Logic and prospects of Trumpism

Piracy in Venezuela and threats to Colombia and Cuba. Eyes on Greenland. The ‘Donroe’ doctrine and the negotiated division of the world with Russia and China. The utopia of pacifism. The failure of campism

Italian version

The act of American piracy carried out in Venezuela, with the public humiliation of Maduro in handcuffs, is a revolting episode in the eyes of democratic public opinion worldwide. The first necessity is the broadest possible mobilisation against the imperialist arrogance of the United States. The demand for Maduro's release is, among others, a natural demand of this mobilisation.

No (rightful) class opposition to the Maduro regime can legitimise Trumpism’s colonial operation. It must be denounced for what it is: an unprecedented act of political thuggery.

At the same time, the events that have taken place raise many questions about the meaning of what happened, both in Venezuela and internationally.


WHO IS IN CHARGE IN VENEZUELA NOW?
THE UNKNOWNS OF MADURISM WITHOUT MADURO

In Venezuela, first of all.

The abduction of Maduro, widely broadcasted by Trump, was certainly brilliant from a military point of view. In a few hours in Caracas, Trump managed to do with Maduro what Putin failed to do in 2022 in Ukraine with Zelensky: decapitate the top leadership. But now the military success, boasted in propaganda and rhetoric, will have to confront the political knot – what political solution for Venezuela after Maduro?

Here, things get much more complicated. Trump’s immediate goal is to take direct possession of Venezuelan oil, the declared aim of the operation. But to control oil, it is necessary to control power. Who will rule now in Caracas? There are several possible scenarios, but also many unknown factors.

US imperialism would like to avoid an institutional gap in the attacked country – what happened twenty years ago in Iraq, with the famous ‘de-Baathification’, dragged the US into a resounding political failure. At the same time, Trump does not seem to trust the pro-imperialist Venezuelan opposition, despite Corina Machado’s desperate plea for investiture. Not only because the failed experiment first with Guaidó and then with López during Trump’s first administration deters a similar operation, but also for fear of an uncontrolled civil war and prolonged instability. This is the exact opposite of what Trump would like.

The scenario that the American administration seems to favour is a political solution negotiated with the regime’s decapitated apparatus: an attempt to reach an agreement with Venezuela’s military leaders, or to co-opt their central core, within a framework of joint government of the country which can assure relative institutional stability.

This is not an impossible solution. The military leaders of the Maduro regime are the cornerstone of the new Venezuelan bolibourgeoisie. They control the levers of the economy, particularly in the oil industry, and the various branches of the state administration, both central and peripheral (a role similar of the military leadership in Egypt, for example). An agreement with the Venezuelan military leadership would allow the US to gain control of the Venezuelan oil industry, in the context of a desired social control of the country. Wealth and profits on the one hand, public order and discipline on the other.

This scenario is far from paradoxical. Maduro himself, just the day before his abduction, had tried to appease US imperialism with a final generous public offer: “If they want Venezuelan oil, Venezuela is ready for US investments such as Chevron, whenever they want, wherever they want and however they want” (Il Fatto Quotidiano, 2 January). The offer clearly did not have the desired effect, though. But it certainly reveals a willingness to collaborate with imperialism that has already been extensively tested, beyond Bolivarian rhetoric, by the regime’s apparatus.

Contrary to propaganda legends, the Chavista regime has never been socialist, nor even properly anti-imperialist. Nationalisations have been very limited and overcompensated. Foreign banks were spared. Foreign debt to financial capital has always been regularly paid, at enormous cost to the masses. As for social subsidies, they held up as long as oil revenues held up, and the government’s support followed the same path. Maduro had to manage the collapse of the regime’s material bases with increasingly heavy internal repression, including against the labour movement and trade unions.

However, neither Chávez nor Maduro were political expressions of US imperialism, nor were they under its political control. They collaborated with US big companies (Chevron) but on the basis of autonomous power, born of a petty-bourgeois military strain of the Venezuelan state, which was and had long been increasingly oriented towards Russian and Chinese imperialist powers. Suffice it to say that since 2000, China has increased its trade with Venezuela from 12 to 500 billion.

The US ousting of Maduro is therefore an answer to the desire for assert American political control over the country. With a position of strength he has now achieved – and with the threat of resorting to force again, if necessary – Trump now aims to negotiate with a decapitated regime, selecting the most potentially willing counterparts. When Trump refers to Marco Rubio’s “constructive” talks with Delcy Rodriguez, Venezuela’s vice-president and oil minister, presenting her as willing to do what she cannot avoid doing, he is pointing to a (wished) solution to the crisis: a sort of Madurism without Maduro, under American control, with a reversed balance of power.

However, this new balance is by no means simple, much less it is a foregone conclusion. The regime fears its downfall, and its end. For this reason, it is currently seeking to preserve its unity around the claim that Maduro is the “only President”. Moreover, Trump himself referred, somewhat confusingly, to a forthcoming “American administration” of Venezuela, for an indefinite period, through his trustee. The contradiction between the imperialism and the regime therefore remains unresolved, and the outcome of the dealings is unpredictable.

Two things are certain, however. First is that US imperialism does not want external interference in Venezuelan affairs – the offer by European imperialism to act as mediator has been rejected. Second is that no political and institutional “transition” under imperialist control can be progressive for the oppressed masses of Venezuela, whatever the possible actors in the mediation may be.

Only a mass intervention of the Venezuelan working class, rejecting imperialist aggression, defending the country’s sovereignty, and asserting its independent, democratic, and social interests, can open the way to a progressive solution to the crisis. This solution must be anti-capitalist, or it won't succeed.


strong>THE DIFFERENT SEASONS OF US IMPERIALISM

But far beyond Venezuela, Donald Trump’s act of piracy once again highlights the fundamental shift in US policy.

Of course, we are all aware of the long historical tradition of US imperialist crimes in Latin America. Here are just a few examples from the post-World War II period: the overthrow of President Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, the failed Bay of Pigs operation against the Cuban revolution in 1961; the coup against President Goulart in Brazil in 1964, the Pinochet counter-revolution in Chile in 1973; Operation Condor (conducted throughout the continent in the 1970s and 1980s with hundreds of terrorist operations), the invasion of Panama in 1989… Hundreds of thousands of deaths in total. Those who see Donald Trump’s actions as a sudden phenomenon in US imperialism are unfamiliar with historical memory and often silence their own conscience: it is those liberal-progressive political, journalistic, and intellectual circles which have been praising the so-called American democracy as an anti-communist bulwark and beacon of global progress.

However, it would be wrong to maintain that nothing has changed in US politics with Trump. US imperialism remains the same in terms of its criminal capabilities. Otherwise, it would not be imperialism. But its strategy has undergone different phases since the capitalist restoration of the USSR. Three distinct phases, to be precise. Rationalising them is crucial to understanding the current Trumpian shift.

The first phase, from 1991 to the mid-2000s, was that of US “unipolarism”. US imperialism sought to establish itself as the only world power that could impose its order everywhere. The first Gulf War against Iraq (1990-91), the aggression against Serbia (1999), the invasion of Afghanistan (2001), and the second invasion of Iraq (2003) are part of this imperial policy (disguised as “exporting democracy”).
This strategic approach crumbled at first with the political defeat in the Middle East, then with the great capitalist crisis of 2008, and finally with the rise of Chinese power.

A second phase was undertaken by Barack Obama (2008) and continued by the Biden administration, in the name of the “pivot to China.”
The new approach of US imperialism aimed at a strategic opposition against the new rival power, leading the entire camp of its imperialist allies, both in Europe and Asia, in this direction. The goal was achieving hegemony over the Atlantic bloc and form a barrier to contain China. This approach too failed spectacularly. Just before the 2008 crisis, China made a great leap forward in its imperialist power. This leap allowed the development of Russian imperialism with its relative expansion (in Ukraine, Syria, North Africa, Central Africa) and the emergence of a new Russian-Chinese imperialist bloc, primarily to the advantage of Beijing. The humiliating defeat of US forces in Afghanistan and the international expansion of the BRICS area under Chinese hegemony sealed the strategic defeat of the “containment of China.”

The second Trump administration marks the beginning of a third phase in US imperialist policy. On one hand, this phase rationalises the failure of the US plan for global hegemony and the material impossibility for the US to continue to bear its costs, particularly in view of its astronomical public debt. On the other, it aims to transform a state of necessity into an advantage, combining withdrawal from global responsibilities with the revival of a great American nationalism (“America first”).

This approach includes the progressive disengagement of the US from the multilateral structures of post-war imperialist governance; a massive revival of protectionism against rival and “allied” powers and breaking the transatlantic axis with European imperialist powers. At the same time, this approach include a new configuration of US foreign policy in relation to the other two emerging imperialist powers (China and Russia): a policy that offers both countries (especially to Russian imperialism) the possibility of negotiation in their respective areas of continental influence, in exchange for their acceptance of the US monopoly over the entire American continent.


THE 2025 STRATEGIC DOCUMENT OF THE NEW US ADMINISTRATION

The strategic document released in 2025 by the US administration (“National Security Strategy of the United States of America – November 2025”) serves as the compass for this new direction. “America for Americans” is its guiding principle. This does not mean isolationism, nor does it mean limiting US intervention and interests to the American continent alone. It means subordinating every American decision, on any stage and in any field, to the dominance over the Western Hemisphere.

There are three central implications in this document.

The first is the theorization of a break with a declining European civilisation in the name of true national and Christian values. The goal is not only to marginalise the EU in all areas of international negotiation, but also to dismantle it internally, e.g. by directly supporting right-wing and far-right anti-EU nationalist movements. European imperialist powers are turning from allies to rivals.

The second is the recognition of the real competing imperialist powers, China and Russia, and their “legitimate” interests: hence the message sent to them about the end of any NATO expansion and the willingness to renegotiate the balance of power, outside and against Biden’s old policy. The main outcome of this stance is the progressive disengagement of the US from Ukraine.

The third implication is a central one: the assertion of US imperialist control over the whole American continent, north and south. The priority for the USA is now to concentrate forces, attention, and resources on this front: only the assertion of full US control over the American hemisphere can lift the USA out of decline and enable it to tilt the global balance of power. US imperialism aims at bringing manufacturing back home through widespread protectionism, but it also aims at shortening value and supply chains as much as possible, at widening its direct control over Latin American raw materials, and at opening up the new treasure trove of the Arctic. Removing or marginalising Chinese and Russian influence in the Americas is a decisive part of this plan.

Piracy in Venezuela has its roots here. It does not concern Venezuela alone, nor is it determined solely by oil interests (nonetheless important in Trump’s closest circle). It mainly concerns the planned expansion of American control over the continent. “ Trump does what he says ”, as Marco Rubio – the main instigator of the anti-Maduro operation – gleefully declares. The explicit threats to Colombia, Cuba, and Greenland are no joke. They reflect the real intentions of Trumpism. The policy of intimidation towards Mexico, and even to Canadian imperialism, is part of a concrete strategic vision. If the pressure of intimidation leads to capitulation, so much the better. If not, the option of force remains, in whatever form or degree.

The new element of this policy is that it is publicly declared for what it is. It does not hide behind democratic hypocrisy. It presents itself as a will to power, as the revival of US imperialism from its own decline. Elements of adventurism, improvisation, and sheer profiteering certainly play a part in this American shift. But they are not the essential factor. The essential factor is the will to power. It is the great return of US imperialism. The end of its retreat.


AMERICA FOR AMERICANS – CHINA OUT OF LATIN AMERICA

US imperialism is reacting to its economic decline by deploying the undisputed superiority of its military force against its imperialist rivals, China and Russia. China is a gigantic economic power, but its military presence, though growing enormously, does not extend essentially beyond the borders of Asia. Russia is a great military power, but concentrated mainly in Europe and Central Asia, with limited offshoots in Africa. The fall of Assad and the drastic downsizing of Iran have reduced Russia’s range of action and influence. The Russian and Chinese presence in the Americas’ backyard is therefore considered an abuse by the new US administration, also because it is not backed by military force and therefore lacks the balance of power to enforce it.

US piracy in Venezuela sends a message: Russia and China out of Latin America. What matters is not only direct US control over Caracas’ oil, but the removal of the “illicit” Chinese-Russian presence. From now on, it will be the US, not Venezuela, selling Venezuelan oil to China. In Trump’s intentions, this principle should extend to all of Latin America’s immense treasure trove of raw materials, lithium in particular. China has gained access to it, and now it is being asked to withdraw.
The Latin American governments that returned under direct US political control (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador) have begun to act upon US requests. The others are threatened and invited to obey quickly. As for Cuba, the main victim of an American return to Venezuela, the imperialist noose is tightening fast. Marco Rubio is taking on this task, cheered on by the reactionary anti-Castro diaspora.


“TRUMP, MAN OF PEACE”, PITIFUL BLUNDER OF CAMPISM

The most ridiculous and tragic aspect of this situation is that the entire pro-Russian-Chinese campist sector (mostly of Stalinist ideological origin, but not only) has presented Trump as a new man of peace, supposedly unconnected to the American deep state, because of his openness to Putin on Ukraine. “With Trump, at least the wars will end,” wrote Marco Travaglio, followed by a long line of leftist supporters.

The reality is the exact opposite in every respect.

First, legitimising the invasion of Ukraine by Russian imperialism means legitimising and encouraging its war. Any peace agreement imposed by a war of invasion can only be a neo-colonial peace.

Second, US power politics on its “own” continent generally strengthens the war plans of competing imperialist powers in their own backyards (including Taiwan). The silence of Russia and China on Venezuela, (limited to a few routine critical statements) is not only a sign of their powerlessness but also a calculated act of strategic self-interest, which goes far beyond their lost position in Caracas.

Third, as we can see, the negotiating force of US imperialism in a “peaceful” division of the planet on a continental basis depends on the use of American military force on its own continent. And not only there. US support for the Zionist genocide in Palestine, US engagement in Israel as the cornerstone of a new Middle Eastern order, US aggression and threats against Iran, US bombing in Nigeria—all these are examples of the reckless use of military force as a bargaining tool for a new international balance of power. Rebuilding the criminal reputation of US imperialism is part of its revival. The US reconquest of the Americas is only the center of gravity of the operation.


THE DECEPTION OF MULTIPOLARISM AS A LEVER FOR PEACE

The call for multipolarism as an alternative to current world politics is likewise nonsense.

Here too, the reality is quite the opposite. It is precisely the multiplication of imperialist powers that drives war policies. Russian imperialism could not have invaded Ukraine without the support of the new Chinese imperialism. Chinese imperialism is projecting its threat onto Taiwan in order to alter the balance of power in the Pacific against its rivals (US and Japan). US imperialism, as we have seen, bases its revival ambition on competition with Chinese imperialism.

Multipolarism is not a plea for peace looking to the future. It is a present reality. Its outcome is not peace, but the greatest arms race across the globe. Historically, this implies a tendency toward war between the great powers.

In his essay on imperialism (1916), Lenin mocked the idea of a possible global peace as a stable framework for coexistence between rival imperialist countries. Whether in the form of a super-imperialism capable of resolving national rivalries, or in the form of a stable division between competing empires, it is just impossible. Capitalism, especially in the age of imperialism, is dynamic – powers rise and fall, the balance of power constantly shifts, and new conflicts over areas of influence, raw materials, labor, and investment markets are continually undefinite. War remains a recurring instrument for resolving imperialist contradictions.

It's true, today direct military confrontation between great powers is partly inhibited by the risk of a destructive, “final” nuclear war. But this possibility, while not imminent, is by no means historically excluded.

Moreover, Trump’s idea of a second Yalta – a peaceful division of the world among great powers – faces material obstacles. The first Yalta, a counter-revolutionary treaty agreed upon by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, was based on the structural division of the world between the imperialist camp and the “socialist” Soviet camp, with fundamentally different economies. After the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and China, the development of new imperialist powers, and the establishment of a global intertwined, world-wide capitalist market, the idea of dividing the world by continental spheres is extremely complex. Could China agree with the US to withdraw from Latin America (not to mention Africa) in exchange for a US pass on Taiwan? The struggle between old and new great powers will be all-out and ruthless. Resorting to wars is already happening. A new world war is a terrible possibility.


THE REFORMIST ORPHANS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

In this context, all inevitable cries in defense of international law by liberals, progressives and reformists, all the calls in defense of UN resolutions and the primacy of diplomacy are frankly pathetic. Let’s be clear. This ideological framework has always been a scam. The UN has stamped its approval on the “humanitarian wars” of Western imperialism in the 1990s and 2000s, and more recently on Trump’s neo-colonial plan in Palestine (thanks to the consent given by China and Russia).

When the imperialist powers agree on a solution in their own interests, the UN legitimises it, covering up abuses with the veneer of international law. When imperialist interests clash and are irreconcilable, the UN remains silent or pretends inability with vain resolutions. It is the material reality of imperialism that defines the limits of the law, not the law that can change the reality of imperialism. All invocations of international law by the anti-Trump liberal medias, and by people such as Nicola Fratoianni, Maurizio Acerbo, and campist left-wingers, only reveal their subordination to the present world order, the very world order they formally criticise or even dare to denounce.


ONLY REVOLUTION CHANGES THINGS.
FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST LEAGUE

The truth is dramatically simpler and, at the same time, far more difficult – only revolution can change things. Only an uprising of workers and oppressed peoples against imperialism — against all imperialist powers, old and new — can build a new world. Out of this perspective, there is only barbarism. Not only future barbarism, but present barbarism, as the events in Venezuela show.

The building of the International Socialist League (ISL) across the world — the international unification of revolutionary Marxists — is the decisive investment in a real alternative. It is either revolutionary or it is nothing.