The Peace and Solidarity Commission of the Communist Party, USA, condemns in the strongest terms the ongoing U.S. military escalation against Venezuela, including the recent wave of deadly airstrikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. These strikes, ordered by the Trump regime under the pretext of “counter-narcotics” operations, have already destroyed at least twenty vessels since early September and killed around eighty people, many of them poor workers from Venezuela and neighboring countries.

Washington insists these are “drug boats,” but has provided no evidence for these claims. Victims’ families and regional governments have raised serious doubts, noting that some of the dead were fishermen and small-scale traders. The Colombian government has now announced it is suspending intelligence cooperation with the U.S. in protest against what it calls attacks that resemble extrajudicial executions at sea.

At the same time, the U.S. has deployed the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group and other warships, as well as submarines, warplanes, and at least 10,000 troops to the Caribbean. The deployment triggered, in response, large-scale Venezuelan military exercises and preparations for a guerrilla-style resistance in case of invasion. European and Latin American officials, as well as international legal experts, have warned that the strikes disregard international law and edge the region toward a de-facto, undeclared war.

This is not an isolated incident. It is the latest chapter in a long history in which U.S. imperialism feeds its financial-military-industrial complex (including, especially, the fossil-fuel and arms industry) with wars, coups, sanctions, and destabilization campaigns abroad. These only drive poverty, misery, and destruction, and are a leading cause of migration.

From Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan, the U.S. ruling class has repeatedly used manufactured pretexts — “domino theory,” “weapons of mass destruction,” or the “war on terror” to name a few — to justify interventions that have killed millions, devastated societies, and enriched arms corporations and contractors. Today’s rhetoric of “narco-terrorism” and “drug boats” in the Caribbean functions in a similar way: as a flexible label that can be attached to any target chosen by the White House, without transparency, evidence, or due process.

Venezuela has long been in Washington’s crosshairs because its government claims sovereignty over its vast oil reserves, rejects U.S. domination, and pursues economic and diplomatic ties outside the orbit of U.S. monopoly capital. President Trump has stated openly that the U.S. wants Venezuela’s oil, not because the U.S. has a shortage, but because the oil monopolies abhor competition. Sanctions, asset theft, economic sabotage, coups, land invasions and diplomatic isolation have all been used in attempts to overturn Venezuela’s political course. The new wave of air and naval escalation represents a dangerous qualitative step, from hybrid warfare to open use of bombs and missiles against innocent noncombatants at sea.

If this course continues, the people of Venezuela — and the broader Caribbean and Latin American region, including especially Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia and Mexico — face the threat of a wider war launched without Congressional authorization and in clear violation of both the U.S. Constitution and the UN Charter’s prohibitions on aggressive use of force.

Money for jobs and healthcare, not bombs

The people of the United States have nothing to gain from a war against Venezuela. Indeed, the opposite is true. While working-class and oppressed communities here are struggling with low wages, budget-busting food prices, high medical bills, unaffordable housing, student debt, climate disasters, and the deployment of ICE and military forces that intimidate and abduct civilians domestically, the administration is spending billions to move aircraft carriers, warships, drones, and warplanes into the Caribbean and Pacific. Every bomb dropped on a small boat in the Caribbean is another expression of a system that prioritizes profits for the arms, fossil fuel, and mineral extraction industries over human needs at home and abroad.

We demand:

• The United States must immediately stop airstrikes and other military actions against Venezuelan and regional vessels and withdraw its carrier strike group and associated forces from the region.
• All plans for direct military intervention in Venezuela must be rejected, and any disputes must be handled through diplomacy, regional dialogue, and respect for Venezuelan sovereignty and self-determination.
• Sanctions and economic warfare against Venezuela must be lifted, as they punish ordinary people, deepen the economic crisis, and create the conditions for further escalation.
• The U.S. must abide by the Zone of Peace announced by the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.
• The illegal blockade of Cuba, sanctions on Nicaragua, and threats to invade Mexico and other Latin American countries, must end.

A call to action

Stopping this slide toward war requires organized pressure from below. The CPUSA urges peace organizations, unions, community groups, faith communities, and political organizations around the country to take this threat seriously and respond proactively.

We urge CPUSA members to:

• Join or plan antiwar actions called for by many solidarity groups for the week of November 15 to November 23.
• Contact their members of Congress and local officials and demand opposition to any authorization by the U.S. — formal or informal — to use force or subterfuge to attack Venezuela. Call for hearings on the illegality of the current airstrikes. Click here to send a letter.
• Raise the alarm in unions and workplaces about the danger of another disastrous war and the diversion of public resources into militarism instead of wages, public services, climate resilience, and social programs.
• Organize forums and educational events on the current escalation against Venezuela that explore the history of U.S. interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America and the Caribbean, and elsewhere, and make the connection to the absence of providing for the needs of working people today.
• Build broad coalitions — uniting peace groups, Latin American and Caribbean diaspora organizations, anti-racist and immigrant-rights groups, student organizations, and others — to oppose war moves and defend the right of the Venezuelan people to determine their own future.
• Prepare coordinated public actions — rallies, vigils, marches, and other forms of protest — should the administration move to a full-scale attack or expand its current campaign of strikes.

The choice before us is clear: either we allow another imperialist war to be launched in our name, or we respond with united, organized resistance. The Peace and Solidarity Commission stands with the people of Venezuela, with the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, and with all those in the United States and around the world who say:

No war on Venezuela!

No blockades, sanctions, and interference in Cuba or any other country.

Respect sovereignty!

Money for human needs, not for endless war!

Image: People working off the coast of Venezuela, photo by Wilfredorrh (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)