Since this statement was written, late on the night of January 2nd, the US bombed military and civilian facilities in Caracas, culminating in the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores. This act is a violation of International Law, as well as the stated goals of occupation prior to regime change. It signals an alarming precedent that US law enforcement are willing to conduct illegal military operations on sovereign soil.

The West Sound chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America recognizes that the United States of America is currently engaged in remote, unlawful and inhumane military action in and around the sovereign space of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and condemns the Trump administration as well as any Republican or Democratic lawmaker who voted to reject two resolutions, brought forward in 2025 under the War Powers Act of 1973. These measures would have limited executive authority to carry out such actions and required congressional approval for both military action taken against Venezuela, and military action in the Caribbean Sea. The failure of these congressional measures signal the continued concentration of war-making power within the US state, and the erosion of democratic control on the use of military force.

These military actions primarily involved the striking of suspected drug traffickers off the Caribbean coast of Venezuela. As of reporting from December 29th, 2025, strikes on a boat in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and a Venezuelan port have occurred, marking the first land strike of a facility by the US military in Venezuela since the operation began. These actions are a part of the US Counter-Narco-Terrorism campaign, Operation Southern Spear. Rather than detain individuals through any credible judicial process, the Trump administration is relying on terrorist designations that have long been used to circumvent accountability for extrajudicial violence.

It is through this distinction of “fighting terrorism” that the Trump administration justifies the use of deadly force against declared “non-state groups,” seemingly acting as executioner with impunity. These Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) are identified as Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as well as Cartel de los Soles, and were initially used to distinguish the action taken militarily as not being directed at the Venezuelan government itself; in December 2025, this too would change when President Trump declared Venezuela as an FTO. This has been a common strategy utilized by previous US administrations to take military action without democratic consent, especially when it came to many military operations in the Middle East.

A US military operation on September 2nd, 2025, observed and directed by US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and US Naval Admiral Mitch Bradley, resulted in the death of 11 people. This was prior to the FTO designation being applied to Venezuela itself. The initial drone strike destroyed the vessel and presumably killed 9 individuals onboard. From captured aerial footage, 2 individuals survived the strike and are seen swimming towards the wreckage. A subsequent strike would kill these two people. The events as described constitute a war crime and violation of the Geneva Convention.

According to Common Article III of the Geneva Conventions of 1949:

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

• violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
• taking of hostages;
• outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;
• the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for. An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict. The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention. The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

Additionally, the summary of the United States War Crimes Act of 1996 (H.R. 3680) states:

War Crimes Act of 1996 - Amends the Federal criminal code to provide that anyone, whether inside or outside the United States, who commits a grave breach of the Geneva conventions, where the person who commits such breach or the victim of such breach is a member of the U.S. armed forces or a U.S. national, shall be fined or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, or, if death results to the victim, be subject to the death penalty.

It is by these standards that all involved in the September 2nd operation, in which survivors of an initial kinetic strike were killed in a subsequent strike after confirmation of survivors was known, are potentially guilty of both violating the Geneva Convention as well as federal law under the War Crimes Act of 1996, and should be immediately tried accordingly. As of the 29th of December, and from the beginning of military action in the Caribbean, 30 boat strikes and at least 107 people have been killed by US strikes, according to the Associated Press.

It should also not be left unsaid that this is not the first instance of the US violating the Geneva Convention in this way, as multiple instances of these “double-taps” and killing the wounded have been reported across multiple conflicts, including conflicts under President George Bush Sr. during the First Gulf War, President George W. Bush during the Iraq War (Second Gulf War), and President Barack Obama in Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen (among other countries). This tactic of “double-taps” is usually compounded with the targeting of individuals seeking to aid the wounded, and has only been becoming more prolific of a “strategy” over the last few decades.

It is with great urgency that we as a nation must address these grievances enacted on the foreign persons of Venezuela by this administration, as not only is it in violation of international law, but it is in violation of federal law as well. President Trump and his administration, notably Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Vice President J.D. Vance, tout drug trafficking as tantamount to terrorism, placing significant emphasis on the transportation of fentanyl within repurposed fishing vessels. According to an executive order signed December 15th, 2025, fentanyl is “closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic” and “illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals” are thus classified Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD); this supposedly necessitates the need for extreme military action.

We must recognize similarities between the urgent calls to wage war and calls to incite regime change abroad by the Trump administration with nearly identical calls for action in Iraq at the turn of the millennium:

“[…] our belief is that the international community wants to see Saddam Hussein reverse course and that Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction are a threat to everybody in the region.” - Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu; Joint Press Availability, Royal Garden Hotel; London, United Kingdom, November 14, 1997. The US would later begin military operations in Iraq in 2003, and by January 2004 the Bush administration would concede to there being no “Weapons of Mass Destruction” in Iraq. Similarly, there is no evidence that fentanyl is produced or distributed through or within Venezuela. For the drug trafficking of Schedule 1 and 2 substances, which includes cocaine, fentanyl, and fentanyl analogs, the punishment ranges from 5- 40 years in for a first offense, with life imprisonment being the maximum sentence for multiple offences or when loss of life is involved. None of the killed have so far been proven to be drug traffickers, let alone tried in a court of law.

The actual motivations for the Trump administration and US military violating domestic and international law are likely in part due to control over perceived valuable resources, with President Trump having stated: “They took all of our oil not that long ago. And we want it back.” He has also advocated explicitly for regime change in Venezuela, and they have enacted, concurrently with the administration’s military actions, a total blockade of sanctioned oil tankers leaving Venezuela, resulting in two such tankers being intercepted and acquired by the US military. Another key motivation for regime change is due to Venezuela’s status as a socialist country, a justification used for US military intervention globally since the start of the Cold War.

We must also be wary of the capital forces behind continued military action anywhere. For reference, Dick Cheney, as Vice President of the US, helped ensure the company Haliburton received 36.9 billion dollars in military contracts. Dick Cheney was a former Halliburton CEO and continued to receive “deferred compensation” of 1 million dollars annually while the company executives participated in discussions within the administration over potential oil production in post-war Iraq. Today in Venezuela, fentanyl is the media spin, but there is little mistaking capital as a primary driver of this military action.

Land, resources, and weapons manufacturing are the primary drivers of US military spending, especially since the second World War, and it props up an economy dependent on constant conflict.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

It is this feature of wartime profiteering that is a hallmark of US imperialism, and is perpetuated through capital influences on our politics from the defence lobby.

This echoes the motivation for US interventionism and imperialism in Latin America throughout our nation’s history. From the land theft of indigenous peoples by settlers all over the country, culminating in war with Mexico to seize land from California to Texas, to President Theodore Roosevelt’s Roosevelt Corollary, which began directing US military operations throughout Central and South America as a way to protect US and European colonial interests throughout the 20th century. The resources and capital extracted by US companies from Latin American banana republics was the primary motivator for continuous military interventionism and multiple campaigns of regime change.

After World War II and during the Cold War with the USSR, leftist and socialist campaigns to uplift the peasantry and decouple the governments from colonialism were brutally suppressed by the United States, either through direct military action or the training and funding of US-friendly authoritarian regimes, in the name of fighting communism. Even nations somewhat successful in establishing leftist governments found their situations sabotaged by crippling sanctions imposed by the US, and internal corruption exacerbated by CIA operations.

Throughout the 20th century in Latin America, the US was involved directly in the “successful” regime change of 17 governments, and of 24 others indirectly, through training and military funding. As noted in a Harvard Review of Latin America paper from 2005, if spread out evenly over the whole of the 20th century, this would amount to US policy having been consequential in instituting largely right-wing authoritarians in a different country every 28 months. This does not include less-than successful attempts at regime change such as US involvement in Cuba defined by the Cuban Missile Crisis and the rise of Fidel Castro, nor the amount of times the US has directly or indirectly supported pro-US dictatorships in the region from regime change. Notable examples include:

• The use of Cuban liberation as an excuse to wage war on Spain at the turn of the 20th century, after which the US directly occupied Cuba before installing a US-friendly dictator.
• Intervention promoting Panamanian secession from Colombia, using US troops to occupy and secure land which would be used to begin construction of the Panama Canal in 1904, which would not fall under ownership of Panama until December 31st 1999.
• Occupation of the Dominican Republic under President Lyndon B. Johnson a few years after the assassination of DR President Trujillo as a way to exert political power in the face of internal US political threats by Republicans in congress.
• Contra war, in which US backed opposition to the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, with Henry Kissinger and Ronald Reagan having circumvented congressional law that prevented the arming of rebel groups by first selling weapons to Iran to then sell to rebels in Nicaragua.
• Heavy involvement in Chile in the early 1970s by Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, culminating in the brutal coup d’état and assassination of the democratically elected President of Chile, Marxist-socialist Salavador Allende, by military general Pinochet.
• US funding and training of death squads in El Salvador after backing the establishment of a military junta in the country. They supported the right-wing authoritarian regime against leftist guerilla groups during the over-decade long civil war from 1979 to 1992. Hundreds of thousands of people, mainly indigenous folks and the peasantry, would lose their lives to conflicts funded and at times directed by the United States. The echoes of colonialism, violence, and bloodshed in the name of US imperialism can still be felt in these countries. As people in Latin America continue to fight for self-determination and an end to the perpetual poverty necessitated by US capital interests, our government continues the inhumane treatment of refugees and persons seeking solace within our own borders. In many ways, the immigration crisis we face now has been manufactured over decades of US imperialism, and our dependence on an economically-depressed Latin America prolongs the conditions which cause them to flee.

War profiteering, human rights abuses, and a bipartisan legacy of undemocratic military intervention are on full display in these operations. Please join West Sound DSA in saying no to perpetuating US imperialism, and no to war on Venezuela.

Take Action

• Read the National DSA Statement: DSA Condemns Trump’s Illegal War Against Venezuela / DSA condena la guerra ilegal de Trump contra Venezuela
• Join the “Hands Off Venezuela” Mass Call: Tuesday, January 6 at 6pm PT
• Organize Against This War: Get involved in West Sound DSA and join the International Committee’s Venezuela Working Group