Statement by the League of Revolutionaries for a New America

Three days into the new year, after months of lethal attacks and coercive threats, the Trump administration sent the U.S. military to invade Venezuela and abduct President Nicolas Maduro. He was flown to the United States, ostensibly to stand trial. The Trump administration’s long-standing allegation that Venezuela was a major player in narcotics trafficking to the U.S. was the rationale, for which no concrete evidence was produced.

The impunity with which the Trump administration openly flouted international law with regard to Venezuela was shocking, but not new. Control of Venezuela’s rich oil reserves had been central to U.S. policy toward the country for decades. After the operation, President Trump openly boasted that the U.S. was now in control of Venezuela and was going to “take back our oil.”

Trump’s grandiose candor expressed U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century “writ large.” For 250 years, our Republic’s growth was maintained by a system rooted in exploitation and plunder, to achieve the status of the greatest economic and military power in the world. However, though capitalism was capable of producing a billionaire class, it will never be able to resolve inequality. Capitalism needs a working class and the poor wherever it functions in the world to generate its wealth and bear the cost of the wasteful excesses necessary to sustain it. That includes its so-called “forever wars.”