Evan R. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Oregon–

Recently, the Trump regime has revealed that it authorized the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela with the aim of regime change. This is just an admission of a long running policy against the South American state, which has found itself in the crosshairs of US imperialism since the Bolivarian revolution of 1999. 

American aggression towards the nation poses a grave threat to the Venezuelan people, already suffering from decades of what the United States describes euphemistically as sanctions, rather than what they are: siege warfare.

Millions have left Venezuela thanks to an economic crisis engineered by the US and its allies to crush Venezuelan sovereignty and bring their rich resources, particularly oil, under the control of American capital in competition with Russia and China. The nation already faces crises of crime, unemployment, and deprivation of essential goods while the American constrictor tightens the coils around it. This process represents decades of bipartisan Washington foreign policy, with both Democrats and Republicans working together to isolate and destroy Venezuela. 

Very few of these refugees have found the peace and security they were seeking. Instead they face ruthless exploitation by their host nations and targeting by the racist Trump regime’s ICE forces. In 2025 over 600,000 Venezuelans in the U.S. have lost their protected migrant status. This is in the nature of capitalism: by creating a crisis and destabilizing an entire region it can increase profits via further exploitation of the weakened nations and desperate people.

The admission of covert activities has come at a time of increased tension between the two nations, with the US Navy now openly firing on unarmed and non-hostile Venezuelan ships. Although the regime claims that these ships are trafficking narcotics, all available evidence points to the contrary. 

A large force of nearly 10,000 troops, dozens of aircraft and 8 warships are now tightening the noose around Venezuela’s neck, and it seems as if an attack is imminent. B-52 heavy strategic bombers are carrying out launch maneuvers in the skies above the country, clearly training for what is to come next. The elusive special forces ship MV Ocean Trader, a floating barracks, helicopter carrier and command center for up to 159 commandos, has also been spotted in the region. 

It is clear that the Trump regime wants war, even rejecting a plan from the Maduro government to step down and transfer power to the opposition within 3 years. Meanwhile, Trump jokes about how Venezuelans shouldn’t go fishing anymore to a thinning press corps cowed by both threats and the machinations of capital, unwilling and unable to report anything but what the Pentagon and the arms contractors want them to.

As the situation in Venezuela teeters on the brink of outright war, neoliberal policies have led to rising tensions all over South America. The Trump regime is not just employing a doctrine of force, but also of definitively imperialist financial exploitation.

In Argentina, with the backing of both Trump and American capital, the wildly unpopular Javier Milei has destroyed the nation’s economy through extreme neo-liberal reforms. At first, his reforms were aimed towards the country’s poor, deliberately impoverishing them to increase profits for the business elite. Like Noboa, Milei has implemented a brutal program of austerity targeted at the country’s poorest citizens, further increasing Argentina’s already high rates of wealth inequality.

However, the nature of capitalism calls for endless growth and when the poor were cut to the bone, Milei had to find other ways to increase profit margins. He has sold off land for pennies on the dollar to foreign mining and resource extraction companies while manufacturing collapses and jobs vanish. He has promoted crypto scams  and massive stock market ponzi schemes, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars for wealthy investors while simultaneously depreciating the savings of average Argentines through massive inflation. 

After the first six months of Milei’s rule, nearly two-thirds of Argentinians say they are worse off than they were before and a majority of the nation now lives in poverty.

Despite this, the Trump regime has promised billions in bailouts to the faltering Milei regime and has threatened the Argentine people with a termination of foreign aid if the opposition is victorious in upcoming elections. If any other nation did this, it would be condemned as a dire threat to democracy, but for America, it is simply business as usual. The façade of democracy is a paper-thin covering over the truth of bourgeois rule, which will always be the dictatorship of capital. 

Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor.

V. I. Lenin, “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky.”

In Brazil, Trump is pulling strings in an attempt to protect former far-right leader and convicted criminal Jair Bolsonaro. Trump denounced Bolsonaro’s trial for plotting a coup as a witch hunt, and applied 50% tariffs to Brazilian goods in an open attempt to manipulate the justice system. After Bolsonaro’s conviction and sentence of 27 years in prison, Trump sanctioned the judges responsible and threatened Brazil with further action unless the government pardons Bolsonaro.

As in Venezuela, American meddling in the affairs of Brazil is long running and bipartisan. Bolsonaro only came to power in the first place because of the “car wash” corruption investigation, which was orchestrated by the US under Obama to destroy popular social-democratic leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (better known as Lula) and his successor, Dilma Rousseff. The plan was initially successful. Lula was arrested and Rousseff was impeached, however the tables were turned on appeal where it was found that the trial was politically motivated and biased. Lula was released from jail and is currently the President of Brazil. 

Of course, all of this predates Trump. The history of the United States’ meddling in the region is long, going back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which designated South and Central America under the US’ “sphere of influence” and was used as justification to impose US hegemony over the continent. 

“In this administration, we’re not afraid to use the word Monroe Doctrine…It’s been the objective of American presidents going back to President Ronald Reagan to have a completely democratic hemisphere.”

John Bolton, 2019.

While he was never mild, in his second term it seems that Trump is leaning into this policy of aggressive imperialism. Now, a new Monroe doctrine appears to be forming in Washington. Nearly all of South America is facing a deep crisis, and everywhere you look, the flames of war are stoked by capitalist imperialism. Any country which takes a stance towards its political or economic sovereignty is ruthlessly attacked, either directly, as in Venezuela, or indirectly as in Argentina or Brazil.

What is happening in Venezuela parallels our circumstances in America, where anyone who opposes the regime may be labelled a “terrorist” to be killed without charge or trial.

It is the duty of the American workers to organize toward revolution, to work together to bring a permanent end to this system and the warfare that it wages on the world. We have no time to wait. We must resist this rising tide of imperialism in the region, not least of all because it presages the rise of an increasingly violent authoritarianism at home.

Categories: Immigration, U.S. Military, U.S. News