Image by Isabela Kronemberger.

The National Security Strategy (NSS) is a document setting U.S. foreign policy goals that the Executive Branch periodically sends to Congress. Commenting on the NSS released on December 5, Rebecca Lissner, associated with the establishment-oriented Council on Foreign Relations, indicated that, “The Western Hemisphere is elevated as America’s highest priority, with an emphasis on arresting migration, combating so-called “narco-terrorists,” and assuring U.S. dominance through a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine.

What follows here is a survey of U.S. activities in Venezuela and Honduras that make good on U.S. imperialist purposes as set forth in the 2025 NSS for Latin America and the Caribbean area.

That document asks, “What are America’s core foreign policy interests? What do we want in and from the world?” The response is: “We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States … a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations … a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets … In other words, we will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine.”

The Doctrine put forth by President James Monroe in 1823 asserts that the United States rejects the intrusion of European powers in Western Hemisphere affairs. The (Theodore) Roosevelt Corollary of the Monroe Doctrine appearing 1904 proclaimed that the United States would exercise “police power” over targeted countries and that a “big stick” would be used to fix their finances, governments, and external relations.

Attention here centers on aspects of current and past attacks on Venezuela and on recent elections held in Honduras. The Trump Corollary is at work in both situations. Each is emblematic of overreach driven by money and power, of U.S. imperialism in other words.

No invasion yet

An armada of warships patrols waters off Venezuela – guided missile destroyers, amphibious assault vessels, an aircraft carrier, and a nuclear-powered submarine. On board are fighter planes and thousands of troops. The U.S government has announced upcoming CIA actions in the country, submitted Venezuela to a no-fly zone, deployed troops and F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico, reactivated the Roosevelt Roads naval base there, and persuaded rightwing president of the Dominican Republic Luis Abinader to permit U.S. use there of an airport and military base in that country.

As of December 5, U.S. forces attacking from the air had destroyed 22 small boats traveling in international waters off Venezuela and Colombia. They’ve killed 87 people on board.

The alleged target is narco-trafficking. No evidence appears showing that the boats were carrying illicit drugs. The drug cartel allegedly controlled by Venezuela’s government does not exist. International monitoring agencies indicate Venezuela’s narcotrafficking record is far more favorable than the region’s top offending countries.

The U.S. fight against narcotrafficking has been episodic, contradictory, often hesitant, and never on the large scale evident in the current U.S. military mobilization.

Narcotrafficking is pretext for assaulting Venezuela. One real U.S. priority is that of controlling Venezuela’s natural resources. The country has world’s largest underground store of crude oil plus resources like iron, gold, coal, coltan, copper, nickel, and diamonds.

The other is that of replacing Venezuela’s government with a congenial one to get to Venezuela’s natural resources and not face a government oriented to social justice, regional unity, and national sovereignty.

The effort began with the election of Hugo Chavez as president in 1998. The U.S. government facilitated a coup in 2002 and shortly thereafter a strike by oil workers. It has repeatedly supported and financed big, dangerous antigovernment street disturbances and has subsidized internal opposition forces.

The United States elevated and funded fake Venezuelan President Juan Guido, stole Venezuela’s Citgo oil company, seized currency assets deposited abroad, and since 2015 has inflicted economic sanctions causing tens of thousands of deaths and hollowing out Venezuela’s economy. The U.S. government has right wing extremist Maria Corina Machado on call as replacement president.

Lastly in regard to Venezuela, preparations for the current aggression are those for any major military operation undertaken on behalf of U.S. imperialism. Methods useful in earlier episodes return, among them plans for assuring impunity for crimes that are committed.

The term “enemy combatants” appears in reference to individuals killed at sea as their boats are destroyed. The offending drug cartel becomes a “foreign terrorist organization.” Such terminology makes a return appearance.

Official communications referred to prisoners taken in the Iraq and Afghanistan anti-terrorism wars as unlawful enemy combatants. Had those victims, or the current ones, been regarded as prisoners of war, international law might have provided relief. The aggressors in both situations would be answerable to pleas for the victims based on established human and legal rights. By contrast, enemy combatants lack such protection. Protections afforded “become simply a matter of executive grace,” according to a legal analyst.

Lacking law-based protections, the U.S. prisoners of the early 2000s endured torture and/or prison at Guantanamo. A legal wasteland similarly attends the killings at sea of Venezuelans and Colombians. No murder charge will be prosecuted under U.S. or Venezuelan law. Adjudication of the lack of due process for determining whether or not the boats carried illicit drugs is impossible. Thus the U.S. government pursuing hegemonic interests avoids accountability.

Free and fair vote?

That government recently turned its attention to Honduras, to elections for president and Congress held on November 30. A week later, with votes still being processed, National Party candidate Nasry Asfura had a narrow lead over fellow right winger and Liberal Party competitor Salvador Nasralla. Rixi Moncada, presidential candidate of the Party of Refoundation and Liberty, or Libre Party, was far in the rear. Some pre-election polling predicted she might win.

Moncada was facing long odds. The U.S. government in 2009 provided an assist to local plotters who, with the military’s help, expelled President Manuel Zaleya. He had offended by preparing for a constituent assembly, raising wages and delivering land to small farmers. The old guard represented by the National Party held power from 2010 until early 2022. Fraudulent elections in 2013 and 2017 gave the presidency to Juan Orlando Hernández.

The Libre Party’s Xiomara Castro is the departing president. Candidate Moncada reported on progressive changes taking place during Castro’s administration and promised the same for her presidency. It was not to be.

Three weeks prior to the voting, a scheme revealed from within the National Electoral Council would impede votes moving from localities to the center where counting takes place. A trial run of the elections showed votes not being counted. Ahead of the voting, a U.S. official indicated a corrupt election would prompt a visit to Honduras by naval ships deployed against Venezuela.

Rixi Moncada, speaking to an interviewer on December 3, told what happened. The electoral records of “over 3,300 voting centers remained trapped in the system and weren’t made public … [and] thousands of voting records were rejected by the biometric system for voter identity.”

She added that President Trump, instructing voters on social media, had insisted, “She’s a communist, don’t vote for her.’” Next came “millions of text messages … saying ‘If Rixi Moncada wins, December remittances will not arrive.’” Moncada explained that, “Honduras has approximately 2.5 million people who receive remittances from the United States.” Remittances make up 25% of Honduras’s GDP.

At a press conference on December 5, Marlon Ochoa, Libre Party representative on the National Electoral Council, reported that “19.167 polling stations had transmitted only 69.8 % of the electoral records of the vote for president and that 86.6% of those were full of errors and inconsistencies. He indicated “the transmission system was assigning unreal numbers, hundreds at a time, to the original documents.”

Immediately prior to the elections, the Trump administration released from a U.S. prison Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras for the National Party. A U.S. court had sentenced him to 45 years for narco-trafficking. His brother Tony, similarly charged, remains in a U.S. prison.

Signaling his preference for the National Party, President Trump had indicated on social media that the Party’s candidate “Tito (Asfura) and I can work together to fight the narco-communists.” U.S. prosecutors had earlier referred to a “symbiotic relation between the National Party and Narcotrafficking.”

From the colony

Puerto Rico’s Claridad newspaper reflects on U.S. imperialism’s recent adventures in the region:

“Finally, it is no secret that Venezuela, along with Nicaragua and Cuba, are the last obstacles standing in the way of the US government’s expansionist ambitions and its desire to control the countries of our America. This includes tactics such as intervening in internal elections to impose its will, as Trump did in Argentina last month and in Honduras this past Sunday. Like stones in a shoe, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba make him uncomfortable, and are therefore the objects of the fury and intransigence of the imperial master.”

The post Interventions in Venezuela and Honduras Advance Imperialist Purposes appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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