Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Funny thing about war: it is relatively easy to start. An insult here. A lie there. A “false flag” as a casus belli there, and shots, bombs, missiles ensue…and destruction and deaths follow until there is some sort of “victory”. However, when the odds are stacked against a much smaller opponent that is facing an overwhelmingly larger foe, then “victory” will not appear straightforward, or even clear. It will be messy.

This is the case of Venezuela. The USA thinks its technological superiority will allow it to subdue the Venezuelan government and people: in other words, bomb them into submission. But I would like to point out a few TRUTHS, not the propaganda with which Trump and his gang of thugs surround themselves:

ONE: LEGITIMACY. Despite the attempt to criminalize President Maduro, he is not a dictator. He is a duly elected president in fair elections, witnessed by several hundred international observers, recognized by the UN and most of the countries of the world. As to the criticism that he is “authoritarian”, it’s a vague, undefined insult, unaccompanied by real evidence. For the USA to call President Maduro an authoritarian is also extremely hypocritical. Authoritarian Trump, who directs ICE to attack USA’s own citizens, should be more careful when throwing rocks from his glass house in Florida.

TWO: DRUGS. The supposed reason why the US is committing murder in the high seas (6 boats blown to bits and 27 murders) is its fake accusation that Venezuela is a major source of illegal drugs entering the USA. The real purpose of the US government is regime change, and the assertion of its Monroe Doctrine based illusion of the right to control Latin America. The US government wants a supine, obedient, subservient Venezuela that will hand over its resources to USA interests and obey Washington. Drugs are an easily debunked excuse for aggression. The UN World Drug Report in no uncertain terms states that Venezuela is not a narco-state. Most of the drugs enter the USA by way of the Pacific Ocean – not the Caribbean Sea – through Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia. The United Nations, the European Union and even the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) consider Venezuela to be free of drug production and processing. The country grows no poppy or coca. Only 5% of Colombian cocaine entering the US passes through Venezuela. Furthermore, the US has not produced a shred of evidence that connects President Maduro with drugs. As to the claim that Venezuela has emptied its prisons and insane asylums into the USA, that accusation is so preposterous that it deserves only scorn.

THREE: OIL. Venezuela is located on top of the world’s largest oil reserves, larger even than those of Saudi Arabia. Trump openly said in his first term as president that he wants Venezuelan oil and believes the US should just take it. It is obvious that these 26-years of aggression against Venezuela is because the US wants complete control of its oil for its corporations. It does not want to buy the oil, but to own it. The uncle of one of the six Trinidadians recently blown up by a US warship on the pretense of drug smuggling stated in plain language what is obvious to all: “I just want to know why Donald Trump is killing poor people… He’s going after peoples riches and killing poor people, children.” (The Guardian, 17 Oct. 2025)

FOUR: PEOPLE. The great majority of Venezuelans support the president and government, and in face of US warships in the Caribbean, their popularity increased exponentially. All the political parties and grass roots groups in the country are united in defending the nation. After the US war ships threat, the civil militia that numbered 5 million has now grown to 8 million. As the Vietnam war amply showed, invaders have multiple obstacles and costs when the people are against them. Invaders in Venezuela will not be met with accolades, but with bullets.

FIVE: ARMY. Any military commander or military expert will tell you that the sine qua non, the most essential factor, in any war is the morale of its soldiers, their sense of purpose. Unless soldiers are psychopaths, they need justification for picking up a gun or pushing a button to obliterate other human beings. They need to believe the orders they receive are not only legitimate, but wise and necessary. The Bolivarian Armed Forces of Venezuela, by any standards and the most casual observations, is imbued with the sense of purpose and pride that they are the heirs of the army of Simon Bolívar, the guardians of the Venezuelan people and upholders of the Constitution. When soldiers march through the streets, flowers are thrown at them with shouts of approval. Venezuelans know these soldiers took the oath of Bolivar to never turn their arms against them. The US is extremely foolish to think the Venezuelan army will turn against their own government. The morale of the US forces cannot be very firm: their top leaders have been subjected to an unprecedented, embarrassing, harangue by Trump and his “minister of war”, and the admiral head of the Southern Command has just unexpectedly resigned. Furthermore, the use of US soldiers to “subdue” US citizens, which Trump assures is what is in store for them from now on, has not gone down well with the military. None of this is good for the morale of US soldiers. It will be hard to portray Venezuelans as villains, deserving of bombs and missiles, as they have done no harm to the USA.

SIX: SOLIDARITY. No matter how much the US has tried to isolate the Venezuelan nation with its media demonization, it has utterly failed to do so. Venezuelan diplomacy has been prodigious and successful. Its representative in the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, is Vice-President of the UN General Assembly, a position to which he has been elected twice. The leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement at its meeting of 15 October, decried the US threats against Venezuela as violating the norms of international law and diplomacy, as had CELAC and ALBA. Significantly, the Caribbean nations (with the exception of Granada) have all decried the presence of US warships in the Caribbean, and three key nations Mexico, Colombia and Brazil have all expressed their solidarity with Venezuela and repudiated any invasion by the US. Even Latin American nations not particularly friends of Venezuela reject this colonialist, arrogant interference by the US. Furthermore, the 11 BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia) have expressed their support for Venezuela and against the US war ships in the Caribbean. These mighty US ships showed their bravado by blowing up 6 small open boats with outboard motors, killing 27 unarmed civilians. They should pause and think again before launching a land invasion as Trump has threatened, knowing that both China and Russia have defence agreements with Venezuela. A war in the Caribbean has global implications.

SEVEN: CONDEMNATION. The Latin American countries declared through its organization CELAC that all its member countries have long agreed to maintain Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace, based on principles such as: the prohibition of the threat or use of force, the peaceful settlement of disputes, the promotion of dialogue and multilateralism, unrestricted respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-interference in the internal affairs of States and the inalienable right of peoples to self-determination. These are also the fundamental principles of the UN Charter. Human Rights Watch has added its voice in condemning the US war ship attacks as a violation of international law and that they amounted to extrajudicial executions. A main legal issue is that the US is not formally engaged in an armed conflict with Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago. Under human rights law standards, it is officials in law enforcement units such as Coast Guards, that should combat alleged criminal groups and these should seek to minimize injury and preserve human life. They may use lethal force only when strictly unavoidable to protect against an imminent threat of death or serious injury. Blowing them up, with a missile is illegal and one could say, also immoral.

EIGHT: REGIONAL WAR. If the US escalates this aggression into the Venezuelan mainland, there will be a regional response which could turn into a conflict like the Vietnam war: prolonged, with terrible loss of life on either side and very, very costly. Many nations and individuals will come to Venezuela’s aid. US facilities, institutions, properties and even citizens, throughout the region would be marked as “fair game” by an enraged population. Guerilla warfare and spontaneous popular aggression is the defense of the weak and it is mighty hard to control.

Let Trump, his bloodthirsty secretary Rubio – the architect of this mess- and his knucklehead minister of war, ponder on these probable effects of unleashing the dogs of war in Latin America. It will be a messy, protracted, costly war, and all the indicators point that in the end, the US will lose like it did in Vietnam.

Or better still, may the USA citizens stay the hand of their war-lusting president.

The post The Likely Consequences of a US War on Venezuela appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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