[News] The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution

[Anti-Imperialist News]

The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s 
Bolivarian Revolution: The Forty-Fifth Newsletter (2025)
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The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s 
Bolivarian Revolution: The Forty-Fifth Newsletter (2025)

With rapid military escalation and a redeployed ‘War on Drugs’ 
narrative, the Trump administration appears to be laying the groundwork 
for an attack on the Venezuelan people.


Children play on the beach during a security deployment in Anzoátegui, 
Venezuela, 19 September 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=76579f7739&e=d206d0a40d>.

Since early September, the United States has given every indication that 
it could be preparing for a military assault on Venezuela. 
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research partnered with ALBA 
Movimientos 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=da81ba4d48&e=d206d0a40d>, 
the International Peoples’ Assembly 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=6797537cfb&e=d206d0a40d>, 
No Cold War 
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and the Simón Bolívar Institute 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=e5168769e7&e=d206d0a40d> 
to produce red alert no. 20, ‘The Empire’s Dogs Are Barking at 
Venezuela’ 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=118448130d&e=d206d0a40d>, 
on the potential scenarios and implications of US intervention.

In February 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez travelled to Havana 
to receive the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural 
Organisation’s José Martí Prize from Fidel Castro. In his speech, he 
likened Washington’s threats against Venezuela to dogs barking, saying 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=b7b1d20dee&e=d206d0a40d>, 
‘Let the dogs bark, because it is a sign that we are on the move’. 
Chávez added, ‘Let the dogs of the empire bark. That is their role: to 
bark. Our role is to fight to achieve in this century – now, at last – 
the true liberation of our people’. Almost two decades later, the 
empire’s dogs continue to bark. But will they bite? That is the question 
that this red alert seeks to answer.


      The Sound of Barking

In February 2025, the US State Department designated 
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a criminal network called Tren de Aragua (Aragua Train) as a ‘foreign 
terrorist organisation’. Then, in July, the US Treasury Department added 
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the so-called Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) to the Office of 
Foreign Assets Control’s sanctions list as a ‘transnational terrorist 
group’. No previous US government report, either from the Drug 
Enforcement Administration (DEA) or the State Department, had identified 
these organisations as a threat, and no publicly verifiable evidence has 
been offered to substantiate the claimed scale or coordination of either 
group. There is no evidence that Tren de Aragua is a coherent 
international operation. As for the Cartel de los Soles, the first time 
the name appeared 
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was in 1993 in Venezuelan reporting on investigations of two National 
Guard generals – a reference to the ‘sun’ insignia on their uniforms – 
years before Hugo Chávez’s 1998 presidential victory. The Trump 
administration has alleged that these groups, working with Venezuelan 
President Nicolás Maduro’s government, are the primary traffickers of 
drugs into the US – while providing zero evidence for the connection. 
Moreover, reports 
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from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the DEA itself have 
consistently found Venezuelan groups to be marginal in global drug 
trafficking. Even so, the US State Department has offered a $50 million 
reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest – the largest in the 
programme’s history.

Members of the first cohort of the Tactical Method of Revolutionary 
Resistance (Método Táctico de Resistencia Revolucionaria, MTRR) course 
smile after completing training at the Command Action Group in Caracas, 
Venezuela, October 2025. Credit: Miguel Ángel García Ojeda.

The US has revived the blunt instrument of the ‘War on Drugs’ to 
pressure countries that are not yielding to its threats or that 
stubbornly refuse to elect right-wing governments. Recently, Trump has 
targeted Mexico and Colombia and has invoked their difficulties with the 
narcotics trade to attack their presidents. Though Venezuela does not 
have a significant domestic drug problem, that has not stopped Trump 
from attacking Maduro’s government with much more venom. In October 
2025, the Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado of the Vente 
Venezuela (Come Venezuela) movement won the Nobel Peace Prize. Machado 
was ineligible to run for president in 2024 largely because she had made 
a series of treasonous statements, accepted a diplomatic post from 
another country in order to plead for intervention in Venezuela (in 
violation of Article 149 of the Constitution), and supported /guarimbas/ 
(violent street actions in which people were beaten, burned alive, and 
beheaded). She has also championed unilateral US sanctions that have 
devastated the economy. The Nobel Prize was secured through the work of 
the Inspire America Foundation (based in Miami, Florida, and led by 
Cuban American lawyer Marcell Felipe) and by the intervention of four US 
politicians, three of them Cuban Americans (Marco Rubio, María Elvira 
Salazar, and Mario Díaz-Balart). The Cuban American connection is key, 
showing how this political network that is focused on the overthrow by 
any means of the Cuban Revolution now sees a US military intervention in 
Venezuela as a way to advance regime change in Cuba. This is, therefore, 
not just an intervention against Venezuela, but one against all those 
governments that the US would like to overthrow.

A woman holds a rifle during a security deployment in the Petare 
neighbourhood of Caracas, Venezuela, 15 October 2025. Credit: Rosana 
Silva R.


      The Bite

In August 2025, the US military began to amass naval forces in the 
southern Caribbean, including Aegis-class destroyers and nuclear- 
powered attack submarines. In September it began a campaign 
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of extrajudicial strikes on small motorboats in Caribbean waters, 
bombing at least thirteen vessels and killing at least fifty-seven 
people – without offering evidence of any drug trafficking links. By 
mid-October, the US had deployed 
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more than four thousand troops off Venezuela’s coast and five thousand 
on standby in Puerto Rico (including F-35 fighter jets and MQ-9 reaper 
drones), authorised 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=c7caff3e31&e=d206d0a40d> 
covert operations inside the country, and flown B-52 ‘demonstration 
missions’ over Caracas. In late October, the USS/Gerald R. Ford/ carrier 
strike group was deployed to the region. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s 
government has mobilised the population to defend the country.

A woman from the Peasant Militia (Milicia Campesina) holds a machete 
during her graduation as a combatant from the MTRR course, October 2025. 
Credit: Rosana Silva R.


      Five Scenarios for US Intervention

*Scenario no. 1:* *the Brother Sam option.* In 1964, the US deployed 
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several warships off the coast of Brazil. Their presence emboldened 
General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, chief of the Army General 
Staff, and his allies to stage a coup that ushered in a twenty-one-year 
dictatorship. But Venezuela is a different terrain. In his first term, 
Chávez strengthened political education in the military academies and 
anchored officer training in defence of the 1999 Constitution. A Castelo 
Branco figure is therefore unlikely to save the day for Washington.

*Scenario no. 2: the Panama option.* In 1989, the US bombed Panama City 
and sent in special operations troops to capture Manuel Noriega, 
Panama’s military leader, and bring him to a US prison while US-backed 
politicians took over the country. Such an operation would be harder to 
replicate in Venezuela: its military is far stronger, trained for 
protracted, asymmetric conflicts, and the country boasts sophisticated 
air defence systems (notably the Russian S-300VM and Buk-M2E 
surface-to-air systems). Any US air campaign would face sustained 
defence, making the prospect of downed aircraft – a major loss of face – 
one Washington is unlikely to risk.

*Scenario no. 3: the Iraq option.* A ‘Shock and Awe’ bombing campaign 
against Caracas and other cities to rattle the population and demoralise 
the state and military, followed by attempts to assassinate senior 
Venezuelan leadership and seize key infrastructure. After such an 
assault, Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado would likely declare herself 
ready to take charge and align Venezuela closely with the US. The 
inadequacy of this manoeuvre is that the Bolivarian leadership runs 
deep: the roots of the defence of the Bolivarian project run through 
working-class barrios, and the military would not be immediately 
demoralised – unlike in Iraq. As the interior minister of Venezuela, 
Diosdado Cabello, recently noted 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=a12f067ade&e=d206d0a40d>, 
‘Anyone who wants to can remember Vietnam… when a small but united 
people with an iron will were able to teach US imperialism a lesson’.

The commander general of the Bolivarian National Police, Brigadier 
General Rubén Santiago, holds a rifle with a sticker of Chávez’s eyes 
during a security deployment in Petare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

*Scenario no. 4: the Gulf of Tonkin option.* In 1964, the US escalated 
its military engagement in the Vietnam War after an incident framed as 
an unprovoked attack on US destroyers off the country’s coast. Later 
disclosures revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) fabricated 
intelligence to manufacture a pretext for escalation. The US claims it 
is now conducting naval and air ‘training exercises’ near Venezuelan 
territorial waters and airspace. On 26 October, the Venezuelan 
government said it had received information about a covert CIA plan to 
stage a false-flag attack on US vessels near Trinidad and Tobago to 
elicit a US response. Venezuelan authorities warned of US manoeuvres and 
said they will not give in to provocations or intimidation.

*Scenario no. 5: the Qasem Soleimani option.* In January 2020, a US 
drone strike ordered by Trump killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, head 
of Iran’s Quds Force. Soleimani was one of Iran’s most senior officials 
and was responsible for its regional defence strategy across Iraq, 
Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. In an interview 
<https://thetricontinental.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6a79324d3b4acfde1e7e546c6&id=3a0145b226&e=d206d0a40d> 
on /60 Minutes/, former US chargé d’affaires for Venezuela James Story 
said, ‘The assets are there to do everything up to and including 
decapitation of [the] government’ – a plain statement of intent to 
assassinate the president. After the death of President Hugo Chávez in 
2013, US officials predicted that the project would collapse. Twelve 
years have now passed, and Venezuela continues along the path set forth 
under Chávez, advancing its communal model whose resilience rests not 
only on the revolution’s collective leadership but also on strong 
popular organisation. The Bolivarian project has never been a one-person 
show.

China and Russia are unlikely to permit a strike on Venezuela without 
pressing for immediate UN Security Council resolutions, and both 
routinely operate in the Caribbean, including joint exercises with Cuba 
and global missions such as China’s Mission Harmony 2025.

A member of the Juventud Socialista de Venezuela (Socialist Youth of 
Venezuela) shows a coin given to graduates of the MTRR course during a 
security deployment in La Guaira, Venezuela, October 2025. Based on the 
methods of Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the MTRR course is 
designed to train people with no prior military experience for possible 
guerrilla warfare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

We hope that none of these scenarios come to pass and that the United 
States takes its military options off the table. But hope alone is not 
enough – we must work to expand the camp of peace.

Warmly,

Vijay

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