We republish the following statement by Revolución Comunista, the Venezuelan section of the RCI. Read the RCA’s Statement on Trump’s aggression to Venezuela here.

Since 15 August, the United States has deployed a large military force in the Caribbean near Venezuelan territorial waters, with the presence of marines and amphibious troops, destroyers armed with guided missiles, an attack submarine and advanced air and naval surveillance technology.

The Trump administration’s stated goal is to combat drug trafficking and terrorism, and to dismantle criminal gangs that White House officials have consistently linked to the government of Nicolás Maduro. This move has sparked regional concerns and widespread speculation about a possible invasion of Venezuela.

With this operation, US imperialism is demonstrating its interventionist character, once again using the fight against drugs as an excuse, in an attempt to export its internal crisis in this sphere for geopolitical purposes. From Revolución Comunista, the Venezuelan section of the Revolutionary Communist International, we strongly reject this latest maneuver involving military provocation, pressure, intimidation and potential aggression against our country.

A large-scale military operation

The military operation includes the mobilization of more than 4,000 troops, mainly Marines, supported by an advanced complement of three main ships: the USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious ship capable of transporting troops and helicopters; the USS Fort Lauderdale and the USS San Antonio, as well as auxiliary landing craft with technology for operations in coastal areas.

Three Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham and USS Sampson, provide air defense, anti-submarine warfare and sea-based precision missile strike capabilities. In addition, a nuclear-powered attack submarine has also been deployed, providing stealth patrol capability and the option of precision underwater offensive action.

In the air, the US has mobilized P-8 Poseidon maritime reconnaissance aircraft equipped with sophisticated radar and sensors to detect and track ships and submarines, as well as torpedo and anti-submarine missile capabilities.

For enhanced air surveillance and control, the operation includes the deployment of E-3 AWACS aircraft, with rotary radar providing extensive air cover, and E-8 JSTARS, specialised in ground surveillance and real-time strategic analysis. The air fleet also incorporates ship-based helicopters for reconnaissance, logistics support and evacuation missions.

A move of this scale represents a considerable threat to Venezuela’s sovereignty. The military operation seems destined to go on for months, in a clear show of force against our country, but also to US public opinion about its government’s supposed willingness to fight drug trafficking.

What is behind the imperialist maneuver?

This US military deployment is based on an authorization issued on 8 August 2025 by Donald Trump for the use of the armed forces to intervene against Latin American drug cartels. Previously, the so-called Cartel de los Soles, an organization that US authorities allege has close ties to senior Venezuelan officials, was declared a terrorist group.

In February, criminal organizations such as Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua were also declared terrorists. It is beyond doubt that these measures represent dangerous precedents that open the door to interventionist operations by the US military in Latin America and beyond. They represent the expansion of the application of US “justice” beyond its own territory, which is completely unacceptable in any context.

In this context, on 7 August the US government announced an increase in the reward for information leading to the capture of Nicolás Maduro, setting the sum at $50 million, double what was offered for Osama Bin Laden.

Pam Bondi, US Attorney General, reported without much detail on the seizure of assets worth around $700 million, which she alleges are linked to Nicolás Maduro and his close entourage. Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State, has reiterated on numerous occasions that the Venezuelan state has been taken over by a criminal group, clearly referring to the government headed by Maduro.

While this same individual has stated that the current military operation in the Caribbean does not entail an invasion of Venezuela, nevertheless, this does not reduce the seriousness or the extent of threat represented by this imperialist provocation. Despite these statements, this enormous military deployment has clearly been planned for many months, and we must not imagine that they rule out some kind of intervention in the future, such as an invasion, a naval blockade, or selective bombing, among other measures.

This is not the first time that a Trump administration has ordered a military deployment off Venezuelan territorial waters. In April 2020—during Trump’s first term in office—the US carried out a similar operation in the Caribbean with a much more limited deployment.

On that occasion, warships and aircraft with patrol and surveillance capabilities were mobilized, but did not include the amphibious groups and specialized air platforms that are part of the current operation. At the time, such a maneuver was part of the failed “maximum pressure” policy against Maduro, which included the self-appointment of a parallel government, and the recognition of this fake authority by more than 50 countries, as well as the imposition of harsh sanctions.

This precedent would seem to support the idea that this military mobilization is part of a political strategy aimed at pressuring the Venezuelan regime to the point of breaking it. The increase in the reward for incriminating information against Maduro is aimed at generating insubordination by adventurous military sectors and fomenting a coup d’état to overthrow the current Venezuelan government.

But a break with the regime at present—given the loyalty it maintains from a significant layer of the Armed Forces and heavily armed vigilante groups—would mean the beginning of a civil war that would destabilize the region, as we have already made clear in numerous analyses. This was the warning issued by Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who fears that such a conflict would drag Colombia down with it.

Once again the clumsy interventionism of US imperialism is threatening to spill rivers of blood in a foreign country in an attempt to bolster its nefarious interests.

Hypocrisy and smokescreen

The hypocrisy of US imperialism, which time and again resorts to the anti-drugs discourse to justify its policy of intervention, is beyond measure.

It is well known that during the Vietnam War, the US Air Force provided aircraft for drug trafficking operations that financed South Vietnam. In more recent years – with the implementation of ‘Plan Colombia’ in which the US and the DEA were actively involved – the export of cocaine from that country to North America and the world skyrocketed.

After the imperialist invasion of Afghanistan, the production and export of opium poppies reached unprecedented levels. To this must be added the immense quantities of blood money generated by drug trafficking, among other shady dealing, that are then laundered and circulate through the US financial system.

These examples illustrate the close connection of imperialism with this dirty world, which causes thousands of deaths annually in the producing countries and transit zones, while the demand for drugs in the US continues to grow unchecked. In relation to the latter, the comrades of the US section of the Revolutionary Communist International have stated the following:

Trump is cynically using the drug epidemic in the US to justify imperialist aggression. But the root cause of the drug epidemic is not the drug cartels south of the US border, but the nightmare of life under capitalism. Over the past 50 years, while the capitalists have been getting richer, the living conditions of the American working class have sharply declined. This is the real reason behind the increase in addiction and deaths due to overdose. Jobs, especially ones that can pay the median wage, have disappeared. This has pushed wider layers into poverty and unemployment. Big Pharma has made billions off getting Americans addicted to opioids, particularly in the “rust belt” areas where most jobs have been offshored. (Revolutionary Communists of America, 21 August 2025).

At the same time, the White House’s extensive record of promoting terrorism merits mention. Suffice it to recall its support for death squads in Central America during the 1980s, or the supply of arms and funding to Al Qaeda-affiliates and similar groups such as the Al-Nusra front in the Syrian war.

US imperialism has no moral standing to speak of drug trafficking and terrorism, when throughout its history it has been the main driving force behind these scourges of capitalist society against the peoples of the world.

Much less, does it have the right to try to remove or put in place presidents in any country as it sees fit. With all our strength, the workers and revolutionaries of the world must raise our voices with the slogan: “Stop imperialist meddling and interventionism!”

The US invasion of Panama in December 1989, under the name “Operation Just Cause,” was a brutal demonstration of US imperialist power in its so-called “backyard.” More than 24,000 US troops were deployed in a massive operation against the regime of General Manuel Noriega, a former CIA ally who fell from grace not so much for his involvement in crime and drug trafficking, but for stepping out of line with his former bosses in the White House.

The operation was marked by indiscriminate bombings that destroyed the “El Chorrillo” neighbourhood of Panama City, causing hundreds of civilian and military deaths and leaving deep wounds in Panamanian society. It was the duty of every revolutionary at that time to oppose this criminal invasion without any reservation, just as we must today oppose the US claims on Venezuela.

Faced with such a situation, we must firmly point out that only Venezuelan workers have the right to solve Venezuela’s problems. Right-wing leaders like María Corina Machado are utterly miserable specimens, having sunk, in their mediocrity, to the level of openly clamoring for a US invasion.

These parasites want to see the blood of thousands or millions of innocent people spilled so that they might be crowned the puppet rulers of the country with the largest oil reserves in the world. We repudiate to the last this pro-imperialist right wing and their cowardly and dirty pretensions.

In the face of the potential aggression of imperialism, workers, revolutionaries, and even simply consistent democrats, have only one camp to join: that of opposition to Yankee intervention, arms in hand.

The Venezuelan working people would have nothing to gain in the event of a military invasion, a naval blockade or the launching of selective attacks, where the bombs, the destruction of infrastructure and the economy, as well as the trail of death, would not distinguish between Maduristas, Chavistas, opposition or the right. Our camp clearly and unequivocally stands for the full defense of Venezuela.

Maduro’s response

In a recent speech, Nicolás Maduro has ordered the expansion of the Bolivarian Militia to 4.5 million troops, and the handing over of weapons to the population. If this were to be implemented, we would agree with it. But we must ask ourselves whether such actions are to be expected from a government that has bureaucratically stifled all instances of popular participation, that outlaws independent trade union activity, that today brutally represses the working people in order to stay in power, that has imposed the most aggressive austerity in the history of Latin America?

Fearing the initiative of the masses, when previously threatened by imperialism this government has always refused to implement such measures as the general arming of the population, and placing the generals, who today constitute the main pillar of the regime, under the vigilance of the workers, the people and the rank and file soldiers. While such an announcement might point in the right direction, it really amounts to cheap verbiage from a government that has fully turned its back on the needs of the working people.

In the event of a reprehensible foreign military invasion of our country, the Maduro regime, far from arming the masses and encouraging popular initiative, would at all times maintain order and social obedience to the military, while bidding for support from China and Russia. In such a scenario, Venezuela would be at the mercy of negotiation from above between the various imperialist powers, without the Venezuelan people having a say in their own destiny.

In this sense, we cannot simply accept the words of a government that is responsible for killing and burying the Bolivarian Revolution, which is corrupt to its foundations. The Venezuelan workers cannot entrust the national defense to the same hangmen who oppress them today.

Only the systematic pressure of the workers from below, aimed at taking control of the country into their own hands, can organize a coherent defense in line with the interests of the majority. We must also say that US imperialism has no right to judge and depose our hangmen, for that task belongs solely and exclusively to the Venezuelan working people.

Revolution as a true defense

Genuine consistent struggle against imperialist aggression and in defense of national sovereignty requires the best traditions that the historical experience of the world proletariat has to offer. These are none other than the general arming of the people, revolutionary vigilance over the generals and military leaders, and the socialist transformation of society. Maduro represents the very opposite of these traditions, which creates a greater risk of successful imperialist aggression.

The genuine defense of Venezuela’s sovereignty cannot be left in the hands of corrupt and consummate counter-revolutionaries, ready to guard the wealth they have acquired above all else. The only homeland these characters know is their properties and bulging bank accounts.

Instead of absurd and innocuous calls for peace, we advocate a new revolutionary awakening of the Venezuelan working people. A new revolution, where the organized workers of the city and countryside take control of their destiny, can more effectively combat and repel all external threats, as well as overthrow all bourgeois obstacles that deny them a dignified life.

The revolutionary mobilization of the people from below must have as its ultimate goal the overthrow of backward and pestilent Venezuelan capitalism, with the expropriation of the industrial monopolies, the large estates, the banks and the imperialist multinationals like Chevron, under the democratic control of the working class.

The Venezuelan workers must also call for the international solidarity of the working class across Latin America, which is also threatened by the export of US “justice”; and also the working class of the United States itself, which does not approve of any more military adventures by the imperialists. In short, a victory against imperialism will not be possible without the pressure that the workers of the continent, and above all those who live in the belly of the imperialist beast, can exert.

This is the policy that the revolutionary communists of Venezuela defend. The revolution is the only guarantee of real defense of the country, in the face of the threat of intervention, the pro-imperialist servility of the Venezuelan right wing and the defenselessness to which the policies of Maduro and his corrupt government lead us.

Hands off Venezuela!

Imperialist troops out of the Caribbean and Latin America!

For a revolutionary policy of national defense!

Workers of the United States, Latin America and Venezuela, unite against imperialism!