US LAW mandates that only Congress can declare war, but it seems certain that Donald Trump is planning to launch a war on Venezuela regardless of any “checks and balances.”

Trump, reeling from the recent massive “No Kings” protests across the US and even more from last week’s revelations of how prominently he featured in the Epstein files, essentially confirmed last Friday that he is planning a full-scale military invasion of the socialist-run South American nation when he told reporters that “I sort of have made up my mind — yeah.” This is hardly a revelation, as Trump and other senior US figures have spoken quite openly of the “need” to control Venezuela’s vast oil reserves and other natural resources.

Trump has had his eye on regime change in Venezuela since his first term as US president. In 2017, his administration backed so-called “democracy campaigners” — in reality a coalition of far-right groups that were bombing police and burning or beheading political opponents — to replace the Maduro government, while in early 2019 he and his then-vice president Mike Pence declared virtually unknown and entirely unelected right-winger Juan Guaido to be the official Venezuelan president.

This claim was based on the supposed rigging of yet another huge presidential election win for Nicolas Maduro, but independent observers have repeatedly declared Venezuela’s electoral processes to be world-leading and essentially “unriggable,” with Irish MP and independent election observer Chris Hazzard pointing out that it is “not possible to ‘stuff ballot boxes’ as ballots are electronically twinned with voter ID and fingerprints.”

Venezuela’s election processes are, in fact, far more secure and reliable than those of the US, or for that matter Britain, which naturally parroted US talking points and recognised Guaido’s presidency. But such claims have been repeated every time Maduro, now since last year in his third term, has been elected, with Western corporate and state media dutifully repeating the narratives of right-wing opposition groups and Western regime-change advocates.

Despite this — and despite the impact of US sanctions and a concerted attempt by the owners of Venezuelan corporations to manufacture food shortages — the Venezuelan people and military have rallied around Maduro and against US-driven interference. Trump ended his first term with failure: Maduro was still solidly in place.

Fast-forward to Trump’s second term, in which he clearly sees Venezuela as unfinished business and his failure to engineer regime change through soft power still appears to sting — and is also facing the increasing collapse of US influence and pressure from the rise of China and India, the demonstrated military capabilities of Russia and the growth of the Brics alliance they co-founded, which now has 10 member states and dozens more waiting to join. Having seen that Maduro is too secure to be toppled indirectly through sanctions and US-funded “opposition” groups, Trump now seems set on doing it directly.

The machinery of imperialism has reached a fever pitch. The US military has put over a dozen warships, including the USS Gerald R Ford — the world’s most advanced and powerful aircraft carrier- and 15,000 troops, 75 tactical aircraft, and a nuclear-powered submarine into the area in what it is calling “Operation Southern Spear” and is refurbishing a derelict US base in the Caribbean, representing the largest deployment in the Caribbean for over three decades, in what observers consider to be a signal of its intent to establish a permanent influence in the region and a preparation for the invasion.

Under orders from the Trump administration, US warplanes have bombed fishing boats in clear violation of international law, designating them as “drug boats” and slaughtering more than 80 civilians, without trial, without evidence and without mercy. The Trump administration has produced no credible evidence that these boats carried drugs, no identification of those murdered, no due process.

Yet Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth brazenly declared: “If you’re trafficking drugs to poison the American people and we know you… do not get in a boat.” These are not investigations — they are executions, extrajudicial killings dressed in the language of counter-narcotics.

Meanwhile, US heavy bombers have repeatedly entered Venezuelan air space as an intimidatory tactic and to test its defences and, perhaps, trying to provoke a response Trump and his “Secretary of War” Hegseth can claim as aggression to justify a US “response.”

Trump has also openly authorised the CIA and other intelligence services to conduct operations against Maduro on Venezuelan soil.

On November 15, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the “Cartel de los Soles” — a construct the Trump administration claims is headed by President Maduro himself — will be designated a “foreign terrorist organisation” effective from November 24. This is not accident; this is design. Once Maduro is formally designated as a terrorist, the US claims legal authority to strike him directly, to assassinate him, to conduct raids on Venezuelan territory under the guise of counter-terrorism. Trump himself admitted this designation “allows us to do that.”

The sword hangs suspended, designed to break Venezuelan resolve through sheer psychological warfare.

The real motive remains unchanged: control. Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven oil reserves — 303 billion barrels — far exceeding Saudi Arabia. This is not about drugs. It is naked resource plunder, capitalist pillage, the theft of a nation’s patrimony.

As the military threats and attacks continue, the propaganda war is of course again escalating alongside it. This time Guaido has been replaced by a new “democracy” figurehead, Maria Corina Machado — this time with credibility shored up by a newly awarded Nobel Peace Prize, arguably after pressure from a right-wing US group and Rubio for her “tireless fight for peace in Venezuela and the world,” despite her leading role in right-wing protests in 2014 that led to the deaths of dozens of civilians. 

Rubio, the “Inspire America Foundation” that pushed for the award and two of three other US politicians that called for her to win are linked to Cuban right-wing groups that see the overthrow of Venezuela’s socialist government as a step to “freeing” Cuba.

Machado’s peace prize does not seem even slightly to have inhibited her thirst for war. She said that the US military’s extrajudicial murders of Venezuelan fishermen was justified, saying that “we” had “asked for years” for such action — and Machado also praised Trump’s mooted intention to launch a military invasion as “absolutely correct,” even dedicating her Nobel prize to him for his “support.”

She has also spoken openly of her intention, if she gains power, to sell off $1.7 trillion of national assets to US corporations — and the history of South America is littered with the bodies of the victims of regimes that have opened the doors to US interests in this way. Given her alleged support for the “guarimba” attacks that brutally killed civilians and political opponents on Venezuela’s streets, the only surprise in all this is the winning of the “peace prize” in the first place.

Ordinary Venezuelans, meanwhile, appear to be uniting more strongly under the threat from the US, while Maduro has responded by issuing a mass distribution of arms to Venezuelan citizens across the country — hardly the reaction one would expect from a supposedly unpopular “dictator” who can only win elections by somehow rigging them!

The same cannot be said for the Venezuelan right and the US’s habitual allies. Right-wing opposition groups have split. One major faction, led by two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, has rejected armed US intervention, instead advocating for renewed negotiations with the Maduro. The Netherlands, Colombia and even the Starmer government in Britain have ended or significantly reduced intelligence-sharing with the US over its attacks on civilian boats and its false narrative that Venezuela plays a significant role in US drug problems.

Even normally hawkish military groups are saying that Trump’s aggression is doomed to backfire, with military think tank The Royal United Services Institute condemning it as “self-defeating” and a breach of US and international law that goes too far to be justified.

Under Trump, the US empire is lashing out as it tries to stave off the decline and collapse that its own history of wars, regime change, extrajudicial killing and support for genocide have seeded. But its supposed justification for its attack on Venezuela, and its lust for Venezuela’s natural resources, are transparent and distrust and division are clear even among its habitual allies.

Faced with the deadly but fragile threat of US violence and fascism, the global left must be unwavering in it is support for Venezuela and clear-eyed both about the West’s motives for targeting it and about the frailties and fallibility of any political system under concerted and international action, either positive or negative. The answer must be unwavering international socialist solidarity.

Venezuela is not any kind of utopia, but as one of the world’s embattled socialist states it is miles ahead of any US-sponsored far-right regime pillaging the nation’s wealth for the enrichment of a foreign few.

The international community must say loud and clear: No to Trump’s war on Venezuela. 

Claudia Webbe was previously the member of Parliament for Leicester East (2019-24). You can follow her at www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and x.com/claudiawebbe.