Solidarity with countries in the crosshairs of imperialism is a bedrock of the international communist movement, and the U.S. attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro has outraged parties around the world.
From inside the targeted country, the Communist Party of Venezuela denounced the “military aggression against the Venezuelan people” as well as Trump’s “utter contempt for international law and the self-determination of peoples.”
In an editorial in its paper, Tribuna Popular, the PCV also criticized the “violent and illegal detention” of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Despite having sharp disagreements with the Maduro government, the Communist Party rejected any outside interference in the country’s affairs. It said “U.S. laws have no jurisdiction in Venezuela, and no foreign power is entitled to impose its will by force of arms.”
It also dismissed the Venezuelan opposition forces both inside and outside the country for cheering on the destruction of their own nation. Its statement said that “the most reactionary sector of the opposition, led by María Corina Machado,” who appears to have fallen out of favor with Trump, is focused on “controlling and appropriating Venezuela’s energy industry.”
The PCV appealed to the international communist and workers movement and all the democratic forces of the world “to mobilize immediately” to “reject this new and dangerous military offensive.”
The Communist Party USA was among the first communist parties in the world to answer the call. Over a century ago, Lenin said that the “duty of rendering the most active assistance rests primarily with the workers” of oppressing countries. Operating from within the U.S. imperial core, the CPUSA stuck to that principle in its response.
In an op-ed published in People’s World on Jan. 3, just hours after the military raid in Caracas, CPUSA Co-chair Joe Sims called the assault “an act of war” and “state terror.” Dismissing Trump’s claims that the bombings and kidnapping of Maduro were connected to alleged drug trafficking, Sims said they instead had “everything to do with the vast oil reserves that lie beneath Venezuela’s soil.”
He also pointed out that with polls showing the U.S. president and his MAGA movement growing politically weaker ahead of the midterm elections later this year, they are becoming “all the more dangerous.”
An official statement from the CPUSA followed on the same day, warning of a “familiar pattern of imperialist aggression driven by a fascist-minded might-makes-right foreign policy.” It raised the slogan, “Free the Maduros! Jail Trump!”
The CPV and CPUSA were also signatories to a joint statement of more than 40 parties (as of press time) entitled “Down with the Imperialist Boot in Venezuela and Latin America.” The document highlighted the fact that the strike on Caracas was not an isolated incident but “rather the culmination of years of sanctions, threats, blockades, and destabilization efforts.”
Trump’s ambition of controlling not just Venezuela’s oil but of imposing “economic, political, and military control” over the entire Western Hemisphere was singled out as the main strategic priority of U.S. imperialism at the current moment.
In Havana, the government of Cuba, which is led by the Communist Party of Cuba, condemned the attack and reaffirmed its “absolute support and solidarity” with Venezuela. It characterized U.S. actions as “blatant imperialist and fascist aggression” aimed at reviving the Monroe Doctrine.
As one of Venezuela’s closest allies and trading partners, Cuba’s already struggling economy will be hit hard by U.S. plans to dominate and re-orient Venezuela’s oil industry. Regardless of the hostility emanating from Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Cuba’s leaders declared that for the “sister nation and people” of Venezuela, they are “prepared to give, as we would for Cuba, even our own blood.”
Commentary in People’s Daily, newspaper of the Communist Party of China, said that the U.S. attack has “shown the world, unequivocally, who stands as the true transgressor of international law.” Citing invasions and interventions in places ranging from Iraq and Libya to Panama and Grenada, the editors said Venezuela now joins the list of targets of U.S. military coercion.
Also homing in on Trump’s revival of the Monroe Doctrine, the People’s Daily said that “Washington has emerged as one of the most serious threats to the very international order it claims to defend.” Editors argued that speaking out in defense of sovereignty and multilateralism is no longer optional. “It is essential,” the Chinese Communists said, “to preventing a return to a world where power, not law, decides the fate of nations.”
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) turned out tens of thousands of people across the country in demonstrations protesting the attack and slammed the Modi government’s silence as “craven and unworthy of India’s long-held position of defense of the independence and sovereignty of nations.”
From Moscow, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation characterized the strike on Venezuela as “a challenge to the entire Latin American region.” It accused Trump of trying to bring back “the era of neo-colonialism when the U.S. installed” dictators on “banana thrones.”
The CPRF showed little patience for those on the pseudo-left still claiming Trump’s foreign policy is a net-positive for world peace. The party said it is “high time for everyone to recognize that any illusions that the current U.S. administration is to be preferred to ‘globalist democrats’ are not only hollow but dangerous.”
Speaking on behalf of a people that have themselves been the subject of U.S. invasion and conquest, the Iraqi Communist Party expressed its solidarity with Venezuela, saying the bombing and abduction of Maduro “are nothing but international piracy that violates sovereignty and terrorizes peoples.”
The South African Communist Party not only trashed Trump’s aggression, it also enumerated all the parts of the United Nations Charter—considered international law—which the U.S. government violated. The SACP paid particular attention to Articles 1 and 2, which enshrine sovereignty, the legal equality of states, and the prohibition of the use of force.
The Palestinian Communist Party compared Venezuela’s fight to its people’s struggle against “imperialist-Zionist aggression” from the Israeli military. The Communist Party of Israel touched on a similar point, saying that given how so many world leaders have been silent for the past two years as the Israeli government carried on a genocidal war against the Palestinian people, “it is no wonder that the biggest military superpower in the Western world believes it can do the same.”
The communists of Iran, another oil-rich country targeted by U.S. sanctions and bombs, also added their voices to the condemnation chorus. The Tudeh Party of Iran—describing a situation that could be applied to their own nation if the warhawks in Washington prevail—said the attack on Venezuela is “an attempt to impose a government subservient to imperialism…and to plunder…oil and natural resources.”
The joint Solidnet statement of parties put it similarly, saying the true aim of Trump’s assault is “the direct imposition of the geopolitical and economic interests of U.S. imperialism in Venezuela and the region” within the context of “the struggle among capitalist powers for control over energy resources, strategic raw materials, trade routes, and markets.”
The description echoed Lenin’s landmark 1916 book Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, where he said that capitalism had grown into a “system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of ‘advanced’ countries.” That insight gained new relevance on Jan. 3.
Across the dozens of declarations issued so far by parties around the world, this Communist analysis of imperialism—together with working-class internationalism—emerges again and again.
To read the complete texts of the statements cited above as well as many more which space did not allow us to quote, check out this list on Solidnet.
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