In a major escalation of its hostilities against the people of Venezuela and the government of Nicolás Maduro, U.S. president Donald Trump announced on December 16 “a total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers” going in and out of that country.

This is an act of war, aimed not only at Venezuela but Cuba, and a warning to all governments in Latin America and the Caribbean that dare stand up to the Yankee bully. Coming on the heels of killing at least 95 people in small boats off the Venezuelan and Colombian coasts on the pretext of fighting drug trafficking — nothing but murder at sea — and the seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker, the blockade of Venezuelan oil brings the region a step closer to war.

Now is the time in the United States and throughout the region to organize united front actions — teach-ins, protests, union resolutions — demanding “No war against Venezuela; end the blockade; U.S. military out of the Caribbean.”

EDITORIAL

Trump asserted in an announcement on his TruthSocial account that the blockade will remain in place “until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.” This is an apparent reference to the nationalization by the Venezuelan government in 2007 of some oil production units owned by U.S.-based companies, an act that is a sovereign right of Venezuela and its people.

The Venezuelan government responded, “The president of the United States is trying in an absolutely irrational manner to impose a supposed military naval blockade on Venezuela to steal the riches of our homeland. Venezuela will never go back to being a colony of the empire, nor any other foreign power.”

It is now clearer than ever that Washington’s antagonism toward Venezuela is not due to any connection to fentanyl smuggling, as the White House has repeatedly claimed. Fentanyl production is widely known to take place largely in Mexico using raw materials from China.

Instead, the administration views Venezuela as a stumbling block in the way of asserting what it calls “The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.”^[1]

In November, the Trump administration released its 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) document. It declared that Trump “has cemented his legacy as ‘The President of Peace,’” having used “unconventional diplomacy, America’s military might, and economic leverage.” The latest warmongering actions in the Caribbean and the Pacific show what a boldfaced lie this is.

The NSS document states the U.S. goal now is to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” and to control its resources, including Venezuelan oil. It is aimed, primarily, at facing increasing investments and influence in Latin America by China — Washington’s chief competitor in the world — and it will do little to stem China’s trade and rising economic clout in the region.

In addition to Venezuela, Cuba — long a thorn in the side of the U.S. rulers — is also a target of this recent escalation. Cuba depends on Venezuela for a large portion of its oil; the tanker seized on December 10 was, in fact, headed for the Cuban port of Matanzas.

On his X account, Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel responded appropriately to Trump’s announcement.

“The statement from the government of the United States is a criminal act of piracy and a full disregard for international law. We call on the international community to put an end to double standards and to denounce this new barbarity,” Díaz-Canel said

“The firm resistance of Venezuela exacerbates Yankee frustration and arrogance, leading them to admit, through fallacies and shamelessly, what it’s all about: appropriating [Venezuela’s] vast natural resources,” Cuba’s president continued.

“The naval blockade with which [Venezuela is] pressured is arbitrary and illegitimate.”

The Trump administration’s strategy document asserts demagogically that U.S. hegemony in the western hemisphere is part of a “pro-American worker” vision. But its foreign policy is no more “pro-worker” than its domestic agenda: undermining healthcare, education, workplace safety, and our democratic rights. That set of policies and actions, centered on the war against immigrant workers, have made clear Trump’s unmistakable march toward one-man rule — one that has posed the deadly danger of the rise of incipient fascism in the United States.

Working people in the United States will not be the beneficiaries of the plunder that Washington has in its sights and have no interest in the military buildup or interventions that are an inevitable part of this strategy. On the contrary, we will pay the price, economically and with blood, to line the pockets of U.S. capitalists.

Our interests lie in building solidarity with our brothers and sisters throughout the Americas, from Hudson Bay in the far north to Cape Horn on the southern tip of the South American continent and defending the sovereignty of those peoples. In doing so, we strengthen ourselves for the battles we face at home.

No Blood for Oil in Venezuela!

NOTES

[1] First articulated by then-president James Monroe in 1823, when nearly all Spanish colonies in the Americas had either achieved or were close to independence, the Monroe doctrine asserted that any further efforts by European powers to control or influence sovereign states in the region would be viewed as a threat to U.S. security. It represented the seeds of a policy that could be summarized as Latin America and the Caribbean being the “backyard” of the United States — an unabashed attempt at U.S. economic domination in the hemisphere and the mustering of military power to back that up.

“The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” was first asserted in the 2025 National Security Strategy document released by the White House in November.

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