The IWU-FI condemns the recent missile attacks carried out by the far-right Donald Trump in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Since 2 September, the United States has carried out 10 bombings, resulting in 43 deaths, several of them Venezuelans, Colombians, Ecuadorians, and Trinidadians. These bombings have been carried out without judicial proceedings and justified with accusations of drug trafficking that lack evidence. These are real murders in international waters. Several of the murdered people from Colombia, Venezuela, and Trinidad have been recognised by their families as fishermen working with their small boats in the waters of the southern Caribbean.
For more than a month, far-right Donald Trump has deployed approximately 10,000 military personnel, Tomahawk missile destroyers, F-35 aircraft, and B-52 strategic bombers to the Caribbean, very close to the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia. More recently, the Pentagon announced the deployment of its largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, to the Caribbean, accompanied by a strike group composed of several warships.
Threats and tensions between the United States, Colombia, and Venezuela further escalated after Trump announced that his administration plans to expand the military anti-drug campaign with ground operations, although he did not specify their location. “Land will be next,” Trump stated at a press conference with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. The leader of US imperialism also ordered the CIA to carry out possible covert operations in Venezuelan territory, which have not yet occurred.
This operation represents a new imperialist threat against the Caribbean and Latin America people. The US government itself, through its spokespersons, has said that it’s about demonstrating imperialist military power as a deterrent. That is, baring its teeth, deploying ships, submarines, and marines in a supposed fight against drug trafficking, with resources typical of a war or a military invasion.
It recently called Colombian President Gustavo Petro a “thug,” falsely accusing him of manufacturing “many drugs.” Petro, whom we do not give political support to, correctly denounced the Israeli genocide in Gaza, supported by Trump, at the UN and called for the formation of an international military force to support the Palestinian people. At the same time, he rejected the imperialist bombings in the Caribbean.
Imperialist Trump appeals to the carrot and the stick, particularly against Venezuela. On the one hand, he is negotiating with Nicolas Maduro to exchange American prisoners for Venezuelan migrants held in Bukele prison in El Salvador and granting Chevron a new license to operate in the country. On the other, he is accusing Maduro of being a “drug trafficker” and threatening him with possible “ground” actions. The IWU-FI and the Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSL), its Venezuelan section, do not support the Maduro government. We consider it a capitalist dictatorship under a false socialist rhetoric. It represses and exploits the Venezuelan working people. However, we repudiate imperialist aggression off the coast of Venezuela, whether as an attack or attempted military invasion.
All these attacks are part of a global counteroffensive deployed by Trump, which attempts to reverse the crisis of US domination, a part of the global crisis of imperialist capitalism. Trump seeks to make “America great again,” as his slogan says, but so far without success.
In reality, this entire military deployment in the Caribbean and the Pacific is not a show of strength; on the contrary, it highlights the weaknesses and crises of imperialism, which has endured years of economic, political, and military setbacks and failures. Such is the crisis that several Republican legislators have already questioned the bombings in the Caribbean: “We must present evidence. All these people have been killed without us knowing their names, without any evidence of a crime,” said Republican Senator Rand Paul (Kentucky), who, along with Democratic Senators Tim Kaine (Virginia) and Adam Schiff (California), presented “a bipartisan resolution, concerned about the government’s ordering of a CIA covert action in Venezuela.” (La Nacion, Argentina, 25 October 2025)
They still cannot overcome the military defeat in Vietnam 1975. After 20 years of occupation of Afghanistan, they had to withdraw in defeat in 2021, alongside NATO, leaving a devastated country in increasing poverty and under an ultra-reactionary regime like the Taliban that deepens poverty and the subjugation of women and the people.
This counteroffensive is global in nature, On the one hand, with its aggressive policy, it attempts to advance the plundering and over-exploitation of the semi-colonies, redefining agreements with Europe and other imperialist countries, attempting to impose its unilateral domination. This includes the “tariff war”; its racist immigration policy; the reversal of the gains made by women and dissidents; the threats to seize the Panama Canal, which resulted in the deployment of troops in the country; the demand to annex Greenland to exploit its mineral resources, a clear offensive against the EU, since it is Danish territory, a bravado that it has been unable to achieve.
More recently, expressed in its unconditional support for Netanyahu’s genocide and the ethnic cleansing in Gaza and all of Palestine, where it has been unable to declare victory. As well as its policy of financial support for Argentina and its president, the subservient far-right leader Javier Milei, who is greatly weakened amid an acute political and economic crisis. “Aid” for which the US banks JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Citi Group, which would provide the $20 billion loan, are demanding guarantees that would mean further subjugating Argentina to US interests.
The IWU-FI reaffirms its repudiation of this aggressive policy of US imperialism, which seeks to redouble the plundering of countries’ natural resources, the overexploitation of the world’s peoples, and to halt the mass mobilisation that threatens the entire capitalist/imperialist system, which is mired in its deepest crisis.
We call on the peoples of the world to continue mobilising to defeat the austerity policies and imperialist plans of over-exploitation. As youth, workers, and popular sectors have done in Nepal, Indonesia, Morocco, Ecuador, and Peru, as well as the strikes in France and the historic general strike in Italy on 3 October to support the Palestinian people and the Sumud Global Flotilla,
The IWU-FI calls to condemn and mobilise to reject the presence of US warships and troops in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific. Enough with the naval bombings and assassinations. No to the interventionist threats from Trump and imperialism against Venezuela and Colombia. Trump out of Latin America!
International Workers’ Unity – Fourth International (IWU-FI)
25 October 2025
