Donald Trump announced this week that he had authorised CIA activity in Venezuela. And Fox News hasn’t exactly tried to hide what’s really behind Trump’s march to war against the Caribbean nation.

US x Venezuela: Oil and regime change in the shadow of genocide

Venezuela has lots of oil. And the US wants lots of oil. But in the late 1990s, a left-wing movement sought to reduce poverty and the power of US corporations in the country. So the US and its lackeys have been putting intense political, economic, and media pressure on Venezuela ever since.

Now, in the shadow of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, and the apparent lack of consequences for destroying international law, the Trump regime is getting cocky. And true to the spirit of its revamped ‘Department of War‘, the Trump regime is seeking to intensify the longstanding US stranglehold on Venezuela and regime-change the country once and for all.

In August, the US doubled the bounty on President Nicolás Maduro‘s head to $50m. Since September, meanwhile, it has been carrying out illegal extrajudicial executions off the Venezuelan coast, which have killed around 27 people. Then, this month, the ill-titled Nobel Peace Prize went to “Venezuelan Margaret Thatcher” María Corina Machado — a wealthy, pro-Israel privatiser. And now, Trump has openly said he’s authorised a ‘no real limits‘ CIA mission in Venezuela. But as Maduro pointed out:

Can anyone believe the CIA hasn’t been operating in Venezuela for the past 60 years?

Indeed, the US consistently used the CIA and other means to terrorise Latin America into submission during the Cold War. It usually tried to justify these measures (during its global campaign of terror) by half-heartedly saying something about ‘freedom’, ‘human rights’, or ‘democracy’.

Trump’s weak excuse today is drug trafficking, despite Venezuela playing “a relatively minor role in the region’s drug trade”.

Fox News laughs about US imperialism

Following Trump’s comments about the CIA, right-wing Murdoch-media outlet Fox News was brazenly honest and upbeat about what the US is doing in Venezuela. Jesse Watters, for example, said:

This is more about regime change in Venezuela. We have 10% of our naval power in the region. We have the destroyer fleet. We have F-35s there. And now we have these helicopters which are used for Green Berets, Delta, and special forces. So this is serious stuff.

The CIA’s been unleashed. We have a $50m bounty on this guy’s head. Trump’s now considering strikes on Venezuelan soil. And so we’re engaged in what we like to call some ‘friendly gunboat diplomacy’.

Gunboat diplomacy was a tactic the US used in the past to get what it wanted by threatening the use of force.

Despite Venezuela’s apparent openness to compromise, Watters said, Trump’s team have reportedly “said no”:

So that tells me there’s gonna be major action against Maduro pretty soon. And you never know how this goes – these things in Latin America can go sideways. But also, they could be layups. And if it is a layup, and Maduro is deposed, we’re basically Monroe Doctrining… out of Latin America of China and Russia.

The Monroe Doctrine was a vile 19th-century foreign policy that marked Latin America as Washington’s ‘backyard’, justifying military interventionism on the basis that the US was the only major power that should have influence or dominance in the region.

And what does that do after the successful strikes against the Iranian regime? That basically takes this big pile of deterrence, and shoves it right in Taiwan’s face, right in Ukraine’s face, and Trump is wielding a lot of power internationally after.

Greg Gutfeld then joked about this being the US ‘exporting toxic masculinity beyond our borders’, which in very simple terms is exactly what’s happening.

As other media outlets also say Trump’s actions seem to be preparing the way for a US invasion or other regime-change efforts, Venezuela has been making preparations.

But not everything will necessarily be plain sailing for Trump either. Because his team has been offending military personnel and reportedly sparking a rift among them. The top commander overseeing the illegal Caribbean executions has just stepped down, for example, after reportedly ‘raising concerns’ about them. And back home, retired military leaders have slammed Trump’s ‘political and unnecessary militarisation‘ on US soil.

The suffering of Venezuelans under the decades-long US stranglehold, however, is unlikely to end any time soon.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.