Donald Trump’s undeclared war in Venezuela against the Marxist regime of President Nicolas Maduro has erupted into the open. Trump says the US has captured Venezuela’s leader and his wife. In a statement on Truth Social, Trump wrote:
‘The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow. There will be a News Conference today at 11 A.M., at Mar-a-Lago. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.’
Trump’s statement emerged after the US carried out strikes on sites inside Venezuela, including military facilities. Explosions were heard early this morning as smoke rose over the capital Caracas.
The Venezuelan government said that it ‘rejects, repudiates, and denounces before the international community the extremely serious military aggression perpetrated by the current Government of the United States of America against Venezuelan territory.’ But those words won’t deter Trump from pressing on with his military campaign.
For several months, Trump has ordered strikes against smuggling boats who he says are delivering narcotics to the US. These attacks have taken more than 100 lives at sea since September. Last week, the CIA hit a docking area inside Venezuela which was allegedly used by the smugglers. It was the first piece of direct American action on Venezuelan soil of Trump’s presidency. This morning’s strikes demonstrate how Trump has dramatically stepped up his campaign.
Why is Trump so intent on removing Maduro from power? One reason is that he blames the Venezuelan President for wrecking American communities. Trump says he has flooded US cities with illegal migrants and supplied them with drugs such as cocaine and fentanyl which have devastated their social fabrics and boosted crime.
The US President may also be interested in getting access to Venezuela’s untapped oil reserves. Estimated at around 300 billion barrels, Venezuela’s reserves are larger than those in Saudi Arabia. The US recently boarded and seized two Venezuelan tankers that Trump accused of exporting oil in defiance of US sanctions.
Despite being an economic basket case, Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves. Under Maduro’s socialist rule – and that of his charismatic predecessor Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer in 2013 – the country has been reduced to dire poverty and mass unemployment. The country is predicted to have an inflation rate of 548 per cent in 2025, and more than eight million people – a third of the entire population – have fled abroad, making dangerous journeys to the US and other countries in South America. This exodus has fuelled social unrest.
Finally, Washington is ideologically opposed to Maduro, who international observers charged with rigging his last presidential election victory in 2024. The country’s leading opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, who had been living underground since that poll for fear of arrest, won the Nobel Peace Prize in November for her ‘peaceful resistance to repression’. She openly backs Trump’s anti-Maduro campaign.
The ongoing confrontation is the most serious clash between the US and one of its Latin American neighbours since the long but unsuccessful campaign to bring down the communist Castro dictatorship in Cuba in the 1960s. President Trump is famously averse to getting the US involved in foreign ‘forever wars’, but in the case of Venezuela he seems ready to make an exception.
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