikely, arguing that occupation and nation-building contradict current political messaging, but it emphasizes that options short of occupation, targeted strikes, special operations, or efforts to catalyze a military coup would still produce extensive human and regional costs.
Venezuelan forces, the report stresses, have adapted doctrines to contest conventional assault by dispersing and employing asymmetric strategies, measures supported by Cuban advisers and reinforced by the presence of seasoned Colombian guerrilla units operating inside Venezuela. Those forces, FP reports, may constitute a counterbalance to US plots for regime change.
The Cuban dimension: Vulnerability and resilience
Cuba has long been Caracas’s closest regional partner, receiving subsidised oil in exchange for medical and technical personnel. Foreign Policy traces that relationship back to 1998.
At its peak, Cuba received more than 100,000 barrels per day; by 2024 shipments had declined to figures as low as 32,000 bpd and even less this year, the report claims.
The article argues, however, that while the loss of Venezuelan oil would damage an already stressed Cuban economy, political collapse is not inevitable. The Cuban government, the report notes, has withstood decades of pressure and possesses internal security mechanisms that have neutralized US-backed organizations and “regime-change” programmes in the past.
As Foreign Policy cautions, economic collapse may deepen civilian suffering without producing the political opening Washington’s hawks imagine.
Regional reaction and legal concerns
Foreign Policy records significant international unease. Human rights bodies and major NGOs have criticised US strikes and tactics as legally problematic, and several Latin American leaders, including Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum and Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, have protested the escalation.
The report warns that aggressive US military action will accelerate a political and strategic shift in the region toward alternative partners, notably China, and will undermine Washington’s cooperation with governments it needs for drug interdiction and other security tasks.
The report paints a scenario in which US policymakers, driven by a combination of electoral politics and long-standing ideological goals, central among them Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s avowed ambition to rollback Cuba’s revolution, misread both the durability of the Maduro regime and the resilience of Cuba’s political order.
Cutting off Venezuelan oil, Foreign Policy argues, is unlikely to precipitate the rapid collapse of Cuba.
RT | November 2, 2025
The US military buildup off Venezuela’s coast could help bring about regime change, opposition figure Maria Corina Machado has said. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate this year signaled she would welcome US strikes on the country if they help remove President Nicolas Maduro.
Washington has accused Maduro of having ties to drug cartels, calling him a “narcoterrorist.” Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump deployed a naval armada to the western Caribbean, and since September, US forces have struck alleged drug-smuggling vessels off Venezuela’s coast.
Media reports say Washington is expanding its naval presence, with analysts suggesting that the mission could extend beyond counter-narcotics. Trump denied planning direct strikes inside Venezuela, but reportedly reviewed a list of potential targets.
Asked on Bloomberg’s ‘The Mishal Husain Show’ if she backs US military action, Machado said, “I believe the escalation that’s taking place is the only way to force Maduro to understand that it’s time to go.”
She claimed that Maduro “illegally” seized power in last year’s election, from which she was barred. Machado also claimed that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia won the election. Ousting Maduro, she said, would not be “regime change in the conventional way,” since he is “not the legitimate president” but “the head of a narcoterrorist structure.”
“This is not regime change, this is enforcing the will of the Venezuelan people,” she stressed.
Maduro has accused Machado of channeling US funds to “fascist” anti-government groups, calling her a front for Washington’s interference in Venezuelan affairs. Machado has had close contacts with the US government for decades. In 2005, then-President George W. Bush received her at the Oval Office.
Asked if US military force is the only way to remove Maduro, Machado said the threat alone could be sufficient: “It was absolutely indispensable to have a credible threat.” She added that the Venezuelan opposition is “ready to take over government,” backed by the military and police, claiming that “more than 80% of them are joining and will be part of this orderly transition as soon as it starts.”
Maduro has denied US drug-trafficking accusations, accusing Trump of “fabricating a new war.” Caracas called the US operations a violation of sovereignty and a coup attempt, reportedly seeking help from Russia, China, and Iran to strengthen its defenses.
Russia, which ratified a strategic partnership treaty with Venezuela on Monday, has condemned the US campaign.
By Raphael Machado | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 31, 2025
A common vice found among geopolitically anti-imperialist analysts and journalists is the attempt to explain all international conflicts by the “single cause” of the imperialist quest for natural resources — almost always oil. This is how the Iraq War is classically explained, for example: “Big Oil” would have used the Bush administration to open markets, once closed, through bombing and territorial occupation.
This type of clearly materialist explanation stems from an evidently Marxian premise, insofar as it aims to treat all social, cultural, and political phenomena as epiphenomena before the preponderant and structural reality of economic transformations and interests.
Like a good part of the 19th-century pseudo-scientific efforts to reduce reality to a single principle (as was the case with Freudianism and Positivism), this economist materialism also does not hold up under the hammer of critical analysis.
Just as an example, in the Iraqi case, the generic materialist explanation does not withstand the empirical discovery that the major U.S. oil companies were, in fact, already on a path of dialogue with the counter-hegemonic countries of the Middle East and, precisely for that reason, tried unsuccessfully to pressure for non-intervention and the pacification of American-Iraqi relations.
Nonetheless, the “oil myth” persists in the study of the Middle East. So we are not surprised that it is appealed to once again to explain the U.S. pressure on Venezuela. The narrative says that Trump’s pressure on Maduro, and the threats to overthrow his government, are due to Trump’s interest in Venezuela’s 300 billion barrel reserves — the largest in the world.
The problem with this narrative, however, is that according to all indications, Maduro would have offered to close extremely advantageous partnerships with the U.S. for the exploitation of Venezuelan oil, given that the current level of extraction in Venezuela is minimal. From a material perspective, the deal would be quite interesting for the U.S. oil industry, as the country consumes a vast amount of oil and its reserves are “only” the ninth largest in the world.
Everything indicates, however, that Trump would have rejected the offer of a deal.
The U.S., apparently, wants something that is worth more than the largest oil reserve in the world.
This is where geopolitical science comes in.
Generally, geopolitics is confused with “geo-economics,” in the sense that many people believe they are seeing a “geopolitical analysis” when they see an attribution of economic causes to some international conflict. But geopolitics is, fundamentally, the science that studies the correlation between geography and power. In this sense, resources can enter into geopolitical analyses, but only as part of a general context.
And in the Venezuelan case, even the very important and abundant oil is of secondary importance in the conflict with the U.S.
More important than oil, for the U.S., is to guarantee hemispheric hegemony — especially in the Americas. It is about, as defined in an arrogant and classic manner, the U.S. “backyard,” a space in which the U.S. elite in the 19th century decided to no longer tolerate any European presence.
Let’s fast forward 200 years. How are the international relations of Ibero-American countries?
China is the main commercial partner for most countries in the region, several of which have joined the Belt & Road Initiative (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, etc.). Some countries in the region (Brazil, Bolivia, Cuba) have also joined BRICS, which works towards the de-dollarization of international trade. Specifically Russia, in turn, has developed military ties — which consist of supplying equipment and conducting exercises — especially with Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, with a military rapprochement also with Bolivia and, to a lesser extent, Peru and Brazil.
In a context where pressure on the U.S. in other regions of the world is growing, it is dangerous for U.S. hegemony to see the growth of Russian-Chinese influence in its “backyard.”
Venezuela is a significant and priority target there because it is precisely the country with the deepest strategic relations with Russia and China. Venezuela is one of the main sources of oil for China, while at the same time Caracas seems to play a relevant role in the multifaceted Russian strategy of “pushing” for multipolarity by strengthening countries around the world that try to challenge the hegemonic order.
To confirm this thesis, we would need to analyze U.S. relations with the rest of the continent to verify if there is any movement by the U.S. to try to pull countries in the region away from Russia and China.
And it seems very clear: the strategy of rapprochement with Brazil is based precisely on an effort to pull the country out of the “Chinese orbit.” The U.S. also pressured Mexico to remain outside the New Silk Road. The U.S. increased its presence in Ecuador and pressured Milei to abandon plans for a Chinese base in its territory. Examples abound to indicate that we are facing a broad continental offensive whose goal is to update the Monroe Doctrine for the 21st century.
It is not, therefore, about oil, but about hegemony.
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The ruthless businessman who financed coups in Central America and shaped Israeli statehood
José Niño Unfiltered | May 7, 2026
Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
Few figures in American business history wielded power as ruthlessly or as secretly as Zemurray. Born Schmiel Zmurri on January 18, 1877, to a poor Jewish family in Imperial Russia, this teenage immigrant would rise from peddling rotting bananas off railroad cars in Alabama to become the controlling force behind the United Fruit Company, the most powerful agricultural corporation on earth. Along the way he overthrew governments, bribed presidents, hired mercenaries, and played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the creation of the State of Israel. … continue
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