US show of force in Venezuela: All states are imperialist! Capitalism means war!

It took just one night for US special forces to kidnap Nicolas Maduro in the heart of Caracas and imprison him in a New York jail. This impressive show of force, intended to decapitate the Venezuelan government, was an opportunity for Donald Trump to boast once again and issue a warning to the world:

"No nation in the world can accomplish what we have accomplished !"

Behind Trump and Maduro, the same capitalist barbarism

Trump's supporters played their usual role as defenders of democracy: by overthrowing a dictator, America had exported ‘peace, freedom and justice for the great people of Venezuela’.

This time, the charade did not go down well. Trump no longer even bothers with international law, the false pretext that the major powers, led by the United States, have used since 1945 to justify their imperialist actions and impose their ‘order’. The US military has thus intervened outside any legal framework under the flimsy pretext of fighting narco-terrorism. And Trump did not even hesitate to justify his intervention by pointing to the juicy profits that, according to him, American control of Venezuelan oil could generate. Trump and his clique therefore have no interest in democracy; they had only one goal in mind: to overthrow an uncooperative regime, place Venezuela under guardianship and deal a huge blow to its rivals, notably Russia and above all China, which has been on the offensive for years and is establishing itself in Latin America: “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never again be questioned” (Trump).

Of course, Maduro's supporters, particularly the forces that control capital, namely the ‘radical’ left-wing parties, immediately denounced this as a violation of international law and as an example of  ‘imperialist aggression’. The Bolivarian regime, at the head of a ‘non-aligned’ country, represents, according to them, a hotbed of resistance to ‘American imperialism’.

This discourse is pure hypocrisy! Venezuela is far from being the innocent little victim of the American ogre. In their confrontation with the United States, Maduro, and Chavez before him, have unflinchingly enlisted the support of Putin's Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran, thereby demonstrating that Caracas, like all countries in the world, however weak they may be, is a genuine cog in the wheel of imperialism, its wars and its plundering. While Venezuela is clearly no match for the American juggernaut militarily, its leaders have not hesitated to use both oil and cartels as weapons of war. As a veritable corridor for cocaine produced in Colombia, Venezuela has thus contributed greatly to the flood of drugs into its enemies' countries.

Left-wing parties may well boast of ‘21st-century socialism’, but the ‘Bolivarian leaders’ are nothing more than a bourgeois clique that is hated and corrupt to the core. Chávez and Maduro have both pursued a systematic policy of job insecurity and increased exploitation, impoverishing the population as never before, and violently repressing the numerous protests that have punctuated their reign. The country has thousands of political prisoners. Kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial executions are commonplace. This ‘paradise on earth’ of 28 million inhabitants has 8 million refugees, the highest rate in the world! Maduro's ‘terrorism’ has been directed primarily against the working class!

As in every conflict, the bourgeoisie seeks to make us choose one bourgeois camp over another, to lock us into a false alternative between nations at war. But nowhere, neither in the United States, nor in Venezuela, nor in Ukraine, nor in Russia, nor in Israel, nor in Palestine, does any bourgeois faction offer the slightest hope for a more just and peaceful world. For this world is one of capitalism in irremediable crisis, where all states, whether democratic or authoritarian, populist or liberal, are in competition, all are imperialist and are active agents of destruction and chaos.

A new stage in chaos has been reached

Latin America is a microcosm of the barbarism into which capitalism is sinking. Rampant poverty, trafficking of all kinds, large-scale corruption, the disintegration of social and state structures... the continent increasingly resembles a gigantic Wild West. Through his military operation, Trump is importing war and the promise of considerably accelerating this chaos.

Today, Trump is strutting about, confident in the omnipotence of his army: “We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” But the trouble is only just beginning. Far from the ‘ideal’ scenario of the 1973 coup in Chile, Washington is no longer able to replace one leader with another at will. We are no longer in the Cold War era, when the bourgeoisies were still disciplined and concerned with preserving the general interests of national capital within the framework of their military bloc.

Now, without the existence of these blocs, every man for himself and chaos reign supreme. The United States has spent twenty years trying, in vain, to establish stable governments in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Even if Trump is “not afraid to put boots on the ground” the same will be true in Venezuela. Whatever happens, the US administration will have to deal with an extremely divided Venezuelan bourgeoisie1 that Maduro had struggled to bring to heel. What Trump is likely to end up with is a powerless state, a fractured, miserable and anarchic country, a hub for all kinds of trafficking and the starting point for new waves of emigration.

All of this risks destabilising the entire continent and forcing the United States into a headlong rush of military interventions and adventures. Neighbouring Colombia has already deployed its troops to the border, fearing the consequences of a humanitarian crisis and conflicts between cartels. Even the US government is aware of the instability to come: “We are ready to launch a second, larger attack if necessary,” Trump said. And his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has already threatened Cuba with words worthy of a movie mafia boss: "If I lived in Havana and was part of the government, I would be at least a little worried... "

The consequences of this intervention go beyond the American continent alone. Trump has just trampled on all the international regulatory bodies designed to manage rivalries between nations, and wiped his feet on the legal framework that had allowed the United States to impose itself as the world's policeman in the past. Trump is acknowledging the end of American leadership and the advent of every man for himself: the United States no longer has the power to impose a world order; in the midst of chaos, only force is law.

In fact, Operation Absolute Resolve is not only a blow to the great Chinese rival, it is also a warning to the Europeans: while Trump has made clear his intention to seize Venezuela's vast hydrocarbon reserves, the United States will not hesitate to stab its ‘allies’ in the back if the defence of American strategic interests requires it. Katie Miller, the wife of the White House deputy chief of staff, posted a photo of Greenland draped in the colours of the American flag on the day of Maduro's abduction, accompanied by a caption that was explicit to say the least: “soon”...

Capitalism has nothing more to offer humanity than ever more wars and barbarism. The only force that can put an end to capitalist war is the working class, because it carries within it a revolutionary perspective, that of the overthrow of capitalism. It was the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat in Russia and Germany that ended the First World War! The working class will have to conquer real and lasting peace everywhere by overthrowing capitalism on a global scale. It will take years of struggle to regain its class identity and its weapons of struggle. But there is no other way to overthrow this moribund and destructive system!

EG, 4 January 2026

1 Moreover, the United States has made no secret of the fact that Operation Absolute Resolve was made possible by complicity at the highest levels of the Venezuelan government.