The Trump administration’s deadly attacks on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific are part of a broader offensive against self-determination in the region, argues Tim Young.

Over the past few months, the Trump administration has intensified its long-standing aggression against Venezuela by deploying a range of warships – including a nuclear submarine – in the Caribbean Sea in a purported anti-narcotics operation. This has been widely condemned as a pretext for a ‘regime change’ operation aimed at deposing President Maduro and destroying Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution.

To date, US forces have attacked 18 small boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, claiming they were engaged in drug trafficking but without presenting any evidence. Approximately 70 people have been killed in these attacks. Trump’s latest move has been to authorise the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela.

The US’s aggressive actions have been described by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, as unacceptable and clear violations of international law. A large number of Latin American and Caribbean countries have condemned the attacks as a threat to the stability and self-determination of all the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Regionally, the ALBA bloc of countries has issued a statement strongly denouncing the US’s actions: “We categorically reject the orders from the United States government to deploy military forces under false pretexts, with the clear intention of imposing illegal, interventionist policies that are contrary to the constitutional order of the States of Latin America and the Caribbean.”

The US’s justification for its actions is that under President Maduro’s leadership Venezuela is a ‘narco-terrorist’ country engaged in major drug trafficking. But most international experts ‒ including the authoritative 2025 United Nations World Drug Report ‒ refute this, considering Venezuela a minor player in the narcotics trade.

According to the 2025 UN Report, over 80% percent of the lethal drugs (cocaine and fentanyl) entering the US use Pacific Ocean routes, where Venezuela has no coastline, and only just above 10% go across the Caribbean Sea. Most of the drugs entering the United States, according to the US’s Drug Enforcement Agency, come from the Andes, from Central America and from Mexico.

For the US, the real prize is Venezuela’s oil. Apart from its vast mineral wealth, Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves. In 2023 Trump himself publicly admitted that he wanted to overthrow Maduro to secure control over Venezuela’s oil, mirroring the way he boasted in 2020 that he was militarily occupying Syria’s crude oil-rich regions in order to “take the oil”.

But this current instance of US aggression towards Venezuela is the latest – and perhaps the most serious – in its long history of trying to destabilise and overthrow the Venezuelan Government.

As early as 2002, just three years into Hugo Chávez’s presidency, the US backed a military coup which temporarily ousted Chávez before a spontaneous popular uprising restored him to the presidency. Since then, other destabilising tactics by the US have included massive funding of opposition groups to try –unsuccessfully – to win elections, coupled with disinformation campaigns to isolate the country, campaigns of violence on the streets, further coup attempts and domestic sabotage.

The most powerful US weapon against Venezuela has been an increasingly severe set of economic sanctions, illegal under international law, designed to destroy the economy and bring the country to its knees. Ramped up by Trump in his first presidency into a crippling economic, trade and financial blockade, sanctions have led to a 99% fall in oil revenues and well over 100,000 unnecessary deaths.

Throughout this entire period, the British government has supported the US’s policy, even levying its own sanctions and withholding 31 tons of Venezuelan gold worth roughly $2 billion lodged in the Bank of England’s vaults.

Venezuela’s commitment to Latin American independence and resistance to neo-liberalism are anathema to the US’s historic and continuing commitment to the Monroe Doctrine. ‘Regime change’ in Venezuela would be a body blow to left movements and governments across Latin America, especially blockaded Cuba and heavily-sanctioned Nicaragua. In Trump’s sights also is Colombia, whose President Gustav Petro has been accused of being a drugs gangster and allowing cartels to operate.

The task for the solidarity and labour movements now to maximise support for solidarity with Venezuela on the basis of respect for Venezuela’s sovereignty, a recall of the US fleet and an end to US military aggression in Latin America and the Caribbean. Apart from the incalculable damage that the US might wreak upon Venezuela through this aggression, the danger is that this might be the start of a wider military escalation by Trump in Latin America.

 Please sign and circulate the emergency statement at https://bit.ly/notrumpwaronvenezuela

Tim Young is a Venezuela Solidarity Campaign executive member.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag-map_of_Venezuela.svg Author: Darwinek, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.