“You know they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building … I’m not going to start wars. I’m going to end wars.”
So said the “peace” candidate Donald J. Trump on the 2024 campaign trail, earning him the vote of millions fed up with warmongering politicians and “forever wars.”
But a year after his inauguration, Trump has bombed seven countries, carried out an entirely illegal military operation to kidnap the sitting president of a sovereign country, and further threatened Mexico, Colombia, Greenland, Iran, and now Cuba.
Since 2000, the ruling class has waged wars costing $8 trillion that have destroyed entire societies, killed millions—including 7,000 American soldiers—and inoculated American workers with a healthy skepticism against military aggression. The war-weary working-class elements of Trump’s base increasingly see him as just another “war hawk sitting in Washington.”
MAGA splits
Some MAGA pundits, like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, are already expressing reservations about the kidnapping and coup in Venezuela. Once a do-or-die Trump stalwart, MTG said: “This is the same Washington playbook that we are so sick and tired of that doesn’t serve the American people, that actually serves the big corporations, the banks, and the oil executives.”
As the anti-interventionist mood grows, more cracks could open in MAGA. There is often a healthy class instinct behind the rejection of foreign military adventures. But without a leadership to explain how wars abroad are extensions of the class war waged by capitalists against workers at home, the festering anti-war mood is bound to express itself in distorted ways.
Media blitz
Trump often exchanges jabs with “fake news” outlets, but the media played a key role in spreading the government’s anti-Venezuela propaganda. Marco Rubio even thanked The New York Times for keeping “Operation Southern Spear” under wraps!
However, despite persistent media manipulation, American workers are still mistrustful of military adventures. For years, the mainstream press primed public opinion to favor the invasion of Iraq, and yet approval for the war plummeted from 75% in 2003 to less than 36% in 2011.
Today, according to a Washington Post poll, 94% of Americans say the Venezuelan people, not the US, should decide the country’s future. As a Texas Republican told the Post: “I generally dislike the US intervening in other countries’ affairs and especially dislike attempting regime change.”
Who pays for “forever wars”?
Flashy missions might produce short-term victories against governments weakened by years of US sanctions. But such “precision” operations can’t force an entire continent to submit to the will of the American ruling class.
US imperialism’s attempt to gain total dominance in Latin America could become another hated “forever war.” Already, the deployment of 20% of the US Navy in the Caribbean cost at least $700 million. This is chump change compared to Trump’s recent call for a 50% increase to the trillion-dollar military budget.
Even without “boots on the ground,” it is American workers who are forced to foot the bill for the war hawks’ military adventures through cuts, layoffs, and tariff-fueled inflation.
Our class doesn’t benefit from any imperialist intervention. American workers share a common class enemy with the Venezuelan and Iranian masses: the banks, oil barons, military-industrial complex, and the entire system they uphold.