U.S. imperialism’s gunboat diplomacy off the coast of Venezuela is rapidly escalating, reaching the verge of all-out war. Over the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, President Donald Trump unilaterally—and illegally—declared the airspace in and around Venezuela “closed” and said that attacks on that country would soon take place “by land.”
He then reportedly issued an ultimatum directly to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to surrender power immediately and flee, or else.
According to The Miami Herald, quoting an unnamed source supposedly familiar with the substance of a telephone call between the two presidents late last week, the U.S. leader is said to have told Maduro, “You can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now.”
He then offered the Venezuelan leader “safe passage” for himself, his wife, and his son, but “only if he agreed to resign right away.”
The Herald claims that Maduro refused Trump’s ultimatum and supposedly offered his own counter-demands, including, in the words of the newspaper, “global amnesty for any crimes he and his group had committed” and the right to retain control over the country’s armed forces in exchange for holding new elections.
The Miami Herald has long functioned as an organ of the right-wing Latin American exile community in Florida—especially those from Cuba and now Venezuela—so neither its reporting nor the claims of its supposed “anonymous source” can be verified.
However, the rapid intensification of both Trump’s war rhetoric and the U.S. military buildup in the region suggest that more direct attacks could be imminent.
Biggest deployment since Iraq
The assembly of U.S. forces off the Venezuelan coast—now officially named “Operation Spear” by the Pentagon—includes the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the nuclear-powered USS Gerald R. Ford, and more than a dozen other warships.
Some of the vessels are outfitted with amphibious vehicles that can be deployed to land troops on shore and conduct coastal attacks. At least 15,000 U.S. troops have also been dispatched, and ten F-35 fighter jets capable of carrying out airstrikes are stationed at a U.S. base in Puerto Rico.
All told, this collection of forces amounts to the largest U.S. military deployment since the launch of the Iraq War 22 years ago.
This marks a major step up from the attacks on small boats in the Caribbean which have been carried out by the U.S. since early September—attacks which have been condemned as illegal by international bodies.
Though Trump and his “Secretary of War,” Pete Hegseth, continuously allege the boats sunk by the U.S. are carrying drugs eventually bound for the U.S., their claims have been challenged. Investigations by several major news outlets, including the New York Times, have suggested some of those on board the sunken vessels were simply fishermen or migrants—not drug runners.
At least 20 boats have been attacked and sunk by the U.S. in international waters, resulting in the deaths of at least 83 people to date.
“Kill them all”
Survivors have been rare; only two men are known to have escaped with their lives so far. A pair of men were plucked from the water after an Oct. 16 strike on a supposed “narco-submarine” and extradited by the U.S. to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia to face trial.
However, the Ecuadorian Attorney General’s Office released Andrés Fernando Tufiño Chila, as no crimes could be proven against him. Jeison Obando Pérez has not yet been questioned in Colombia due to his severe injuries, but he is expected to be released due to lack of evidence.
U.S. authorities have so far presented no proof that the boats targeted in its attacks were actually used for drug trafficking, and the near total lack of survivors means that few are left alive to dispute U.S. claims of their alleged guilt. That is apparently by design.
The Washington Post reported this weekend that Hegseth “gave a spoken directive” to “kill everybody” on board boats when the operation started in September. When there were still two men left alive after the first strike, a Special Operations commander ordered a follow-up hit to murder the men and comply with Hegseth’s direction, the Post reported.
Hegseth denied the report, calling it “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory” in a post on X and continued to claim the attacks on boats are “lawful under both U.S. and international law.” Lawmakers in Congress, however, are demanding an investigation.
Venezuela braces for war
With airstrikes and a possible invasion looming, Venezuela is preparing to defend itself.
At a rally in the Caracas suburb of Petare, Maduro declared, “In Venezuela, fascist oligarchy and imperialism will never again hold power. Power in Venezuela will forever remain with the people at the grassroots level, the ordinary people.”
He dispatched a letter to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) accusing Trump of seeking control over Venezuela’s oil. Maduro wrote that the U.S. government and major energy companies seek to “appropriate Venezuela’s vast oil reserves—the largest on the planet—through the lethal use of military force.”
Maduro has been the target of U.S. pressure ever since being elected in 2013 after the death of President Hugo Chávez, whose “Bolivarian Revolution” and declared intention to build “21st century socialism” had already made the country’s government an enemy of U.S. imperialism. A $50 million bounty is currently on Maduro’s head, courtesy of the U.S. State Department.
To defend against the possibility of an imminent U.S. attack, the government has established 235,000 “Bolivarian Street Committees,” which, according to official figures, now count at least 4.5 million members. In the eastern region of the country, people have been urged to maintain heightened vigilance, as the neighboring island nation of Trinidad and Tobago has expanded military exercises with the U.S. and expressed willingness to act as a staging ground for strikes.
The official Venezuelan armed forces are at the highest alert level. Units are preparing for air defense, assaults on the coast via U.S. sea-based forces, and the possibility of internal clandestine sabotage and attacks.
According to Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, preparations are underway not only for direct defense but also for a guerrilla war. “What they are attempting with an enormous deployment of naval and air forces from the Caribbean,” he declared, “we will answer from the mountains of freedom.”
Warmongers grow louder
In the U.S., the foreign policy establishment is giving mixed signals. Some are warning that an attack on Venezuela and overthrow of Maduro would not necessarily lead to the quick and easy U.S. seizure of the country and its resources as the Trump administration envisions.
This gives no pause to the voices advocating for war, though. In its Sunday edition, the Wall Street Journal amplified its long-running campaign for U.S. intervention, declaring in an editorial that “deposing Maduro is in the U.S. interest.”
Hoping to manipulate the U.S. president’s obsession with his self-image as a tough leader, the editors of the capitalist class’s premier newspaper wrote: “If Maduro refuses to leave, and Trump shrinks from acting to depose him, Trump and the credibility of the U.S. will be the losers.”
Inside Venezuela, meanwhile, the “democratic” opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado continues to advocate a U.S. attack on her own country and its people.
She has repeated not only the unfounded allegations made by Trump of a Maduro-led drug cartel but also attempted to spread totally debunked claims of Venezuelan interference in U.S. elections. Seeking to appeal to MAGA claims that the 2020 presidential vote was stolen from Trump, Machado accused Maduro and other government officials of being “masterminds of a system that has rigged elections” in the U.S. and other countries.
She expects to be appointed head of a new puppet government should a U.S. military operation and/or financial pressure succeed in toppling the Venezuelan state.
Few if any of the foreign policy “experts” are discussing the human costs that would come from large-scale U.S. military action. Venezuelan cities like Caracas are densely populated, meaning airstrike casualty numbers would soar quickly. And with the opposition—which has resorted to violence at multiple times in the past—itching for a fight, the threat of civil war stands as a real possibility.
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