On the early morning of January 3, the United States government launched a massive attack on Caracas, Venezuela, and three of the country’s states. Roughly 150 aircraft swarmed the skies, bombing with exceptional ferocity. Amongst these aircraft were EA-18 Growlers equipped with the most advanced electronic warfare systems, such as the Next General Jammers, as well as AH-64 Apache and CH-47 Chinook helicopters. Residents of the city had never experienced such sustained violence: loud explosions, massive plumes of smoke, and aircraft – seemingly unconcerned about counter-attacks – plunged the city into darkness. Later, at a press conference, US President Donald Trump said, ‘The lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have. It was dark and it was deadly’. The United States does not spend more than $1 trillion annually on its military without having built the world’s most lethal arsenal. This was hyper-imperialism in hyper-drive.
Elite Delta Force troops descended from the helicopters to the location where President Nicolás Maduro was spending the night. They faced resistance from soldiers on the ground, but overwhelming firepower from the air killed many Venezuelan and Cuban soldiers (24 Venezuelans, according to the Venezuelan Army, and 32 Cubans, according to Havana). Once ground resistance was neutralised, the Delta Force seized President Maduro and Venezuela National Assembly member, Cilia Flores, Maduro’s wife. They were taken to the USS Iwo Jima and then flown to the United States to stand trial in the Southern District of New York, based on an indictment alleging that they ‘corrupted once-legitimate institutions to import cocaine into the United States’. Six people are accused in the indictment, including Maduro and Flores.
Meanwhile, in Venezuela, Vice President Delcy Rodriquez assumed leadership in Maduro’s absence. She held a widely publicized meeting with all the main political leaders, including the Minister of Interior Diosdado Cabello who was also named in the indictment. In this initial meeting, Rodriquez called for the release of Maduro and Flores, emphasised that Maduro remains the legitimate president, and confirmed that the government remained intact and at work to assess the situation. Within a day, Rodriquez – now sworn in as acting president in the absence of Maduro – said that she is open to discussion with the United States to prevent another attack, though she continued to insist on the release and return of Maduro and Flores. Certainly, the scale of the attack by the United States made it clear that Venezuela cannot sustain a full barrage from the US over a period, thus, reopening dialogue will be necessary, especially regarding Trump’s primary interest: the oil industry. Rodriquez comes from a revolutionary family, her father Jorge Antonio Rodriquez being the founder of the Socialist League, in which Delcy Rodriquez and Maduro once served as cadres. There is no question of any surrender of the Bolivarian process, which is a fundamental political line for Rodriquez and the team that is leading Venezuela’s government.
As dawn broke on 3 January and the stench of bombs lingered in the air, the population was both alarmed and shocked. It is important to emphasise that the 2003 Operation Shock and Awe bombing campaign in Iraq was dwarfed by the bombing of Operation Absolute Resolve (2026) against Venezuela. The bombs were way more powerful, and the weapons systems far more sophisticated and overwhelming. Yet it did not take long for people to take to the streets. A spontaneous open-mic outside the Presidential Palace of Miraflores drew crowds to speak out against the attack on their country. Most speakers spoke passionately with great feeling about the Bolivarian process. They understood that this attack was against their sovereignty, and – more significantly – that this was an attack on behalf of the Venezuela’s old oligarchy and US oil conglomerates. Their clarity was striking, yet corporate media ignored this coverage.
The weakness of the new mood in the Global South
A few hours before the attack on Venezuela, President Maduro met with Qiu Xiaoqi, the high envoy of President Xi Jinping. They discussed China’s Third Policy Paper on Latin America (released December 10), in which the Chinese government affirmed, ‘as a developing country and a member of the Global South, China has always stood in solidarity through thick and thin with the Global South, including Latin America and the Caribbean’. They reviewed the 600 projects that are being jointly conducted between China and Venezuela and the $70 billion Chinese investment in Venezuela. Maduro and Qiu chatted, and then they took photographs which were posted widely on social media and shown on Venezuelan television. Qiu then left with the Chinese Ambassador to Venezuela Lan Hu and the directors of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Latin America and Caribbean department, Liu Bo and Wang Hao. Within hours, the city was being bombed. That day, the spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, ‘Such hegemonic acts of the US seriously violate international law and Venezuelan sovereignty, and threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean region. China firmly opposes it’. Beyond that, little could be done. China does not have the capacity to roll back US hyper-imperialism through military force.
Within Latin America, the rising Angry Tide – led by Argentina’s Javier Milei – celebrated the capture of Maduro, while Ecuador’s right-wing President Daniel Noboa made the point not only about Venezuela, but about the need to defeat the Pink Tide that had been inspired by Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarianism: ‘All the criminal narco-Chavistas will have their moment. Their structure will finally collapse across the continent’. Argentina led a group of ten countries to block a condemnation of the US violation of the UN Charter at a meeting of the thirty-three-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). These countries were Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago. It is a sign of the Angry Tide’s growing influence that CELAC, once able to stand for sovereignty, is now dragged into support for US adventurism in Latin America and for Trump’s orientation toward the revival of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine.
CELAC was established in 2010 from the Rio Group (1986) in 2010 to form a regional body excluding the United States (as the Organisation of American States does), which is why its creation was helped along by the Pink Tide. Its first co-chairs were right-wing Chilean President Sebastián Piñera and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. This kind of unity of the right and left over the idea of sovereignty is now weakened beyond recognition. A failure of CELAC to act has meant that not only its orientation (including the passage of the idea that the Latin America is a Zone of Peace in the 2014 Havana summit) has been dismissed, but so too has the Charter of the Organisation of American States.
Trump has openly pledged to revive the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, first articulated by US President James Monroe to combat not only European interference in the Western hemisphere but also the growth of independence led by people such as Simón BolÃvar, one of Latin America’s greatest heroes. Bolivarianism was revived by Chávez as one of the core ideological frameworks of the Pink Tide. Trump’s open embrace of the Monroe Doctrine and his call for a “Trump Corollary" (do what it takes to enforce the Doctrine) signals the US aim to restore old oligarchies across the hemisphere and grant US conglomerates free rein (potentially even reviving the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a trade initiative defeated by Chávez and others in 2005). This is class struggle on a continental level.
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This article was produced by Globetrotter. Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power. Chelwa and Prashad will publish How the International Monetary Fund is Suffocating Africa later this year with Inkani Books.
Carlos Ron is Co-Coordinator of the Nuestra America office of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. He is a former Venezuelan diplomat who served as Vice Minister for North America (2018-2025)
This article was produced by Globetrotter. Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power. Chelwa and Prashad will publish How the International Monetary Fund is Suffocating Africa later this year with Inkani Books.
Carlos Ron is Co-Coordinator of the Nuestra America office of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research. He is a former Venezuelan diplomat who served as Vice Minister for North America (2018-2025)
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