USA on the Brink of Invading Venezuela

Washington has established a world of lawlessness in the Caribbean. The struggle for emancipation from the United States must still be fought – in Latin America as well as in Europe.

By Sevim Dagdelen

The United States stands on the verge of a military invasion of Venezuela. Washington has already deployed an entire fleet of warships in the Caribbean along with 10,000 soldiers. U.S. President Donald Trump has authorized both CIA covert operations and a possible ground invasion by U.S. forces. The alleged link between Venezuela’s leadership and a drug cartel serves as the pretext. No evidence has been provided. As in Iraq in 2003 – when Saddam Hussein was said to possess weapons of mass destruction – the claim merely serves to justify a grave violation of international law.

U.S. forces have already killed around 50 civilians off the Venezuelan coast under the pretext of combating drug trafficking. In the Caribbean, no law applies any longer – only the orders of U.S. officials, who decide over life and death.

The Doctrine of Aggression

It is often argued that the United States acts on the basis of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. The original aim of U.S. President James Monroe’s doctrine was to repel European colonial ambitions on the American continent. Yet what is happening today in relation to Venezuela has a very different origin. More than 120 years ago, on December 6, 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt issued an addition to the Monroe Doctrine. This “Roosevelt Corollary” turned a defensive principle into a justification for aggressive U.S. foreign policy. The Western Hemisphere – that is, the entire American continent – became a U.S. intervention zone.

“Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation; and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power,” declared Roosevelt in 1904 in unmistakably colonial language.

Donald Trump follows directly in the footsteps of this founding document of U.S. imperialism. It is a colonial claim, asserted without restraint. The sovereignty of states on the American continent is placed under U.S. supervision and thus rendered void. The United States claims an exclusive sphere of influence in which other states are not only forbidden to join alternative military alliances, but are also subjected to U.S. control over their domestic politics and political leadership. Sovereignty exists only as long as it does not conflict with U.S. interests.

Instruments of Intervention

Trump’s approach stands in a long tradition. The structures he relies on for the coming military intervention were created by his predecessors. On January 2, 2010, Barack Obama established the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative as a reaction to the emancipation movements in Latin America. Officially justified as “security cooperation,” it laid the groundwork for U.S. troop deployments throughout the region, including in the island state of Trinidad and Tobago off the Venezuelan coast. Today, it serves as the legal and logistical basis for the planned invasion, with Trinidad and Tobago functioning as a launching pad.

In preparation for intervention, the United States appears to be drawing on the full historical arsenal of regime-change tactics. Reports are multiplying about planned false-flag operations designed to fabricate a pretext for invasion, as well as about CIA activities such as attempts to recruit the pilot of the Venezuelan presidential aircraft in order to kidnap Nicolás Maduro.

Facing massive U.S. military threats, Venezuela is relying on the arming of its population as a deterrent. Yet the country stands alone. It has no military defense pact with other nations – and if it did, Washington might have intervened even sooner.

Trump shows no concern that 62 percent of U.S. citizens oppose military intervention and that only 4 percent of Venezuelans support U.S. policy. He is expanding the conflict zone to include neighboring Colombia. In an effort to halt the decline of global U.S. hegemony, the goal is clear: to bring all of Latin America once again under total U.S. control. Venezuela is particularly important, as it possesses the largest proven oil reserves in the world – ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia. China is the main buyer of Venezuelan oil. Alongside the geopolitical suppression of alternative integration projects across the continent, this is what drives Washington’s campaign.

Military interventions in Venezuela and Colombia could thus be only the prelude to further operations against Cuba and Nicaragua. The only rules that apply are those of U.S. imperialism, which sees itself, in opposition to China – now designated as the principal adversary – as the enforcer against a multipolar world and is prepared to violate any international law in doing so.

Europe’s Moral Bankruptcy

Europe remains silent in the face of U.S. crimes – or even supports them, as in the case of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Europe is in the process of abandoning itself. The sanctification of U.S. violence merely exposes the state of Europe’s own political decay. On the European continent, it is through the NATO mechanism that the United States enforces the imperialist logic of Roosevelt’s addition to the Monroe Doctrine.

The aim is total control over the domestic policies of individual countries in order to integrate them into Washington’s struggle for global supremacy – even if, as in Germany’s case, this means steady and irreversible decline. Venezuela thus serves as a warning, a writing on the wall: the struggle for emancipation from the United States must still be fought, in Latin America as well as in Europe.

Sevim Dağdelen is a former member of parliament, publicist, and foreign-policy spokesperson of the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). She was for many years deputy chair of the German-Chinese Parliamentary Group of the German Bundestag.

Foto: USS Gerald R. Ford