As the U.S. continues its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine and its escalation with China in the Asia-Pacific, the U.S. is also targeting a number of nations not only across Eurasia, but also far beyond it, including the Latin American nation of Venezuela.

The purpose of targeting Venezuela—officially—is to stop the flood of illicit narcotics into the U.S., which Venezuela's government is accused of facilitating. In reality, this is a fabricated pretext meant to manufacture consent for yet another war of aggression—one designed to contribute to a wider geopolitical objective of confronting and rolling back multipolarism. 

The U.S., since the end of the Cold War, has pursued a U.S.-dominated unipolar world order in which all matters are determined by and for the U.S. Part of achieving this is preventing any one single nation or group of nations from challenging America's global primacy.

In recent years these efforts have focused on preventing the reemergence of Russia and the rise of China. It also has focused on preventing nations outside U.S. domination from aligning with either or both. The U.S. achieves this through influence, coercion, political capture—and failing that, proxy war, then actual war. 

Continuity across administrations 

Venezuela has been targeted by the U.S. for regime change throughout the 21st century. The George W. Bush administration very briefly ousted the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002. Since then, regardless of who occupies the White House or controls U.S. Congress, U.S.-funded political interference, sanctions and covert military operations have continued placing pressure on Venezuela in hopes of removing the current political order from power and replacing it with a U.S. client regime.

While headlines focus on U.S. President Donald Trump's obsession with regime change in Venezuela spanning his two terms in office, it should be noted that sanctions and political interference targeting the nation continued from the Bush administration, throughout the eight years of the Barak Obama administration and also under the Joe Biden administration.

Despite attempts by the Trump administration to deny involvement in the 2020 failed overthrow of the Venezuelan Government, it fits in with both a historical pattern of U.S. interference worldwide, and other covert operations carried out under the Trump administration.

Regardless, the U.S. now openly seeks to overthrow the Venezuelan Government and has been assembling significant military forces to do so off Venezuela's coasts, including U.S. Navy and Marine Corps vessels, warplanes and troops.

Should the decision be made to launch a military operation, it will likely take the form of similar decapitation strikes the U.S. and its Israeli proxies have conducted against Hezbollah in Lebanon last year and against the Iranian Government earlier this year together with strikes aimed at crippling civilian infrastructure and damaging Venezuela's economy even further than years of U.S. sanctions already have.

Manufacturing consent

While Trump campaigned for office on a platform of ending "endless wars," since taking office, he has continued each war inherited from the previous Biden administration while launching and preparing to launch several new conflicts.

To justify a war of aggression against Venezuela aimed at regime change, President Trump has shifted narratives previously based on fighting Venezuela's "corruption" and "dictatorship," to blaming America's multi-decade drug crisis suddenly and squarely on Venezuela.

The administration has claimed President Trump is acting to "protect our country from those trying to bring deadly poison to our shores" at the same time the Trump administration also claims to have already "secured" America's borders within its first 100 days in office.

According to the White House official website, "Since President Donald J. Trump took office, he and his administration have ushered in the most secure border in modern American history—and he didn't need legislation to do it. President Trump has made good on the promises he made on the campaign trail to usher in an unprecedented era of homeland security."

And yet, according to the same administration, Venezuela is single-handedly circumventing this "unprecedented era of homeland security" to "poison" millions of Americans with illicit narcotics—so much so that it warrants a war of aggression launched against Venezuela itself.

Part of the theatrics in selling this latest war of aggression includes the U.S. targeting boats allegedly trafficking illicit narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela, despite the boats being targeted not having the physical ability to make the more than 1,000-mile (1,700 km) trip. While some seem to assume the U.S. had actionable information before carrying out the strikes, it should be pointed out that similar warfare throughout the 20-plus years of the "war on terror" resulted in mainly civilian casualties.

In a 2021 Washington Post article, it was reported that Daniel Hale, a former member of the U.S. armed forces, leaked "classified information about drone warfare to a reporter after leaving the military."

The leaked information revealed, "During one five-month stretch of an operation in Afghanistan, the documents revealed, nearly 90 percent of the people killed were not the intended targets."

The same vague pretext and lack of transparency that resulted in staggering civilian casualties throughout the "war on terror" now continues amid the Trump administration's "war on drugs."

Launching a war of aggression based on false pretexts has defined U.S. foreign policy throughout the 21st century—most notably ahead of the U.S. occupation of Iraq in 2003.

In a 2011 article, The Guardian published admissions the supposed justification for the invasion was based on deliberate fabrications, writing: "the defector who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons programme has admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war."

While the article attempts to portray the U.S. establishment as "tricked" into war with Iraq, it is clear that war with Iraq—just like now with Venezuela—was already a foregone conclusion and the U.S. establishment simply worked its way backward to create a narrative to convince Americans and the world to go along.

Under the current Trump administration, the very worst of past U.S. conflicts is converging once again ahead of yet another unnecessary war of aggression, once again built on a transparently false pretext and waged by the Trump administration through the same indiscriminate brutality many Americans voted President Trump into office to end.

While some analysts have mistakenly concluded U.S. escalation toward Venezuela represents a "retreat" from Asia or even Eurasia, and a transition from pursuing global primacy toward carving out an American "sphere of influence," the U.S. is much more likely attempting to complement its continued encirclement, containment and confrontation with both Russia and China by eliminating one of their more vulnerable allies—Venezuela—in a bid to escalate rather than withdraw from Washington's ongoing war against multipolarism. BR

The author is a Bangkok-based independent geopolitical analyst and a former U.S. Marine

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson

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