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us imperialism
Venezuela Gets the Iraq Treatment: US Corporate Media Manufactures Consent for Another Imperialist War
Over weeks of military buildup and threats, corporate outlets elected to ignore the evidence disproving Trump’s claims and to platform warmongers.
Nov 20, 2025
Since August, the US has been amassing military assets in the Caribbean. Warships, bombers, and thousands of troops have been joined by the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, in the largest regional deployment in decades. Extrajudicial strikes against small vessels, which United Nations experts have decried as violations of international law, have killed at least 80 civilians (CNN, 11/14/25).
Many foreign policy analysts believe that regime change in Venezuela is the ultimate goal (Al Jazeera, 10/24/25; Left Chapter, 10/21/25), but the Trump administration instead claims it is fighting “narcoterrorism,” accusing Caracas of flooding the US with drugs via the Cartel of the Suns and Tren de Aragua, both designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
Over the years, Western media have endorsed Washington’s Venezuela regime-change efforts at every turn, from cheerleading coup attempts to whitewashing deadly sanctions (FAIR.org, 6/13/22, 6/4/21, 1/22/20). Now, with a possible military operation that could have disastrous consequences, corporate outlets are making little effort to hold the US government accountable. Rather, they are unsurprisingly ceding the floor to the warmongers.
Fabricating ‘Tensions’
Despite Washington ominously amassing naval assets and issuing overt threats against Caracas, Western journalists often talk of “tensions” between the two countries (Fox, 11/17/25; ABC, 11/18/25), or even a “showdown” (Wall Street Journal, 10/9/25; Washington Post, 10/25/25). This is conceptually similar to the framing of Israel’s genocide in Gaza as a “conflict” with Hamas (FAIR.org, 12/8/23), except in this case the media does not have an equivalent of October 7 to rationalize all the atrocities by the US and its allies.
Though the Trump administration has largely abandoned the traditional US exceptionalist discourse of promoting “freedom” and “democracy,” that has not stopped corporate journalists from relentlessly demonizing the Venezuelan government.
Several outlets reporting on potentially imminent US strikes mention the White House’s declared anti-narcotics mission but conveniently omit the fact that, even according to US agencies, fewer drugs flow through this region than many others.
Journalists are quick to label Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, currently facing hundreds of Tomahawk missiles pointed at his country, an “authoritarian” (Guardian, 11/14/25; New York Times, 10/15/25;) or an “autocrat” (Wall Street Journal, 11/5/25; Washington Post, 10/24/25). In contrast, the same pieces place no labels on the Trump administration despite its authoritarianism both at home and abroad (Guardian, 10/16/25; CNN, 8/13/25).
Articles in the Guardian (11/6/25, 10/22/25) describe US operations in Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989) as success stories, fawning over special operations forces while ignoring the deadly impact. The Panama City neighborhood of El Chorrillo became known as “Little Hiroshima” after civilians were massacred there during the US invasion.
Very few outlets recall more recent US interventions, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, which according to Brown University’s Costs of War project have killed an estimated 4.5-4.7 million people over the past two decades. Such “accumulation by waste” has seen $8 trillion transferred to the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley.
Hiding the Evidence
Washington’s steady escalation in the Caribbean has evoked memories of the buildup to the Iraq War, when Washington also counted on crucial support from the media establishment to manufacture consent for imperialist war (FAIR.org, 2/5/13, 3/22/23).
At that time, corporate media parroted White House claims about Iraq’s hidden arsenal, despite evidence that Iraq had destroyed its banned weapons arsenal, in contradiction to the White House’s case for war (FAIR.org, 2/27/03). Fast forward more than 20 years, and once more there is ample information undermining the administration narrative, this time about “narcoterrorism.”
Reports from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have consistently found Venezuela’s Eastern Caribbean corridor to be a marginal route for US-bound cocaine trafficking, with former UNODC director Pino Arlacchi estimating that only around 5% of Colombian-sourced drugs flow through Venezuela (L’Antidiplomatico, 8/27/25).
These findings have been corroborated by the Drug Enforcement Administration itself. For instance, the agency’s 2024 National Drug Threat Assessment report does not even include the word “Venezuela.” The 2025 report only has a small section on the gang Tren de Aragua, which dismisses any ties to the Venezuelan government and places its drug trafficking activities “mainly at the street level.”
Yet these glaring flaws in the Trump administration’s casus belli are often overlooked by Western media. Several outlets reporting on potentially imminent US strikes mention the White House’s declared anti-narcotics mission but conveniently omit the fact that, even according to US agencies, fewer drugs flow through this region than many others (Guardian, 11/11/25; Washington Post, 11/14/25; Bloomberg, 11/14/25; New York Times, 11/14/25).
Former UNODC director Arlacchi pointed out that “Guatemala is a drug corridor seven times more important than the Bolivarian ‘narco-state’ allegedly is.” He accused Washington of hypocritically driving the anti-Venezuela narrative due to interest in its massive oil reserves.
‘Maduro Denies’
With the “narcoterrorism” accusations against Maduro and associates, Western journalists absolve US officials of the burden of proof (New York Times, 11/4/25; Financial Times, 10/6/25; Wall Street Journal, 11/5/25). There has never been any public evidence about Maduro, or other high-ranking Venezuelan officials indicted by the US, being involved in drug trafficking via the Cartel of the Suns, while a leaked US intelligence memo rejected the notion of government ties to Tren de Aragua.
The Cartel of the Suns’ very existence is far from established, with subject experts contending that, while drug trafficking may be entwined with corruption in Venezuela’s military, there is no evidence of a centralized structure going all the way up to the president (InSight Crime, 11/3/25, 8/1/25; AFP, 8/29/25).
Many liberal establishment outlets have been more bellicose than the US president they have occasionally chided for murdering scores of civilians in the Caribbean.
Instead of exposing the unfounded accusations and providing data from experts and specialized agencies, Western outlets either let President Donald Trump’s case for war go unchallenged, or merely present a dissenting opinion from Maduro, whom they have systematically demonized (New York Times, 10/06/25; DW, 11/14/25; NPR, 11/12/25; CBS, 10/15/25; CNN, 11/14/25).
This behavior is certainly not new, as Western outlets have consistently pushed the unfounded “narcoterrorism” narrative, going back to the first Trump administration (FAIR.org, 9/24/19). Similar unfounded accusations of drug trafficking were made against Nicaragua in the 1980s (Extra!, 10–11/87, 7–8/88; FAIR.org, 10/10/17), which served to justify US attempts to overthrow the Sandinista government through the CIA-backed Contras.
Warmongers to the Stage
In his typical style, Trump has sent mixed signals over whether he wants to strike targets inside Venezuela, with contradictory on-record and unofficial statements going back and forth. When asked if the White House is seeking regime change in Venezuela, Trump has been noncommittal (Wall Street Journal, 11/4/25). It is worth recalling that in June, Trump similarly sent all sorts of inconsistent messages before ultimately attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
True to form (FAIR.org, 2/9/17, 4/13/18, 7/3/20), many liberal establishment outlets have been more bellicose than the US president they have occasionally chided for murdering scores of civilians in the Caribbean (The Hill, 10/30/25; Foreign Policy, 11/7/25). The New York Times’ Bret Stephens (1/14/25, 10/10/25, 11/17/25) has advocated for a regime-changing military intervention for months (FAIR.org, 2/12/25). Quite tellingly, Stephens does not regret supporting the Iraq War (New York Times, 3/21/23).
The Washington Post published an editorial (10/10/25) after the recent Nobel Peace Prize award to far-right Venezuelan leader María Corina Machado, arguing that US interests would be “better served” by someone like Machado, a firm endorser of US-led regime-change (FAIR.org, 10/23/25). But with the war drums beating louder, the Jeff Bezos-owned paper granted a column (11/12/25) to John Bolton, a former Trump adviser whose main criticism was that the administration is not being efficient enough in overthrowing Maduro.
Bolton, an architect of the Iraq War, and of the “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuela during Trump’s first term, bemoaned the White House’s “inadequate” explanations about the ongoing lethal boat strikes and international quarrels as damaging the “laudable goal” of throwing Venezuela into chaos.
Bolton went on to urge the administration to create a better “strategy,” which includes “greater efforts to strangle Caracas economically.” The Washington Post is happy to platform a call for escalating measures that have already caused tens of thousands of deaths (CEPR, 4/25/19).
Finally, the former Trump official says that “we owe it to ourselves and Venezuela’s people” to violently oust the Maduro government, despite opinion polls showing that such a military intervention is widely rejected both in the US and in Venezuela.
Bloomberg columnist Javier Blas (11/4/25) went one step further by saying the quiet part out loud: “Venezuelan Regime Change May Open Oil’s Floodgates.” Blas rejoiced at the prospect of a “US-enforced change of ideology” that would install a “pro-Western and pro-business government,” which would do wonders for energy markets in the long run.
Unfazed by the human cost of a military intervention, the corporate pundit was only concerned about the possible impact of Venezuela’s current 1 million daily barrels of oil being wiped out. Who cares about millions of Venezuelans when a “brief military campaign” could drive oil prices down and secure a steady supply in the 2030s?
Complicity With War
The White House’s military buildup and illegal strikes have drawn widespread condemnation and opposition, even from within the US political establishment (NPR, 11/5/25; Intercept, 10/31/25). US politicians have also raised alarm bells about a potential military intervention in Venezuela without congressional approval (New York Times, 11/18/25; Politico, 11/6/25), but these voices feature much less prominently than the administration’s.
There is hope that a combination of Venezuelan defense deterrence with domestic and international pressure, coupled with Trump’s own unpredictability, might ultimately avoid yet another US regime-change military assault.
But should the worst come to pass, the media establishment will have once again done nothing to stop yet another deadly US foreign invasion. Over weeks of military buildup and threats, corporate outlets elected to ignore the evidence disproving Trump’s claims and to platform warmongers. They will not wash the Venezuelan people’s blood off their hands.
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'Trillion Dollar War Machine': Understanding US Militarism and How to Dismantle It
William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman's extremely timely and necessary book explains how today's crises are the predictable consequence of an entrenched system of militarism, a politics captured by lobbies, and elite self-dealing.
Nov 19, 2025
At this very second, Washington is pouring billions into escalations toward a potential invasion of Venezuela that would set Latin America on fire, escalate tensions with neighbors, and trap US troops in another undefined quagmire. It has already conducted about a dozen strikes on unproven “drug boats” in the Caribbean, without congressional approval, a trial, or even demonstrated intelligence, killing innumerable Venezuelan and foreign civilians, while it has moved Naval strike groups and carriers near Venezuela’s shores. This is one of the disastrous and preventable results of American militarism, exceptionalism, and the military-industrial complex that fuels them.
Such is the context in which The Trillion Dollar War Machine lands on bookshelves. William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman's extremely timely and necessary book explains how these crises are not a series of isolated events, but the predictable consequence of an entrenched system of militarism, a politics captured by lobbies, and elite self-dealing that traces its lineage back to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 warning about the military-industrial complex.
Their diagnosis offers a map of the structural forces that continuously push America toward war, even when the public wants peace and even when national security (and economics) is the pretext rather than the driver. America engineers itself into these wars for elite interests.
As Hartung and Freeman detail, more than half of the Pentagon budget now goes to private contractors. These corporations, especially the “Big Five” of Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon), Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman, have together absorbed more than $2.1 trillion in Pentagon contracts in the post-9/11 era. The book opens by reminding us that $8 trillion were wasted by the war machine on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The end of the world and MAD could be ushered in because Lockheed Martin and Congress can’t stop obsessing over their stocks and profits.
That sum alone could have fully decarbonized the US electrical grid; paid off every student loan in the country; and still had trillions left for climate resilience, healthcare, and democratic infrastructure. Even just maintaining the system as it is costs billions—America’s 750 military bases in 80 countries cost $55 billion a year to maintain. A lot of them, like in Guam, have also destroyed the environment, caused irreparable health effects, and stalled the local economy and democracy.
When Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, and Congress briefly considered blocking US weapons transfers to Saudi Arabia, lobbyists went to work behind the scenes to “derail the initiative.” In the same week they lobbied lawmakers, they donated to the same lawmakers’ campaigns. Everything about that should look like bribery. But because the military-industrial complex is woven into the legal, regulatory, and cultural DNA of Washington, it is perfectly legal. In fact, it’s just a regular Tuesday. This is the machinery that powers nearly every war the United States engages in.
Hartung and Freeman document how 945 lobbyists work directly for Pentagon contractors; how dozens of them are simultaneously registered as foreign agents; and how former members of Congress, Pentagon staffers, and even chiefs of staff for the nation’s most powerful leaders pass seamlessly through the revolving door to sell weapons to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other authoritarian regimes. American foreign policy is shaped in lobbying offices, overpriced dinners, and backdoor negotiations with firms that openly expect “business benefits” from new wars. The consequences of this model are catastrophic for human life.
The book recounts how US weapons have fueled atrocities in Yemen, the Philippines, Nigeria, Egypt, and now Gaza, where the authors confirm what most of us progressives already knew; that most of the people killed “have nothing to do with Hamas.” They cite updated reporting that the Biden administration concluded more than 100 separate arms transfers to Israel in the first months of the war, without even informing Congress.
More than half of the conflicts on Earth involve US weapons on at least one side. The United States continues to arm regimes that Freedom House classifies as “not free,” even when those regimes commit torture, disappearances, mass detentions, and extrajudicial murders. Even this week, there has been reporting into Egypt’s continued use of torture and crimes against humanity in its “counterterrorism” efforts, with US weapons and taxpayer money. Wherever there is repression, inequality, or mass death, US weapons are often close by. The results do not make the US, or the world, safer, freer, or more prosperous; in fact, they do quite the opposite.
Hartung and Freeman trace how an arms industry that began as an adjunct to US defense has transformed into a permanent, profit-seeking entity that requires conflict to justify its existence. They revisit the “last supper” of the 1990s, when defense mergers consolidated the industry into a small cluster of giants, and the Pentagon volunteered billions in taxpayer dollars to subsidize those mergers, even giving executives multimillion-dollar “golden parachutes,” funded by tax money.
They revisit how the highly dangerous nuclear triad was shaped not by strategy but by “turf wars” between the Air Force and Navy, each desperate to preserve its slice of the budget. That’s right, the end of the world and MAD could be ushered in because Lockheed Martin and Congress can’t stop obsessing over their stocks and profits. Hartung and Freeman also revisit the disastrous Littoral Combat Ship program, the “Little Crappy Ship,” which was pushed through political pressure even after the Navy warned it was unfit for combat. M1 Abrams tanks were also sold to Ukraine, after being pushed by think tanks funded by defense contractors, even as the tanks resulted in catastrophic casualties for Ukrainian fighters. In every case, the logic is identical. Weapons are built because there is profit in building them, not because there is security in possessing them. Don’t fall for the tired arguments about “job creation” and “American manufacturing,” either; Hartung and Freeman show other, non-military economic sectors are much better at creating jobs, for cheaper. Most MIC jobs aren’t even unionized.
One of the book’s most disturbing contributions is its detailed exploration of how the war machine’s surplus equipment, tactics, and political culture flowed into policing. The authors describe a country where protesting can be met with military-grade rifles, armored vehicles, acoustic weapons, and tear gas developed for counterinsurgency. They note that more than 6,500 police departments have received $7 billion worth of Pentagon equipment through the 1033 Program. They argue that “it’s not the police, it’s a paramilitary force.” It’s simply the domestic mirror of the foreign policy problem (also called the Imperial Boomerang). Now, American communities live under the terror and oppression that much of the world has suffered through, in Washington’s own wars.
The authors argue for a “new peace network,” a coalition of movements that understand militarism as a unifying force behind poverty, racial injustice, surveillance, climate destruction, and authoritarianism.
The authors also underline the economic argument for dismantling the war machine. Military spending has become one of the least efficient job creators in the entire US economy. Investments in healthcare, education, climate resilience, and clean energy create far more jobs than investments in defense. Pentagon contractors, they show, are shedding union jobs at historic rates. Corporations like Lockheed Martin spend billions on stock buybacks rather than innovation. Automation will soon cut even more jobs. The economic bargain that once tied militarism to employment is dissolving. The authors argue that a just transition away from militarism is not just possible. It is necessary.
The authors also expose how deeply media culture is implicated in sustaining this system. Hartung and Freeman recount how Hollywood rewrites scripts at the Pentagon’s request in exchange for access to hardware. How think tanks funded by weapons manufacturers produce reports that conveniently recommend more weapons purchases. How television networks turn war planners into celebrities, how the Iraq War was sold through manufactured narratives, and how even major news organizations were swept up in the 9/11 wave of militarism. They highlight the “artificial consensus” that emerges when the same small circle of MIC-funded think tanks supply the experts for congressional hearings, television panels, and academic publications. This is why dissent is always framed as fringe, because it goes against an entire manufactured apparatus of propaganda and warfare, funded by taxpayer money and corporations.
The book is chock-full of these stories, each more infuriating than the other, but compiled in a way that could drive someone numb. However, do not despair; the authors, as they should, propose a successful path forward.
Every chapter offers a form of resistance, however small. They emphasize the importance of organizations like the Project on Government Oversight (or POGO), which, though it started out mostly getting attention from conspiracists and sci-fi enthusiasts, has defended whistleblowers and exposed fraud. They highlight reporting from independent outlets like ProPublica and FAIR that refuse to act as stenographers for the war machine, and progressive fighters in Congress like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who have pushed back from the inside.
They recount moments when insiders resisted corruption, when whistleblowers forced accountability, and when activists successfully shut down harmful programs. Public opinion overwhelmingly opposes new nuclear weapons, endless wars, and blank-check aid to repressive allies. The machine can be broken, but it takes an “all-hands-on-deck approach,” as the authors hammer home.
The book’s most hopeful chapter focuses on the much-needed peace movement. The authors argue for a “new peace network,” a coalition of movements that understand militarism as a unifying force behind poverty, racial injustice, surveillance, climate destruction, and authoritarianism. They highlight the Poor People’s Campaign, built on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision, which brings veterans, workers, and marginalized communities into a shared struggle against economic exploitation and war. They emphasize that any new peace movement must bridge ideological divides, drawing support from libertarians, populists, progressives, veterans, and communities directly harmed by war and militarization. They warn against grifters and extremists who exploit anti-war sentiment to push bigotry or authoritarian agendas (one could maybe think of examples, like Tucker Carlson, Matt Walsh, Nick Fuentes, or even Donald Trump). They insist that a principled peace movement must be rooted in solidarity, democracy, and human dignity.
This is where Hartung and Freeman’s credibility matters. Both authors have spent years inside Washington, fighting the very system they describe. Freeman’s landmark investigations at the Project on Government Oversight reshaped our understanding of foreign influence, and his current work at the Quincy Institute, including with the Think Tank Funding Tracker, continues to expose the financial pipelines between authoritarian regimes and corporations, and US policymaking.
Their blueprint also includes campaign finance reform to sever the link between money and militarism. It includes transparency laws to expose think-tank conflicts of interest, robust whistleblower protections for insiders willing to confront corruption, new priorities for federal spending that center human needs rather than endless war, and, most importantly, reimagining foreign policy around genuine defense rather than global weapons distribution. They, for instance, point to arming Ukraine against Russia’s imperialistic invasion as a noble cause (with caveats of course, which they get into), but warn against arming Israel, whose wars in the Middle East are not defensive. But this can’t happen without people pushing relentlessly.
The book ends with a warning and a call to action. The war machine is everywhere. It exists in budgets; in lobby shops; in universities; in movies; in police departments; in political campaigns; at sports games; and in the language we use to talk about our politics, society, culture, and life. But monsters can be tamed. They can be disrupted, defunded, delegitimized, and replaced.
We must get informed (first by reading this book!), pressure our representatives, support whistleblowers, follow and strengthen genuine independent media, create and join movements fighting militarism, and refuse to accept that endless war is the price of life, freedom, and citizenship. We all have agency, power, and responsibility to stop the war machine. Time to organize.
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The US War on China, Venezuela, and the Global Left
Because of the economic and political alliance between China and Venezuela, it is impossible to understand the growing push for war on Venezuela without also considering the buildup to war with China as well.
Nov 15, 2025
Resistance movements against US imperialism have sprouted up all over the world in response to its indiscriminate violence and disregard for human life. Together, they form the living front of the international left, a network of people and organizations that seek liberation from the same systems of domination and colonial control. While their forms differ, from student encampments to workers’ strikes, the purpose remains the same: an end to empire and the creation of a new multipolar world rooted in the simple truth of our shared humanity and the equal worth of every nation and people.
The alliance between China and Venezuela is part of this broader project. And the US push for war against both nations is but a violent reaction to the impending truth that US hegemonic status is slipping, and with it, its control on global resources, political power, and the ability to dictate the terms of development and sovereignty for the rest of the world.
Over the past month, the Trump administration has unleashed a series of strikes on Venezuelan fishing vessels, claiming to be cracking down on drug smugglers. The lie is as unoriginal as it is absurd, and a stark example of the waning facade of the supposed “morality” of liberal internationalism. Truth is often exposed during these periods of turbulence, when agitation overrides calculation; the knowledge of its imminent demise is so dire that the empire is barely trying to hide its true intentions anymore.
What is the truth, then? The truth is that the US war on Venezuela has nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with control. For years, Venezuela has faced relentless pressure, economic warfare, sanctions, and constant threats designed to undermine its sovereignty and keep it under the boot of US empire. As with most nations, US interest in Venezuela is about strategic resources and power. First, Venezuela sits atop the largest proven oil reserves in the world, along with significant deposits of gold, coltan, and other minerals critical to technology and energy production. Control over these strategic resources means control over global markets and energy security. Second, Venezuela’s geographic location within Latin America makes it a pivotal point of leverage within the region.
The lesson is clear: Where there is a US-backed war or intervention, you are likely to find some strategic resource or monetary interest beneath it.
Yet Venezuela’s defiance did not emerge in a vacuum. It followed more than a century of US domination across the hemisphere, from the invasion of Haiti and the occupation of Nicaragua to the coups in Guatemala, Chile, and Honduras. What unites these histories is a single message from Washington: No Latin American nation has the right to chart an independent course.
The Bolivarian Revolution, launched with Hugo Chávez’s election in 1998, was a direct challenge to that order. Emerging from the ruins of neoliberal collapse, it confronted Venezuela’s historical condition as a rentier state subordinated to US interests. Chávez redirected oil revenues to social programs, such as mass education and healthcare, while expanding access to political participation through communal councils and cooperatives.
Venezuela’s defiance took continental form 20 years ago, in November 2005, when Latin American leaders gathered in Mar de la Plata, Argentina, for the Summit of the Americas. There, Washington sought to impose the Free Trade Area of the Americas (ALCA)—a hemispheric agreement that would have locked the region into permanent subordination to US capital.
The summit instead became a turning point in modern Latin American history. Before tens of thousands of people chanting “ALCA, ALCA, al carajo!” the governments of Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, and others rejected the deal. That rejection, led politically by Hugo Chávez and supported by social movements across the continent, signaled the collapse of the neoliberal consensus and the rebirth of Latin American sovereignty. Out of that victory came ALBA and Petrocaribe, mechanisms of regional cooperation that prioritized social development over corporate profit. The US has spent decades trying to reverse it through sanctions, coups, and now, open militarization in the Caribbean.
Today, matters are complicated by the introduction of a new, increasingly powerful actor. China has, over the past few decades, maintained a strong alliance with Venezuela. Starting in the early 2000s, China began providing Venezuela with tens of billions of dollars in loans to be repaid in oil shipments. This has enabled Venezuela to fund social programs and infrastructure while bypassing Western-controlled financial systems like the IMF and World Bank. A US Institute of Peace report states, “China’s industrialization boom in the early 2000s created new opportunities for its resource-rich trade partners in Latin America and Africa. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez… was enthusiastic about advances from China.”
Since then, China has also helped Venezuela build railways, housing projects, and telecommunications infrastructure as part of its broader Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to foster development across the Global South. The partnership, unlike those with the US, is not coercive but strictly noninterventionist. China does not advocate for regime change like US leaders, but maintains steadfast diplomatic support, referring to itself as an “apolitical development partner” while criticizing the history of US interference in the internal affairs of Latin American and Caribbean countries. Meanwhile, the US criticizes China’s lack of desire to instigate regime change.
Because of the economic and political alliance between China and Venezuela, it is impossible to understand the growing push for war on Venezuela without also considering the buildup to war with China as well. They are, after all, part of the same battle. As the USIP report writes, “Venezuela will remain a key site for the rapidly expanding strategic rivalry between the United States and China.” US leaders are fully willing to sacrifice the lives of Venezuelan civilians if it means destroying the Venezuelan economy, installing a US puppet government, and destroying the budding solidarity movement between the two nations. As it stands, Venezuela has also provided a source of economic sovereignty to China by helping diversify its energy sources away from the Middle East and US-controlled suppliers, acting as a lifeline against US sanctions and economic isolation.
So though the US certainly has a vested interest in Venezuela itself, the nation is also another battlefront for the US war on China, which under the Trump administration has manifested as an escalating trade battle over strategic resources, a hyper-militarization of Pacific allies around China, and a domestic crackdown on Chinese nationals and Chinese Americans in the US. Of course, China is no existential threat to US citizens themselves. The only threat it poses is to a US-dominated world system and the perpetuation of the international division of labor that keeps a few Western elite wealthy, while the rest of the world struggles.
The US push for war on China is part of an ongoing campaign to hinder China’s rise. While the world hurtles inevitably toward a new multipolarity, US leaders lash out through military posturing, economic coercion, and war propaganda. President Donald Trump’s recent tariffs on China are only one small part of that larger strategy. At the heart of this confrontation lies a struggle over control of the strategic resources and technology that will define the future—rare earth minerals, semiconductors, AI, and more. China currently dominates the global supply of rare earth elements, the essential components in everything from smartphones and wind turbines to missiles and fighter jets. For the US, this is intolerable. It threatens its monopoly over high-tech production and, by extension, its military and economic supremacy. That’s why you’ll see political leaders and media sources perpetuate the narrative that China is weaponizing trade, even though it’s Western countries that have killed millions of people through unilateral sanctions since WWII. But China, as a sovereign nation, has the right to protect its strategic resources, especially when they are being used against it. Rare earth minerals, for example, are used by the US to create advanced weapons systems in preparation for war with China. And if economic warfare fails to hinder China’s rise, which it undoubtedly will if the recent Trump-Xi meetings are anything to go by, then it is increasingly likely that US leaders will force a physical confrontation, and those weapons will be used.
This isn’t the first time the US has waged war over strategic resources while using propaganda to paint a prettier picture. The Gulf War and invasion of Iraq, while justified as “defending democracy” and “protecting the world from weapons of mass destruction” that didn’t actually exist, were ultimately about carving up Iraq’s oil fields for US corporations. The NATO bombing campaign in Libya was in response to Gaddafi’s nationalization of oil and the threat to the US dollar. The continued occupation of Syria is about securing oil and gas fields. The overthrow of Bolivian President Evo Morales was connected to his nationalization of lithium, often referred to as the “new oil,” as well as attempts to thwart competition with Russia and China. The list goes on and on and on.
The lesson is clear: Where there is a US-backed war or intervention, you are likely to find some strategic resource or monetary interest beneath it. This is what it means to be an imperialist power. In order to sustain its dominance, the US must continually extract, control, or deny access to the materials that sustain global industry and technology, such as oil, gas, lithium, and rare earth minerals. And when another nation dares to assert sovereignty over its own resources, it is branded a threat to freedom, sanctioned, bombed, or toppled to keep it dependent, weak, and loyal. China, Venezuela, and all nations seeking sovereignty over their own development in ways contradictory to the capitalist imperial order threaten this, and that is why they are targeted—not for any moral or legal reason. As we’ve so clearly seen from two years of US-funded genocide in Gaza, neither morality nor legality guides US policy.
The struggle against US imperialism is a global struggle. To stand with Venezuela, with China, or with any nation resisting domination is to stand for the possibility of a new internationalism rooted in solidarity across borders. That is our task—to connect these struggles, to see in every act of resistance the reflection of our own, and to build a world of shared humanity and global equality.
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