3rd January 2026
US bombs strike Caracas, Venezuela
British Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, says that he cannot comment on the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife by the United States until he has all of the “facts”. It is difficult to know which ‘facts’ Starmer is waiting for. The kidnapping of the Head of a sovereign state, by the armed forces of another state, is surely fact enough upon which to comment, if not condemn outright, as a major transgression of international law.
US President Donald Trump has been ordering US warships to commit acts of international piracy for months, alleging that Maduro is heading a drugs cartel which is running narcotics into the United States. There is no evidence of this and over 100 people have died so far as a result of US actions in the Caribbean.
The bombing of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, followed by the abduction of Maduro and his wife, is the latest act of terror perpetrated by the Trump administration, allegedly in the name of peace. Only in the twisted logic of Trump can this make any sense.
As a man who desperately craves a Nobel Peace Prize and calls himself a President of peace Trump’s record in his first year in office is nothing short of a catalogue of disaster.
The fuelling of the war in Ukraine, kept going through the sale of US weapons, in spite of Trump’s claims to want to end the conflict, is one example. The cosying up to the religious fundamentalist government in Israel, perpetrating genocide upon the people of Palestine, killed, maimed and mutilated by US weapons is another. Weapons sales to Saudi Arabia utilised against the Houthis in Yemen hardly makes for a peaceful solution to the conflict in that country.
Trump green lighted the Israeli attack upon Iran in June then sent his own bombers in to hit Iranian nuclear power facilities. More recently he has said that he will defend those protesting against the theocratic dictatorship in Iran, a barely veiled threat for another use of force, while also saying that if Iran rebuilds its nuclear or missiles programme he will “knock the hell out of them.”
US missiles have recently hit targets in Nigeria, allegedly in defence of Christians, while the US also turns a blind eye to Israeli incursions into Syria, as well as its illegal occupation, euphemistically termed ‘settler programme’ in the West Bank.
Trump’s desire to turn the fertile land of Gaza into a playground riviera for the rich is not off the table. The over 60 year illegal blockade of Cuba has intensified since Trump’s return to office.
The likelihood of Cuba being next in line for the gunfire of US imperialism was given added credence by both Trump and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio in a press conference today (3 January). The importance of solidarity with Cuba , always crucial, will be even more vital in the coming days and weeks.
The threat to annexe Greenland, because the US “needs” it according to Trump, has not gone away. Ongoing threats against China continue to be an integral part of the Trump worldview.
It is no surprise that Ukraine has rare earth minerals that the US wants to get its hand on. Regime change in Iran would give the US access to the vast reserves of oil and gas in that country. Venezuela has the greatest amount of untapped oil in the world. Greenland is seen to be of strategic military importance for control of the arctic region.
None of this may stop Trump getting a Nobel Peace Prize. Any committee which can make the award to Henry Kissinger for authorising the carpet bombing of Cambodia in the 1970s, or to Venezuelan counter revolutionary Maria Corina Machado for calling for US intervention against her own country, is capable of giving an award to anyone.
The facts are that US imperialism continues to flex its muscles around the world in defence of its own class interests and its own desire for world dominance in both political and military terms. Trump is simply the visible ugly face behind which a world of forces in the US military industrial complex are positioned.
The attack upon Venezuela must be condemned out of hand. It is not good enough that Kier Starmer shows no backbone and says that “the UK is not involved”. Everyone who wants a world free from domination of one state by another, who wants the government of sovereign states to be determined by the people of those states, not by external forces, is ‘involved’.
The international community has not done enough to defend the Cuban people against US economic aggression for decades. It has not done enough to stop the creeping Israeli colonisation of the West Bank and the genocide in Gaza. The people of Venezuela must not become the latest victims of international surrender in the face of US imperialism.
Avanti Populo 