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War & Peace
Puerto Ricans Continue Protests Against US Militarism and War Threats
“We are against any type of military intervention in the country of Venezuela, and above all we are against the vile and terrible assassinations of our fishermen brothers," said one protester.
Nov 12, 2025
Protests continued Tuesday in Puerto Rico against the US military buildup and attacks on alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean Sea, as well as the Trump administration's warmongering toward Venezuela.
Since September, Puerto Ricans have been protesting the reactivation of former US bases like Roosevelt Roads in Ceiba, increased operations at Muñiz Air National Guard Base and other sites, airstrikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, and Trump's deployment of warships and thousands of troops to the region for possible attacks on Venezuela. Trump has also authorized covert CIA action against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“We are against US imperialism, we are against any type of military intervention in the country of Venezuela, and above all we are against the vile and terrible assassinations of our fishermen brothers that have happened with the pretext that they are boats for drug traffickers," explained protester Enrique Rivera Zambrana, a resident of the southeastern town of Arroyo. "We condemn those killings, and terrible actions. We are in favor of peace.”
En Puerto Rico se siguen llevando a cabo protestas contra los entrenamientos militares que el Gobierno de Trump está realizando en las playas de Arroyo, una localidad situada en el sureste de la isla.
En las últimas semanas, los residentes de Puerto Rico han revelado haber visto… pic.twitter.com/cT2QMiHNxN
— Democracy Now! en español (@DemocracyNowEs) November 12, 2025
Tuesday's protest was also held in honor of Ángel Rodríguez Cristóbal, a Puerto Rican revolutionary who was found dead in a Florida prison—where he was serving a six-month sentence for opposing the US Navy occupation and bombing of Vieques, Puerto Rico—on November 11, 1979. While US authorities said Rodríguez killed himself, many critics believe he was assassinated.
US Marines began large-scale amphibious warfare exercises involving hundreds of troops at the end of August as part of Trump's remilitarization of the region amid his military buildup against Venezuela. There are currently around 10,000 troops on the island—which was conquered from Spain in 1898—as well as weapons including F-35 fighter jets, MQ-9 Reaper drones, surveillance aircraft, and support equipment.
The US buildup has evoked memories of the fight to kick the Navy out of Vieques, a picture-postcard island whose residents lived downwind from a US bombing range for six decades. Tens of thousands of tons of bombs were dropped. Deadly chemical weapons were tested and stored. Toxins polluted the land, air, and sea, including Agent Orange, depleted uranium, and so-called forever chemicals.
There was little that Puerto Ricans—who were denied political representation in Washington, DC—could do about it. When the Navy finally left in 2003, it left behind a legacy of illness including cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, as well as an infant mortality rate 55% higher than in the rest of the territory.
Vieques octopus fisher José Silva recently told Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) that the new buildup "is like bringing back the monster of the bombings" of the island.
Another Vieques resident, Yamilette Meléndez, said the renewed US presence brought back childhood memories of hiding under her bed whenever warplanes flew overhead.
“The trauma comes back,” she said. “It comes back because for years we lived with the sound of bombs, planes at all hours, while sleeping, at school."
"I thought of my children, of the anxiety," she added. "It’s something you can’t control, because I grew up with it. And I was just a girl then. Imagine how it feels for the older folks who lived through the real struggle.”
The US military brings other forms of violence to Puerto Rico.
“Some of the soldiers who were recently working at the airport approached local businesses and several people, asking if there were sex workers in Vieques," Judith Conde Pacheco, co-founder of the Vieques Women’s Alliance, told CPI. "It’s one of the most brutal forms of violence… women’s bodies are seen as part of the occupied land."
Some Puerto Ricans dismissed the idea that the buildup on what's often called the US' "unsinkable aircraft carrier" signaled any sort of resurgence in the colonizers' presence.
“The idea that the US military is no longer present in Puerto Rico is a myth," former Puerto Rico Bar Association president Alejandro Torres Rivera told CPI. "They never left, they merely scaled back their presence, or the intensity of it, for a time in their colony."
Condemning the buildup and the acquiescence of the territorial government in a Newsweek opinion piece last month, US Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez (D-NY)—the first Puerto Rican woman to serve in Congress—wrote: "The potential remilitarization of Puerto Rico is not progress; it is regression. It marks a step backwards in the struggle for Puerto Rico’s sovereignty."
"To those who celebrate this militarization, or remain complicit, I say: There is no worse bet than one made against your own people, your own land, your own future," she added. "If only someone would dare to bet on Puerto Ricans, and their right to decide their destiny. After generations of allowing others to exploit Puerto Rico, and abandon it without justice, we have had enough."
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Venezuela Mobilizes Military as US Aircraft Carrier Approaches
“The only reason to move it there is to use it against Venezuela,” said one policy expert of the deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford.
Nov 12, 2025
White House officials have sought to walk back President Donald Trump's repeated threats against Venezuela in recent days—even as the Department of Defense has continue to strike boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific—but officials in the South American country on Tuesday took the arrival of a US aircraft carrier in the region seriously despite the administration's claims that it won't target Venezuela directly.
As the USS Gerald R. Ford entered waters near Latin America, accompanied by three warships, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said Venezuela's entire military arsenal had been placed on "full operational readiness," with President Nicolás Maduro ordering the deployment of nearly 200,000 soldiers.
The government also approved the “massive deployment of ground, aerial, naval, riverine, and missile forces," López announced.
Venezuela's military deployment comes weeks after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the Ford to relocate from Europe to Latin America following several military strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that the Trump administration has claimed are meant to stop drug trafficking out of Venezuela—despite the fact that US intelligence agencies and United Nations experts agree that the country plays virtually no role in the trafficking of fentanyl, the top cause of drug overdoses in the US.
At least 76 people have been killed in the strikes so far, and the Associated Press reported last week that the victims have included an out-of-work bus driver and and a struggling fisherman—people who in some cases had turned to helping drug traffickers transport cocaine across the Caribbean, but were hardly the high-level "narco-terrorists" that Hegseth and Trump have insisted they've killed in the region.
With the carrier strike group entering the Caribbean region, the US now has about 15,000 troops in the area where tensions have escalated since the boat strikes began in September.
Mark Cancian, a senior defense adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Post that Venezuelan officials had good reason to mobilize forces.
“The only reason to move it there is to use it against Venezuela,” Cancian said of the Ford deployment. "The shot clock has started because this is not an asset they can just keep there indefinitely. They have to use it or move it."
Since beginning the boat bombings, Trump has signaled the US attacks could move to Venezuela directly, with the Wall Street Journal reporting late last month that the administration was preparing to target "ports and airports controlled by the military that are allegedly used to traffic drugs, including naval facilities and airstrips."
Trump also authorized Central Intelligence Agency operations last month, falsely claiming the country has "emptied" its prisons into the US and again asserting that "we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela."
Democratic senators have introduced two war powers resolutions aimed at stopping the US from striking inside Venezuela and at halting the boat-bombing campaign—but Republicans have voted them down after administration officials assured the caucus that the White House was not currently planning to attack Venezuela.
Maduro said last month that Trump's actions in the region in recent months amount to attempts at "regime change," adding that "if Venezuela did not possess oil, gas, gold, fertile land, and water, the imperialists wouldn’t even look at our country."
Trump himself said publicly in 2023 that if he had won the 2020 presidential election, "we would have taken [Venezuela] over, we would have gotten all that oil."
Trump: When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over, we would have gotten all that oil. pic.twitter.com/5q3Jr1j1Ho
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 10, 2023
On Tuesday, both the United Kingdom and Colombia announced that they were halting intelligence sharing with the US in the region, saying that working with the US as it attacks small vessels in the Caribbean could make the countries complicit in violations of international law.
“All levels of law enforcement intelligence are ordered to suspend communications and other agreements with US security agencies,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro said. “This measure will remain in place as long as missile attacks on boats in the Caribbean continue. The fight against drugs must be subordinate to the human rights of the Caribbean people.”
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GOP NYC Councilwoman Openly Dares Mamdani to Arrest Netanyahu With New Year's Invite
Despite Mamdani's campaign pledge, legal experts have consistently cast doubt on a New York City mayor's authority to order the arrest of a foreign leader.
Nov 11, 2025
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani may have a chance to fulfill one of his campaign promises on his first day of office, although legal experts have repeatedly cast doubt on his power to make it happen.
Republican New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov on Tuesday sent a formal invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak in New York City on January 1, 2026, while at the same time daring Mamdani to keep his pledge to have him arrested on war crimes charges.
"On January 1, Mamdani will take office," Vernikov wrote in a post on X. "And also on January 1, I look forward to welcoming Bibi to New York City. NY will always stand with Israel, and no radical Marxists with a title can change that."
The International Criminal Court (ICC) last year issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Israel's war in Gaza that has killed at least 69,000 Palestinians.
During his successful mayoral campaign, Mamdani repeatedly said that he would enforce the warrant against Netanyahu should the Israeli leader set foot in his city.
Although Mamdani backed off some of his most strident past statements during the campaign, particularly when it comes to the New York Police Department (NYPD), he doubled down on arresting Netanyahu during a September interview with The New York Times.
"This is a moment where we cannot look to the federal government for leadership," Mamdani told the paper. "This is a moment when cities and states will have to demonstrate what it actually looks like to stand up for our own values, our own people."
However, legal experts who spoke with the Times cast doubt on Mamdani's authority as the mayor of a major American city to arrest a foreign head of government, even if the person in question has been indicted by the ICC.
Among other things, experts said that the NYPD does not have jurisdiction to arrest Netanyahu on international war crimes charges, and the Israeli leader would have to commit some crime in violation of local state or city laws to justify such an action.
Additionally, the US has never been party to the ICC and does not recognize its legal authority.
Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School, told the Times that Mamdani's stated determination to arrest Netanyahu was "more a political stunt than a serious law-enforcement policy."
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Foreign Policy Experts Warn US-Saudi Security Pact Would Be 'Risky' to Middle East Stability and Human Rights
The assumption of US backing allowed the Saudis to wage a brutal war in Yemen that cost close to 400,000 lives without fear of consequences. "Now imagine if Saudi Arabia had an ironclad US security guarantee," wrote one scholar.
Nov 11, 2025
As Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman prepares to meet with US President Donald Trump next week, experts are warning that it could cause even greater instability in the Middle East if the president agrees to the Gulf regime's requests for a defense pact.
On November 18, the crown prince, commonly known as MBS, will be welcomed in Washington for the first time since 2018. That meeting with Trump came just months before the prince signed off on the infamous murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi as part of a brutal crackdown on dissenters in the country.
Trump defended MBS from international outrage and isolation at the time and has continued to sing his praises since returning to office. In May, after inking a record $142 billion weapons sale to the Saudis during a tour of the Middle East, Trump gave a speech, practically salivating over the crown prince.
“We have great partners in the world, but we have none stronger, and nobody like the gentleman that’s right before me, he’s your greatest representative, your greatest representative,” Trump said. “And if I didn’t like him, I would get out of here so fast. You know that, don’t you? He knows me well.”
“I do, I like him a lot. I like him too much, that’s why we give so much, you know?” the president continued. “Too much. I like you too much!”
“Oh, what I do for the crown prince,” he added.
Now, according to a report Tuesday from the Financial Times, the Saudis are coming to Washington seeking a similar security guarantee to the one Trump recently granted Qatar, which one State Department diplomat referred to as "on par with the mutual defense commitments the United States provides its closest allies.”
Trump signed an executive order stating that the US would respond to any attack on Qatar by taking all “lawful and appropriate measures—including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military."
That agreement came weeks after Israel launched an unprecedented assault on Hamas leadership as they met for negotiations in Qatar's capital city of Doha to end the two-year genocide in Gaza. Without the security agreement, the Qataris had threatened to walk away from their role in mediating the talks that ultimately led to October's "ceasefire" agreement.
The deal expected to be reached between Trump and the Saudis has been described as "Qatar-plus," not just pledging defense of the state were it to come under attack, but regarding it as a threat to American “peace and security."
Such an agreement was already underway during the tenure of former President Joe Biden, following the normalization of relations with Israel, but was upended by Hamas's October 7 attacks and two years of indiscriminate slaughter Israel launched in response, which bin Salman referred to as a "genocide."
While MBS has publicly stated that he would not agree to continue normalization with Israel without a Palestinian state, he has not shied away from a separate security deal with the US, which reportedly includes "enhanced military and intelligence cooperation."
According to Christopher Preble and Will Smith, a pair of foreign policy researchers at the Stimson Center's Reimagining US Grand Strategy program, the Trump team hopes that by pursuing a heightened security and financial relationship with the Saudis, they can coax them back towards detente with Israel and bring them back into the US orbit in response to what Trump views as an overly flirtatious posture toward China.
"These developments suggest a troubling belief that handing out security guarantees is a quick, cost-free way to reassure anxious partners and ensure their alignment with US priorities. That belief is mistaken," the researchers wrote in Responsible Statecraft Tuesday. "A US-Saudi defense pact would be unnecessary, risky, and unlikely to achieve its unclear aims. Rather than revive the misguided Biden administration initiative, the Trump administration should shelve the idea once and for all."
They said there are few upsides to the normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and that if it were to occur, it would be little more than a formal recognition of the cooperation between the two nations that already exists in combating Iran's influence.
While a deal would lead to few benefits, they argued it would "come with significant downsides," potentially forcing the US to ride along with "reckless driving" by the Saudis, especially with its neighbors in Yemen.
"Extensive US support emboldened Saudi Arabia to wage a disastrous, failed intervention there that dragged on for seven years, fueling a war that claimed close to 400,000 lives, including nearly 20,000 civilians killed by airstrikes," the researchers said.
International relations scholar Adam Gallagher pointed out that the Saudis did all of this merely "because of what it assumed would be continual US backing."
"Now imagine if Saudi Arabia had an ironclad US security guarantee," he said.
The result, he warned, would be something akin to Israel's sense of total impunity to wage destruction in Gaza.
"When a great power provides a security pledge to a less powerful ally, the weaker state is more willing to take on risk, and the patron often ends up paying the price," he wrote. "There is simply no strategic reason for the United States to imperil its interests or incur costs if Saudi Arabia engaged in renewed adventurism."
Human rights groups have noted that a deal also has massive implications for the Saudi regime's actions at home, where its leaders have faced little accountability for their repression of dissent.
“Saudi Arabia’s crown prince is trying to rebrand himself as a global statesman, but the reality at home is mass repression, record numbers of executions, and zero tolerance for dissent," said Sarah Yager, the Washington director at Human Rights Watch. "US officials should be pressing for change, not posing for photos.”
Matt Wells, the deputy director of Reprieve US, emphasized that outside pressure on the regime has mattered in the past: "In the fallout from Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination, Mohammed bin Salman’s regime felt international pressure to improve its human rights record, and that pressure made a difference. Some child defendants on death row were resentenced and released, and from July 2021 to July 2025, there were no executions for childhood crimes.”
“Beneath Saudi Arabia’s glittering facade, the repression of Saudi citizens and residents continues unabated," said Abdullah Aljuraywi, monitoring and campaigns officer at ALQST for Human Rights. "To avoid emboldening this, the US should use its leverage to secure concrete commitments, including the release of detained activists, lifting of arbitrary travel bans, and an end to politically motivated executions.”
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