The U.S. is now nothing but a lawless, rogue, dictatorship engaging in international terrorism. Employing the “Donroe Doctrine”, the US launches a deadly attack on Venezuela and lays claim to its oil reserves.
In announcing the US military’s attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of president Nicolás Maduro, an operation that reportedly killed at least 40 people, President Trump laid bare his real motive.
Invoking the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which has underpinned decades of US aggression against Latin American governments, Trump bragged that “they now call it the Donroe Doctrine… American dominance in the Western Hemisphere won’t be questioned again.” The main target of that dominance is Venezuela’s oil reserves, the world’s largest. With US oil companies leading the way, Trump vowed, “we’re going to get back our oil… the money coming out of the ground is substantial.”
While Trump intends it as a riff on his first name, his signature doctrine is additionally fitting for mirroring the behavior of a Mafia Don: using violence, threats, and sabotage to obtain material wealth.
They Kidnapped Maduro Because The World Is Ruled By Unaccountable Tyrants – Caitlin Johnstone
Well, Trump finally did it. US special forces attacked Venezuela and abducted President Maduro from Caracas, reportedly killing at least 40 people in the process.
And now that it’s all over, the White House is getting a lot more honest about the real motives behind its actions. After all those months of babbling about fentanyl and “narcoterrorism” and freedom and democracy, the Trump administration has come right out and admitted that its regime change interventionism in Venezuela has always been a good old-fashioned oil grab.
“We’re gonna take back the oil that frankly we should have taken back a long time ago,” Trump told the press following Maduro’s abduction, saying “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground, and that wealth is going to the people of Venezuela, and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela, and it goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country.”
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country, and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so,” Trump said.
“We have tremendous energy in that country. It’s very important that we protect it. We need that for ourselves, we need that for the world,” the president added.
Trump made it explicitly clear that this is going to be some sort of long-term US occupation project, contradicting early claims of his supporters who had defended the president’s actions in Venezuela as a brief in-and-out, one-and-done special ops intervention.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said. “So we don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in. And we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years. So we are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”
“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” the president said. “And we have to have, we had boots on the ground last night at a very high level. Actually, we’re not afraid of it, we’re we don’t mind saying it, but we’re going to make sure that that country is run properly. We’re not doing this in vain.”
You would think after all these incredibly honest admissions that this was a regime change operation aimed at controlling the resources of the nation with the largest proven oil reserves on the planet, people would get real and accept that they were lied to about the Trump administration’s real reasons for targeting Venezuela. But I am still getting Trump supporters prattling on about drugs and terrorism and democracy in my social media replies defending my criticisms of his monstrous act of war.
I had one Trump supporter try to tell me the president’s admissions that it was all about the oil don’t necessarily prove it wasn’t also about fighting drug trafficking, arguing that it could possibly have been motivated by both. Which to me kinda sounds like a grandmother acknowledging that yes, she had been victimized by an email scam, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the nice man who scammed her wasn’t also a Nigerian prince.
Trump supporters would make excuses for literally anything he did. Literally anything. I am not using hyperbole for effect. There is literally nothing he could do that they wouldn’t twist themselves into cognitive pretzels trying to justify.
Trump is spelling out the truth of what he is and what the US empire is, and anyone with open eyes can see it plain as day.
For those whose eyes are open or are beginning to open, I hope you continue learning the same lessons with Venezuela that you learned with Gaza. The US empire always lies, the mass media always facilitate its lies, and the global south continues to be ransacked by the murderous abusers who run things.
While I was decrying Trump’s Venezuela assault some empire simp mockingly told me, “It must be sad for you to lose a tyrant.”
I told him no, it’s sad for me that we live in a lawless world that is ruled by tyrants.
It’s sad for me that we are ruled by chaotic despots who can invade a sovereign nation and abduct its leader and suffer no consequences.
It’s sad for me that the people with their hands on the steering wheel of the fate of our species are a bunch of sociopathic thugs who can smash and rob any country they please with total impunity.
It’s sad for me that our planet’s population is subject to the whims of a globe-spanning empire which topples governments, wages wars, sponsors genocides, targets civilians with starvation sanctions, backs proxy conflicts, drops bombs, brainwashes entire nations with propaganda, uses its military and economic might to bully and cajole states into bowing to its dictates, and sows suffering, destruction and death around the world every moment of every day.
It’s sad for me that these are the people who are making the decisions which will determine humanity’s path into the future. The future of our society. The future of our planet’s resources. The future of our technological innovation. The future of our ecosystem. The future of our militaries. The future of our nuclear weapons.
That is what is sad for me. I have no special emotional attachment to Maduro as an individual, but I do have a strong emotional attachment to the possibility of a healthy world emerging in the future.
And as things stand right now it’s looking pretty dark.
I find that sad.
The Don-roe Doctrine in Action: Trump’s Gangster Intervention in Venezuela Binoy Kampmark
It has been an accusation long levelled at certain US politicians that their brains might have been softened by a lengthy diet of television, Westerns, and the heroic triumphalism of the prattling cowboy. There was never going to be a break with this tradition regarding President Donald Trump, except the fact that he claimed to be more restrained on the draw. Of late, that restraint has vanished. A buildup of US army personnel in the Caribbean; the bombing, on fatuous grounds, of vessels in the Caribbean Sea carrying fictional narco-cargo destined for the United States and, just to top things, delirious notions about attacking the Islamic Republic of Iran in the early hours of the morning in the event protestors are shot.
It was clear after the release of the 2025 National Security Strategy that this administration was going to shred the inhibitions imposed by international law and opt for the more liberating costumery of gangsterism. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States would assert its muscle and dictate terms, as it has done previously, to countries in Latin America. Washington desired “a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations”, one “that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains” and ensured “continued access to key strategic locations. In other words, we will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine.”
Venezuela has become the first target of this corollary. On January 3, a little after 2 am local time, Caracas, and other sites in the country, were attacked by US forces as part of Operation Absolute Resolve. By 4:21 am, Trump announced that the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores had been captured. The Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, at a press conference held at the President’s Florida compound, spoke of, “An extraction so precise it involved more than 150 aircraft launching across the Western Hemisphere in close coordination, all coming together in time and place to layer effects for a single purpose, to get an interdiction force into downtown Caracas while maintaining the element of tactical surprise.”
Caine also revealed that US intelligence teams had been eyeing Maduro and his wife for months. With a thuggish flourish, the general explained that those teams had monitored the leader to “understand how he moved, where he lived, where he travelled, what he ate, what he wore, and what were his pets.”
Trump, in explaining the rationale behind the Venezuelan action, spoke ever immodestly about the “Don-roe Doctrine.” The Maduro regime had hosted “foreign adversaries in our region and acquiring menacing offensive weapons that could threaten US interests and lives”. This was “in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy, dating back more than two centuries”. The Monroe Doctrine had been “a big deal, but we’ve superseded it by a lot, a real lot. They now call it the ‘Don-roe Doctrine.’”
US Attorney General Pam Bondi swiftly announced that Maduro had been indicted in the Southern District of New York on a fruit salad array of implausible charges: “Narco-Terrorism Conspiracy, Cocaine Importation Conspiracy, Possession of Machineguns and Destructive Devices against the United States.” As with previous, implausibly elastic categories of combatant hatched by the US Justice Department and White House – that of “unlawful combatant” or “unprivileged belligerent” conceived by the administration of George W. Bush comes to mind – a category has been invented to inspire a false resolution.
The invented category of narco-terrorism has revealed the limits of legal literacy of the Trump administration. Such a term, imputing links between government officials, organised crime and terrorism, supposedly vests war making powers in the executive along with, it transpires in the case of Maduro, abduction powers regarding the foreign leader of a state. The US Congress has again been roguishly sidestepped.
The dress rehearsal for this commenced on September 2 last year when Trump stated in a War Powers Resolution notification to Congress that military strikes on alleged narco-vessels operating in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean were “self-defense” measures motivated by “the inability or unwillingness of some states in the region to address the continuing threat to United States persons and interests emanating from their territories”.
In October, a presidential notice was issued turning those killed in alleged drug smuggling as “unlawful combatants”, thereby twinning this administration’s lexical imagination with that of George W. Bush. For Bush, that imagination extended to fictional weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) held by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq that might be used against Americans and their allies at any given moment. Furthermore, they might fall into the hands of non-state actors.
In Trump’s case, fantasies about Maduro as a wily drugs chieftain hosting rebel groups pullulate. Much of this is sheer nonsense given that the country has little to nothing to do with the flow of cocaine into the US. But there is oil to be seized and managed by US companies and the Don-roe doctrine to maintain.
In responding to this act of breezy criminality, countries programmed to emphasise the “rules-based” international order find themselves in a bind. The European Union, instead of spluttering and raging, proved meek, mocking Maduro’s status as Venezuela’s leader yet finding it hard to condemn Trump’s flouting of convention and the UN Charter. The EU high representative for foreign affairs, Kaja Kallas, was most indicative: “The EU has repeatedly stated that Mr Maduro lacks legitimacy and has defended a peaceful transition. Under all circumstances, the principles of international law and the UN Charter must be respected. We call for restraint.”
In Britain, Trump fanboy and leader of Reform UK Nigel Farage expressed that ecstatic confusion that comes with admiring an untutored, unrestrained bully in international relations. “The American actions in Venezuela overnight are unorthodox and contrary to international law – but if they make China and Russia think twice, it may be a good thing.”
The response from Roderich Kiesewetter, MP from Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union, was more tutored. “The coup in Venezuela marks a return to the old US doctrine from before 1940: a mindset of thinking in terms of spheres of influence, where the law of force rules, not international law.” The reaction from the Cuban government was much in the same vein, though more colourful: “This is a blatant imperialist and fascist aggression with objectives of domination, aimed at reviving US hegemonic ambitions over Our America, rooted in the Monroe Doctrine, and at achieving unrestricted access to and control over the natural wealth of Venezuela and the region.”
The kidnapping of leaders by bullying powers in the post-1945 world is not new. Hungary’s deceived Imre Nagy, seen as the figurehead of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, was seized by the Soviet Union for disciplinary action that culminated in his trial and execution. Czechoslovakia’s Alexander Dubček, leader of the crushed Prague Spring of 1968, was spared execution but faced similar ideological chastisement by the Soviet leadership for implementing reforms. Within their sphere of influence, the Soviets were keen to dissuade unruly contrarians that their leaders might, at any moment, be kidnapped, executed or reprogrammed at will. Trump has, without knowing it, joined a most dubious club.
Jeffrey Sachs: The U.S. is now nothing but a lawless, rogue, dictatorship.
“Jeffrey Sachs: U.S. Attacks Venezuela & Kidnaps President Maduro”
Glenn Diesen, 3 January 2025
Transcript
0:00
Welcome back. We are joined by Professor Jeffrey Saxs to discuss the US attack on
0:05
Venezuela and uh the kidnapping of its president uh Maduro. So, thank you very
0:11
much for coming back on the program. Um, of course. Yes, dramatic events.
0:17
Yeah, it’s quite uh dramatic and this of course was an actual unprovoked attack,
0:22
an illegal attack as well. Uh but the the the capture or arrest as the media
0:30
sometimes refer to it as the president of Venezuela has been also quite dramatic. How are you assessing the
0:37
situation and uh what are the objectives of the United States here?
0:44
Well, clearly this is a a blatantly illegal act. Uh but it’s one in a long
0:52
line of blatantly illegal American actions. And just in the recent days,
0:59
Trump has been threatening uh a new country every day. He bombed Nigeria
1:05
last week. He said that the US would intervene in Iran if the government
1:14
acts against the protesters in a way that Trump doesn’t like. He has invaded
1:20
Venezuela. Uh just uh recently he uh
1:26
created a special envoy for Greenland uh declaring that Greenland will be ours.
1:32
Uh so it’s a threat against Europe, which of course Europe doesn’t even acknowledge or recognize because it’s so
1:41
passive uh relative to the United States. Uh we’re we we are not in a
1:48
constitutional order uh in the United States. We are in uh a an order led by a
1:58
military state. Uh we do not obey the US Constitution. Uh everything is by
2:05
executive decree. When uh a congressman dared to mention the US Constitution
2:12
today, Trump said, “What is he whining about? Uh this is ridiculous.” Uh well,
2:20
this is uh really uh at least what Trump has done is expose the fact that we’re
2:26
at the end of constitutional rule in the United States. What happens when there’s
2:32
a thuggish rule remains to be seen, but in my view, this makes the world
2:39
extraordinarily dangerous. Of course, we’re hardly at the end of the story
2:44
about Venezuela itself. They have arrested a president. Uh but uh this is
2:52
not the end of uh anything. uh the whole
2:57
history of US regime change operations which number probably around 100 such
3:05
operations since the end of World War II um is a record of bloodshed, violence,
3:15
deliberate creation of instability, uh coups, assassinations,
3:21
civil war. So, we don’t know what will come next, but we know that there’s been
3:26
thuggery. It’s also interesting, though it’s
3:32
may maybe I don’t have a definitive count of it, but I’ve not noticed any of the mainstream media in the United
3:39
States even raising a question about this. The
3:44
New York Times, the so-called uh paper of record did not one time in recent
3:53
weeks say, “Oh, it wouldn’t be a good idea to brazenly attack that country.”
3:59
Uh the editorial board was completely silent. As far as I can see, it remains silent. Uh our Congress is more
4:07
abundant. It’s it doesn’t exist uh in fact uh in in any operational sense. So
4:15
I find all of this very dramatic uh and extremely worrisome though I hasten to
4:24
repeat we’re not at the end of the story by any means of what will transpire in
4:30
Venezuela itself. There is a a government in place. There is a
4:35
military. there is a mobilized part of society. There’s lots of guns around.
4:42
Um, this is not a simple smooth takeover by the United States as much as Donald
4:50
Trump might believe.
4:56
…
13:45
Let me say a few things. First, uh all of the various explanations that have been given are blah blah blah blah
13:53
blah. Meaning that they are whatever joke or improvisation the
14:02
United States wants to use for the moment. Uh the US has been trying to
14:07
overthrow the government of Venezuela for 23 years. Uh they tried to coup
14:14
against the predecessor of Maduro, Ugo Chavez. Uh they have announced that
14:21
the US is the enemy uh that Venezuela is the enemy of the United States to put it
14:26
uh more clearly, because this has been a left-wing regime that uh believes that
14:33
Venezuela’s resources belong to Venezuela and that Venezuela does not
14:39
have to follow the US dictates on who controls the oil and who receives the
14:45
rents and so on. And so this is a long story and it’s very important to
14:52
understand. In 2017 in Trump’s first year of office, he said to a dinner
15:03
table of Latin American leaders, “Why don’t I just invade Venezuela?” Uh, two
15:10
of the leaders talked him down from that. I heard from two presidents that
15:16
were there independently about this dinner. That idea of Trump of invading
15:23
Venezuela is eight years in the making. The lead uh uh cheerleader of invading
15:31
Venezuela was Senator Marco Rubio and now uh
15:36
Secretary of State Marco Rubio. And there were celebrations in Florida today
15:43
of uh Venezuelan expats and uh others uh celebrating uh the US action.
15:51
…
22:58
The idea that democracy is peace is an Orwellian idea. Democracy by these leading
23:06
hegimons whether it’s Athens or Britain or the United States has meant war
23:11
almost nonstop. Now Iran is a project
23:18
like Venezuela is a project like Syria is a project. The United States has been
23:24
intervening in Iran since 1953 when it toppled the first uh
23:33
when it toppled a democratic government uh of Mossadegh which had the audacity to
23:40
think that the oil under Iranian ground was actually Iranian. And when
23:49
Mossadegh declared that Iranian oil was Iranian and would be controlled by Iran,
23:55
MI6 and the CIA overthrew Mosedc and installed a police state. When the
24:02
police state fell in 1979, the United States armed Iraq to attack Iran and
24:12
hundreds of thousands of lives were lost. Since that time, the United States
24:17
has tried to uh destroy Iran in multiple ways. Economic sanctions uh repeatedly
24:26
of course that’s why there are protests because the economy is uh in a collapse.
24:32
But the US is the agent of that sanctions regime. Hh when Iran
24:39
negotiated an arrangement to uh absolutely show uh that its nuclear
24:46
program was curbed, uh Trump said no uh we will crush the regime instead. This
24:54
is all at the behest of the Zionist lobby in the United States and Israel, uh
24:59
in in this case. So this is another project they they’re probably chortling.
25:05
Well, look, we’re very, very close right now. We should understand that the
25:10
protests in Iran are part of the script. Uh, I’m not saying people aren’t
25:16
protesting. I’m saying the US has gone out of its way to crush the Iranian
25:21
economy and to crush the regime. And last week, Trump made all of this very,
25:28
very clear. So we I think can expect Israeli bombing soon, or maybe US and
25:36
Israeli bombing soon, uh or some other CIA operation. God only knows. But I was
25:44
saying that for the world, this is alarming. It’s not something just to go
25:51
along with. I don’t think even though as I said the UN really is defunct right
25:57
now, it should not be allowed to die. Uh it needs uh to be brought back to life.
26:06
And while the US will not do that, the rest of the world maybe the rest of the
26:12
world except the western alliance so-called you have
26:18
85% of the world uh that really should
26:24
not want this kind of thuggery. Of course, as an American, I don’t want
26:29
this kind of thuggery, but nobody asked the American people anything anymore.
26:34
This is all a military state that we’re in, that is extra constitutional.
26:44
…
