US Starts 2026 by Bombing Venezuela and Kidnapping Its President

With its violent military intervention into Venezuela—a country where I once lived—the US has begun this year with entitled and undisguised imperialism. The unapologetic kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and of Celia Flores (not just a wife as the media refers to her, but also former head of the National Assembly) and killing of at least 40 Venezuelans aims to cement and normalize the US standard operating procedure for international relations as violence and control. It will take Venezuela's oil and other crucial minerals, and to hell with Global South self-determination, agency, and ownership.

I remember when I lived in Venezuela, and we talked about what we would do if the US attacked. We were already facing other kinds of attacks, including basic food shortages orchestrated by private companies, destabilization attempts, right-wing violence, and English-language mainstream media lies. The conversation particularly came up around elections, when the shortages and destabilization typically increased, and US attacks felt less hypothetical.

Even then, though, we would balance the very real and long history of violent US interventions in Latin America with skepticism. How could they kill innocent people and bomb what felt like to me the closest thing to paradise? Venezuela was never a utopia; there were mistakes and much work to do, but the Andean mountains were intensely green, the coastal waters a peaceful turquoise, the nights full of fairy fog that you could see drifting down the streets. The days were full of the laughter of the tiny children I taught through our participatory education project. We solved our own local problems as an organized community, turned empty lots into community gardens, and there was always political debate and high levels of political literacy. People knew their constitution, often by heart, knew the laws, and the news. Venezuelans had an infinite urge to dance, even on moving buses or after two-day long meetings. How could anyone consider destroying that world? It felt inconceivable. It didn't make sense, and it still doesn't.

Yet we all know that beautiful Gaza, with its beaches, shops, delicious zaatar bread, hospitals, books, and resilient people, has been turned into rubble and whole families wiped out. The US-led destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq ruined people, communities and saw key cultural and archaeological sites irreparably damaged, and artifacts looted. I live in Mexico now, and here alone, the US has used NAFTA and the so-called "War on Drugs" to militarize this beautiful country and systematically turn it into a vast grave (with 131,000 forced disappearances) and into an obedient neoliberal production line for nearshoring US companies. So, in Venezuela, I guess we should have been less skeptical. Friends there messaged me on Saturday in shock, their ears ringing from the sounds of bombs. New Year's weekend wasn't meant to be this.

However, throughout 2025, the US had asserted itself more openly as global police chief at the service of big business. It "negotiated" (aka pressured) a "ceasefire" in the Democratic Republic of Congo which would give it access to the country's highly sought-after tech minerals and metals. It has supported Israel's genocide in Gaza, bombed Nigeria, and killed Venezuelans with complete impunity. It closed its borders to refugees in violation of international law, and breached migrant and human rights within its own borders. It also bombed Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Somalia. It carried out or was partner to 622 overseas bombings in total, and also intervened in manipulative ways, such as Trump's comments days before the Honduran election in November that led to the victory of the right-wing candidate he backed, or the US role in the international "Gang Suppression Force" in Haiti.

While global institutions like the International Criminal Court and the United Nations have demonstrated their ineffectiveness at doing anything at all about the illegal US sanctions against Cuba, the genocide in Gaza, or climate destruction, Trump has been able to fortify the US as a force that actually decides international affairs.

In his press conference Saturday, Trump said the US would be selling Venezuelan oil. Though he laid the groundwork for the military intervention into Venezuela with evidence-free talk of drug cartels and "narcoterrorists"—murdering more than 100 people in cold blood on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific—most people knew this was always about regaining control over the country with the largest known oil reserves. However, Venezuela also represents defiance. The US has sanctioned the country for such behavior for over a decade, killing or contributing to the deaths of over 40,000 people in 2017–18 alone.

The US doesn't just treat the Global South as a resource buffet. In order to secure its access to natural resources, it wants the governments of less powerful nations at its beck and call. Venezuela, especially during the 2010s and through initiatives like CELAC, was playing a role of uniting Latin America against such dominance and towards independence and social and economic alternatives.

The bombing of Venezuela, beyond the oil itself, is about US control over Latin America and part of a right-wing pushback against social movements, grassroots empowerment, and alternatives to violent capitalism. Beyond Bukele in El Salvador and Milei in Argentina, in 2025 the right wing also won in Bolivia, Honduras, and Chile. With Trump's backing, these "leaders" are furthering racist, homophobic, sexist, and privatization agendas.

Normalizing empire and global human rights violations

Beyond the horrific event itself, the events of January 3 are part of a move towards normalizing a global state of danger, insecurity, human rights abuses, and disregard for international law. It does not matter what anyone thinks of Maduro; whether he won the 2025 election is an important discussion for another place and time. The US has no right to determine the heads of other countries. It wants to be, but is not the world boss, and beyond that, has no moral standing to decide or control anything.

But Saturday's move, as a continuation of US policy in 2025, upholds military intervention as a solution to problems. It is a signal to wayward countries to obey. Such imperialism not only kills people, in the long term it perpetuates racist tropes of Global South countries that can't run themselves, while legitimizing US- and Euro-centrisim that stipulates their monopoly on wisdom and democracy. Imperialism scares its victims into silence and submission and cements a global apartheid dynamic where some regions are politically and financially controlled, subjected to unlivable wages and to resource robbery. Through debt systems and trade and income inequalities, rich countries have drained $152 trillion from the Global South since 1960.

The intervention machine is rigging the world for US big business interests, at the price of Global South dignity and agency. For invaded and intervened countries, there are hidden impacts as well; lower self-worth and an unsubstantiated belief that one's education, art, and inventions are inferior, disillusion with organizing and movements, and often, a need to migrate that is then met with rejection by those forces causing that need—as of course is the case with the US and Venezuela.

The Venezuelan people are not a threat. The country doesn't even produce or traffic significant amounts of illicit drugs. In reality, much of the cruelty and harm globally is coming from the US. The Trump government and the US elites are the ones committing human rights violations, shirking democracy by orchestrating coups like the one on Saturday morning, violating international law and destroying moral decency with the extrajudicial killing of people in Venezuelan boats under the pretext of opposing drug trafficking. With Saturday's attack, the US furthers its and Israel's impunity for war crimes, abuses, and violations.