Ever since Chavez was elected in 1998, the United States and the corrupt comprador Venezuelan economic elites have waged a never-ending campaign to overthrow a government elected, and re-elected, and re-elected by the people of Venezuela in elections deemed by foreign observers to be a fair reflection of the will of the people. No stone has remained unturned in this nearly three-decade-long war on the people of Venezuela and the government that they elected. The working classes wanted a leader who would help them overcome poverty, and the middle class wanted someone to deal with the widespread corruption of the economic elites and the corrupt management of the national oil company.

The rise in oil prices soon after Chavez came to power removed the option of financial throttling by the IMF and World Bank. Chavez had the policy freedom to appoint a constituent assembly to rewrite the elite-friendly constitution and remove the elite courtiers in the government and judiciary. As Chavez also had the loyalty of the military and security services, in which he had served, these measures created the basic institutional strength needed for significant reforms. In 2000, Chavez also launched a Thursday night television show and a Sunday morning radio show where he directly engaged with Venezuelan citizens in order to educate them politically. Chavez also aided his own citizens and Cuba through an “oil for doctors” arrangement which initially provided 20,000 medical specialists in return for 53,000 barrels of oil per day at preferential rates. This was later increased to 40,000 medical specialists and 90,000 bpd. An excellent start to the reorientation of Venezuela away from corrupt rentier comprador capitalism.

And also a guaranteed way of putting a big US target on your back! In 2000 Chavez was re-elected by a large margin and passed a slew of social and economic decrees, as well as bringing the state oil company under proper oversight and increasing taxes on foreign oil companies. The target on his back grew bigger. In 2001, the rich, the rich-controlled media, and corporate leaders united together to overthrow Chavez under the leadership of Pedro Carmona. On April 11, 2002 this opposition staged an attempted coup, which was overthrown by mass protests against the coup. After being kidnapped, Chavez returned triumphantly to power. This was where he made his biggest mistake. Just when the opportunity to thoroughly deal with the comprador elites sat at his feet he blinked. Instead of declaring a state of emergency, jailing and executing the traitors, and confiscating the wealth of the plotters, and closing down the media that was an open part of the coup, he practised great leniency. If he thought that the elites would be thankful and work with him, he was delusional, they simply regrouped with the help of a US that had openly celebrated the coup.

He moderated his approach and even reinstated the previous corrupt board of directors and managers of the state oil company; something that would very quickly be seen as a significant error. The elites took his moderation as a sign of weakness not strength.

Some of the military officers that should have been summarily executed for taking part in the coup now openly called for the military to overthrow the government; open treason. Then the elites organized street protests that tried to bring down the government, but these faced massive counter protests from the majority. In December 2002, the management of the sate oil company walked out – crippling the economy. This was backed by a private sector strike, with businesses being closed down to destabilize the economy. Chavez responded by firing about 19,000 of the striking workers and then employed retired workers, foreign contractors and military personnel to replace them. The private sector general strike also collapsed. Greatly angering the elites, oil production rapidly recovered to previous levels and stayed there until 2016. But once again, Chavez let a chance go to throughly flush the traitorous elements. He had won a great victory, but then refused to use it to remove the opponents of the revolution.

The economic elites then forced a recall referendum in 2004 that failed. Chavez may have thought that his opponents were now vanquished, but like all capitalist elites they were just biding their time for the next attempt to overthrow a government that they could not control. In the 2006 election, his third, Chavez trounced the opposition. He stated that he wanted to implement a “democratic socialism” in contrast to the socialism of the Soviet Union or China which he considered to be too autocratic. He would have done well to spend some time with the Chinese Party-State elites and unlearn some of this foolish nonsense. Possibly the first thing that they would tell him was the need to fully subjugate the bourgeois class. The second would have been to develop the productive forces of the economy through state investment. The latter he utterly failed at, with none of the oil revenues going to build out Venezuela’s industrial sector; even in implementing oil refineries to produce higher value-added products. Capital controls were in place from 2003 onwards to stop capital flight, but no import controls to aid domestic industry development. Venezuela remained as a petro-economy.

In 2007 Chavez finally shut down the most offending elite-propaganda television channel, RCTV, by not renewing its license. Its management should have been in jail long ago for open treason. In 2011 he nationalized the gold industry, widening the target on his back even further. In 2009 he had won a referendum to allow him to stand for president again in 2012, and he won that election with 54% of the votes. Chavez then died of an extremely aggressive cancer in March 2013. The man who was Chavez’s personal assistant and body guard since he first came to power defected to the US in December 2014, feeding theories of an intentional poisoning of Chavez; something that the CIA had attempted many times with Fidel Castro. Vice President Maduro took over the presidency from Chavez, and he won the election in 2013 with a small margin over his opponent. Note that unlike in the US, the vice president could not simply serve out the term of the dead elected president; i.e. Venezuela was actually more democratic than the US in this matter. Maduro’s opponent disputed the results, which is par for the course for such compadres, but foreign observers deemed it to be a valid representation of the people’s wishes.

From mid-2014 the global oil price fell from over US$100 to US$26.21 in early 2016, severely impacting the Venezuelan petro-economy. The economy contracted by 3.9% in 2014, then by 6.2% in 2015 and inflation took off due to shortages and a mismanagement of monetary policy. In 2016, the economy plunged by 17%. By mid-2016, the global oil price had recovered somewhat to nearly US$50; but oil production suddenly fell off a cliff in 2016! The Western media blamed mismanagement, corruption etc., but none of these can account for the rapid fall from nearly 2.5 million barrels per day in 2016 to 2 mbpd (a 20% drop) the following year, to 1.5 mbpd (a further 25% drop) in 2018. This robbed Venezuela of the benefit of the recovering oil price that reached US$70 in 2018. The economy plunged by a further 15.67% in 2017.

The opposition had won a majority in the National Assembly in 2015, but without enough of a majority to challenge Maduro, so they then pushed for a recall referendum; just as they had done against Chavez. Significant unrest was also ignited on the streets of Venezuela by both the economic elites and the rapidly deteriorating situation for the majority of the population. By decree, Maduro held Constituent Assembly elections in 2017 which the opposition boycotted; leading to an overwhelming majority of Maduro supporters being elected.

This was the period when Chavez’s mistakes came home to roost, the two missed opportunities to fully subjugate the economic elites and their media tools and the lack of significant investment in the productive forces; both oil and non-oil. Actual sabotage by the comprador elites cannot also be ruled out, as there was an out and out power struggle ongoing between them and the popular forces. The oil price crash would have been seen as a great opportunity to bring down the government, and intensifying any economic crisis seen as an excellent tactic. Using the Constituent Assembly elections as an excuse, with the opposition colluding with US interests to boycott the election, the Trump administration launched an all out war to cripple the Venezuelan economy for good.

In August 2017, the US prohibited Venezuela’s access to U.S. financial markets; which due to US extra-territoriality effectively meant much of the world’s financial system and the US$ that is used in most import and export transactions. In 2018 this was expanded to block the purchase of Venezuelan debt, crippling the nation’s ability to manage its foreign debt. Numerous senior individuals had already been sanctioned by the Obama administration and many more added in an obvious attempt to disrupt the operations of the Venezuelan state and state industries; including the state oil company. Then in 2019, these were extended to economic sanctions on individuals and companies involved in the petroleum, gold, mining, and banking industries and even the food subsidy program. Other Western countries also applied sanctions. Every time that the Venezuelan government did not collapse, greater sanctions were added in an attempt to force the issue.

The US even stopped the Venezuelan state-owned CITGO from repatriating profits to keep choking off any flow of US$ to Venezuela. In 2019, it recognized the self-appointed Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s “interim president” and just handed over Venezuelan state assets, including the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, to him. The Bank of England also refused to give Venezuela access to its gold stored in the country, tightening the financial noose even more. In 2019 and 2020, oil prices fluctuated between US$50 and US$60. The economy continued to crash, by 19.66% in 2018, 27.66% in 2019 and 30% in 2020. A recovery from a very low base then set in in 2021 with 1% growth, and then 8% growth in 2022, followed by 4% in 2023 and 5.3% in 2024. Because of the Western sanctions, Venezuela was unable to fully benefit from the very high oil prices between 2021 and 2024.

The Maduro government survived all of this, with Maduro being re-elected in 2018. The opposition was split on whether or not to participate in that election, with a couple of opposition candidates standing. A number of opposition figures could not run due to offences committed during the 2014 protests and also some opposition parties were disqualified from standing. These issues, together with the split of the opposition, greatly undermined them and Maduro won a majority of the vote. The West rejected the results, while many other countries accepted them as reflecting the will of the people. Many bodies, including the Carter Centre, refused to send election monitors; which is highly suspicious. This helped facilitate the Western propaganda campaign against the validity of the elections. It must be said though that of any of the Chavez/Maduro elections this is the one that has some real questions about it. By this time it was very obvious that the West was intentionally trying to overthrow the government.

The US vassal Canadian government had set up the Lima Group of the right-wing leaders of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Saint Lucia to diplomatically isolate Venezuela and to increase the pressure for regime change. It was created because the Organisation of American States did not support interference in Venezuela’s domestic affairs. As stated here:

The “Lima Group” of 13 governments (out of 33 OAS member States), signatories of the declaration (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru y Saint Lucia), is totally illegitimate in its pretension to be an international body. The group wants to achieve outside the OAS what it could not achieve within the OAS. Ultimately, it will have to be held accountable as the foreign ideological instigator of any violence that might occur in Venezuela.

Argentina and Mexico left the group in 2021, and since then, the group has drifted into irrelevance. In 2018 an attempt to assassinate Maduro with drones failed, and in May 2020, an obviously US-sponsored coup (organised by a private US security company) attempt also failed. With the incoming Biden administration and the high oil prices stemming from the anti-Russia sanctions, some sanctions relief on Venezuelan oil production was allowed. In addition, China was also buying some Venezuelan oil and the now heavily sanctioned Russia was increasing relations with the country. Here a US mercenary talks about his role in the 2020 attempted coup, together with the ongoing acts of sabotage against the Venezuelan economy.

Presidential elections were held in 2024, with the main opposition group The Unitary Alliance represented by Edmundo Gonzalez. Maria Corina Machado, the main opposition leader, was banned from standing for election. Machado is a member of an elite rich family and has been involved with the US authorities, with US regime change NGOs (e.g. the National Endowment for Democracy) and the Guaido attempted usurpation. Chavez never took the opportunities given to him to negate the influence of this central opposition figure that has repeatedly worked with the US government against the interests of the Venezuelan people. In 2014 she accepted a diplomatic position from the government of Panama to enable her to address the OAS where she called for foreign intervention in Venezuela, treason. In many countries she would have been imprisoned for such treachery, at the least. She is a full-on comprador neoliberal who wants to sell off state assets to foreign interests at knock-down prices, including the state oil company that sits atop massive heavy oil reserves. This piececovers what the Western press will not.

Washington’s singular preference for Machado became particularly evident between January 26, when the Supreme Tribunal of Justice definitively ruled that she could not run for president, and April 19 when González Urrutia became the opposition’s candidate. During that period, a journalist asked Francisco Palmieri, head of the U.S. mission for Venezuela located in Bogotá, if “any opposition candidate would satisfy the Biden administration.” Palmieri went straight to the point: “We have and will continue to support María Corina Machado as the candidate of the democratic opposition.”

…

Machado is an internationalist. She not only assumes reactionary positions but has openly supported and forged relationships with rightists in Europe, Israel and Latin America.

Maduro won the election with 51.95% of the vote to Gonzalez’ 43.18%; with Western governments predictably calling the election fraudulent. With the Venezuelan economy slowly recovering, admittedly from a very low level, the usurper Guaido fell into irrelevance along with the Lima Group, and with Maduro newly re-elected, a quarter century of US and Venezuelan vassal elite attempts to overthrow the government seem to have come to naught. Underlining this, in May 2025, Machado fled the Argentine embassy where she had been holding out for 15 months to the US; aided by the US authorities. She has now been awarded the utterly Western propagandist Nobel Peace Prize, which is very separate from the other Nobel prizes. The West is burgeoning her image to be the next US-installed leader of Venezuela.

Now faced with decades of failure, the new Trump administration has decided to go for the military option. A classic response, if all else fails go military. With respect to nuclear-armed Russia, a proxy war was utilized (and now failing). With respect to China, that option is now utterly untenable. With respect to a weak Venezuela, it seems that the US administration considers that some air strikes and sabotage covered up with “fighting drug dealers” propagandist rubbish may help push the Venezuelan government over the edge. This also aligns with the US consolidation back within its own hemisphere, with the “pink tides” in Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina reversed and heavy tariffs placed upon Brazil. Such a takedown of Venezuela by the US would have a very “disciplinary” effect on other South and Central American governments.

So now we see the US government murdering fishermen again and again, while lying that they were drug traffickers. Even the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has to accept that these actions constitute murder, and draws parallels with the Reagan-era invasion of Panama after the president there stopped taking orders from the US. But the population of Panama was only 2 million in the 1980s and US troops were already stationed in the Panama Canal Zone. Venezuela has a population of 28.4 million, with a large army loyal to Maduro and millions of armed citizens ready to defend their homeland. It could easily become a quagmire for the US, as the CBC notes. Of course, the CBC has to trot out some compradors to complain about their “bad” treatment as they cavort with a foreign power on the brink of war with their country! Maduro is using the opportunity to fully crack down on the opposition, to remove them as a possible counterrevolutionary force available to the US.

With just over a year to go to the US mid-terms, the last thing Trump wants is involvement in a quagmire. His decisions since he became president show a preference for short sharp attacks, not full-blown air wars and invasions. But Trump, and the US oligarchy behind him, do desperately want to bring all of the Latin American governments in line and to take the vast resource wealth of Venezuela for themselves. And as this article notes:

The Trump administration appears to be determined to escalate things to the next level, which could involve bombing Venezuela or attempting to seize strategic ports or airfields in the country, steps that would almost certainly provoke a full-blown war with the government.

The Secretary of State “Little Narco” also represents the “Miami Mafia” of expatriate Cuban, Venezuelan and other Latin American nationalities right-wing population that would be joyful to see Maduro (and also of course the Cuban government) overthrown. Florida is an extremely important political swing state, where ethnic Cubans number 1.6 million (heavily concentrated in Miami-Dade county), and ethnic Venezuelans number 380,000 (again heavily concentrated in Miami-Dade). Also, 826,000 Colombians. About two-thirds of ethnic Cubans are US citizens, but only about 50% of Colombians and 25% of Venezuelans are. There are also populations of Haitian (500,000) and Nicaraguan emigres (135,000) in Florida; predominantly non-citizens.

Due to the anti-immigrant stance of the Trump administration, the temporary humanitarian pathway for Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan immigrants was ended as soon as it came into power. This immediately affected 532,000 people from these nations who predominantly reside in Florida and may now be subject to deportation. In March, the Department of Homeland Security formally revoked the legal protections for the people who had been covered by these pathway programs; and this decision has been upheld by the US Supreme Court. Additional hundreds of thousands became affected by the termination of other immigration programs in September. Cubans are already being deported back to their country.

Only 1,000 Cubans have been deported so far, but another 42,000 have deportation orders. 10,200 Venezuelans have already been deported. Given the much higher ethnic Cuban voting block, the US government may continue to go relatively easy on ethnic Cubans, at least until the mid-terms. The emigres may be finding that they are more pawns of the US oligarchy than having significant real power within the US, and lose out in a clash with a US ethnic nationalism that is a significant part of MAGA. The US oligarchy is changing its tactics, using immigration (and other cultural issues such as abortion and identity politics) as a tool to maintain support among MAGA while carrying out many other policies that negatively affect its MAGA base. It may want to control the natural resources of Venezuela, but no longer want Venezuelans within the US. A regime change in Venezuela may very well result in the deportation of all Venezuelans who had temporary immigration status. Such news items as below will play very well with the MAGA nationalist base.

The Latino populations of Florida are learning that many of them were just temporary immigrants, and were not “special”. The delusional nature of the above couple with respect to their status is quite incredible. “We are not prepared to leave, we are law-abiding citizens” says the husband when it is not up to them and they are not US citizens; and it seems that they do not speak English while having what MAGA would call an “anchor baby”.

The US military must be cognizant of Venezuela’s air defences. Venezuela does possess at least two SV300-M surface-to-air long-range missile units, plus up to 45 S-125 Pechora medium-range systems, and 12 Buk -M2 more advanced medium-range systems. These are all based on mobile launchers, which make them very hard to locate and destroy. They can even remain turned off, and then suddenly turn on if enemy aircraft are detected. The nation also has 300 ZU-23-2 towed twin-barrelled 23mm anti-aircraft guns, which can be very useful against drones and low flying subsonic cruise missiles (which US cruise missiles tend to be). It also has 5,000 of the extremely advanced Igla-S man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS), as well as 5,000 Swedish RBS 70 MANPADS. As the article notes:

Overall, Venezuela has an unusually varied collection of air defense assets, including smaller numbers of more capable systems. However, even most of the older surface-to-air missile systems have been upgraded and, as stated earlier, are generally highly mobile, meaning they can appear virtually anywhere, disrupting carefully laid mission plans. They could still pose a threat that would have to be taken seriously during any kind of offensive U.S. air operation directed against Venezuela.

With the Houthis getting close to downing US F-35s and F-16s, and damaging Saudi Tornados, F-15s and F16s, with quite rudimentary air defences, the US will have to be very cognizant of Venezuela’s air defence capabilities. The nation also possesses 21 Su-30MK2V Flanker fighters. The last things that President Trump will want is F35s dropping out of the sky, and body bags returning home; for a war very few Americans want. Also a war so blatantly based upon lies about Venezuela’s role in the drug industry when everyone understands the central role of Colombia and Mexico.

Especially when polls show him with a significantly negative net approval rating, and the Democrats in the lead with respect to next year’s mid-term elections. The MAGA group certainly did not vote for Trump in the hope of more foreign wars. On a personal level, Trump has to be worried about the mid-terms delivering Democrat majorities in the House and Senate that could be used to once again impeach him. If anything can save Venezuela from a US invasion, it may be the politically tenuous nature of the US administration.

It does appear though that Maduro made an offer of very large concessions to the Trump administration, which were rejected. It does seem that the US administration is currently hell bent on regime change, but it may be limited in the extent of the risks that it will take to gain its objective. What we do know is that the US will continue to work to make the lives of Venezuelans as worse as possible until they make a choice that is acceptable to the US oligarchy. And now Trump has officially stated that he has unleashed the CIA upon Venezuela to facilitate regime change and possible assassination, just accepting the reality that has been in place for years.