US-Venezuela Relations

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