Photograph Source: Speaker Mike Johnson – Public Domain

On 23 September 2025, US President Donald Trump delivered a dramatic address, explicitly threatening those allegedly involved in drug trafficking to the United States with being blown “out of existence”. This statement, taken as a blatant disregard for international law and due process, made reference to the latest escalation in the decades-long US War on Drugs, a campaign historically used to justify US foreign intervention in Latin America, and now, prominently aimed at Venezuela.

For the last 26 years, Venezuela has undergone a profound political transformation successfully asserting sovereignty over the world’s largest proven oil reserves primarily by using revenues to attack decades of poverty and social exclusion through social programs. It also embarked on ending Washington’s historical political influence.

Venezuela has crafted an independent foreign policy aimed at building a multipolar world, forging closer ties with countries like Iran, Russia(with whom it has just approved a strategic partnership) and China, with an “All-Weather Partnership” signed in 2023. It has also promoted regional alliances free of US dominance such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA); promoting South-South cooperation with renewed participation in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Non-Aligned Movement; and leading the formation of the Group of Friends of the United Nations Charter.

These shifts prompted the US to declare Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” in 2015. This opened the door for a comprehensive campaign of unilateral sanctions —rather, coercive measures— that has continued across the Obama, Biden, and both Trump Administrations. This campaign has damaged the Venezuelan economy, contributed to the loss of lives, and fueled migration to the US and to neighboring countries.

As the US seeks to reassert its influence in the region in its global competition with adversaries like China, this policy on........

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