Ben Norton Twitter:
The US attack on Venezuela is part of a larger US imperialist assault on all of Latin America.
This is the US empire’s plan. It was spelled out clearly in the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy.
The US seeks to forcibly impose its hegemony in the entire western hemisphere, reviving the colonial Monroe Doctrine (now known as the “Donroe Doctrine”). The plan is for US corporations to control all of the region’s strategic natural resources, including critical minerals and rare earth elements. The US wants to create a new supply chain in the western hemisphere that cuts out China, to prepare for future conflict with Beijing.
Trump administration officials recognize that manufacturing jobs are not actually coming back to the US, so they admit in the National Security Strategy that they want to “near-shore manufacturing” to Latin America. US corporations hope to exploit low-paid Latin American workers to make their products, cutting out China.
This is also why a new US-dominated supply chain in the western hemisphere is needed: not only because the US military-industrial complex needs to remove China from the supply chain for the weapons that it is making to prepare for a potential future war with China; but also because Washington wants to economically decouple from China, and thinks Latin America can help it do that.
Moreover, the US empire seeks to control all of the strategic infrastructure in the region. So the Trump administration is going to brazenly threaten Latin American countries to force China to sell any investments it has in infrastructure projects. Trump already forced Panama to pressure the Hong Kong company that owned ports surrounding the Panama Canal to sell them to Wall Street giant BlackRock.
It is likely that the US will also target Peru’s Port of Chancay, one of the most important ports in the region, which was built by China. Washington could even blackmail Latin American governments to force them to impose restrictions on Chinese investment in the region.
The National Security Council shows how the Trump administration is obsessed with trying to force the countries of Latin America to cut off their ties with China. This is Cold War Two.
In his first trip abroad as secretary of state, Marco Rubio went to Panama, where he forced the country to withdraw from China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Trump administration is going to massively increase its pressure on other countries in the region to withdraw from the BRI.
Likewise, Trump blatantly meddled in Honduras’ election in 2025 and backed an electoral coup d’etat. Honduras’ new right-wing US puppet regime will likely formally break diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic of China. The US also wants to use Honduras as a base of operations for attacks on the Sandinista government in neighboring Nicaragua.
After bombing and occupying Venezuela, Trump and Marco Rubio want to carry out similar imperialist regime-change wars on Nicaragua and Cuba. Rubio has dedicated his entire career to overthrowing their socialist revolutions. It is a political crusade for him.
The Trump administration’s goal is simple: to impose right-wing US puppet regimes in every country in Latin America, which will obediently serve the interests of Washington and Wall Street, and sell off their assets to US investors.
Two important elections are coming up in 2026 in countries with left-wing governments: Brazil (in October) and Colombia (in May). It is guaranteed that the Trump administration is going to meddle in those elections to try to put in power obedient right-wing US puppets (like Javier Milei in Argentina).
Trump is also threatening to bomb Mexico, which has a very popular left-wing, independent government. Mexico has strongly opposed these US threats, saying they would be an attack on Mexico’s sovereignty. But the US empire doesn’t care a bit about sovereignty.
The superficial, puerile rhetoric about “democracy” that we hear from Western officials and pundits is ridiculous. It is impossible for the countries of Latin America (and the Global South as a whole) to practice democracy when the world’s most powerful and deadliest empire is constantly interfering in their elections, attacking them, imposing sanctions on them, and sponsoring coups.
True democracy is impossible while imperialism exists.
