During the night of January 2 and following the tradition of the CIA’s coups d’état in Latin America and the Caribbean, Trump launched a raid on Venezuela. He had the Venezuelan president, Maduro, kidnapped and announced that the U.S. would run the country until further notice.
The leaders of the great powers, who are as greedy and imperialistic as the U.S. even if they don’t have the same resources, endorsed the coup.
The Trump team is now threatening Colombia. It wants to suffocate Cuba economically so that the regime falls. And it’s talking again about annexing Greenland. The whole continent must serve the interests of American capitalists and woe betide any who refuse to kiss the master’s ring; they’ll be arrested on some wild accusation and sent to rot in American jails for the rest of their life!
Obviously, it’s Venezuela’s oil that the American bourgeoisie is interested in. Venezuela holds the world’s largest reserves of black gold and Uncle Sam can’t bear for them not to be in its grasp. When Trump asserted last month “they took our oil away from us… we want it back”, he made things clear. For the sake of oil, the world’s highest imperialist power is ready, yet again, to destabilize a country or even a whole region and push peoples into war.
On top of oil, Trump wants to take back control of the American continent to counter the competition of China that has become Latin America’s top trade partner. This military coup is a warning to Putin and Xi Jinping: the American government will stop at nothing. Trump is the leader of the richest country in the world with the strongest army, he wants to be the sole world leader.
It really is the world he wants and not just America! Ukraine, Palestine, Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria, Iran… the sheriff in the White House plans to impose the interests of the American bourgeoisie everywhere. Entire regions are already burning, the whole world is a powder keg and meanwhile Trump is threatening and ranting, matches in hand.
The world is advancing by leaps and bounds into widespread war.
Macron acted as chief lackey while European leaders protested feebly, explaining that it wasn’t the right way to behave. Their call to the UN and for the respect of international law was hypocritical – as if that had ever stopped a war!
The UN has always been the biggest robbers’ den on the planet. It served to maintain the fiction of a peaceful order, respectful of nations and peoples. It maintained the illusion that coups and military expeditions instigated by the great powers were a thing of the past, that there would be no more annexations or colonizations.
What a sick joke! Colonial order vanished but was replaced by imperialism and its militarist interventions that allowed the developed capitalist countries, led by the U.S. and the old European powers, to continue siphoning off the riches of the poorest countries.
The Iraqi, Libyan, Afghan, Palestinian, and many African and Asian peoples have suffered under the iron heel of imperialism, often in the guise of international law and the UN. Their towns have been bombed, their families decimated and their living conditions set back by decades. Has war stopped for them in recent years, even for just one day?
What’s happening in Venezuela, Ukraine, Gaza is a forecast of what will happen to us, too. As long as we live under capitalism, with private property, trade laws and competition, there will be war.
Things are speeding up now because the economic war between the U.S. and Chinese giants is fiercer than ever. American imperialism is becoming more cynical, more greedy, more aggressive. The only possible outcome is widespread war.
There are no limits for Trump who wants to remain leader of the world, or for Putin and Xi Jinping who are defending their turf. They are capable of destroying humanity. They will only stop under pressure from their peoples, when they are afraid of the workers, when they fear being overthrown by them, together with their capitalist system that is the foundation of imperialism.
Nathalie Arthaud