Struggle Against Monroe Doctrine Continues

Donald Trump’s ordered a military attack Venezuela on January 3, 2026. The attack consisted of the heavy bombardment of military and civilian targets in four cities (Caracas, Miranda, La Guaira and Maracay), and the violent kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, both of whom were taken prisoner and flown to New York City.

The US government’s narrative to justify this blatant violation of international law evolved from bogus charges about the Venezuelan government being responsible for “drug-trafficking” and “narco-terrorism”, attempting to obscure the real objective: taking possession of Venezuela’s oil (the world’s largest reserves) by military force.

Washington’s war for Venezuela’s oil

After the US military assault on Venezuela, Trump claimed that Venezuela had taken “our oil away from us” and had stolen “our assets”. In the same vein, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, leading right-wing ideologue in the US administration, said that since the US “created the oil industry in Venezuela,” its nationalization in 1976 “was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property.”

The US war fleet deployed in the Caribbean (Operation Southern Spear) had nothing to do with fighting “drug trafficking” or “narco-terrorism” but everything to do with violent “regime change” to control Venezuela’s oil.

In fact, Trump announced he was putting Venezuela under temporary US control: “We will run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition” and that major US companies would move into Venezuela.

The US war fleet (the largest in 30 years) is still deployed off the coast of Venezuela and, at a US Senate hearing, Marco Rubio repeated Trump’s threat: force could even be used to ensure “maximum co-operation [from the interim president] if other methods fail.”

In short, the Venezuelan interim government has a US gun pointed at its head.

Then the Department of Justice (DoJ’s) false contention that Venezuela was run by the non-existent drug trafficking group Cartel de los Soles, allegedly headed by President Maduro and the Bolivarian government, was dropped.

The false narco-terrorism pretext for US intervention

The designation of the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization was in November 2025. On January 6, 2026, (three days after the kidnapping of Venezuela’s head of state), the US DoJ referred to it as a “patronage system”, thus admitting it isn’t real.

Between September 2025 and January 2026, Operation Southern Spear involved the blowing to smithereens of 29 small boats and the extrajudicial killing of well over 100 alleged drug-traffickers and narco-terrorists.

Yet US authorities squarely refuse to provide any information about the individuals executed or present any evidence. After President Maduro’s kidnapping, US strikes against small boats have altogether stopped.

Paradoxically, US pundits, politicians, and retired generals have pointed to the DEA’s (the Drug Enforcement Administration) and UNODC’s (the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) repeated reports that over 85% of the cocaine produced in Colombia reaches the US through the Pacific, that a tiny proportion (5–7%) tries (not always successfully) to use Venezuela as a transit route and that Venezuela’s contribution to fentanyl trafficking is zero.

Trump’s pardon for former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández who was serving 45 years in prison for having shipped 400 tons of cocaine into the US, confirmed that the US military attack on Venezuela was definitely not about drug-trafficking.

Bolivarian Revolution under Washington’s gun

Interestingly, Trump dismissed extreme right-wing politician Maria Corina Machado out of hand as a replacement for President Maduro because she “is not respected”, i.e., she does not enjoy support in Venezuela (even less after her abject servility to Trump led her to give the US president her Nobel Peace Prize medal).

This means the Bolivarian state is shaken but intact.

No sooner had Trump and Rubio accepted the limitations of what they could impose on Venezuela, and, grudgingly, recognized the interim president’s authority, Washington launched a smear campaign against Delcy Rodriguez, saying she was “compromising on the heritage of President Nicolás Maduro and Hugo Chavez.”

A UK daily went as far as to report on secret meetings held by Rodriguez to hand over President Maduro. The corporate media seeks to portray her as a “Trump asset” falsely claiming her appointment as interim president had been the “result of prolonged negotiations”. The obvious aim is sowing division in the Chavista movement.

Rodriguez’s appointment as interim president by the Supreme Court has the full support of the National Assembly, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the armed forces. This has ensured constitutional continuity and secured political normality.

Her very first statement (January 4, 2026) as interim president was to demand the immediate release of President Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, firmly stating: “The only president of Venezuela is President Nicolás Maduro.”

She also implemented a Maduro executive decree, placing the country in a state of upheaval, and activated the National Defense Council.

Regional solidarity

On the same day, a special extraordinary summit of CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) took place prompted by the US attack on Venezuela, at which Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil Pinto demanded CELAC request the immediate withdrawal of all US military forces in the Caribbean with Cuba demanding “due respect for Venezuelan territorial integrity and independence and the immediate release of the Venezuelan leader and his wife.”

The following day Venezuela demanded an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council at which the US attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president were deemed unjustifiable crimes, and the immediate release of Nicolás Maduro and his wife was demanded.

In response to Trump’s contention that the US was running Venezuela, interim President Rodriguez retorted: “The government of Venezuela rules in our country and no-one else; there is no external agent that governs Venezuela.” On January 7, 2026, at a mass march of women to demand the president’s safe return, interior minister and PSUV general secretary Diosdado Cabello pointed out that US military actions had generated deep anti-imperialist sentiment in the country.

CITGO, sanctions, and the economic front of the war

The mainstream media has also focused on the updating of Venezuela’s existing law ruling over the nation’s oil industry (the Hydrocarbons Law) which is deliberately misrepresented as US-imposed privatization.

The law was unanimously approved by the National Assembly and strongly supported by the labor movement and is, in fact, a reform of the existing Anti-Blockade Law and very similar to Cuba’s Law of Investments. Both have the same goal: to attract direct foreign investment to their blockaded and sanctioned economies given their inability to generate sufficient resources domestically.

In line with Rodriguez’s policy, Foreign Minister Gil Pinto condemned the forced sale of Venezuela-owned oil company Citgo, operating in the US, as one of the most outrageous acts of “theft, criminality, and judicial piracy in modern history.”

US aggression expands to Cuba

Encouraged by the attack on Venezuela, Trump will impose tariffs on imports from countries that sell or supply oil to Cuba and has deployed two warships to the north of Cuba. This is gunboat diplomacy on steroids.

Naturally, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel slammed the aggression: “We will face this new onslaught with firmness, equanimity, and the certainty that reason is absolutely on our side.”

Gil Pinto also condemned it as a flagrant violation of international law, an attack on national sovereignty and said that free trade should not be subject to coercion. He added: “To consider Cuba a threat to the national security of the United States of America is absurd and poses a serious threat to its very existence as a nation.”

Both statements typify the independent governments leading sovereign nations.

US gunboat diplomacy is seriously jeopardizing Venezuela’s, Cuba’s, and Latin America’s sovereignty. The struggle against the Monroe Doctrine continues. And the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, and across the world, continue to demand the immediate release of President Maduro and the withdrawal of the US war fleet from the Caribbean.

Francisco Dominguez is secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign.

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch