This is the prepared presentation at today’s forum (11th January 2026). A recording of the presentation and discussion is here.
US Imperialism has gone into what looks like a huge crisis in the 10 days or so since the New Year. First, we had the outrageous military attack on Venezuela on 3rd January, the kidnapping of President Nicholas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, followed by Trump’s claim that he was going to ‘run’ Venezuela. Prior to the kidnap-invasion we had weeks of Yankee murders of Venezuelan fishermen by so-called US ‘Coastguards’, claiming that they were intercepting ‘drug smugglers’ who are supposedly smuggling fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, into the US. These fishermen were murdered, some with ‘double tap’ killings that were boasted about by War Secretary Pete Hesgeth, when the survivors of the primary attack, clinging to wreckage, were then killed by a second attack with no other purpose than brazen murder.
In the US attack that kidnapped Maduro, the US brutally killed both Cuban and Panamanian guards that were helping Venezuela with security. There was evidently treachery from some in Maduro’s guard, and there is reason to suspect that not only the CIA, but also Mossad, were involved in preparing the way for the abduction, which had been planned for several months. His kidnapping causes political problems for Trump and the US. Because the charges are all lies. Maduro simply says he is innocent of all this crap, he was kidnapped and is a prisoner of war. Which he obviously is. He cannot be legitimately tried as a POW. He has very good lawyers already – the guy who was ready to defend Assange. And the government have been forced to admit that the supposed ‘Cartel of the Suns’ drug cartel that they accused Maduro of being the boss of, doesn’t actually exist. And they’ve changed the drug they now say he was involved in importing to the US, from fentanyl – a kind of super-heroin – to cocaine. They are desperately making it up as they go along. And Trump has not overthrown the US legal system as yet, although he wants to. It is not yet clear that he is strong enough to do that.
This is all not new. The Yankees have been seeking to overthrow the ‘Bolivarian revolution’ ever since General Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in 1999. His programme involved use of the country’s oil reserves to benefit the working class and the poor. It was a social democratic, welfare state policy funded by taxation of oil revenues, which then led to re-asserting state control over the Venezuelan oil industry in 2007. It had earlier been nationalised by a previous social democratic party in power, Democratic Action, in 1976, but that had effectively been undermined though the neoliberal period by a system of joint ventures with mainly US imperialist oil companies
When Chavez came to power in 1999, he gave expression to an enormous wave of popular discontent against the attacks and impoverishment the country suffered in the intervening decades. A veritable social explosion, which Chavez named the ‘Bolivarian revolution’, named after the early 19th Century Venezuelan military officer and revolutionary nationalist leader who led struggles against Spanish rule that led to the creation of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru as well as Venezuela as independent states from 1817 to 1830. Obviously, evocation of his name is a powerful weapon feeding off the nationalist and anti-colonialist sentiments of the Venezuelan and other South American masses. Even though Spain has long gone as an early colonial master, now the struggle is against US imperialism, as it has been for the whole of the 20th and 21st Centuries so far.
Chavez’ left populist government was enormously popular, and its actions triggered enormous imperialist hostility. The CIA attempted to garner a military coup against him in 2002, and he was seized by the coup plotters, but mass action by the workers and peasants forced his release and reinstatement as president. Notably, new Labour under Blair, in the person of Denis McShane at the Foreign Office (Latin American department), supported the coup of 2002, and bitterly regretted its defeat. So Starmer’s refusal to condemn the kidnap of Maduro is not new.
Chavez allied with Cuba diplomatically and was seen as a major ally. He renationalised oil in 2007, and his populist example spread in the late 2000s, with the governments of Evo Morles in Bolivia and then Rafael Correa in Ecuador being of a similar disposition and inspired by Venezuela. But it should be noted that none of these populist governments broke with capitalism. Unlike in Cuba, where in the autumn of 1960 under Yankee pressure Castro and Guevara liquidated the bourgeoisie and effectively nationalized the whole economy, in these countries, capitalism remained intact, though supposedly under control.
Later, Morales and Correa were overthrown and/or manoeuvred out of power by forces allied with US imperialism. Whereas in Venezuela, the huge popular movement inspired by the Bolivarian revolution meant that Chavez was harder to eliminate. Chavez himself died of cancer in 2013, and it has long been suspected, but not proven, that his cancer was the result of some sort of US poisoning. Maduro was his successor and carried on with Chavez’ policies. Less charismatic, he still proved competent and a thorn in the US’s side. There have been long standing attempts to get rid of him, including phoney allegations of election fraud when he won elections. So called ‘legitimate’ presidents such as Juan Guaido, Edmundo Gonzalez, and now Maria Corazon Machado, all imperialist puppets were touted by US imperialism. Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025. She is a far-right Zionist who wants to essentially give Venezuelan natural resources to the US. Trump was forced to admit she has no popular support and cannot lead Venezuela even as a US puppet.
Trump seems to be delusional. He thinks that Delcy Rodrigues will help him to rule Venezuela. Maduro’s vice president, now acting president. He threatens her with death if she does not cooperate, a fat worse than Maduro, he says. The US wants Delcy Rodriguez and the current Venezuelan regime to act as his agent. But there is no chance of that. The anger of the masses, still within the framework of the Bolivarian revolution, is enormous and she could not do that even if she wanted to. There is no sign that she does, despite Tariq Ali et al.
To get what he wants, Trump would have to occupy the country. Which would immediately lead to a war of liberation which the US cannot win. Venezuela has 28 million people, bigger than Iraq. But South America is a huge, fertile continent and huge numbers of people hate US imperialism and would come to fight it in event of an invasion. And not only from South America. It’s just about the worst terrain they can think of. Far more difficult than Iraq. And there is a very high level of class consciousness in South America as compared to the Middle East. It would be a huge graveyard for US imperialism Some parts of the US bourgeoisie are worried, that they are walking into a huge disaster, a super-Vietnam, or something like the Spanish Civil War. Hence the War Powers resolution passing in the senate.
But nevertheless, this event has set off a frenzy of openly expressed imperialist and militarist sentiment from some US imperialist politicians, raving about how they are going to attack Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, and any other country that asserts its sovereignty and defiance of US imperialism. Trump calls it the ‘Donroe Doctrine’, after the ‘Monroe Doctrine’ concept put forward by US President James Monroe in 1823. Which states that no outside power should be allowed have any influence or presence in the Americas. In its original form, this was in part an anti-colonial doctrine, that the US as a newly independent colony from Britain would help to drive other colonial powers out of the Americas. That was in the epoch of progressive capitalism. But from the 20th Century a modified version of it became the doctrine of US imperialism, when that was born, that the whole of the Americas belongs to the US. No one has ever stated this so openly as Trump, that the natural resources of Venezuela belong to the US, not to the people of Venezuela.
We have also had threats from Trump to take Greenland from Denmark since the Venezuela attack. And even some references and rumblings about annexing Canada. Such things would cause chaos in inter-imperialist relations. An attack on Greenland would destroy NATO and would signify a reemergence of inter-imperialist conflict for the first time since WWII. Which side the UK would fall in this is anyone’s guess. It could also tear the British ruling class apart. And that abstracts from the complex questions involved in the activities of the Israel lobby, which is a factor, but not primary, in all this. Whether any of that will materialise is not clear, there are obviously conflicting forces in the US ruling class.
There is also the likelihood of US participation in another Israeli war against Iran. There are signs that both Iran, and Russia, expect an Israel-Iran war very soon. Russia has pulled most of its diplomats out of Israel, as Iran has the armed capacity to devastate Israel with hypersonic missiles, as it did in the 12-day war last June. It is better armed now than it was then, having been reinforced by both Russia and China. Which means it depends on the US to defeat Iran. But the US may well be overstretched. These are all additional reasons why cracks are appearing in the unity of the US bourgeoisie. Trump’s strategy, as we have noted before, is to reconsolidate US imperialism in the Western Hemisphere now, to reconquer US world hegemony later. This is what is behind Rubio’s remarks about accepting multipolarity, to a degree. But Venezuelan oil, and conflicts over it, mean conflict with Russia and China sooner rather than later. China is a big customer of Venezuelan oil on a trade, not enforced, basis.
Trump’s regime is outside the ‘normal’ framework of US ‘democracy’ in that ICE is now effectively his private version of the Sturmabteilung, the SA in pre- and early- Nazi Germany. Though Trump has not yet fully overthrown the Constitutional order in the US and may not actually be strong enough to do so. ICE was initially set up by GW Bush as a centralised, bureaucratic continuation of earlier US immigration forces, with a remit for the ‘war on terror’ that fed into Guantanamo Bay etc. Very bad. But Trump has re-officered it with actual fascists, Proud Boys and the like, who he pardoned from the Beer Hall putsch of Jan 6, 2021, when he resumed power in 2025. So now they are on the rampage, and not just against immigrants. The killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis shows that.
ICE has no legal authority to lay a finger on any US citizen unless it has evidence they are hiding undocumented workers. It also has no authority to stop traffic, to interfere with it in any way. They are not police. They are not even like the French CRS in their formal legal powers. But in practice, as opposed to theory, they are a terrorist gangster force rampaging around the US. It’s very clear that that Jonanthan Ross murdered Renee Nicole Good in cold blood. And he is an archetype. Video from his phone showed she was conciliatory to him and moved away. He murdered her with three bullets in the face in the most disgusting manner. Then he called her a ‘fucking bitch’. That is premediated murder, murder 1, a capital crime in many US states (but not in Minnesota, where Minneapolis is).
This is even more explosive than the murder of George Floyd during the first Trump administration. Because of the race question and racial divisions in the US. It’s regrettable and appalling, but racial divisions mean black suffering does not necessarily find a big enough echo in the US. But this produced a rather large movement that the first Trump administration struggled to deal with. Trump could not stop Derek Chauvin, Floyd’s police murderer, from getting 22 years in prison for George Floyd’s murder. It was a big factor in destroying what little popular legitimacy he had in his first term. Given that he had lost the popular vote in 2016. The only reason he won the popular vote in 2024 was that the Biden-Harris administration discredited itself with Ukraine, which most in the US did not understand but which crucified the US economy. And then tried to compete with Trump as to who could be the most loyal lackey of Israel and its genocide. A contest Trump was always going to win, as he is a paid agent.
No one, until recently Mamdani, has even postured against Israel, and Mamdani has severe limitations to put it mildly. But this killing going to be a huge radicalising issue. We are already seeing mass demonstrations against ICE right across the US. Trump did not dare to openly defend Derek Chauvin, who incidentally murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis. And though he pardoned the 6 Jan 2021 criminals who acted for him, he did not dare pardon Chauvin. Though his scumbag arch-Zionist supporter Ben Shapiro tried to get this with a petition.
What conclusion do we draw? We want the defeat of US imperialism in Venezuela, in Iran, and in in any other conflict they get in with workers’ states, ex-workers’ states, or the global South. We want an anti-imperialist united front of Russia, China, and all the workers’ states and oppressed countries to defend Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and any non-imperialist country or workers’ state that comes under attack. On the other hand, a conflict with Europe over Greenland would be an inter-imperialist conflict. We have no side between the EU and the US. Regarding ICE, it is essential for communists to make use of the 2nd Amendment to agitate for a ‘well-regulated militia’ to crush ICE. There need to be political strikes against this murder and other crimes of ICE and the Trumpists. Its early days, but you can see this taking a revolutionary turn in the US. Trump is basically a fascist, but he is not running a consolidated fascist regime. There is still a real chance to defeat that.
