On December 16, Trump took to social media to announce “A TOTAL AND COMPLETE BLOCKADE OF ALL SANCTIONED OIL TANKERS going into, and out of, Venezuela.” The day after, the world was awash with rumors that he was going to announce war on the South American nation. This represents yet another escalation in the five-month old campaign of imperialist bullying against the oil-rich country. If truth is to be told, the US regime is already at war with Venezuela.

[Originally published on Marxist.com]

Since the end of August, there has been an aggressive military escalation against Venezuela, with the deployment of an ever-growing number of military assets in the Caribbean, including frigates, fighter jets, bomber planes, aircraft carriers, assault ships, a nuclear submarine, and a total of 15,000 troops. About 20% of the US Navy is currently in the Caribbean, threatening Venezuela.

This is not just an aggressive deployment. These military assets have already been used. US strikes on what Washington describes as “narco-boats” have already killed over 90 people. No proof or evidence has been provided to back up the claims that these small boats were involved in narcotrafficking.

There have been constant and repeated flights by US fighter jets and bomber planes along the Venezuelan coast and in some cases violations of Venezuelan airspace.

On November 29, Trump unilaterally declared “the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela to be closed in its entirety.” The US has no authority over Venezuelan airspace, but the threat was enough to prompt the overwhelming majority of foreign airlines to suspend flights to Venezuela, leading to a de facto air blockade.

On December 10, the US seized an oil supertanker leaving Venezuela with two million barrels of crude oil on board, in what can only be described as an act of piracy. This action of military aggression immediately had the impact of scaring off a number of other tankers from loading in Venezuela. A de facto oil blockade of Venezuela was being prepared.

An oil blockade, which is what Trump announced on December 16, is considered an act of war in international law. The air blockade is also unlawful. None of this bothers the president of the world’s most powerful nation. While previous occupants of the White House seemed preoccupied with giving their imperialist actions a semblance of legality and cynically talked about a rules-based world order, Trump is tearing up the rule book of diplomacy and revealing for all to see that the only law that really matters is the law of the strongest.

In his declaration on social media, Trump talked about a blockade of “sanctioned oil tankers” in an attempt to give the unilateral act of aggression some semblance of legality. But in reality, it is the United States itself that has imposed these sanctions. About 45% of all tankers used by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA are sanctioned by the US and many more can be added to the list at will, as the tankers are affected by secondary sanctions derived from US sanctions on PDVSA. In fact, six more tankers have been added by the US to the sanctions list in the last week.

Incidentally, these sanctions, which have been in place since 2017–19 are based on an Executive Order issued by Obama in 2015 declaring Venezuela to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States(!!)”—revealing the bipartisan nature of US imperialism.

So, let us be clear, this is not a targeted action against a few oil tankers, but a wholesale oil blockade of Venezuela, with the only exception being US multinational Chevron, which continues to operate under a special license and is now enjoying the benefit of lower prices. This criminal blockade is designed to completely cripple the country’s economy, which depends to an extraordinary degree on its oil exports. Oil represents about 50% of government revenue, 20% of GDP and 90% of the country’s export earnings. Very quickly, it will have a practical impact on the lives of ordinary people in Venezuela.

Trump’s threats have already led to a fall in the price of Venezuelan oil as buyers and shippers seek to protect themselves from risk.

So, even without a formal declaration of war, and without actual US strikes on Venezuelan soil, which Trump has threatened to carry out, Washington has already, for all intents and purposes, declared war on Venezuela.

Trump’s statement is written in his usual bombastic and hyperbolic style. He declares that “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America” and promises that “it will only get bigger and the shock to them will be like nothing they have ever seen before.”

We hate to break it to the US president, but his knowledge of History, with a capital H, is deficient to say the least. When the British imperialists carried out a naval blockade of Cartagena de Indias in 1741, they assembled a substantially larger force in terms of number of vessels (over 180, including over 50 warships compared to Trump’s 12) and military personnel (about 30,000 sailors to Trump’s 15,000). Of course, from a technological and fire-power point of view, today’s deployment is stronger, but certainly not larger. The British, at the time, were defeated.

The problem for Trump is that this massive deployment of military power is costly, with a total bill so far running into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, which includes an aircraft carrier and several escort destroyers, has an estimated daily operating cost of between $6 million and $8 million. Operating an E-3 AWACS plane costs nearly $40,000 per hour. The deployment also includes F-35 fighter jets, B-52 bombers, AC-130 gunships, and MQ-9 Reaper drones.

The announcement of an oil blockade seems to be a way of escalating the aggression short of actual military operations on Venezuelan soil, which would be risky and would have an uncertain outcome.

The aim of this imperialist assault on Venezuela has nothing to do with “human rights” or “democracy.” / Image: In Defence of Marxism

The real reasons for US aggression against Venezuela

As we have already explained, the aim of this imperialist assault on Venezuela (and also on Colombia and Latin America in general) has nothing to do with “human rights” or “democracy.” Insofar as he doesn’t use liberal fig leaves to hide his naked aggression, Trump is at least less hypocritical than his predecessors.

It also has little to do with drugs. Fentanyl is not produced in Venezuela, nor trafficked through it. Cocaine is not produced in Venezuela, and only a negligible amount is trafficked through its territory. Trump has just pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was serving a 45 year jail sentenced in the US for … drug trafficking.

It has little to do with Venezuelan migration to the US or Venezuelan crime in the US. There is already an agreement (which continues to operate to this very day) through which Venezuela is accepting deportation flights from the US. War against Venezuela would lead to increased migration pressure from people fleeing the conflict.

Many have argued that this imperialist escalation is related to oil and natural resources. That is certainly an important factor. Venezuela has the world’s largest proven reserves of oil, and Venezuelan extra heavy crude is particularly suited for America’s Gulf of Mexico refineries.

Oil has been mentioned in the latest tirade by Trump, who has charged Venezuela with stealing “oil, land and assets” from US companies. In a post on social media, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller added: “American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela. Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries, and drugs.”

This is deranged and has no connection with reality. Venezuelan oil belongs to Venezuela, just as all countries own their own natural resources. When he talks about “tyrannical expropriation” Miller shows the same ignorance as his boss when it comes to history.

The oil industry was nationalized in Venezuela by the US-friendly Carlos Andrés Perez government in 1976. This nationalization was carried out on terms beneficial to US multinationals which were paid generous indemnities for contracts which were about to run out in 1983, at which point they would have expired without any compensation.

That was followed in the 1990s by the so-called “opening up” of the oil industry, in which US-aligned Venezuelan governments allowed US multinational companies to operate in Venezuelan oil fields on extremely lucrative contracts.

Trump and Miller may be referring to 2007, when president Chavez renegotiated these contracts and established that there had to be majority-Venezuelan ownership in all joint ventures, particularly in the Orinoco Belt. The majority of US multinational oil companies agreed to the new terms and remained as minority partners. Only two US giants, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, refused and were then kicked out. For years, they have been litigating in international courts and they have been awarded billions of dollars in compensation.

The truth is, Venezuela was just taking back control over resources which are rightfully hers and in no way belong to the US! “Oil, land, and assets” belong to Venezuela, not the US, and therefore were not and could not have been “stolen” as Trump claims.

This is just being used as a convenient excuse for the build up against Venezuela, now that the drug “motive” has largely been debunked by Trump’s own actions. But if oil were the real reason, then there would be no need for such a demonstrative military build up. Maduro has shown to be amenable to negotiating oil contracts with US companies, and the main reason only one of them is operating in the country currently (under a special license) is … as a result of US sanctions!

Hands off Venezuela!

The real underlying reason is the new US National Security Strategy, which strives to reassert US imperialist domination over the whole continent (“OUR hemisphere”). The US considers the Americas to be its backyard, and wants to ensure free and unfettered access by US companies to its natural resources. US imperialism wants to remove “non-hemispheric actors” from Latin America (read: China) and it openly declares its intention to do so by using economic pressure, diplomatic bullying and also by military means when necessary.

All the other reasons (currying favor with the reactionary gusanos in Miami, dealing a blow to the Cuban Revolution, etc.) are an added bonus.

So far, US imperialism has not achieved its aims. That is why it is looking for ways to increase the pressure by any means necessary. For now they have settled on an oil blockade. But a direct military intervention on Venezuelan soil is not ruled out.

Let us be clear, military aggression by the most powerful and reactionary imperialist power on Earth against a sovereign nation in Latin America is already underway and must be opposed with all forces at our disposal.