The ongoing US military buildup near Venezuela’s coasts threatens to ignite a regional war following the extrajudicial mass murders of at least 17 passengers aboard four vessels sunk by the US expeditionary force deployed in the Southern Caribbean.
The White House made its most alarming escalation yet by declaring a “non-international armed conflict” against drug cartels, according to a memo to Congress obtained by the Associated Press on Thursday.
The term is a pseudo-legal attempt to evade the War Powers Act which reserves to Congress the authority to declare war. At the same time, the idea that war across the hemisphere is “non-international” both expresses the neo-colonial ambitions of the Trump administration for the region and provides a euphemism for the Nazi concept of “Total War” waged against the regime’s domestic and foreign enemies alike.
The declaration of war on cartels takes place as it becomes clearer by the day that many, if not all, of the victims of the boats sunk were fishermen accused without any evidence of drug trafficking by the Pentagon.
The New York Times reports that the first boat destroyed on September 1 (with the attack gleefully announced by Trump on social media the following day) carried people from the Paria Peninsula in Sucre. Times regional correspondent Julie Turkewitz interviewed a widow of a passenger killed, who recounted, “My husband was a fisherman with four children who left one day for work and never came back.”
Other journalists have stressed that this stretch of Caribbean coast is not just a corridor for cocaine but also for migrants, human trafficking victims and the smuggling of government-subsidized gasoline. Local sources, independent reporters, and relatives of victims have all indicated the absence of any evidence linking those killed to organized drug trafficking and have widely denounced the sinking of their vessels as acts of murder.
The lack of forensic identification and the subsequent detainment of other fishing crews by US naval forces has provoked national outrage in Venezuela and alarm in neighboring Colombia. The UN and multiple human rights organizations have condemned the US strikes as “extrajudicial executions,” demanding accountability and a halt to the campaign.
Neighbors and relatives of the victims openly paid homage to them on social media, with the Venezuelan outlet El Pitazo concluding from these publications that eight of the victims were from Unare and three from Güiria. Many of the social media comments make clear that the victims were fishermen, although some alleged neighbors claim they were possibly working out of necessity for smugglers of some kind.
During an unprecedented assembly of hundreds of generals and admirals near Washington on Tuesday, Trump boasted of the obliteration of unarmed vessels in the Caribbean as a precedent of the homicidal violence expected from the military. “If you try to poison our people, we will blow you out of existence,” he declared.
That same day, Trump expressed his readiness to “look very seriously at cartels coming by land,” reflecting new plans to attack Venezuelan territory beyond the maritime buildup. The New York Times reported Monday that the US Army has prepared plans for strikes inside Venezuela.
Eight warships and a nuclear-powered submarine are currently stationed in the Southern Caribbean, carrying about 4,500 marines and sailors, supplemented by F-35 jets and MQ-9 drones based in Puerto Rico.
In contradiction to the rhetorical justifications around “saving American lives from drug cartels,” US government data and independent reviews confirm that Fentanyl—the main killer in US overdose deaths—is neither produced nor transported through Venezuela. Only a small fraction of cocaine is shipped from Venezuela, a fact acknowledged by the US State Department and corroborated by the DEA.
In the first instance, these attacks and buildup are aimed at provoking the downfall of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has been charged in the US with leading the non-existent “Cartel of the Suns.”
Interviews and on-the-ground reporting by the New York Times have revealed that opposition forces, led by far-right politician Maria Corina Machado and her circle, are openly coordinating with the Trump administration on post-coup plans. Machado’s adviser, Pedro Urruchurtu, bragged to the Times of a “100-hour” transition blueprint involving “international allies, especially the United States.”
Edmundo González—Machado’s surrogate after her own disqualification in last year’s elections—is presumably ready to take power. The plans reportedly include “guaranteed stability,” a phrase that veils the threat of purges and violence against supporters of the current government and any opposition from below.
Inside the Pentagon, there are active debates on a new national defense strategy focused on US soil and the Western Hemisphere, disclosed in recent Military Times reports. “The Pentagon can use this hyperfocus on the Western Hemisphere to better counter Chinese malign activity in Latin America,” officials said, confirming that preparations for war against China underpin the new strategy.
Drug interdiction is invoked as a fraudulent pretext for aggressive military maneuvers akin to the “weapons of mass destruction” in the war against Iraq. A US official admitted, “The strategy is still very keyed in on defending against China … [and] drug cartels that are tied to China,” making clear the so-called war on narco-terrorism is primarily a tool for imperialist intervention.
The shadow of war extends further. In Brazil, President Lula’s government is conducting the largest military exercise in the country’s history, from October 3 to 9, in the Amazon region bordering Venezuela, involving 10,000 troops and advanced weaponry. This unprecedented buildup, while publicly pitched as an exercise supporting “regional stability,” clearly reflects growing anxiety over US intervention and the potential spillover of war into neighboring states.
Maduro has hinted at declaring a “state of commotion” as a response to American aggression, which constitutes a threat to use the conflict to suppress internal dissent.
A prominent Venezuelan businessman, also quoted by the Times, bluntly described the stakes: “If you kill Maduro, you turn Venezuela into Haiti.” Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, for her part, appealed to the American daily for the normalization of relations with Washington—a signal of exhaustion and alarm in the face of overwhelming US pressure and the risk of catastrophic instability.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, whose government Washington decertified last month as a partner in the “war on drugs” because of its opposition to the US military deployment in the Caribbean, retaliated by declaring the suspension of American arms purchases.
The current wave of extrajudicial killings, provocative military deployments, and open plotting for coups across Latin America goes hand in hand with the declaration of war against the American working class at home and the deployment of troops to US cities. Only by uniting across borders in opposition to capitalism, the root cause of fascist dictatorship and war, can workers across the Americas defend their lives, livelihoods and democratic rights.