There’s a war on the horizon, and its targets will be the people of the United States.
In the past year, we’ve seen an increase in ICE and policing of local communities regardless of the citizenship of those being policed. This is, of course, connected to the escalation of aggression across Latin America and adventures aimed at maintain the empire’s fleeting hegemony. Politically, it takes the form of the revival of the Monroe Doctrine by the Trump administration.
The imperial boomerang is when we see foreign policies, tactics, and weaponry brought back and used on the civilian population. It’s what’s already happening—a serious case of blowback that we all need to prepare ourselves for.
Monroe Doctrine reborn
The Monroe Doctrine was declared by President James Monroe in 1823 and claims exclusive right for the U.S. to control Latin America and forbids foreign intervention from European countries. It was instituted to stop Europe from re-establishing a foothold in the Western Hemisphere after Latin American countries gained their independence.
Now Trump is reviving it to reassert the U.S. as the dominant power over all of North and South America. It’s an attempt to curtail the collapse of the U.S. empire, as stated in the National Security Strategy of 2025.
Economically, the U.S. position in the world economy has been rapidly declining, particularly due to China’s rise. The Trump administration is scrambling for ways to reposition the U.S. as the country on top. One part of that strategy was the seizure of Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest in the world, as Trump stated himself recently.
With say over how Venezuela’s oil is produced, the U.S. locks in control of much of the world’s fossil fuel production and also pulls Venezuela into the U.S. economic sphere. “Venezuela is going to be purchasing ONLY American Made Products, with the money they receive from our new Oil Deal,” Trump said on Jan. 7, “A wise choice, and a very good thing for the people of Venezuela, and the United States.”
The move further serves to weaken the anti-imperialist movement of Global South that has long resisted U.S. provocations. It’s also cuts off China and Russia from developing stronger trade or political relationships with countries in the Western Hemisphere. This is especially important to the Trump administration because of Venezuela’s role within the region as a support to other countries targeted by U.S. imperialism.
Nations like Cuba, for instance, have been able to withstand U.S. pressure largely thanks to allied governments like that of Venezuela. The Venezuelan government continued to trade with Cuba despite the U.S. blockade; the supply of oil to Cuba has been particularly crucial. There is also Nicaragua, whose left-leaning government has withstood U.S. pressure. The Trump administration recently interfered in the elections in Honduras, and Haiti has been a constant target, with Kenyan and Jamaican troops used to invade the first country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery.
Trump’s bombing of small Venezuelan boats over last few months and then his naval blockade of oil ships increased the U.S. stranglehold on the country to further isolate it from the rest of the Global South, the Caribbean, China, and Russia—who are also major trading partners and allies. The U.S. used Trinidad and Tobago as a platform for U.S. troops and vessels in the region.
Then, on Jan. 3, the U.S. invaded Venezuela and kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. The U.S. used its classic military tactic of shock-and-awe, relying on rapid and unrelenting military force to paralyze an adversary. It left the Venezuelan military disoriented, giving the U.S. a window of opportunity to kidnap Maduro.
U.S. imperialism, with Trump at its head, is showing that it is committed to “Monroe Doctrine 2.0” with these brazen acts of violence, demonstrating that the U.S. doesn’t respect the sovereignty of any country it feels it can overpower and dominate.
The domestic blowback
The imperial violence that the U.S. wages abroad always trickles back into our local communities. The increase in funding for ICE and police agencies over the years show that the ruling class feels worried that deteriorating standards of living—rising homelessness, unaffordable healthcare, defunded education, crippling student debt—will spark resistance.
The U.S. government understands this and is preparing for the rise of mass organized movements. Maintain the domestic interests of the capitalist class is linked to the pursuit of its interests abroad. This shows up in the massive increase of spending on arms and the instruments of repression.
“I have determined that, for the Good of our Country, especially in these very troubled and dangerous times,” Trump said on Jan. 7, “our Military Budget for the year 2027 should not be $1 Trillion Dollars, but rather $1.5 Trillion Dollars.”
Already, the president has dispatched the National Guard to multiple U.S. cities. This gradually gets people accustomed to seeing soldiers in their community so that when the government really feels the need to deploy the armed forces domestically, the people won’t be as resistant to it. D.C. stands as an example. Trump mobilized the National Guard to occupy the capital city using high crime rates as justification, even though Washington crime rates have been declining. There has been resistance to the takeover, but seeing armed soldiers in the streets is no longer unusual or unexpected—as Trump intended.
This kind of over-policing isn’t anything new for people of color and immigrants, of course, who have faced police terror, mass incarceration, been placed in concentration camps, and seen too many lives lost. This is part the long history of war that the U.S. had waged against its citizens and non-citizens alike since its birth. But what’s happening now is that the veneer of American society is being stripped away for everyone, and people need to grapple with the reality of what the U.S. state truly is and what it stands for.
The creation of cop cities in already over-policed predominantly Black cities—where police forces have military grade weaponry such as drones, surveillance technology, and armored vehicles—stand as the models the far-right hopes to re-create across the country. You can add in the repression of free speech on college campuses and the fact that police and ICE agents have been trained in suppression tactics perfected by the Israel Defense Forces, which have been carrying out a genocide of the Palestinian people for the past two years.
The frequent killing of U.S. citizens and non-citizens by the police—from the country’s inception—show that at least some residents are viewed as an occupied colony that needs to be pacified and remains subservient to the power of the monopoly capitalist class and U.S. corporations. And all of it is connected to imperialist aims abroad
With ICE blatantly disregarding the law, kidnapping people from their loved ones, assaulting them, and now murdering them, as in the case of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, we see the normalization of violence against Americans is integral to to maintaining U.S. capitalist class hegemony domestically.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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