What You Need to Know About the U.S. Attack on Venezuela

Why did the U.S. attack Venezuela?

Was it all about the oil?

Of course it was about the oil. Venezuela holds the largest known oil reserves in the world. 

Unlike the Iraq war, when Bush administration officials tried desperately to avoid talking about oil as a primary motivator and instead kept the focus on false claims of weapons of mass destruction, possible nuclear weapons, and democracy, President Trump has proudly acknowledged the centrality of oil in his rationale for attacking Venezuela. Trump referenced Venezuela’s oil 23 times in his post-invasion press conference on January 3rd, claiming that it belonged to the U.S. He also claimed to have spoken with U.S. oil executives before the Pentagon launched its operation in Caracas.

But it was never only about the oil — or at least, not just about the potential profits or the oil industry’s wishes. Yes, there are some potential profits for U.S. oil companies, but these are very uncertain given the relatively low global price of oil. There is also the particular challenge of refining and selling Venezuela’s extra-heavy crude. 

There are big refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast that were built to process exactly this kind of heavy Venezuelan oil. And there are companies that want access to it, and they may displace Canadian crude — which has taken the place of Venezuelan oil — to do it. But that’s not the whole oil industry. And it may take a decade and the investment of billions of dollars to rebuild Venezuela’s broken oil infrastructure — and the chance of reaping any short-term profits. 

Even if that happened, it is unclear how much that would increase U.S. power in the region or globally. If Chevron (which is already operating in Venezuela) and a couple of other U.S. oil giants were pumping all of Venezuela’s oil, they could try to redirect much of it away from its current customers in China. But they would still be selling the oil on the global market — and directly or indirectly, China would almost certainly continue to get access to much of it.

So was it about stopping the flow of drugs?

No. Despite Trump’s rhetoric that U.S. military attacks in the Caribbean and the abduction of Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro are stopping deadly drugs from entering the U.S., it was never really about the drugs. Venezuela has never been a producer of fentanyl and is not a major player in the drug trade overall.

Venezuela is primarily used as a transit country in the global drug trade. Traffickers move cocaine through Venezuela and along its coasts, with most of that cargo bound for Europe and elsewhere, not for the United States. 

Yet the Trump administration continued to claim that Maduro was the head of a nefarious gang called the “Cartel de los Soles” — until they faced potentially having to justify that in court. Experts and U.S. intelligence have long acknowledged that such an organization does not exist — and the Justice Department’s actual indictment never even mentions it. But the Trump administration has demonstrated that they are not afraid to use accusations of drug trafficking to interfere in the affairs of sovereign states.

So if it wasn’t drugs and it wasn’t only oil, why did the Trump administration attack Venezuela?

The decision to invade was ultimately an amalgamation of different reasons and interests within the administration all coming together — a “coalition of the willing” of sorts. 

One is rooted in the longstanding anti-Cuba views of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Grounded in the anti-Castro milieu of the Miami Cuban community, Rubio is working to continue U.S. Cold War politics and policies toward Latin America in the 21st century. This centrally involves demonizing and working to destroy any government associated with socialism or the left, especially Venezuela’s ally, Cuba. 

For Rubio, weakening and isolating Cuba is another motivation for the seizure of Maduro, the latest step in his longstanding efforts to bring down the Cuban government. Cuba already faces some of the most difficult economic challenges since the 1959 revolution, perhaps even greater than those presented by the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

Venezuela has long had a strong relationship with Cuba, with important links that include exchanges of resources, including Venezuelan oil sent to Cuba at subsidized prices to fuel electricity and other needs. Rubio appears to anticipate a U.S.-controlled Venezuelan economy that no longer sends cheap oil to Cuba, hoping that will lead to the downfall of the Cuban government. And Rubio leads a key faction of the Trump administration — one that is perfectly happy to use military force abroad.

Other reasons for the attack on Venezuela reflect Trump’s own commitment to strengthening U.S. domination of Latin America overall. 

Trump is enthusiastically embracing the Monroe Doctrine, which originated in the early 19th century and argued that the United States has exclusive rights to dominate Latin America and the Caribbean politically, economically, and militarily. Starting when the U.S. was a rising power in the 1800s and early 1900s, the U.S. used the Monroe Doctrine to send a message to European powers that the U.S. — not the earlier European colonialists — would be the dominant imperialist power in the Americas, and the doctrine has guided U.S. foreign policy in the hemisphere ever since.

Trump’s embrace of the Monroe Doctrine fits with his other more recent threats to seize Panama and Greenland, to annex Canada as the “51st state,” and to take over Gaza with his “Riviera on the Mediterranean” real estate pitch. This reflects a return to open, 19th century-style colonialism, in which the goal is to “run the country” — not only to seize its resources but to control its territory and people, even when not part of a settler-colonial plan.

Another of Trump’s aims in attacking Venezuela and kidnapping Maduro is building on his racist narratives that demonize Latino immigrants and providing additional rationales for escalating mass deportations. Trump argues that Maduro sends “gang members” and “drug traffickers” to the U.S. and that his action “protects Americans.” 

Trump’s selection of the extremist Stephen Miller, the key architect of the anti-immigrant crackdown, as one of the four American men appointed to control Venezuela highlights the centrality of Trump’s white supremacist onslaught — which we see both domestically and beyond U.S. borders — in its attack on Venezuela.

Lastly, Trump is using the attack on Venezuela to promote the power, appearance, and “lethality” of the U.S. military. Self-named Secretary of War and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine made this clear in their superlative descriptions of the U.S. military operation to abduct Maduro. 

In fact, the assault on Venezuela was not a sudden one-off event. It was the culmination of a year of aggressive Pentagon actions that Trump (despite his claimed aversion to foreign wars) and the military brass bragged about, including bombing attacks on Somalia, Yemen, Iran, and Nigeria.  

How will the attacks on Venezuela affect the United States?

How much did the January 3rd attack against Venezuela cost?

The Trump regime has shut down legitimate questions about the cost of the Venezuela invasion. Independent estimates aren’t yet available, but this was no minor operation, with 150 aircraft, special forces, and an ongoing naval blockade reported to have cost $700 million and counting.

The Trump administration offered a lot of militaristic bluster about U.S. power in the aftermath of the raid. But we’re not hearing so much about the violations of law, the 80 or more people killed by the U.S. attack, or the fact that the situation inside Venezuela is likely to deteriorate, either quickly or slowly. And we’re not hearing so much about what the cost of the invasion and the months of preparation mean about U.S. strength or values while more than half of Americans say they are struggling to afford basic necessities, including housing, food, transportation, and healthcare. 

While we don’t yet know the cost of the full invasion, we do know that operations like this are massively expensive, to the detriment of people here in the United States. Here are comparisons to the U.S. cost of living for just three types of the 150 aircraft that were reported to have been part of the January 3 operation: 

• B-1B Lancers bombers. Each of these bombers costs $91,330 per hour to operate. That’s about three times the average salary for a food service worker in the United States.
• F-22A Raptors. These fighters can also drop bombs, and each one costs $56,511 per hour to operate. That’s more than twice the average annual housing costs (including rent or mortgage, utilities, and other costs) for people and families in the United States in 2024.
• MH-47G Chinook. Each of these military helicopters costs $9,663 per hour to operate. That’s nearly the annual food budget for American people and families in 2024. 

How much has the naval deployment off the Venezuelan coast and in the eastern Caribbean that began in September 2025 cost? And how much is it likely to cost going forward?   

Prior to January 3, the U.S. military conducted at least 35 strikes against boats in South American water. Taken together, those strikes killed at least 115 people. 

At least some of those strikes are believed to have involved Hellfire and/or JAGM missiles (the military’s successor to the Hellfire missile) — and at least sometimes, more than one of those missiles. Replacing a single JAGM for the U.S. Navy costs more than $267,000 — enough to fund food stamps/ SNAP benefits for 117 Americans for a year.

Will these attacks and the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro reduce fentanyl deaths in the United States?

No. Venezuela is not a major source of drugs coming into the U.S., and the drugs that do come through routes near the Venezuelan coast are almost all cocaine headed for Europe, not the fentanyl that is responsible for so many deaths in this country.  

For years in the name of targeting drug trafficking, the U.S. has carried out operations in the Caribbean involving the Coast Guard and federal law enforcement aimed at arresting drug traffickers and trying to find information to get to the top of the drug hierarchy. Militarizing the so-called “drug war” off the coast of Venezuela kills mostly poor fishermen, and experts agree it will have no serious impact on the drug trade. 

In contradiction with his stated aims of going after high-level drug traffickers, President Trump recently pardoned the former president of Honduras  — Juan Orlando Hernandez — who had actually been convicted in U.S. federal court of drug trafficking and sentenced to 45 years in prison. 

Trump’s decision to abduct Maduro just weeks after releasing Orlando Hernandez shows that his rhetoric about drug trafficking is purely cynical.

What kind of precedent does this action set for the growing collaboration of U.S. military and domestic police forces in carrying out this military action?

The January 3 abduction of Maduro sets an extremely dangerous precedent in this regard. We have already witnessed in U.S. cities the blurred lines of the military and police forces, with agents in unidentifiable uniforms carrying military weapons abducting people and carrying out other violence. On January 7, ICE agents in Minnesota killed an unarmed woman in her car. In addition to increasing repression, blurring the lines of military and police forces makes holding these forces accountable for their actions more difficult. 

In Venezuela, we witnessed a further blurring of the lines and integration between U.S. police and military forces. White House officials are calling the abduction of Maduro a law enforcement action, but it involved hundreds of U.S. troops, special forces, military pilots, ship crews, and more — from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force, and Cyber Command. They used hundreds of the Pentagon’s planes, ships, helicopters and bombs, drones, and other weapons. The action was coordinated by the Pentagon and overseen by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a four-star general. This was a military action.   

Military units flew from the ships to protect the helicopters, planes, and drones that dropped bombs to destroy anti-aircraft capacities and to destroy electricity plants to black out the capital city, killing people along the way. Various federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies were brought along — from the FBI, CIA, Drug Enforcement Agency — to take Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, into official custody and read them their rights. 

This was an act of war that included the invasion of a sovereign country and the high-level kidnapping of a sitting president of that country. And by including domestic law enforcement agencies as what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs described as “our teammates,” the longstanding U.S. laws designed to separate the role of the military from the role of domestic law enforcement were effectively shredded.

What impact will these attacks have on Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S.?

Economic crises over a decade — caused by internal mismanagement and corruption, falling oil prices, and most of all unilateral U.S. oil sanctions — have resulted in almost 8 million Venezuelans being forced to leave their country. Many have come to the United States. 

Escalating attacks — including family separations, racial profiling, forced deportations, state and right-wing violence, and more — have impacted all immigrant communities. And they escalated throughout 2025. 

The Venezuelan diaspora in the U.S. has been especially vulnerable and stigmatized. The Trump administration has pushed the lie that virtually all Venezuelan men in the U.S. are tied to the Tren de Aragua gang, and he’s attempted to use the Alien Enemies Act to target Venezuelan migrants. Those efforts were based on fictional assertions that the government in Caracas was sending an army of migrants to invade the United States. 

While that deportation effort is currently blocked by the courts, Trump’s top aide, anti-immigrant extremist Stephen Miller — who also developed the plan to attack the small boats off the coast of Venezuela — reminded the White House that the Alien Enemies Act could be used for mass deportation again if there were war between the U.S. and Venezuela. 

In the wake of the January 3rd U.S. attack, many more Venezuelans could face deportation.  Venezuelans with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) are among the people from 11 countries for whom Trump canceled the status last year. Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News that, since the abduction of Maduro, the “great news for those who are here from Venezuela on temporary protected status is that now they can go home with hope for their country.” There’s no evidence at the moment that TPS holders in the U.S. are eager to jump on a plane.

Does the attack on Venezuela make the U.S. safer?

No. Not only will it not stop fentanyl deaths, but illegal unilateral attacks on other countries — despite U.S. officials’ claims aimed at justifying those attacks — create enormous anger around the world, and that anger often turns towards hostility not only towards the U.S. government but towards American citizens and residents. 

Sometimes the justifications were outright lies — think “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq or “self-defense” in Afghanistan. Other times it could be half-truths that had nothing to do with the real reasons for the attacks — like human rights violations in Libya or food aid in Somalia. But in all those cases local, regional, and global anger increased. 

People — including the very people U.S. military forces are supposed to be protecting — see the truth. And because our country claims to be a democracy, it is all too often assumed that its citizens are responsible for the acts, and the crimes, of its government.

Was the attack on Venezuela legal?

Was this action legal according to U.S. law?

Not even close. The U.S. Constitution is unequivocal that the power to declare war lies with Congress, not with the president. Especially since the U.S. war in Vietnam, the White House has required Congressional approval before carrying out acts of war. Congress did not authorize military action in Venezuela (or for the air strikes in the Caribbean that preceded it). Venezuela had not launched an armed attack on the United States, so the White House does not have a case that it was using the military in self-defense.

Congress paved the way for the attack by failing to pass various measures that might have prevented this, and by passing a $1 trillion military budget with no meaningful safeguards — even as the White House has been using the military more recklessly and with less accountability or oversight.

Was the attack on Venezuela legal under international law?

Starting with the UN Charter, the bedrock of modern international law, the UN requires that its members “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” 

The only exceptions require either the UN Security Council authorizing a military attack — which clearly was not the situation here — or in case of immediate self-defense, in which a country faces “an armed attack” from another country. Claiming that drug smuggling, or the desire to arrest someone indicted for drug trafficking, somehow count as an “armed attack” does not make it so. The U.S. attack on Venezuela stands in complete violation of international law.

Trump aide Stephen Miller made clear the White House’s disdain for international law — dismissing it as “international niceties and everything else” — with his assertion of raw power as the basis for “the real world.” His is the world “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.” 

No. These are the laws of “might makes right.”

The U.S. violated numerous other international laws in its military raid. The killing of scores of people in order to make an arrest violates requirements of proportionality and military necessity. The destruction of energy centers leaving huge swathes of Caracas in the dark without electricity violates prohibitions on collective punishment. And the forcible arrest of a sitting head of state violates centuries of customary international law.

But the fundamental violation is the unlawful use of force against another country for any reason other than Security Council permission or immediate self-defense. The U.S. is clearly in violation of international law. The fact that the Security Council, faced with the clear U.S. violations in their meeting of January 5th, was unwilling even to try to pass a resolution, or even issue a non-binding statement of condemnation — even disapproval — of the U.S. assault on Venezuela because of the inevitable U.S. veto, provides just the latest example of U.S. domination of the UN. 

It is particularly ironic given that the 10 elected members of the Security Council now include five that have faced either U.S. threats of military attack in recent days (Colombia and Denmark), bombing attacks earlier this year (Somalia), or regime change attacks in the past (the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Panama). It demonstrated again the inability and/or reluctance not only of major powers, but also of the multilateral institutions themselves, to challenge rising U.S. global as well as regional hegemony. And that is hastening the decline of the UN’s legitimacy and influence around the world. 

What are some of the international consequences of this attack?

What does it mean regarding threats to Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico — and potentially to Greenland and Canada?

This moment following the U.S. assault on Venezuela is extremely dangerous for all of these countries. 

During the White House press conference following the attack, Trump explicitly threatened Colombia and Mexico, while resuming threats to seize Greenland for its rare earth minerals and strategic Arctic location. Marco Rubio, who has long sought the overthrow of the Cuban government, told “Meet The Press” after the action in Venezuela that if he was part of that government today, “I’d be concerned.” 

The Venezuela attack also renews fears that Trump’s threats might be the precursor to further military attacks to also try to seize Panama and threaten Canada. 

If neither Congress nor multilateral agencies such as the UN are able to hold the U.S. and the Trump administration accountable, and instead allow full impunity for the Venezuela assault, all these countries will remain in serious jeopardy.

Does this action provide an implicit green light for other global powers (like China and Russia) to claim their own spheres of influence?

Of course. When any power acts with aggression and lawlessness and gets away with it, other powers take note and follow suit. 

This is especially true when the United States — the world’s most powerful country — takes such actions. When the U.S. launched a violent, open-ended, and unaccountable “War on Terror” in 2001, states around the world — including China and Russia — launched their own “wars against terrorism.” If the U.S. is not held to account for its actions in Venezuela, we can expect similar aggression from other powers.

Trump’s admiration for the Monroe Doctrine is an embrace of a time before the United Nations — indeed, before any international institutions to which states were accountable — when colonial powers permitted each other to claim “spheres of influence” where they would dominate peoples and places. Trump is creating a 21st century version of this, in which powers like Russia, China, and others have full permission — as far as Washington is concerned — to dominate others.