The US bombing and invasion of Venezuela on January 3, 2026 was accompanied by White House threats against other nations, and references to the military occupations and assaults on our own US cities. Thomas A. Drohan, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general and professor emeritus of military and strategic studies at the USAF Academy, tells us,
“Effectively, we are at war and peace all the time…. in a boundless battlespace of weaponized information. What’s clear is that warfare is hybrid conflict marked by…. arenas of warfare that are all-domain, all-instruments-of-power, and all-effects.”
The Trump administration has committed acts of war against Venezuela, but the attack on Venezuela is an attack on all of us. To stand with Venezuela is an act of self-defense.
The War against Venezuela is against Us All – AFGJ Statement on January 3, 2026 attacks
The Alliance for Global Justice condemns the military attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro during the early hours of January 3, 2026. We demand that the US withdraw all its troops and agents from Venezuela, end the military blockade and sanctions, and free President Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and return them home, safe and unharmed.
The US aggression against Venezuela is not just about Venezuela. It is a threat to the entire hemisphere. A global signal. We must defend Venezuela now, because it is taking the brunt of an assault against us all.
The war on Venezuela is a war on Latin America, much of it based out of occupied Puerto Rico. President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have made threatening statements toward Cuba, Greenland, Mexico, and Colombian President Gustavo Petro. This is a new Manifest Destiny, the vision of a US Empire “from sea to shining sea” expanding northward and southward from Pole to warming Pole.
The war on Venezuela is a war on the people of the US, robbing our resources to wage war and occupying our streets as part of a hemispheric repression of resistance. In his first press conference following the January 3 invasion, Trump specifically referenced Washington, DC, Memphis, and other US cities that have been occupied by federal troops. He knows full well that these are connected. People of color, immigrants, all those who resist are designated as internal enemies, and international solidarity movements are targets of the hybrid war. People of the US should be very concerned by proposals to unify the Pentagon’s Southern and Northern Commands into one hemispheric Americom. The US Army has already consolidated its North and South American commands. The strategies of war and repression against Venezuela are united in a single strategy not only toward other nations, but here at home. Memphis or Caracas—to the Pentagon, we’re all the same.
The war on Venezuela is a new phase in the fake Drug War, serving notice that the White House is willing to strike anywhere it pleases with or without congressional approval or any semblance of due process. The Drug War has never been about drugs. AFGJ delegations have traveled in areas of Colombia where we saw miles of coca plantations and the lights of processing factories in the distances that were interspersed with military checkpoints supplied in part by the US. While the White House, without evidence, decries Venezuela’s ties to narcotrafficking, Marco Rubio openly praises former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, the “father” of Colombian death squads who was once identified by the Pentagon itself as one of the country’s top narcotraffickers. Even as Trump was ordering strikes on alleged drug boats from Venezuela, he pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted for coordinating the transport of 400,000 tons of cocaine into the US.
The war on Venezuela is not new. Rather, it is a new stage in a constant campaign of interference by the United States that has been underway ever since Hugo Chávez was first elected president in 1998. Since that time, scarcely a day has gone by that the US was not plotting coups, trying to sabotage the economy, spending millions of dollars to fund and direct political campaigns and right wing opposition groups, infiltrating labor unions, and disseminating a constant flow of lies and disinformation about the country.
In 2014, the Obama administration enacted a devastating system of sanctions and a military blockade that itself constituted an act of war. Those sanctions, upheld and reinforced by successive Trump and Biden administrations, led to the deaths of more than 40,000 Venezuelans.
Before 2014, Venezuela had made great strides in alleviating poverty, expanding health care, and wiping out illiteracy. Following the blockade, the country plunged into a more than 80% poverty level. Still, despite this, over the last couple of years, Venezuela’s economy had begun showing signs of stabilization and improvement. We must understand, then, that the bombings and invasion ordered by President Trump on January 3 are a culmination of 28 years of bipartisan efforts to thwart the autonomy and success of the Venezuelan people.
It is correct to say the war on Venezuela is yet one more war for oil (the world’s largest reserves), water, minerals, and other resources. But that does not tell the whole story. Indeed, the pretexts for the aggressions against Venezuela and the threats to other countries shift from moment to moment.
More than anything the war on Venezuela is an attack on people’s hope and people’s sovereignty. It is an attack on socialism, in all its forms, in order to advance a new fascism across the Americas. It is an attack on ecology and eco-defense and any kind of thought or political organization that is oriented towards the prioritization and integration of community and ecosystem. It is an effort to stop any nation, movement, or person who dares to seek any alternatives to the rule of the obscenely wealthy backed by the US military.
The war on Venezuela is a war against every nation, every town, every person, every heart, and every mind that dares to resist. But it is in our resistance that we find our hope. AFGJ calls on all those who hunger for peace, justice, liberation, and sustainability to join together across international lines. Even in the darkest of moments, we must continue to shine the light of our guiding dream toward a new, better, and more beautiful world.
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TAKE ACTION
Send an email to the Senate demanding they invoke the War Powers Resolution
This is at least the fourth time we have asked supporters to write the House and/or Senate in support of efforts to invoke the War Powers Resolution and stop the rush to war with Venezuela. We suffer no illusions that this is enough, nor do we think attacks on Venezuela would be legitimate even if Congress approved them. Nevertheless, our legal and quasi-democratic processes are still important, and we must employ a variety of tactics to resist and stop this war. We do, then, encourage people to take this action but to understand that there is much more to do than this.
January 17 No War on Venezuela Global Day of Action
Join the January 25, 2026 International Online Rally to Stop the War on Venezuela
PLEASE ADD YOUR NAME TO THIS SIGN ON LETTER AGAINST WAR WITH VENEZUELA
MORE RESOURCES, EDUCATIONAL EVENTS
Webinars January 6, 8, 13: Venezuela in Washington’s Crosshairs María Páez Victor, Marjorie Cohn, Leonardo Flores, Jesús Rodríguez-Espinoza, Richard Falk, Corinna Mullin, Ajamu Baraka, Dan Kovalik, Michelle Ellner.
January 11: No to Trump’s War on Venezuela! Activists report on their trip to Caracas peace conference Hear from activists who traveled to Venezuela alongside representatives from more than 50 countries to attend the People’s Assembly for Peace and Sovereignty of Our Americas in Solidarity.
Declarations from international coalitions AFGJ participates in and from some close allies / Declaraciones de coaliciones internacionales en las que participa AFGJ y de algunos aliados cercanos:
Coordinadora Americana por los Derechos de los Pueblos
Observatorio de los Derechos Humanos de los Pueblos
Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 
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