US-Venezuela Relations

As the Senate voted to advance a War Powers Resolution on Venezuela on January 8th, Republican Senator Susan Collins declared that she did not agree with “a sustained engagement “running” Venezuela.” 

The world was mystified when President Trump first said that the United States would “run” Venezuela. He then made it clear that he wants to control Venezuela by imposing a U.S. monopoly on foreign oil operations in Venezuela and marketing its oil to the rest of the world, to trap the Venezuelan government in a subservient relationship with the United States.

The U.S. Energy Department published a plan to sell Venezuelan oil already seized by the United States and then to use the same system for future Venezuelan oil exports. The U.S. would dictate how the revenues are divided between the U.S. and Venezuela, and continue this form of control indefinitely. Trump is meeting with U.S. oil company executives on Friday, January 9th, to discuss his plans.

Trump’s original plan would have cut off Venezuela’s trade with China, Russia, Iran and Cuba, and forced it to spend its oil revenues on goods and services from the United States. This new form of economic colonialism would also prevent Venezuela from continuing to spend the bulk of its oil revenues on its generous system of social spending, which has lifted millions of Venezuelans out of poverty.

However, on January 7th, the New York Times reported that Venezuela has other plans. “Venezuela’s state-run oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, confirmed for the first time that it was negotiating the “sale” of crude oil to the United States,” the Times reported. “This process is being developed under frameworks similar to those currently in effect with international companies, such as Chevron, and is based on a strictly commercial transaction,” the oil company’s statement said.

By January 8th, the U.S. had already backed down on some of its more extreme demands. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox Business Network, “I think you will probably see some long-term involvement of China in Venezuela. As long as …America is the dominant force there, the rule of law (sic), the United States controls oil flow. That will be fine…In that framework, where Venezuela’s main partner … is the United States, can there be commerce with China? Sure.”  

Trump has threatened further military action to remove acting president Delcy Rodriguez from office if she does not comply with U.S. plans for Venezuela. But Trump has already bowed to reality in his decision to cooperate with Rodriguez, recognizing that Maria Corina Machado, the previous U.S. favorite, does not have popular support. The very presence of Delcy Rodriguez as acting president exposes the failure of Trump’s regime change operation and his well-grounded reluctance to unleash yet another catastrophic and unwinnable war.

After the U.S. invasion and abduction of President Maduro on January 3rd, Delcy Rodriguez was sworn in as Acting President, reaffirming her loyalty to President Maduro and taking charge of running the country in his absence. But who is Delcy Rodriguez, and how is she likely to govern Venezuela? As a compliant and coerced U.S. puppet, or as the leader of an undefeated and independent Venezuela?          

Delcy Rodriguez was seven years old in 1976, when her father was tortured and beaten to death as a political prisoner in Venezuela. Jorge Antonio Rodriguez was the 34-year-old co-founder of the Socialist League, a leftist political party, whom the government accused of a leading role in the kidnapping of William Niehous, a suspected CIA officer working under cover as an Owens Corning executive.

Jorge Rodríguez was arrested and died in state custody after interrogation by Venezuelan intelligence agents. While the official cause of death was listed as a heart attack, his autopsy found that he had suffered severe injuries consistent with torture, including seven broken ribs, a collapsed chest, and a detached liver.

Delcy studied law in Caracas and Paris and became a labor lawyer, while her older brother Jorge became a psychiatrist. Delcy and her mother, Delcy Gomez, were in London during the failed U.S.-backed coup in Venezuela in 2003, and they denounced the coup from the Venezuelan embassy in interviews with the BBC and CNN. 

Delcy and her older brother Jorge soon joined Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian government, and rose to a series of senior positions under Chavez and then Maduro: Delcy served as Foreign Minister from 2014 to 2017, and Economy and Finance Minister from 2020 to 2024, as well as Oil Minister and Vice President; Jorge was Vice President for a year under Chavez and then Mayor of Caracas for 8 years.

On January 5th 2026, it fell to Jorge, now the president of the National Assembly, to swear in his sister as acting president, after the illegal U.S. invasion and abduction of President Maduro. Delcy Rodriguez told her people and the world,

“I come as the executive vice president of the constitutional president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro Moros, to take the oath of office. I come with pain for the suffering that has been caused to the Venezuelan people after an illegitimate military aggression against our homeland. I come with pain for the kidnapping of two heroes who are being held hostage in the United States of America, President Nicolas Maduro and the first combatant, first lady of our country, Cilia Flores. I come with pain, but I must say that I also come with honor to swear in the name of all Venezuelans. I come to swear by our father, liberator Simon Bolivar.”

In other public statements, acting president Rodriguez has struck a fine balance between fierce assertions of Venezuela’s independence and a pragmatic readiness to cooperate peacefully with the United States. 

On January 3rd, Delcy Rodriguez declared that Venezuela would “never again be anyone’s colony.” However, after chairing her first cabinet meeting the next day, she said that Venezuela was looking for a “balanced and respectful” relationship with the United States. She went on to say, “We extend an invitation to the government of the U.S. to work jointly on an agenda of cooperation, aimed at shared development, within the framework of international law, and that strengthens lasting peaceful coexistence,”

In a direct message to Trump, Rodriguez wrote, “President Donald Trump: our peoples and our region deserve peace and dialogue, not war. That has always been President Nicolás Maduro’s conviction and it is that of all Venezuela at this moment. This is the Venezuela I believe in and to which I have dedicated my life. My dream is for Venezuela to become a great power where all decent Venezuelans can come together. Venezuela has the right to peace, development, sovereignty and a future.”

Alan McPherson, who chairs the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy at Temple University in the U.S., calls Delcy Rodriguez “a pragmatist who helped stabilize the Venezuelan economy in recent times.” However, speaking to Al Jazeera, he cautioned that any perceived humiliation by the Trump administration or demands seen as excessive could “backfire and end the cooperation,” making the relationship a “difficult balance to achieve.”

After the U.S.invasion on January 3rd, at least a dozen oil tankers set sail from Venezuela with their location transponders turned off, carrying 12 million barrels of oil, mostly to China, effectively breaking the U.S. blockade. But then, on January 7th, U.S. forces boarded and seized two more oil tankers with links to Venezuela, one in the Caribbean and a Russian one in the north Atlantic that they had been tracking for some time, making it clear that Trump is still intent on selectively enforcing the U.S. blockade.   

Chevron has recalled American employees to work in Venezuela and resumed normal shipments to U.S. refineries after a four-day pause. But other U.S. oil companies are not eager to charge into Venezuela, where Trump’s actions have so far only increased the political risks for any new U.S. investments, amid a global surplus of oil supplies, low prices, and a world transitioning to cleaner, renewable energy. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice is scrambling to make a case against President Maduro, after Trump’s lawless war plan led to Maduro’s illegal arrest as the leader of a non-existent drug cartel in a foreign country where U.S. domestic law does not apply. In his first court appearance in New York, Maduro identified himself as the president of Venezuela and a prisoner of war.

Continuing to seize ships at sea and trying to shake down Venezuela for control of its oil revenues are not the “balanced and respectful” relationship that Delcy Rodriguez and the government of Venezuela are looking for, and the U.S. position is not as strong as Trump and Rubio’s threats suggest. Under the influence of neocons like Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, Trump has marched the U.S. to the brink of a war in Latin America that very few Americans support and that most of the world is united against. 

Mutual respect and cooperation with Rodriguez and other progressive Latin American leaders, like Lula in Brazil, Gustavo Petro in Colombia and Mexico’s Claudia Scheinbaum, offer Trump face-saving ways out of the ever-escalating crisis that he and his clueless advisers have blundered into. 

Trump has an eminently viable alternative to being manipulated into war by Marco Rubio: what the Chinese like to call “win-win cooperation.” Most Americans would favor that over the zero-sum game of hegemonic imperialism into which Rubio and Trump are draining our hard-earned tax dollars.

The main obstacle to the peaceful cooperation that Trump says he wants is his own blind belief in U.S. militarism and military supremacy. He wants to redirect U.S. imperialism away from Europe, Asia and Africa toward Latin America, but this is no more winnable or any more legitimate under international law, and it’s just as unpopular with the American people. 

If anything, there is greater public opposition to U.S aggression “in our backyard” than to U.S. wars 10,000 miles away. Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia are our close neighbors, and the consequences of plunging them into violence and chaos are more obvious to most Americans than the equally appalling human costs of more distant U.S. wars.   

Trump understands that endless war is unpopular, but he still seems to believe that he can get away with “one and done” operations like bombing Iran and kidnapping President Maduro and his first lady. These attacks, however, have only solved imaginary problems – Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons and Maduro’s non-existent drug cartel – while exacerbating long-standing regional crises that U.S policy is largely responsible for, and which have no military solutions. 

Dealing with Trump is a difficult challenge for Delcy Rodriguez and other Latin American leaders, but they should all understand by now that caving to Trump or letting him pick them off one by one is a path to ruin. The world must stand together to deter aggression and defend the basic principles and rules of the UN Charter, under which all countries agree to settle disputes peacefully and not to threaten or use military force against each other. Any chance for a more peaceful world depends on finally starting to take those commitments seriously, as Trump’s predecessors also failed to do.   

There is a growing movement organizing nationwide protests to tell Trump that the American people reject his wars and threats of war against our neighbors in Latin America and around the world. This is a critical moment to raise your voice and help to turn the tide against endless war.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War In Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, now in a revised, updated 2nd edition. Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

Source: Code Pink

After launching a military attack against Caracas and kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, US President Donald Trump made his goal clear: seize the oil.

Historian Steve Ellner and journalist Ricardo Vaz explained how this outcome is not an aberration, but rather the latest chapter in a long-standing struggle over PDVSA, oil sovereignty, and U.S. hemispheric dominance—where economic warfare supplants diplomacy and state power is deployed for private gain.

Source: theAnalysis.News

Caracas, January 9, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – US President Donald Trump hosted executives from major Western energy corporations at the White House on Friday after touting a US $100 billion investment plan in Venezuela’s oil industry.

The Trump administration has moved to claim control over the Caribbean nation’s most important economic sector in the wake of the January 3 bombings and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro.

“We’re going to discuss how these great American companies can help rapidly rebuild Venezuela’s dilapidated oil industry and bring millions of barrels of oil production to benefit the United States, the people of Venezuela and the entire world,” the US president told reporters.

The meeting featured representatives from Chevron (USA), Shell (UK), Eni (Italy), Repsol (Spain) and 13 other energy and trading firms. Chevron has been the only major US company to maintain operations in Venezuela amidst US sanctions.

Trump added that the corporations would be “dealing” with the US directly and not with Venezuelan authorities. Multiple US officials in recent days have claimed that proceeds from crude sales will be deposited in accounts run by administration before being rerouted to Venezuela. Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA has confirmed “negotiations” to resume oil shipments to the US but has not commented on the rumored terms.

In his press conference, Trump said the White House would “devise a formula” to ensure that Caracas receives funds and corporations recover their investments while the US government would get any “leftover funds.” He added that Washington would offer the corporations “security guarantees” to operate in Venezuela.

Despite the Trump administration’s incentives, oil conglomerates have expressed reservations on committing to major investments in Venezuela.

Friday’s meeting at the White House also included executives from ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, two companies that refused to accept the new conditions from the former Chávez government’s oil reforms in the 2000s.

Both companies pursued international arbitration. ExxonMobil was compensated to the tune of $1.6 billion, significantly below its demands, while ConocoPhillips is looking to enforce awards totaling $12 billion. The Houston-headquartered enterprise will collect part of the debt via the forced auction of Venezuela’s US-based refiner CITGO.

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods stated that the company would need “significant changes” to Venezuela’s legal infrastructure before considering a return to the country.

In parallel to the White House gathering, India’s Reliance Industries, the country’s largest conglomerate, is reportedly seeking a US greenlight to resume purchases of Venezuelan crude. Reliance was a significant PDVSA customer before being driven away by US sanctions threats.

Venezuela’s oil sector, the country’s most important revenue source, remains heavily targeted by US unilateral coercive measures, including financial sanctions, an export embargo, and secondary sanctions.

Washington has maintained pressure on Caracas to impose oil conditions by enforcing a naval blockade and seizing tankers attempting to sail away with Venezuelan crude. On Friday, the US Navy seized the fifth tanker since early December, the Timor Leste-flagged Olina which had sailed from Venezuelan shores days ago as part of a flotilla attempting to break the US blockade.

Trump claimed that Venezuelan authorities assisted in the capture of the Olina tanker. According to the New York Times, US naval forces are chasing multiple tankers into the Atlantic, while others that left are reportedly heading back toward Venezuela.

Washington’s interest in controlling the Venezuelan oil industry has already seen the US Treasury Department issue sanctions waivers to global traders Vitol and Trafigura. The two companies were represented in the January 9 White House meeting.

Asked about Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, Trump said that the Venezuelan leader “seems to be an ally.” A US State Department delegation landed in Caracas on Friday to evaluate conditions for the reopening of the US embassy in the Venezuelan capital.

Amidst US official statements and diplomatic pressure, Venezuelan authorities have likewise sought meetings with some of its main allies, including Russia and China.

Rodríguez met with Chinese Ambassador Lan Hu Thursday, thanking Beijing for its condemnation of the US attacks and Maduro abduction. While US officials have pledged to reduce Chinese economic ties with Venezuela, Rodríguez stated in a recent broadcast that Caracas would maintain “diversity” in its economic and geopolitical relations.

Also on Thursday, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil hosted Russian Ambassador Sergey Melik-Bagdasarov. Gil acknowledged Moscow’s support in the wake of the US January 3 attacks and expressed the two nations’ joint commitment to dialogue and sovereignty.

In this episode of the “Decline & Fall” podcast, Alexander Mckay and Kit Klarenberg look at the US empire’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the absurd criminal case and the legal challenges ahead.

Mckay and Klarenberg also place the attack on Venezuela within the bigger picture of the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

Source: Decline and Fall

Four observations on the Trump administration’s flagrant lawbreaking in abducting Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, from Caracas and bringing him to New York to “stand trial” on “narco-terrorism” and firearms charges:

1. It is a sign of quite how much of a rogue state the US has become that Washington isn’t even trying to come up with a plausible reason for kidnapping the Venezuelan president.

In invading Afghanistan, the US said it had to “smoke out” al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from his mountain lair after the 9/11 attacks. In invading Iraq, the US said it was going to destroy Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” that threatened Europe. In bombing Libya, the US claimed it was preventing Muammar Gaddafi’s troops from going on a Viagra-fuelled campaign of rape.

Each of these justifications was a transparent falsehood. The Taliban had offered to hand over bin Laden for trial. There were no WMD in Iraq. And the Viagra story was a work of unadulterated fiction.

But earlier US administrations at least had to pretend their actions were driven by humanitarian considerations and the need to maintain international order.

The charges against Maduro are so patently ridiculous you need to be a Trump fanboy, an old-school imperialist or deeply misinformed to buy any of them. No serious monitoring organisation thinks Venezuela is a major trafficker of drugs into the US, or that Maduro is personally responsible for drug-trafficking. Meanwhile, the firearm charges are so preposterous it’s difficult to understand what they even mean.

2. Unlike his predecessors, President Trump has been honest about what the US really wants: control of oil. This is an old-fashioned, colonial resource grab. So why are the media even pretending that there is some kind of “law enforcement” process going on in New York? A head of state has been abducted – that’s the story. Nothing else.

Instead we’re being subjected to ridiculous debates about whether Maduro is “a bad man”, or whether he mismanaged the Venezuelan economy. Sky News used an interview with Britain’s former Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to harangue him, demanding he condemn Maduro. Why? Precisely to deflect viewers’ attention from the actual story: that in invading Venezuela, the US committed what the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War judged to be the supreme international crime of aggression against another state. Where have you seen any establishment media outlet highlight this point in its coverage?

If Sky and other media are so worried about “bad men” running countries – so concerned that they think international law can be flouted – why are they not haranguing Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper over Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity? Doesn’t that make him a very “bad man”, far worse than anything Maduro is accused of? Why are they not demanding that Starmer and Cooper condemn him before they are allowed to talk about the Middle East?

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the western media did not weigh the justifications for Moscow’s invasion, or offer context, as they are now doing over the lawless attack on Venezuela. They responded with shock and outrage. They were not calm, judicious and analytical. They were indignant. They warned of “Russian expansionism”. They warned of Putin’s “megalomania”. They warned of the threat to international law. They emphasised the right of Ukraine to resist Russia. In many cases, they led the politicians in demanding a stronger response. None of that is visible in the coverage of Maduro’s abduction, or Trump’s lawbreaking.

3. The left is often censured for being slow to denounce non-western powers like China or Russia, or being too wary of military action against them. This is to misunderstand the left’s position. It opposes a unipolar world precisely because that inevitably leads to the kind of destabilising gangsterism just demonstrated by Trump’s attack on Venezuela. It creates a feudal system of one lord, many serfs – but on the global stage.

That is exactly what we see happening now as Trump and Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, mouth off about which country – Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, Mexico – is going to be attacked next. It is exactly why every European leader, from Keir Starmer to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, sucks up to Trump, however monstrous his latest act. It is exactly why the United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, speaks so limply about the general importance of “the rule of law” rather than articulating a clear denunciation of the crimes the US has just committed.

Hard as it is for westerners to acknowledge, we don’t need a stronger West, we need a weaker one.

But harder still, westerners need to understand that the very concept of “the West” is an illusion. For decades, Europe has been simply hanging on to the coat-tails of a US military behemoth, in the hope that it would protect us. But in a world of diminishing resources, the US is showing quite how ready it is to turn on anyone, including its supposed allies, for a bigger share of global wealth. Just ask Greenland and Denmark.

European states’ true interests lie, not in prostrating themselves before a global overlord, but in a multipolar world, where coalitions of interests need to be forged, where compromises must be reached, not diktats imposed. That requires a foreign policy of transparency and compassion, not conceit and arrogance. Without such a change, in an era of burgeoning nuclear tripwires and growing climate chaos, we are all finished.

4. Washington’s goal is to make Venezuela once again a haven for private US capital. If the new acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, refuses, then Trump has made it clear Venezuela will be kept as an economic basket-case, through continuing sanctions and a US naval blockade, until someone else can be installed who will do US bidding.

Venezuela’s crime – one for which it has been punished for decades – is trying to offer a different economic and social model to America’s rampant, planet-destroying, neoliberal capitalism. The deepest fear of the West’s political and media class is that western publics, subjected to permanent austerity as billionaires grow ever richer off the back of ordinary people’s immiseration, may rise up if they see a different system that looks after its citizens rather than its wealth elite.

Venezuela, with its huge oil reserves, could be precisely such a model – had it not been long strangled by US-imposed sanctions. A quarter of a century ago, Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, launched a socialist-style “Bolivarian revolution” of popular democracy, economic independence, equitable distribution of revenues, and an end to political corruption. It reduced extreme poverty by more than 70 per cent, halved unemployment, quadrupled the number of people receiving a state pension and schooled the population to reach literacy rates of 100 per cent. Venezuela became the most equal society in Latin America – one reason why millions still turn out to defend Maduro.

Chavez did so by taking the country’s natural resources – its oil and metal ores – out of the hands of a tiny domestic elite that had ruined the country by extracting the national wealth and mostly hoarding or investing it abroad, often in the US. He nationalised major industries, from oil and steel to electricity. Those are the very industries that Maria Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader feted by the West, wants returned to the parasitic families, like her own, that once ran them privately.

Seeing the way Venezuela has been treated for the past two decades or more should make it clear why European leaders – obedient at all costs to Washington and the corporate elites that rule the West – are so reluctant to even consider nationalising their own public industries, however popular such policies are with electorates.

Britain’s Keir Starmer, who only won the Labour leadership election by promising to nationalise major utilities, ditched his pledge the moment he was elected. None of the traditional main UK parties is offering to renationalise water, rail, energy and mail services, even though surveys regularly show at least three-quarters of the British public support such a move.

The fact is that a unipolar world leaves all of us prey to a rapacious, destructive, US corporate capitalism, which, bit by bit, is destroying our world. The issue isn’t whether Maduro was a good or bad leader of Venezuela – the matter the western establishment media wants us concentrating on. It is how do we put the US back in the box before it is too late for humanity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Source: Jonathan Cook Substack

Caracas, January 7, 2025 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Trump administration has vowed to control Venezuelan oil sales for an “indefinite” period in the wake of the January 3 bombings and kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

“Instead of the oil being blockaded, we’re gonna let the oil flow to US refineries and around the world to bring better oil supplies, but have those sales done by the US,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a Goldman Sachs conference on Wednesday, January 7.

According to Wright, the process would begin with crude that is currently loaded on tankers that have not left Venezuelan shores because of the US naval blockade, before selling future production “indefinitely, going forward.”

A “fact sheet” published by the Department of Energy went on to claim that proceeds from sales of Venezuelan crude “will first settle in US-controlled accounts at globally recognized banks to guarantee the legitimacy and integrity of the ultimate distribution of proceeds.”

The document stated that a “selective rollback” of US economic sanctions will allow transactions involving Venezuelan oil products in global markets. The Department of Energy likewise announced supplies of diluents and equipment to Venezuela’s oil industry, which also require the lifting of sanctions, alongside broader US investment in the oil sector and electric grid.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio affirmed in a Wednesday press conference that the US has a “three-step plan” for Venezuela in the wake of the January 3 military attack. The first step involves “stabilizing” the country to allow for the arrival of US and Western corporations, before a stage of “national reconciliation” and finally a “transition.”

In the wake of the strikes that killed over 80 people in the Caribbean nation, Trump and administration officials have repeatedly threatened the Venezuelan government into accepting its demands, especially in the oil sector.

On Wednesday, US authorities announced the seizure of two new tankers as part of efforts to strangle Venezuelan crude exports. Rubio recently referred to the US’ naval blockade as a “lever of leverage” against Caracas. US forces had previously seized two other tankers transporting Venezuelan crude.

According to ABC, Washington has demanded that Caracas’ oil production and exports be done exclusively with US partners. In 2025, over 80 percent of Venezuelan crude exports were destined for Chinese refineries. However, Politico reported that US oil conglomerates are reluctant to invest heavily in Venezuela.

Trump had emphasized in recent weeks that the US’ main interest was control over Venezuela’s oil industry and reserves. On Tuesday, he wrote on social media that Venezuelan authorities had agreed to “turn over 30-50 million barrels” of oil to the US, in reference to the crude currently blockaded, and that he would “control” the proceeds.

On Wednesday, Trump published another social media post claiming that Caracas would only be purchasing US-made products with the oil sales revenues.

US actions have drawn domestic criticism, with Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy blasting Rubio’s “insane plan.”

“They are talking about stealing the Venezuelan oil at gunpoint for an undefined time period as leverage to micromanage the country. The scope and insanity of that plan is absolutely stunning,” Murphy told press.

Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, for its part, issued a statement on January 7 informing of talks for the “sale of large volumes of crude to the United States.” The communiqué made no reference to the terms alleged by US officials.

“PDVSA ratifies its commitment to continue building alliances that boost national development and contribute to global economic stability,” the text read.

PDVSA added that the prospective agreement would follow a “scheme” similar to the one that currently applies to Chevron. 

The US oil giant is a minority partner in four joint ventures with PDVSA. Under its present sanctions waiver, Chevron allocates crude for PDVSA to sell. However, under a previous license, Chevron would commercialize all the oil before transferring proceeds to its Venezuelan partners.

Acting President and Oil Minister Delcy Rodríguez has not commented on the US officials’ claims. In a Wednesday night televised broadcast, she said Venezuela has developed “diversified economic and geopolitical relations” all around the world.

The Venezuelan oil industry has faced multiple waves of economic sanctions dating back to the first Trump administration, including financial sanctions, an export embargo and secondary sanctions.

Caracas has made repeated calls for foreign investment, including from US companies. US refineries, particularly in the Gulf Coast, are especially geared toward Venezuela’s extra-heavy crude blends. The US was the main destination for Venezuelan oil exports prior to the 2019 embargo.
The Nicolás Maduro government additionally created favorable conditions for oil partners in a bid to ramp up oil production. The 2020 Anti-Blockade Law establishes mechanisms that supersede Venezuela’s hydrocarbon legislation, including concessions whereby private companies can lift more than half the crude produced.

Caracas, January 5, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan social movements and political parties held a massive rally in Caracas on January 4 to reject the US military attacks against the country and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro.

The Sunday march took place in the center of the Venezuelan capital and ended close to Miraflores Presidential Palace.

Demonstrators held handmade signs demanding the release and return of Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, who were abducted in the early hours of January 3 by a US special operations team. US forces bombed several military sites in Caracas and surrounding states.

Venezuelan authorities have yet to report on damages and casualties, with unofficial sources claiming at least 80 people killed.

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez has taken over the presidency on an interim basis after a ruling from the Supreme Court. Following a Sunday cabinet meeting, Rodríguez called on the US to respect the country’s sovereignty and invited Washington to agree to an “agenda of cooperation.”

Photos by Rome Arrieche.

I listened to the January 3 press conference with a knot in my stomach. As a Venezuelan American with family, memories, and a living connection to the country being spoken about as if it were a possession, what I heard was very clear. And that clarity was chilling.

The president said, plainly, that the United States would “run the country” until a transition it deems “safe” and “judicious.” He spoke about capturing Venezuela’s head of state, about transporting him on a U.S. military vessel, about administering Venezuela temporarily, and about bringing in U.S. oil companies to rebuild the industry. He dismissed concerns about international reaction with a phrase that should alarm everyone: “They understand this is our hemisphere.”

For Venezuelans, those words echo a long, painful history.

Let’s be clear about the claims made. The president is asserting that the U.S. can detain a sitting foreign president and his spouse under U.S. criminal law. That the U.S. can administer another sovereign country without an international mandate. That Venezuela’s political future can be decided from Washington. That control over oil and “rebuilding” is a legitimate byproduct of intervention. That all of this can happen without congressional authorization and without evidence of imminent threat.

We have heard this language before. In Iraq, the United States promised a limited intervention and a temporary administration, only to impose years of occupation, seize control of critical infrastructure, and leave behind devastation and instability. What was framed as stewardship became domination. Venezuela is now being spoken about in disturbingly similar terms. “Temporary Administration” ended up being a permanent disaster.

Under international law, nothing described in that press conference is legal. The UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force against another state and bars interference in a nation’s political independence. Sanctions designed to coerce political outcomes and cause civilian suffering amount to collective punishment. Declaring the right to “run” another country is the language of occupation, regardless of how many times the word is avoided.

Under U.S. law, the claims are just as disturbing. War powers belong to Congress. There has been no authorization, no declaration, no lawful process that allows an executive to seize a foreign head of state or administer a country. Calling this “law enforcement” does not make it so. Venezuela poses no threat to the United States. It has not attacked the U.S. and has issued no threat that could justify the use of force under U.S. or international law. There is no lawful basis, domestic or international, for what is being asserted.

But beyond law and precedent lies the most important reality: the cost of this aggression is paid by ordinary people in Venezuela. War, sanctions, and military escalation do not fall evenly. They fall hardest on women, children, the elderly, and the poor. They mean shortages of medicine and food, disrupted healthcare systems, rising maternal and infant mortality, and the daily stress of survival in a country forced to live under siege. They also mean preventable deaths,  people who die not because of natural disaster or inevitability, but because access to care, electricity, transport, or medicine has been deliberately obstructed. Every escalation compounds existing harm and increases the likelihood of loss of life, civilian deaths that will be written off as collateral, even though they were foreseeable and avoidable.

What makes this even more dangerous is the assumption underlying it all: that Venezuelans will remain passive, compliant, and submissive in the face of humiliation and force. That assumption is wrong. And when it collapses, as it inevitably will, the cost will be measured in unnecessary bloodshed.  This is what is erased when a country is discussed as a “transition” or an “administration problem.” Human beings disappear. Lives are reduced to acceptable losses. And the violence that follows is framed as unfortunate rather than the predictable outcome of arrogance and coercion.

To hear a U.S. president talk about a country as something to be managed, stabilized, and handed over once it behaves properly, it hurts. It humiliates. And it enrages.

And yes, Venezuela is not politically unified. It isn’t. It never has been. There are deep divisions, about the government, about the economy, about leadership, about the future. There are people who identify as Chavista, people who are fiercely anti-Chavista, people who are exhausted and disengaged, and yes, there are some who are celebrating what they believe might finally bring change.

But political division does not invite invasion. 

Latin America has seen this logic before. In Chile, internal political division was used to justify U.S. intervention, framed as a response to “ungovernability,” instability, and threats to regional order, ending not in democracy, but in dictatorship, repression, and decades of trauma.

In fact, many Venezuelans who oppose the government still reject this moment outright. They understand that bombs, sanctions, and “transitions” imposed from abroad do not bring democracy, they destroy the conditions that make it possible. 

This moment demands political maturity, not purity tests. You can oppose Maduro and still oppose U.S. aggression. You can want change and still reject foreign control. You can be angry, desperate, or hopeful, and still say no to being governed by another country.

Venezuela is a country where communal councils, worker organizations, neighborhood collectives, and social movements have been forged under pressure. Political education didn’t come from think tanks; it came from survival. Right now, Venezuelans are not hiding. They are closing ranks because they recognize the pattern. They know what it means when foreign leaders start talking about “transitions” and “temporary control.” They know what usually follows. And they are responding the way they always have: by turning fear into collective action.

This press conference wasn’t just about Venezuela. It was about whether empire can say the quiet part out loud again, whether it can openly claim the right to govern other nations and expect the world to shrug.

If this stands, the lesson is brutal and undeniable: sovereignty is conditional, resources are there to be taken by the U.S., and democracy exists only by imperial consent.

As a Venezuelan American, I refuse that lesson.

I refuse the idea that my tax dollars fund the humiliation of my homeland. I refuse the lie that war and coercion are acts of “care” for the Venezuelan people. And I refuse to stay silent while a country I love is spoken about as raw material for U.S. interests, not a society of human beings deserving respect.

Venezuela’s future is not for U.S. officials, corporate boards, or any president who believes the hemisphere is his to command. It belongs to Venezuelans.

Michelle Ellner is a Latin America campaign coordinator of CODEPINK. She was born in Venezuela and holds a bachelor’s degree in languages and international affairs from the University La Sorbonne Paris IV, in Paris. After graduating, she worked for an international scholarship program out of offices in Caracas and Paris and was sent to Haiti, Cuba, The Gambia, and other countries for the purpose of evaluating and selecting applicants.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Following overnight U.S. airstrikes on Caracas, the seizure of President Nicolás Maduro, and President Donald Trump’s declaration that Washington will take control of Venezuela’s oil and effectively run the country, analysts Steve Ellner and Ricardo Vaz warn that the operation constitutes an unlawful use of force.

They cite the combination of military assault, extraterritorial abduction, resource seizure, and alleged extrajudicial killings at sea as violations of international law and Venezuelan sovereignty.

Caracas, January 4, 2025 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The governments of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, and Spain issued a joint statement Sunday rejecting “unilateral US actions in Venezuelan territory.”

“These actions contravene basic principles of international law and represent a very dangerous precedent for peace and regional security,” the communique read.

The joint statement followed widespread regional and global condemnation of Washington’s January 3 strikes against Venezuelan military sites and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.

The countries went on to issue calls for dialogue and urged the United Nations secretary general and member states to help “de-escalate tensions and preserve peace.” 

In response to US President Donald Trump’s claim that he would “run” Venezuela, the signatories expressed concern over “attempts at foreign government control or seizure of natural resources.” However, the declaration made no mention of Maduro nor called for his release.

The diplomatic response to the US attacks also included an emergency summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean nations (CELAC), held on Sunday, January 4. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil decried the US actions as blatant violations of international law and the United Nations Charter.

“The US has violated the personal immunity of a sitting head of state,” Gil told regional leaders in the conference call. “Kidnapping a president is kidnapping a people’s sovereignty.”

Venezuela’s top diplomat urged CELAC member-states to “take a step forward,” warning that silence would amount to acceptance of Washington’s unilateral acts.

A number of countries, including Venezuelan allies Russia and China, have forcefully denounced the US military operation. In a Sunday statement, Beijing charged Washington with a “clear violation of international law” and called for Maduro and Flores’ “immediate release.”

The UN Security Council is scheduled to hold an emergency session on Monday.

For her part, Venezuela Vice President and now acting Interim President Delcy Rodríguez reiterated demands for Maduro’s release and vowed that the country would not submit “to any empire.” Rodríguez held a press conference Saturday afternoon and confirmed the enactment of a decree establishing a “state of external commotion.” The instrument grants the executive additional tools, including the ability to mobilize troops or restrict civil liberties, for a period of 90 days that can be extended.

On Saturday night, the Venezuelan Supreme Court ruled that Maduro’s kidnapping and rendition to US soil constituted a temporary absence and that Rodríguez was mandated to take over the presidency on an interim basis.

Footage surfaced Saturday evening showing Maduro being walked out of an airplane in New York. He was later taken to a DEA facility before being moved, along with Flores, to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. He made no statements but greeted DEA officers and appeared upbeat in photos, making a peace sign and holding his thumbs up.

The Venezuelan president was indicted by a New York district court on Saturday, with charges including “narcoterrorism conspiracy” and “possession of machine guns.” A hearing is reportedly scheduled for Monday.

For their part, Venezuela’s National BolivarianArmed Forces (FANB) likewise issued a communique on Sunday, rejecting the “cowardly kidnapping” of Maduro and Flores and reiterating its mission to “confront imperial aggression.”

The FANB voiced support for Rodríguez taking over the presidency on an acting basis and vowed to maintain readiness to preserve “peace and internal order.” 

The Defense Ministry has yet to provide a report on damages and casualties from the US strikes, though Sunday’s communiqué condemned the “cold-blooded murder” of members of Maduro’s security detail. Unconfirmed reports have put forward a figure of 80 deaths.

Venezuelan popular movements and political parties took to the streets for a second consecutive day on Sunday, holding marches and rallies in Caracas and other cities. Public transportation and retail functioned to a greater degree than on Saturday.

The US attacks also spurred numerous international solidarity demonstrations over the weekend. Crowds gathered in dozens of Latin American, European and US cities. A demonstration was called for Sunday outside the Brooklyn detention center where Maduro is being held.

The January 3 operation came on the heels of the largest ever US Caribbean military build-up, with Trump having previously ordered dozebs of strikes against small boats accused of carrying drugs, killing over 100 civilians. The US president has repeatedly expressed intentions of using military threats to extract favorable oil deals for US corporations.

In a Sunday interview, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned the acting government in Caracas to “make the right decisions” and affirmed that the US retained “leverage” mechanisms, including a naval blockade stopping oil exports.

Caracas, January 3, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan popular movements and international solidarity organizations have taken to the streets to condemn a US military attack against the country and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro.

Following the bombings and special operations raid in the early hours of January 3, pro-government collectives began to concentrate in Caracas near Miraflores Presidential Palace. Demonstrations were likewise registered in many other Venezuelan cities.

“Long live a free and revolutionary Venezuela,” grassroots leader Mariela Machado told press in the Caracas demonstration. “International institutions must stop being accomplices and take a stance because our people are being massacred.”

She went on to state that “the US government is not the world’s police” and demanded the safe return of the Venezuelan President.

Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López published statements in the early morning hours, urging the international community to take a stance against the US actions and calling for popular mobilization.

International solidarity organizations also set up emergency rallies in dozens of cities, including London, New York and several Latin American capitals.

US forces began the attack at 2 am local time with missiles fired against a number of Venezuela military installations in the capital and surrounding areas. Social media users broadcast fires and large columns of smoke emerging from Fuerte Tiuna, the main military installation in Caracas.

The port in La Guaira, an airbase in Higuerote, Miranda State, and a radar facility in El Hatillo, Eastern Caracas, were among the targets reportedly struck. Venezuelan authorities have not disclosed information concerning damages and casualties.

A few hours after the first bombings, US President Donald Trump announced that a special operations raid had kidnapped Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores and that the two were “flown out of the country.” The pair was reportedly taken aboard the USS Iwo Jima warship.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi stated that Maduro and Flores were indicted in a New York District Court on charges including “narco-terrorism conspiracy.” In recent years, US officials have repeatedly accused Maduro and other Venezuelan high-ranking officials of “flooding” the US with drugs. However, they have not presented any court-tested evidence, while UN and DEA reports have shown Venezuela to be a marginal player in global drug trafficking.

In a Saturday press conference, Trump stated that the US will “run” Venezuela until there are conditions for a “safe, proper and judicious transition.” He added that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials will be charged with “running the country.”

The US president reiterated claims to Venezuelan oil resources and threatened that Venezuela would have to “reimburse” the US for oil nationalizations and damages from alleged drug trafficking. Trump went on to say that Rubio had held talks with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, alleging that she had been sworn in and had vowed to accept US dictates.

Trump dismissed the idea of María Corina Machado taking power in the South American nation, affirming that the far-right leader lacks on-the-ground support. 

Washington’s military attack and special operations raid followed months of buildup and escalating regime-change threats against Caracas. US forces have amassed the largest military deployment in decades in the Caribbean Sea while also conducting dozens of bombings against small boats accused of narcotics trafficking.

The military operation drew widespread international condemnation from Latin America and elsewhere.

“The US bombings and Maduro’s capture are unacceptable,” Brazilian President Lula da Silva wrote on social media. “These actions are an affront to Venezuelan sovereignty and set an extremely dangerous precedent for the international community.”

Colombian, Mexican and Cuban leaders were among those to strongly reject US actions and demand respect for international law.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reportedly held a phone conversation with Vice President Rodríguez, reiterating Moscow’s support for the Venezuelan government and a call for dialogue.

For its part, the Chinese foreign ministry issued a statement “fiercely condemning the use of force against a sovereign nation.” Beijing urged Washington to cease its violations of international law and respect other countries’ sovereignty.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil held multiple phone conversations with counterparts from different countries who expressed their condemnation of the US attacks as violations of international law.

Caracas has likewise requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. Two prior meetings called by Venezuela saw China, Russia and other countries criticize the US’ military actions but ultimately no resolutions were put forward.

Washington’s unprovoked aggression against Venezuela, and the likely coming ground attack, are an attempt at reimposing “proud, stable democracy” in the country, in the words of the US front surrogate, Maria Corina Machado.

When you decode the meaning of those words and the pretexts put forth for US aggression, you will find a remarkable culture of terrorism and gangsterism on display. Let us take a look.

The initial pretext was that Venezuela was an exporting “narco-terrorist” state. The knowingly fraudulent story did not merit even laughter by US intelligence agencies and the DEA. In the DEA’s most recent report, Venezuela is mentioned in only a single paragraph. In fact, Venezuela did not merit even a single mention in the one-hundred pages long 2025 UN World Drug Report, just like the EU’s own annual drug assessment report.

Nevertheless, Western media still incessantly report the fabricated charges without comment, while omitting the conclusions from Western intelligence, since it reached the wrong conclusion. The servility could not be more startling.

US propaganda then had to shift its main focus back to its staple: Maduro the dictator must be removed. “Maduro ramps up repression in Venezuela,” noted CNN, which failed to mention that the country is, after all, under a multi-pronged attack by a superpower. 

CNN did not mention, either, that no opposition funded and directed by a hostile superpower would ever be tolerated in the West’s best friends, like Egypt, Israel, the Philippines and so on. Countries that routinely murder – not just imprison – their opposition under far less onerous circumstances. 

The thought that such “opposition” would parade the capital calling for the overthrow of the government in any of these states is plainly absurd. However, that is exactly what happened in Venezuela, with CIA-sponsored figurehead Juan Guaido in 2019. It is Venezuela alone that must live up to such standards.

The idea that democracy promotion could be the real motivation behind the hostility is too ridiculous to merit even a comment. After all, the West lends its full support and sends hundreds of billions in arms to ICJ- and ICC-indicted Israel, Saudi Arabia (which doesn’t even pretend to have elections), Egypt and so on. 

Incidentally, for those interested in actual election fraud in Latin America, there is certainly no shortage of issues to be concerned about. Namely, the election manipulations that are run out of Washington, which is by far the league leader. 

Just to pick some examples known to all media offices – though few, if any, care: Trump was effectively “bribing Honduran voters” to “restore [the] narcotrafficking government to power”. Trump demanded that they vote for Tito Asfura, the colleague of the indicted narco-trafficker he just pardoned, Juan Orlando Hernández. Or else the US would withhold aid to the country, effectively “threatening to destroy the Honduran economy unless the country elects the oligarch-run National Party”. “Trump deployed the same strategy in Argentina’s October 2025 midterm elections,” in which he threatened to withhold a $20 billion bailout, “successfully strong-arming voters there into backing the party of the country’s mentally unstable president, Javier Milei.”

With a naval armada outside their shores to display what will happen if countries disobey, Washington thus sends the appropriate message: “you are free to choose as long as it is the right guys; otherwise you will starve.”

Thus, no reason for going to war with Venezuela worthy even of consideration from anyone with two functioning brain cells has been put forth.

The actual reason is explained openly by the aggressors themselves. In Trump’s own words: “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over. We would have gotten all that oil. It would have been right next door.” More recently, perhaps tired of the “narco-terrorism” script, Trump conceded that he wants “the oil and land rights.”

Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar boasted that “Venezuela, for the American oil companies, will be a field day, because it will be more than a trillion dollars in economic activity.”

This pitch was further explained by Washington’s minion Machado in a speech to the America Business Forum. As soon as she leads a “proud, stable democracy” there will be a “massive privatization program,” offering “a $1.7 trillion opportunity.” “We will open markets … And American companies are in, you know, a super strategic position to invest. … This country, Venezuela, is going to be the brightest opportunity for investment of American companies,” which “are going to make a lot of money.” 

The only criticism found in the political and media establishment against an attack, then, is tactical concerns. Will it work? Will Trump get away with aggression?

Thus, coup plotter Elliott Abrams explained that Venezuela “previously was” a democracy, and “has a long democratic history,” with which he must mean as a US-run junta and staged colony, if words have any meaning whatsoever. If aggression is successful, “oil production can start rising again … As it was before the Chávez-Maduro years, Venezuela can be a major supplier of oil to the United States and a partner in Latin America.” Hopefully “Cuba, and Nicaragua” will fall too, but aggression could hurt American “clout on the international stage.” Abrams concludes by complaining that the “economic and diplomatic pressure we put on Maduro in the first term was simply not enough.”

“For 26 years, the U.S. has tried to restore democracy in Venezuela through negotiations, concessions, sanctions and a combination of carrots and sticks. Nothing has worked,” noted former OAS ambassador and Harvard lecturer Arturo McGields. 

An illegal economic siege, eradicating perhaps 75% of the country’s GDP, and which has killed tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians, a failed mercenary invasion, and numerous coup attempts are not wrong in principle, only tactically unfortunate, since none of it “has worked.”

The euphoria liberals display at this show of sadism is quite revealing. For example, Rebecca Heinrichs pointed out that Cuba could fall if Venezuela is sufficiently squeezed. ”If you pressure” Venezuela “so much” and eliminate “80 to 85% of the revenue” through the illegal naval blockade imposed on them, then ”you are immediately going to have further crises” for the civilian population, and ”they are going to feel that pressure even more, and they will blame Maduro” – Cuba-style, in other words. 

James Story, one of the key architects of the illegal regime change operations against Venezuela in recent years, wrote an op-ed repeating all the standard propaganda charges. Story gloated that the recent oil blockade on Venezuelan exports “is a more effective and acceptable way” of overthrowing the government, since “squeezing this revenue stream would” starve the population sufficiently so as to “recognize that life without him [Maduro] in power is preferable to him remaining”.

You will notice the transparent hypocrisy, since the US a month prior to its “total and complete blockade” on Venezuela denounced “Iran’s use of military forces to conduct an armed boarding and seizure of a commercial vessel in international waters [which] constitutes a blatant violation of international law, undermining freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce”. 

It is not that Western journalists do not know about Washington’s propaganda plot when it condemned Iran only to then conduct global piracy itself, since it was publicly reported. Rather, connecting the dots would expose the media as totally servile to state propaganda, and give the game away.

To be sure, there is nothing that causes more outrage than Venezuela supposedly collaborating with the “enemy states.” Even if the charges are true, this illustrates the leading principle that must be accepted if you wish to be part of the debate: no country, however weak, has the right to defend itself against unprovoked Western aggression.

Thus, Elliot Abrams demanded the US attack Venezuela due to its supposed “cooperation with China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia, which gives countries hostile to U.S. interests a base of operations on the South American mainland,” with weapons that can “reach U.S. territory from Venezuela”. Abrams has no issues with the “legality” of such strikes, only “doubts about the chances of success.” “Merely starving” the country “will not be enough: it must be forced out of power with military strikes, which will throw the regime’s support structures, including in the military, into disarray and make them fear for their own futures.” 

No doubt the Nazi press “criticized” Operation Barbarossa on the same grounds before invading the Soviet Union. Their ideological heirs have learned that “starving” the population is not enough to win; they must smash their opponents “and make them fear for their own futures.”

In fact, without a hint of irony, we read that it is Venezuela with “Castro’s Cuba” who are “attacking” the US “asymmetrically” in Machado’s words – not the other way around, of course. The goal of US aggression is to open “an extraordinary frontier for US investment in energy, infrastructure, technology and agriculture.” 

In short, Washington and its allies cannot tolerate that Venezuela is “associated with” those that the Mafia Don has prohibited, as liberal media darling David Frum put it. So the “goal is to restore the Venezuelan democracy that existed before [Hugo] Chávez and Maduro” – which, again, must refer to the US-directed junta and staged oligarchy.

This is what is called “public debate,” in which the outermost “critics” warn that Western aggression simply may not succeed, while the hawks joyfully celebrate that “military strikes” can “make them fear for their own futures.”

The deep totalitarian streak in Western intellectual culture is beautifully illustrated by these statements, as well as the reactions to them: nil. 

Loyal and brainwashed Westerners cannot notice that the same type of arguments could just as well be used by Putin if he wished to invade Sweden, Ayatollah Khamenei to invade Israel or Xi Jinping to invade Taiwan.

This shows that Western intellectuals reflexively view world order and violence the same way they claim Putin does: “we have our sphere of influence, and must boss it as we please.” Such simple observations cannot be uttered in cultivated circles, no matter how obvious they may be.

Through such means, the Western media have effectively become servants of one of the century’s textbook examples of an unprovoked campaign of aggression against a sovereign state.

Andi Olluri is a freelance writer on propaganda and foreign affairs, publishing mostly in European and occasionally in American leftist papers. In his professional life, he does research in epidemiology and evidence-based medicine, studying at Sahlgrenska Academy University Hospital (Gothenburg, Sweden).

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Caracas, December 30, 2025 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has reportedly bombed a target inside Venezuelan territory.

According to CNN, citing “sources familiar with the matter,” the CIA carried out a drone strike against a “remote dock on the Venezuelan.” US officials allegedly believed the facility was being used for drug storage and shipping.

There was reportedly no one present on site during the attack, which is only specified to have taken place “earlier this month.” A New York Times report, likewise relying on anonymous sources, presented similar claims and added that the strike took place last Wednesday.

US President Donald Trump first alluded to a purported strike inside Venezuelan territory during an interview on Friday, claiming that US forces had destroyed a “big facility where ships come from” two days earlier. 

Trump elaborated on a Monday press conference, adding that the site was along the Venezuelan shore and that there was a “big explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs.”

US agencies have not confirmed the attack, with the CIA, the White House and the Pentagon refusing comment. Analysts relying on open source data tracked no signs of an explosion on the Venezuelan coast in recent days.

For its part, Venezuelan authorities have not released any statements on the matter.

If confirmed, the land strikes would mark a significant escalation in the US’ military campaign against Venezuela. Since August, the Trump administration has amassed the largest build-up in decades in the Caribbean and launched dozens of strikes against small boats accused of narcotics trafficking, killing over 100 civilians in the process.

Trump has repeatedly vowed to bomb purported drug targets inside Venezuelan territory while escalating regime change threats against the Nicolás Maduro government. The White House allegedly approved lethal CIA operations in the country in October.

Despite recurrent “narcoterrorism” accusations against Maduro and other high-ranking Venezuelan officials, Washington has not provided court-tested evidence to back the claims. Specialized agencies have consistently shown Venezuela to play a marginal role in global drug trafficking.

In recent weeks, Trump has turned his discourse toward Venezuelan oil, claiming that the Caribbean nation had “stolen” oil rights from US corporations during nationalization processes in the 2000s and 1970s. 

The US president ordered a naval blockade against Venezuelan oil exports, with US forces seizing two oil tankers carrying Venezuelan crude in international waters earlier this month. A third vessel reportedly refused to be boarded and headed toward the Atlantic Ocean. According to Reuters, US forces have been ordered to enforce a “quarantine” of Venezuelan oil in the next two months in order to exacerbate the South American country’s economic struggles. 

A group of UN experts issued a statement on December 24 condemning the US’ maritime blockade as “violating fundamental rules of international law.”

“The illegal use of force, and threats to use further force at sea and on land, gravely endanger the human right to life and other rights in Venezuela and the region,” the experts affirmed, while urging UN member-states to take measures to stop the blockade and the vessel bombings.

The attempted blockade builds on widespread US economic sanctions, particularly targeting the Venezuelan oil industry, the country’s most important revenue source. US coercive measures have been classified as “collective punishment” and found responsible for tens of thousands of civilian deaths.

For its part, the Maduro government has condemned US “acts of piracy” in capturing oil tankers and blasted the Trump administration’s actions as blatant attempts to seize Venezuela’s natural resources.

Caracas has received diplomatic backing from its main allies, with China and Russia both condemning Washington’s military escalations as violations of international law. However, a recent UN Security Council meeting convened by Venezuela produced no resolutions.

Venezuelanalysis writer and editor Ricardo Vaz joined Sharmini Peries on theAnalysis.news to discuss the latest developments from Venezuela, including Washington’s military buildup, Caracas’ reaction and the role played by the far-right opposition.

Source: theAnalysis.news

Since 2002, the date of the 47-hour coup against Hugo Chávez, Washington has unsuccessfully sponsored and supported regime change in Venezuela time and again. In the name of human rights, freedom, and democracy, economic sanctions, color revolutions, oil strikes, recognition of illegitimate leaders, theft of foreign currency and infrastructure, assassination attempts, media offensives, military uprisings, and threats of ground invasion have been instigated or combined without interruption.

Many of these attacks, aimed at seizing the largest oil reserves on the planet, are acts of international piracy. They have caused immense damage to the country and enormous suffering to its people. They have resulted in billions of dollars in lost oil revenue. Countless Venezuelans have been forced to migrate to other nations to survive. Meanwhile, a segment of the old, corrupt oligarchy lives the high life in their mansions in Miami and Madrid.

But despite the lethality of the punishments and the harshness of the siege, the Bolivarian Revolution continues. Certainly, some Chavista political leaders have betrayed the cause. A few military and intelligence officers have gone over to the enemy ranks. Intellectuals have succumbed to the siren song of metropolitan power. But, against all odds, the majority of the population draws a line in the sand against gunboat democracy; they remain loyal to a project that allowed them to recover their dignity and advance in popular power.

For 27 years, Bolivarianism has won almost every election. Desperate in the face of this setback, the empire has tried other formulas for regime change. In December 2007, Enrique Krauze laid his cards on the table. “If Hugo Chávez has thought of turning Venezuela into a Cuba with oil, the Venezuelans who oppose him have discovered the antidote. It is the student movement,” he wrote. So the far right latched onto this movement and tested an insurrectionary scheme. However, the reactionary forces clashed with a reality that wasn’t in their playbooks. So they left to make their fortunes abroad.

All imperial attempts at regime change have run up against what, until now, seems insurmountable: the unity of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB). There is not a single indicator showing any internal divisions. Part of the key to this unity is the development of a new military doctrine known as the Comprehensive Defense of the Nation. This doctrine seeks to confront the US military threat based on a set of actions designed to deter a technologically and numerically superior enemy.

This strategy has three central elements: strengthening military power, deepening the civil-military union (between the people and the soldiers), and bolstering popular participation in national defense tasks. Previously, the armed forces were fragmented into divisions and brigades. Commander Chávez organized the country into regions, and each region has a military structure with all its components: Army, Navy, Air Force, National Guard, militias, and the people.

If someone attacks a region, that region has the capacity to defend itself. It doesn’t need to move units from elsewhere. On February 23, 2019, under the pretext of bringing in humanitarian aid from Colombia, the Contras and Washington attempted to establish a beachhead in Táchira that would give the illegitimate Juan Guaidó control of a strip of Venezuelan territory to establish a “seat of government.” For 17 hours, fierce clashes erupted between Chavistas and Venezuelan paramilitaries and guarimberos, who operated mostly from the Colombian side. The skirmish ended with the opposition’s defeat.

There, amidst the events, at the military installation beside the Simón Bolívar Bridge, I spoke with Diosdado Cabello, then president of the National Constituent Assembly. Most of the FANB (National Bolivarian Armed Forces) chiefs were also present, whom he introduced to me as his friends and as longtime collaborators of Hugo Chávez. I asked him about the resolve of his troops. In good spirits, he explained:

“President Maduro has visited every barracks. He shows up in the early morning. He arrives, runs with them, shares, does military exercises with them. We have total contact with them. We are like brothers. Many of us have been in this movement since we were children. We support each other and follow each other. We are a family. They will not break us…”

Regarding the role of the militias, he told me: “For the friends of the State, they are a diamond. For the enemies of the State, they are the worst news.” A military intervention by a foreign country in Venezuela is very complicated, and not only because of the civil-military alliance.

Caracas has modernized its weaponry by acquiring it from Russia, China, and Iran, with whom it also maintains an alliance. Furthermore, it covers an area of ​​almost one million square kilometers. Its topography is highly diverse: the Andes mountain range, the Coastal Range, and the Guiana Shield, along with the extensive Orinoco River basin. It boasts 4,208 kilometers of coastline and dense rainforests. The poor neighborhoods of cities like Caracas are dangerous. It shares a 2,341-kilometer border with Colombia, a 2,199-kilometer border with Brazil, and a 789-kilometer border with Guyana.

No neighboring country desires armed conflict on its borders. Venezuela possesses the men, weapons, determination, and territory capable of sustaining a prolonged popular resistance, turning any attempt to occupy the country into a quagmire for whoever tries it. Regardless of what might happen on the day of the occupation, the true military challenge for an invading force lies in what to do in the days that follow. However, beyond what may happen in the future, in Venezuela, today is the time for peace.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Luis Hernández Navarro is the Opinion editor of La Jornada, and the author of numerous books, including Chiapas: La nueva lucha india and Self-Defense in Mexico: Indigenous Community Policing and the New Dirty Wars.

Translated by Mexico Solidarity Media.

Source: La Jornada

The loudest question in Washington right now is whether Donald Trump is going to invade Venezuela. The quieter, and far more dangerous, reality is this: he probably won’t. Not because he cares about Venezuelan lives, but because he has found a strategy that is cheaper, less politically risky at home, and infinitely more devastating: economic warfare.

Venezuela has already survived years of economic warfare. Despite two decades of sweeping U.S. sanctions designed to strangle its economy, the country has found ways to adapt: oil has moved through alternative markets; communities have developed survival strategies; people have endured shortages and hardship with creativity and resilience. This endurance is precisely what the Trump administration is trying to break.

Rather than launching a military invasion that would provoke public backlash and congressional scrutiny, Trump is doubling down on something more insidious: total economic asphyxiation. By tightening restrictions on Venezuelan oil exports, its primary source of revenue, Trump’s administration is deliberately pushing the country toward a full-scale humanitarian collapse.

In recent months, U.S. actions in the Caribbean Sea, including the harassment and interdiction of oil tankers linked to Venezuela, signal a shift from financial pressure to illegal maritime force. These operations have increasingly targeted Venezuela’s ability to move its own resources through international waters. Oil tankers have been delayed, seized, threatened with secondary sanctions, or forced to reroute under coercion. The objective is strangulation.

This is illegal under international law.

The freedom of navigation on the high seas is a cornerstone of international maritime law, enshrined in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Unilateral interdiction of civilian commercial vessels, absent a UN Security Council mandate, violates the principle of sovereign equality and non-intervention. The extraterritorial enforcement of U.S. sanctions, punishing third countries and private actors for engaging in lawful trade with Venezuela, has no legal basis. It is coercion, plain and simple. More importantly, the intent is collective punishment.

By preventing Venezuela from exporting oil, which is the revenue that funds food imports, medicine, electricity, and public services, the Trump administration is knowingly engineering conditions of mass deprivation. Under international humanitarian law, collective punishment is prohibited precisely because it targets civilians as a means to achieve political ends. And if this continues, we will see horrific images: empty shelves, malnourished children, overwhelmed hospitals, people scavenging for food. Scenes that echo those coming out of Gaza, where siege and starvation have been normalized as weapons of war.

U.S. actions will undoubtedly cause millions of Venezuelans to flee the country, likely seeking to travel to the United States, which they are told is safe for their families, full of economic opportunities, and security. But Trump is sealing the U.S. border, cutting off asylum pathways, and criminalizing migration. When people are starved, when economies are crushed, when daily life becomes unlivable, people move. Blocking Venezuelans from entering the United States while systematically destroying the conditions that allow them to survive at home means that neighboring countries like Colombia, Brazil, and Chile will be asked to absorb the human cost of Washington’s decisions. This is how empire outsources the damage. But these countries have their own economic woes, and mass displacement of Venezuelans will destabilize the entire region.

Venezuela is a test case. What is being refined now—economic siege without formal war, maritime coercion without declared blockade, starvation without bombs—is a blueprint. Any country that refuses compliance with Washington’s political and economic demands should be paying attention. This will be the map for 21st-century regime change.

And this is how Trump can reassure the United States Congress that he is not “going to war” with Venezuela. He doesn’t need to. Economic strangulation carries none of the immediate political costs of a military intervention, even as it inflicts slow, widespread devastation. There are no body bags returning to U.S. soil, no draft, no televised bombing campaigns. Just a steady erosion of life elsewhere.

Trump’s calculation is brutally simple: make Venezuelans so miserable that they will rise up and overthrow Maduro. That has been the same calculation behind U.S. policy toward Cuba for six decades—and it has failed. Economic strangulation doesn’t bring democracy; it brings suffering. And even if, by some grim chance, it did succeed in toppling the government, the likely result would not be freedom but chaos—possibly a protracted civil war that could devastate the country, and the region, for decades.

People in Venezuela celebrate Christmas and New Year’s gathered around the table to eat hallacas wrapped with care, slices of pan de jamón, and dulce de lechoza. They will share stories, dance to gaitas, and make a toast with Ponche Crema.

But if this economic siege continues, if Venezuelan oil is fully cut off, if the country is denied the means to feed itself, if hunger is allowed to finish what bombs are no longer politically useful to accomplish, then this Christmas may be remembered as one of the last Venezuelans were able to celebrate in anything resembling normal life, at least in the near future.

Polls consistently show that nearly 70 percent of people in the United States oppose a military intervention in Venezuela. War is recognized for what it is: violent, destructive, unacceptable. But sanctions are treated differently. Many people believe they are a harmless alternative, a way to apply “pressure” without bloodshed.

That assumption is dangerously wrong. According to a comprehensive study in medical journal The Lancet, sanctions increase mortality at levels comparable to armed conflict, hitting children and the elderly first. Sanctions do not avoid civilian harm – they systematically produce it.

If we oppose war because it kills, we must also oppose sanctions that do the same, only more quietly, more slowly, and with far less accountability. If we don’t act against economic warfare with the same urgency we reserve for bombs and invasions, then sanctions will remain the preferred weapon: politically convenient but equally deadly.

Michelle Ellner is the Latin America Campaign Coordinator at CODEPINK. Born in Venezuela, she holds a bachelor’s degree in Languages and International Affairs from Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). Her work focuses on U.S. foreign policy, economic sanctions, and solidarity with Latin America and the Caribbean.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Source: Code Pink

Mexico City, Mexico, December 11, 2025 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuela accused the United States of committing “international piracy” after US authorities seized an oil tanker in the Caribbean, denouncing the action as part of a long-running US campaign to strip the country of its energy resources.

US President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Washington seized an oil tanker sanctioned by the US off Venezuela’s coast. He described the vessel as the largest oil tanker ever seized and indicated that the United States would retain the crude aboard. 

The move was met with a sharp rebuke from Caracas.

“The Bolivarian Government will appeal to all existing international bodies to denounce this grave international crime and will defend its sovereignty with absolute determination,” read the communiqué. “Venezuela will not allow any foreign power to take from the Venezuelan people what belongs to them by historical and constitutional right.”

According to Reuters, the “Skipper” tanker loaded an estimated 1.8 million barrels of crude at Venezuela’s José terminal early this month before unloading 200,000 to a Cuba-bound ship. The remaining cargo was believed to be destined for Asian markets. The move was viewed as aggression against Cuba as well, which relies on Venezuelan oil shipments for energy and income.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parilla condemned “the vile act of piracy” as a violation of international law.

Michael Galant, member of the Progressive International Secretariat, said that calling the US seizure an act of piracy fell short.

“This is the deliberate immiseration of the Cuban people, already suffering debilitating fuel shortages, blackouts, and a chikungunya outbreak thanks to the US blockade,” wrote Galant on social media.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi posted a video on social media on Wednesday evening showing armed US forces boarding the vessel. There was reportedly no resistance from the crew nor any casualties. The assault involved Coast Guard members, Marines, and special forces who were seen in the video descending from helicopters onto the ship’s deck.

The seizure of the tanker comes only days after Delaware District Judge Leonard P. Stark approved the sale of Venezuela’s US-based refiner CITGO to Amber Energy, a process that Venezuela called a “barbaric theft” of a Venezuelan asset via a “fraudulent process.” 

In past years, the United States has intercepted shipments of Iranian fuel bound for Venezuela, ultimately taking control of the gasoline and selling it at auction. While US-led sanctions have created significant challenges for the sale of Venezuelan oil on international markets, Wednesday’s seizure marks the first time the US has directly impeded a crude shipment of from Venezuela. Reuters reported that buyers in Asia were demanding further discounts on Venezuelan crude as a result of the seizure.

Trump’s latest move is a significant escalation in the latest US effort to oust the Nicolás Maduro government from power. Since September, the US has built up its forces in the region, including the mobilization of the Gerard Ford Carrier Fleet, and has carried out deadly strikes on boats that the administration claims are tied to drug trafficking. 

Washington’s decision to seize the tanker drew scrutiny from US lawmakers who have questioned the true intentions behind military mobilization and campaign in the Caribbean.

“If Trump’s aggression in the Caribbean is about drugs, why did he just seize an oil tanker?” asked US Representative Nydia Velázquez. “This is yet another dangerous escalation that brings us closer to a regime change war.”

Senator Mark Warner, who serves as the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, questioned how the US was able to seize an oil tanker but has opted to strike alleged drug smuggling boats from the skies without an effort to arrest the occupants or seize the purported contraband. 

Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen spoke Wednesday on the floor of Congress to call on lawmakers to stop Trump’s ”regime change war” against Venezuela.

Caracas maintains that the US attacks are motivated by a desire for regime change in order to secure access to Venezuela’s natural resources.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, speaking from Oslo where she traveled to receive her Nobel Peace Prize, publicly endorsed the seizure of the tanker as a “very necessary step.”

Juan González, Joe Biden’s former chief Latin America adviser and the architect behind the former president’s Venezuela policy, said that a US Naval blockade was “potentially a viable option” despite admitting that it would constitute an act of war against Venezuela.

The White House has repeatedly threatened further escalation, including land strikes. The New York Times reported that US officials expected additional seizures in the coming weeks. This action would constitute an act of force and place additional pressure against Venezuela’s oil industry.

The United Nations (UN) Charter expressly prohibits all Member States from using or threatening force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state. Blockades imposed without a declaration of war or that are not sanctioned by the UN Security Council are not considered legal. Likewise, UN independent experts have consistently maintained that the extraterritorial application of unilateral sanctions is contrary to international law.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.

On October 19, the Venezuelan people celebrated the sanctification of José Gregorio Hernández, the “doctor of the poor.”

With his beatification process launched under Pope Francis, the first Venezuelan to hold this honor was in a way an “exception” to the Catholic Church’s rules: the threshold is two “miracles” attributed to the candidate, and Hernández only has one. 

Now, during the holiday season and with the year drawing to a close, a second miracle comes to mind: halting a foreign military operation against our country and staving off the collapse of the Venezuelan economy in the wake of the US naval blockade.

Why turn to José Gregorio for this? It actually makes perfect sense. In December 1902, German, British and Italian ships joined forces to blockade Venezuela’s coasts. It was a tactic to force the Cipriano Castro government to pay back exorbitant debts accrued by its predecessors.

In response, Castro issued his famous proclamation, “The foreigner’s insolent boots have desecrated the sacred soil of the Homeland!”, and called for national unity. His call was overwhelmingly backed, even by his adversaries.

Students, professionals and even doctors like José Gregorio Hernández were quick to enlist in a voluntary militia. Nationalist fervor, inspired by the memories of the independence struggle and figures like Bolívar and Ayacucho, contrasted with Venezuela’s military shortcomings in facing the powerful foreign fleets. History does have a way of repeating itself.

In spite of his pacifism, commitment to medicine and strong religious beliefs, Hernández did not waver for a second in answering the nation’s call.

After a lot of “gunboat diplomacy,” the Venezuelan government held its ground and ensured that the debts were subjected to international mediation. 

The doctor of the poor, fortunately, did not have to change his stethoscope for a rifle. In contrast, he managed to do what we all want to do today: continue working for our country and its people.

Hernández studied in Europe and was a pioneer of experimental medical research in Venezuela. He created the histology, experimental physiology and bacteriology branch in the Central University of Venezuela. He introduced the use of the microscope and promoted modern scientific methods in the country.

Still, it’s not so much these achievements that have him worshiped by Venezuelans. Rather, it was his immense generosity, which included seeing patients free of charge and even leaving a little bag with money outside his office so that the poorest patients could buy medicines and food. Hernández saw medicine as a tool at the service of the majority.

Therefore, after his death in 1919, former president and writer Rómulo Gallegos wrote: “It wasn’t the common pain of losing a dedicated and eminent citizen, but a deeper, nobler feeling, something that poured in generous torrents.”

As time went on, this feeling would only grow. Thousands of faithful began to attribute “impossible” medical feats to Hernández; they printed out prayer cards with his face, built little statues to put on bedside tables, placed him on personal altars and filled churches with plaques and candles to acknowledge the “divine favors” bestowed.

The myth began to spread amongst the people. In contrast, Catholic authorities spent decades grappling with the phenomenon. But he was already a saint for the masses. Unlike the Church, he actually delivered…

In fact, Venezuelan religious authorities tried to undermine their believers’ wishes by claiming that Hernández could not be a saint. They claimed his figure was used by “sorcerers,” they disparaged him by claiming he was gay, forbade priests from naming him in public events, and even attempted to censor a song by Puerto Rican musician Daniel Santos dedicated to him.

But Venezuelans don’t really care that José Gregorio had no known love relationships, that he liked to dye his grey hairs or that he dressed outlandishly. On the contrary, we think that is awesome. There is nothing more Venezuelan than ignoring the norms!

The Venezuelan people looked at his virtues and, just in case, made up new ones, until he was consolidated as a religious, kind and serene myth, one who was dedicated to the common good. In the “popular pantheon” he stands alongside figures like independence hero Simón Bolívar, a military genius who traveled the entire continent on horseback several times.

Some historians posit that the peoples create myths that work as role models and express their inner beliefs. I think that’s a correct and very inspired conclusion. In that light, we have quite a spectrum of heroes. It goes from Bolívar, a republican warrior, all the way to José Gregorio Hernández, the pacifist healer. On one hand, a man who fought to liberate people from colonialism, and on the other, a man who heals them; one who proffered great victory speeches and one who triumphed quietly in a laboratory. But one thing they, and all our other heroes, have in common is that they never hesitated to defend the homeland against outside threats.

It is worth clarifying that the peoples, and not “miracles,” are responsible for turning the wheels of history. But with a bloodthirsty maniac like Trump in the White House, there is no harm in reaching out to divine entities as well…

José Gregorio Hernández, like Bolívar and so many others, bequeathed us a lot more than statues and official celebrations. They left us the example of fighting for something bigger than us, a nation that belongs to everyone. And facing a real imperialist threat, resistance is not optional. The struggle continues.

Jessica Dos Santos is a Venezuelan university professor, journalist and writer whose work has appeared in outlets such as RT, Épale CCS magazine and Investig’Action. She is the author of the book “Caracas en Alpargatas” (2018). She’s won the Aníbal Nazoa Journalism Prize in 2014 and received honorable mentions in the Simón Bolívar National Journalism prize in 2016 and 2018.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Caracas, December 12, 2025 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The US Treasury Department levied new sanctions against the Venezuelan oil industry as the Trump White House looks to strangle the Caribbean nation’s most important revenue source.

On Thursday, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) blacklisted six shipping companies for allegedly transporting Venezuelan crude. OFAC likewise identified six tankers, one from each sanctioned firm, as blocked property.

“Today’s action also targets Venezuela’s oil sector, which continues to fund Maduro’s illegitimate regime,” the US Treasury stated in a press release.

The Trump administration’s latest coercive measures mark an escalation in its efforts to target Venezuela’s oil industry. During his first term, Trump introduced a “maximum pressure” campaign that included financial sanctions, an export embargo and secondary sanctions against Venezuela’s oil sector.

In his second term, the White House withdrew Chevron’s license to extract and export crude from its ventures in Venezuela before issuing a new, limited waiver in May.

The latest sanctions come amid a large-scale US military buildup and deadly operations in the Caribbean under a self-declared anti-narcotics mission. However, reports from specialized agencies have contradicted the White House’s “narcoterrorism” accusations against Caracas.

Trump has issued repeated threats to attack purported drug targets inside Venezuelan territory. Analysts and political figures have argued that Washington’s true goal is regime change in order to take control of Venezuelan natural resources.

On Wednesday, the US Coast Guard led the seizure of an oil tanker carrying Venezuelan crude. The Skipper, which had been blacklisted by the US Treasury in 2021 for allegedly transporting Iranian crude, was commandeered in international waters while carrying an estimated 1.6 million barrels of crude bound for Asian markets. 

Caracas condemned the move as “international piracy” and vowed to denounce it before international bodies. US officials told Reuters that more seizures are expected in the near future, while former Biden administration advisor Juan González raised the prospect of a naval blockade against the South American country.

Washington’s tanker drew widespread rejection, with US anti-war collective Code Pink calling it “21st century piracy.” The American Association of Jurists likewise issued a statement condemning US actions as illegal and a violation of international law.

US authorities had previously seized Venezuela-bound Iranian fuel in 2020. In November, a US warship blocked the path of a Russian tanker, forcing it to make a U-turn before eventually reaching its destination in eastern Venezuela.

Thursday’s coercive measures likewise included individual sanctions against Ramón Carretero, Carlos Malpica, Efrain Campo and Franqui Flores. Carretero, a Panamanian national, was targeted for alleged involvement in Venezuelan oil sales.

Malpica, Campo and Flores are nephews of Venezuelan First Lady and National Assembly Deputy Cilia Flores. Malpica had been previously designated in 2017 before being withdrawn from OFAC’s List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN List) in 2022. Campo and Flores were serving 18-year sentences on drug trafficking charges when they were released by the Biden administration in a prisoner exchange in 2022.

The sanctioned companies and individuals will see any US-based assets frozen, while US persons and firms are barred from conducting any business with them.

Oil production remains stable

Amidst recent US threats and escalatory actions, Venezuela’s oil sector has maintained a steady output level.

According to OPEC, production stood at 934,000 barrels per day (bpd) in November, slightly below 961,000 bpd in October, as measured by secondary sources. Venezuela’s oil industry recovered from decades-low output levels in 2020 but has not managed to surpass the 1 million bpd threshold.

In contrast, state oil company PDVSA reported a higher output of 1.14 million bpd in November. The direct and secondary measurements have differed over time due to disagreements on the inclusion of natural gas liquids and condensates.

The recent tanker seizure is expected to hit Venezuelan oil revenues through higher shipping and insurance costs. PDVSA is forced to rely on intermediaries and levy significant discounts in order to place crude cargoes in international markets.

An oversupply of sanctioned crude from Iran and Russia has likewise cut into PDVSA’s profit margins in recent weeks.

Edited by Cira Pascual Marquina in Caracas.

Ever since Hugo Chávez came to power in 1998, the United States has attempted to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution. They have tried everything short of a full-scale military invasion: a military coup, selecting a substitute president, cutting off access to the global financial system, imposing layers of sanctions, sabotaging the electricity grid, sending in mercenaries, and attempting to assassinate its leaders. If you can think of a method to overthrow a government, the United States has likely tried it against Venezuela.

However, in 2025, the escalation became unmistakable. The US sent its warships to patrol Venezuela’s coast, began sinking small boats and killing those on board as they left the South American mainland, and seized an oil tanker bound for Cuba. The quantity of attacks on Venezuela has increased, suggesting the quality of the threats has now reached a different magnitude. It feels as if the United States is preparing for a full-blown invasion of the country.

Donald Trump came to office saying that he was opposed to military interventions that did not further US interests, which is why he called the illegal US war on Iraq a waste of “blood and treasure”. This does not mean Trump is against the use of the US military – he deployed it in Afghanistan (remember the “Mother of all Bombs”) and Yemen, and has fully backed the US/Israeli genocide against the Palestinians. His formula is not for or against war categorically, but about what the US would gain from it. With Iraq, he stated that the problem was not the war itself, but the failure to seize Iraqi oil. Had the US taken Iraq’s oil, Trump would likely have been in Baghdad, ready to build – with Iraqi treasure – a Trump hotel on one of the former presidential properties.

Naturally, the US military buildup in the Caribbean is about Venezuelan oil – the largest known reserves in the world. The US-backed politician, Maria Corina Machado, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just this week after supporting the Israeli genocide and calling for a US invasion of her own country, is on record promising to open up her country’s resources to foreign capital. She would welcome the extraction of Venezuela’s wealth rather than allow its social wealth to better the lives of its own people, as is the goal of the Bolivarian Revolution started by Hugo Chávez. A hypothetical “President Machado” would immediately surrender any claim to the Essequibo region and grant ExxonMobil full command of Venezuela’s oil reserves. This is certainly the prize.

But it is not the immediate spur. A close reading of the 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States shows that there is a renewed emphasis on the Western Hemisphere. The Trump Corollary to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine is clear: the Western Hemisphere must be under US control, and the United States will do what it takes to ensure that only pro-US politicians hold power. It is worth reading that section of the National Security Strategy:

“After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.”

When Argentina faced local elections, Trump warned that the US would cut off external financing if candidates opposing pro-US President Javier Milei lost. In Honduras, Trump intervened directly to oppose the Libre Party, even offering to release a convicted drug trafficker (and former President). The United States is moving aggressively because it has accurately assessed the weakness of the Pink Tide and the strength of a new, far-right “Angry Tide”. The emergence of right-wing governments across South America, Central America, and the Caribbean has emboldened the US to squeeze Venezuela and thereby weaken Cuba – the two major poles of the Latin American left. Overturning these revolutionary processes would allow a full-scale Monroe Doctrine domination of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Since the 1990s, the United States began to speak of Latin America as a partner for shared prosperity, emphasizing globalization over direct control. Now, the language has changed. As the Trump Corollary asserts: “We want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets and that supports critical supply chains…We want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations.” Latin America is seen as a battlefield for geopolitical competition against China and a source of threats like immigration and drug trafficking. The attack on Venezuela and Cuba is not merely an assault on these two countries; it is the opening salvo of direct US intervention on behalf of the Angry Tide. This will not deliver better lives for the population, but greater wealth for US corporations and the oligarchies of Latin America.

Trump is ready to revive the belief that any problem can be solved by military force, even when other tools exist. The Trump Corollary promises to use its “military system superior to any country in the world” to steal the hemisphere’s resources.

The aggression against Venezuela is not a war against Venezuela alone. It is a war against all of Latin America.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power. Chelwa and Prashad will publish How the International Monetary Fund is Suffocating Africa later this year with Inkani Books.

Source: Globetrotter

Caracas, December 23, 2025 (venezuelanalysis.com) – US President Donald Trump made new regime change threats against Venezuela and President Nicolás Maduro.

In a Monday press conference, Trump answered “probably” when asked if Washington intended to oust the Venezuelan leader but said it was up to Maduro to leave power.

“That’s up to him what he wants to do. I think it’d be smart for him to do that. But again, we’re gonna find out,” the US president told reporters in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.

Trump went on to warn the Venezuelan president not to “play tough.” “If he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’s ever able to play tough,” he said.

The US president also said that land strikes against alleged drug cartels would start soon. He has issued such a threat on repeated occasions since September. He likewise repeated past unfounded claims that Venezuela sent “millions of people” to the US, many of them prisoners and mental patients.

Trump’s escalated rhetoric against Caracas followed ramped-up efforts to enforce a naval blockade and paralyze Venezuelan oil exports. On Saturday, the US Coast Guard boarded and seized the Centuries tanker east of Barbados in the Caribbean Sea.

The Panama-flagged ship had recently loaded a reported 1.8 million barrels of Merey crude at José terminal in eastern Venezuela for delivery in China. According to maritime vessel sources, the tanker is owned by a Hong Kong company and had transported Venezuelan oil several times in recent years. 

The takeover operation was led by the US Coast Guard, with White House officials sharing footage of the boarding on social media.

The Centuries’ seizure followed a similar operation targeting the Skipper tanker on December 10. However, unlike the Skipper, the Centuries was not blacklisted by the US Treasury Department. 

US officials referred to the tanker as transporting “sanctioned oil.” Analysts argued that the ambiguous definition is meant to allow US authorities to go after any vessel moving Venezuelan crude in an effort to drive shipping companies away from the Caribbean nation’s oil sector.

The White House’s threats and vessel seizures have already led several tankers to reverse course while en route to Venezuela, with customers reportedly demanding greater oil discounts in Venezuelan crude purchases. The South American oil industry might soon be forced to cut back production if it runs out of storage space.

On Sunday, US forces attempted to board a third tanker, the Guyana-flagged Bella 1 that was headed to Venezuela to load oil. However, the ship’s captain allegedly refused to allow the US Coast Guard’s boarding and turned the vessel back toward the Atlantic Ocean. According to reports, US forces continue to pursue the Bella 1.

Trump announced a naval blockade while demanding that Venezuela return “oil, land and other assets” that were “stolen,” in reference to nationalizations in past decades. Foreign corporations that saw their assets expropriated either agreed to compensation or pursued international arbitration.

The tanker seizures, alongside renewed sanctions targeting the Venezuelan oil industry, came amid a massive US military deployment in the Caribbean on the edge of Venezuelan territory. The build-up was originally declared as an anti-narcotics mission before Washington shifted the discourse toward oil and regime-change.

China and Russia express support

The Venezuelan government has condemned the US military threats and attacks against the oil industry. In a communique issued on Saturday, Caracas decried the second tanker seizure as a “serious act of piracy” and vowed to denounce it before multilateral bodies.

In recent days, the Maduro government received backing from China and Russia, two of its most important allies.

In a Monday press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian criticized the tanker seizures as violations of international law and stated Beijing’s opposition to “unilateral and illegal actions.” The official urged a response from the international community.

Likewise on Monday, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil held a phone call with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. According to Gil, Moscow’s top diplomat reiterated support for Venezuela in the face of “US hostilities.”

The UN Security Council is scheduled to meet on Tuesday afternoon at Venezuela’s request to address the most recent US escalations.

In our Donald-in-Wonderland world, the US is at war with Venezuela while still grasping for a public rationale. The horrific human toll is real – over a 100,000 fatalities from illegal sanctions and over a hundred from more recent “kinetic strikes.” Yet the officially stated justification for the US empire’s escalating offensive remains elusive. 

The empire once spun its domination as “democracy promotion.” Accordingly, State Department stenographers such as The Washington Post framed the US-backed coup in Venezuela – which temporarily overthrew President Hugo Chávez – as an attempt to “restore a legitimate democracy.” The ink had barely dried on The New York Timeseditorial of April 13, 2002 – which legitimized that imperial “democratic” restoration – before the Venezuelan people spontaneously rose up and reinstated their elected president.

When the America Firsters captured the White House, Washington’s worn-out excuse of the “responsibility to protect,” so beloved by the Democrats, was banished from the realm along with any pretense of altruism. Not that the hegemon’s actions were ever driven by anything other than self-interest. The differences between the two wings of the imperial bird have always been more rhetorical than substantive. 

Confronted by Venezuela’s continued resistance, the new Trump administration retained the policy of regime change but switched the pretext to narcotics interdiction. The Caribbean was cast as a battlefield in a renewed “war on drugs.” Yet with Trump’s pardon of convicted narco-trafficker and former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández – among many other contradictions – the alibi was wearing thin.

Venezuelan oil tankers blockaded

The ever-mercurial US president flipped the narrative on December 16, announcing on Truth Social that the US would blockade Venezuelan oil tankers. He justified this straight-up act of war with the striking claim that Venezuela had stolen “our oil, our land, and other assets.”

For the record, Venezuela had nationalized its petroleum industry half a century ago. Foreign companies were compensated.

This presidential social media post followed an earlier one, issued two weeks prior, ordering the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela “closed in its entirety.” The US had also seized an oil tanker departing Venezuela, struck several alleged drug boats, and continued to build up naval forces in the region.

In response to the maritime threat, President Nicolás Maduro ordered the Venezuelan Navy to escort the tankers. The Pentagon was reportedly caught by surprise. China, Mexico, Brazil, BRICS, Turkey, along with international civil society, condemned the escalation. Russia warned the US not to make a “fatal mistake.”

The New York Times reported a “backfire” of nationalist resistance to US aggression among the opposition in Venezuela. Popular demonstrations in support of Venezuela erupted throughout the Americas in Argentina, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, and the US.

Trump’s phrasing about Venezuela’s resources is not incidental. It reveals an assumption that precedes and structures the policy itself: that Venezuelan sovereignty is conditional, subordinate to US claims, and revocable whenever it conflicts with Yankee economic or strategic interests. This marks a shift in emphasis, not in substance; drugs have receded from center stage, replaced by oil as the explicit casus belli.

The change is revealing. When Trump speaks of “our” oil and land, he collapses the distinction between corporate access, geopolitical leverage, and national entitlement. Venezuelan resources are no longer considered merely mismanaged or criminally exploited; they are portrayed as property wrongfully withheld from its rightful owner.

The day after his Truth Social post, Trump’s “most pointless prime-time presidential address ever delivered in American history” (in the words of rightwing blogger Matt Walsh) did not even mention the war on Venezuela. Earlier that same day, however, two House resolutions narrowly failed that would have restrained Trump from continuing strikes on small boats and from exercising war powers without congressional approval.

Speaking against the restraining resolutions, Rep. María Elvira Salazar – the equivalent of Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen and one of the far-right self-described “Crazy Cubans” in Congress – hailed the 1983 Grenada and 1989 Panama invasions as models. She approvingly noted both were perpetrated without congressional authorization and suggested Venezuela should be treated in the same way.

The votes showed that nearly half of Congress is critical – compared to 70% of the general public – but their failure also allows Trump to claim that Congress reviewed his warlike actions and effectively granted him a mandate to continue.

Non-international armed conflict

In this Trumpian Wonderland, a naval blockade with combat troops rappelling from helicopters to seize ships becomes merely a “non-international armed conflict” not involving an actual country. The enemy is not even an actual flesh and blood entity but a tactic – narco-terrorism.

Trump posted: “Venezuelan Regime has been designated a FOREIGN TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.” Yet FTOs are non-state actors lacking sovereign immunities conferred by either treaties or UN membership. Such terrorist labels are not descriptive instruments but strategic ones, designed to foreclose alternatives short of war.

In a feat of rhetorical alchemy, the White House designated fentanyl a “weapon of mass destruction.” Trump accused Venezuela of flooding the US with the deadly synthetic narcotic, when his own Drug Enforcement Administration says the source is Mexico. This recalls a previous disastrous regime-change operation in Iraq, also predicated on lies about WMDs.

Like the Cheshire Cat, presidential chief of staff Susie Wiles emerges as the closest to a reliable narrator in a “we’re all mad here” regime. She reportedly said Trump “wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle,” openly acknowledging that US policy has always been about imperial domination.

The oil is a bonus for the hegemon. But even if Venezuela were resource-poor like Cuba and Nicaragua, it still would be targeted for exercising independent sovereignty.

Seen in that light, Trump’s claim that Venezuela stole “our” oil and land is less an error than a confession. It articulates a worldview in which US power defines legitimacy and resources located elsewhere are treated as imperial property by default. The blockade is not an aberration; it is the logical extension of a twisted belief that sovereignty belongs to whoever is strong enough to seize it. Trump is, in effect, demanding reparations for imperialists for the hardship of living in a world where other countries insist their resources belong to them.

Roger D. Harris is a founding member of the Venezuela Solidarity Network and is active with the Task Force on the Americas and the SanctionsKill Campaign.

Source: Countercurrents