The Caribbean on a knife’s edge: Trump’s military buildup threatens Venezuela
Original article by Manolo De Los Santos republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
The war drums beating in Washington are not just a threat to a distant nation; they are a symptom of a political system that thrives on the distraction of war abroad to cover its internal crises.
The sun glints off the gray hull of the USS Iwo Jima, a massive amphibious assault ship cutting through the Caribbean Sea. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, a key architect of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policies, stands on deck before a group of sailors and marines. His voice, amplified by the ship’s public address system, is a low, serious rumble that carries across the choppy waters. “What you’re doing right now is NOT training,” he says, in a scene reminiscent of George W. Bush’s staged landing to declare victory in Iraq. “This is a REAL-WORLD EXERCISE on behalf of the vital national interests of the United States of America, to end the POISONING of the American people.” His words hang heavy in the air, a dramatic prelude to what some suspect is an impending invasion of Venezuela.
The history of the Caribbean is a bloody one, stained by the imperial ambitions of European powers and the United States. The region now sits on the verge of another bloody chapter. As the great writer and historian Juan Bosch once observed, this region of Latin America is a battleground where empires have fought to seize the rich lands of its peoples and to claim what other empires had already conquered.
Today, the Caribbean is again being transformed into a stage for imperial aggression.
In a dangerous and dramatic escalation, the government of the United States, through its aptly renamed Department of War, has amassed a formidable naval force and deployed advanced fighter jets to the waters off Venezuela. This military buildup, consisting of at least eight warships, 4,000 sailors and marines along with P-8 spy planes and at least one nuclear submarine, is a clear threat to Venezuelan sovereignty and a blatant crime against international law. Washington is hiding behind a well-worn, cynical pretext: the “war on drugs”.
A sordid history of manufactured pretexts
The latest act of lawlessness came on September 2, when US forces in the Caribbean allegedly interdicted a “drug trafficking” vessel. Instead of following international protocols, the US Coast Guard and DEA agents opened fire, destroying the boat and killing all 11 people on board. This extrajudicial execution at sea is a clear violation of international law, which mandates that law enforcement actions must prioritize arrest and the preservation of life. The use of lethal force is only permitted as a last resort in cases of immediate self-defense. Though the US is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the US military’s legal advisors have previously said that the US should “act in a manner consistent with its provisions”. To destroy a vessel and summarily execute its occupants without due process is not law enforcement; it is a state-sanctioned massacre, a crime that echoes other massacres in American military missions abroad. Recently, Professor Michael Becker of Trinity College in Dublin told the BBC that the US action “stretches the meaning of the term beyond its breaking point”.
This act of violence is not an anomaly but part of a deliberate pattern of provocation. The US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has significantly bolstered its presence with additional destroyers and littoral combat ships. Meanwhile, the US Air Force has sent F-35 fighter jets, aircraft designed for air dominance and striking high-value targets – not for intercepting drug runners – to its base in Puerto Rico, an island under US colonial domination. This military posture has nothing to do with curbing narcotics flow and everything to do with encircling and intimidating a nation that has defiantly resisted Washington’s hegemony for over two decades.
The historical context is inescapable. The United States has a long and sordid history of fabricating justifications for military action to achieve its political ends. The sinking of the USS Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the non-existent “Weapons of Mass Destruction” used to justify the invasion of Iraq are all well-worn chapters in the same playbook. The current administration, with its bellicose rhetoric, is drafting a new one. Key architect of Trump-era maximum pressure policies, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has consistently agitated for regime change, framing the Venezuelan government as a “narco-state”.
Exposing the “narco-state” smokescreen
The “narco-state” narrative collapses under the weight of its own fiction. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the US State Department’s own annual reports, the vast majority of cocaine leaving South America originates from and passes through US-allied nations like Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Venezuela is not a significant producer of cocaine. The narrative is a convenient smokescreen, a lie sold to the public to manufacture consent for aggression. The hypocrisy is further exposed by Rubio’s recent tour of Ecuador, a nation with extremely high levels of collaboration with US anti-drug agencies. Despite this collaboration, Ecuador has been plunged into a devastating crisis of drug trafficking and gang violence, proving that US intervention solves nothing and only fuels instability.
Read more: Noboa opens door to US military bases, backs Rubio’s FTO designation for Ecuadorian gangs
The true goal of this military buildup is clearly the overthrow of Venezuela’s government and the seizure of its vast oil reserves. The threats emanating from Washington are not veiled. They range from scenarios of massive bombing campaigns to the outright kidnapping or assassination of President Maduro. Donald Trump’s past musings about a “military option” for Venezuela are now being operationalized.
The Venezuelan people prepare for resistance
In the face of this existential threat, the Venezuelan people are preparing to defend their homeland. President Maduro has called for a “people in arms”, and an estimated 8 million Venezuelans have joined citizen militias. Across the country, young people, students, workers, and retirees are training in basic combat, emergency response, and civil defense. Their resolve is a powerful testament to the spirit of resistance.
Read more: Venezuela mobilizes 4.5 million militia members as US deploys troops to the Caribbean
“We are not an army for aggression, but an army for peace, for the defense of our sacred land,” said Maria Delgado*, a 20-year-old university student and new militia member in Caracas. “They think that because we are young or because we are not professional soldiers, we will be afraid. They are wrong. We know what is at stake: our sovereignty, our future, and the project of justice that our parents built.”
President Maduro has framed this mobilization in stark terms: “Venezuela is facing its greatest threat in 100 years. Having defeated all forms of hybrid warfare, they [United States] have opted for the worst mistake.”
The war drums beating in Washington are not just a threat to a distant nation; they are a symptom of a political system that thrives on the distraction of war abroad to cover its internal crises. The billions spent on deploying F-35s and destroyers to the Caribbean are billions stolen from the right to healthcare, education, and housing of ordinary Americans at home.
*Name changed
Manolo De Los Santos is Executive Director of The People’s Forum and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. His writing appears regularly in Monthly Review, Peoples Dispatch, CounterPunch, La Jornada, and other progressive media. He coedited, most recently, Viviremos: Venezuela vs. Hybrid War (LeftWord, 2020), Comrade of the Revolution: Selected Speeches of Fidel Castro (LeftWord, 2021), and Our Own Path to Socialism: Selected Speeches of Hugo Chávez (LeftWord, 2023).
Original article by Manolo De Los Santos republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.
