Trump and the Bipartisan Imperialist Song

When the present feels overwhelming and the future seems uncertain, I often turn to the past for answers and a sense of grounding. I’ve come to realize that while history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, it certainly rhymes, and US imperialism plays out like a bipartisan, agonizing symphony.

Since Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election and the formation of his hawkish cabinet of billionaire allies, there is a growing concern that things will get much worse for the world. This anxiety is particularly acute for Latin America, especially for anti-imperialist, oil-rich Venezuela given how Trump’s first administration targeted the country with crippling economic sanctions and supported an all-out coup attempt.

Is Trump worse than other US presidents or is he merely another (un)conventional evil president of a deeply evil empire that has always been a threat to all humanity? Was his “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuela an unprecedented depravity, or did he simply continue the murderous strategy established by his predecessors?

Margaret Atwood, author of “The Handmaid’s Tale”, once said that US society has always found its “human sacrifice” through different periods of history. Whether a Democratic or Republican administration is in power, there will always be an “enemy”, domestically and beyond its borders, to divert blame during challenging times, advance the empire’s dominance, and protect its interests. And to defeat this “enemy,” US presidents will happily play the same tune.

In the 1940s and 1950s, it was the persecution of left-wing people and a worldwide campaign spreading fear of communism, known as McCarthyism, to suppress any progressive movement domestically.

The red scare agenda likewise had its tentacles abroad to the point of Washington propping up bloody dictatorships across South America, such as Pinochet in Chile and Somoza in Nicaragua. Most notably, in 1962 President Kennedy imposed an economic blockade on revolutionary Cuba causing an endless humanitarian crisis. A blockade that has been renewed every single year by every White House tenant.

If we jump forward to the early 2000s and the George W. Bush presidency, 9/11 was used as an excuse to start the “Global War on Terror” with the US military invading and occupying Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. More than 4.5 million people died and 38 million were displaced in a massive military campaign that destroyed several nations. US-backed terrorist organizations further destabilized the entire region—wars based on lies that were a money-making machine for the US elite. 

It was also in the early 2000s when Washington identified another “enemy,” one that persists until this day: Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Here’s when the imperialist symphony resonates the most as we see Democratic and Republican administrations sampling one another while pretending to be adversaries.

Just hours after the short-lived 2002 coup against Chávez, the Bush administration recognized Pedro Carmona as Venezuela’s “interim president,” appointed by the coup leaders. If this story rings any bells is because the same happened in 2019, when the first Trump administration endorsed Juan Guaidó’s self-proclamation as “interim president.”

The trend continued this year when Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred to former opposition candidate Edmundo González, who came second in the July 28 election, as “president-elect.” This remark came amidst plans from the Venezuelan far-right to force González’s assumption to power in January 2025.

The 2002 US-backed coup only deepened Chávez’s revolutionary project, and in 2004, he declared that the Bolivarian Revolution was anti-imperialist. In his 2006 epic speech at the UN General Assembly, Chávez called Bush “the devil” and exposed the US as a “false democracy of the elite” desperate to consolidate its “global dictatorship.” 

During this period, social reforms were reshaping Venezuelan society, marked by progressive legislation that returned land to the people and nationalized the oil industry. In 2007, the working-class people of Venezuela officially reclaimed the Orinoco Oil Belt, the largest oil deposits on the planet, from the decades-long grip of foreign companies.

“Oil belongs to Venezuelans,” declared Chávez at the time. A bold statement at a time when the US relied heavily on Venezuelan oil and its corporations had enjoyed easy and cheap access to it while receiving a large share of the revenue through favorable contracts that benefited them at the expense of the Venezuelan state.

Like Silvio Rodríguez sang, “the era was giving birth to a heart.” An anti-imperialist heart of the people that took control of its natural resources. This was, of course, a war declaration for Washington, which started playing its usual song.

The second Bush administration imposed sanctions against Venezuelan officials, an arms embargo based on made-up accusations of “narcoterrorism,” and considered labeling Venezuela a threat to US interests. It was his Democratic successor Barack Obama—who Chávez said had the “same sulfur stench” as Bush—who finally declared Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security and foreign policy in 2015. 

Five years prior, Obama had also begun significantly ramping up domestic crude production and reducing its reliance on Venezuelan oil for the immediate future, which left the field open for sanctions. When Trump arrived at the presidency in 2017, he grabbed the opportunity to target Venezuela with the “collective punishment” sanctions regime that his Republican and Democratic predecessors paved the way for.

A sequence of actions that reflect a coordinated effort to reach the bipartisan regime change goal: the infamous “maximum pressure” policy comprised of financial sanctions (2017) and an export embargo (2019) on Venezuela’s oil industry to strangle the country’s main source of revenue, followed by a Cuba-style blanket ban on the entire Venezuelan economy in 2019.

Biden has largely maintained these sanctions since 2020, relaxing only a few measures to secure oil supplies for the US and Europe after the imposition of sanctions on Russian oil destabilized the global energy market during the Ukraine conflict. Sanctions are a bipartisan affair and Trump was simply the one who got the job of implementing them.

I certainly believe Trump is evil, racist, and dangerous, and his hateful narrative against immigrants, especially Venezuelan immigrants, is going to harm millions. Many people around the world will die and suffer tremendously under Trump, just as many did under Biden, Obama, and Bush because they are all in the same orchestra, playing the same chords. They only differ from each other in terms of narrative with Trump simply saying the quiet parts out loud—what a disruption of the status quo!

Consider Palestine, where people have endured occupation and genocide with US-made weapons and resources for the past 75 years, where Trump has endorsed Netanyahu to “finish the job.” And while it’s likely that Trump would put an end to the proxy war in Ukraine, this reflects the reality that the US has already lost that war and needs to redirect resources to another “enemy.” 

In the case of Venezuela, we can expect psychopath Senator Marco Rubio—Trump’s pick for secretary of state—to drive up intensified sanctions and bolster the violent coup efforts of the Venezuelan far right, including supporting mercenary invasions. Washington’s policy toward Venezuela will continue to be driven by its desire for dominance in the region and control over resources.
As independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone noted, Trump “won’t do anything that wasn’t already being done by those before him” and will continue to be done by those who follow. We, the “enemies” of the empire, must recognize that our struggle is against the entire imperialist system. It’s time to challenge the bipartisan chorus of imperialism.

Andreína Chávez Alava was born in Maracaibo and studied journalism at the University of Zulia, graduating in 2012. She immediately started working as a writer and producer at a local radio station while also taking part in local and international solidarity struggles.

In 2014 she joined TeleSUR, where in six years she rose through the ranks to become editor-in-chief, overseeing news, analysis and multimedia content. Currently based in Caracas, she joined Venezuelanalysis in March 2021 as a writer and social media manager and is a member of Venezuelan artist collective Utopix. Her main interests are popular and feminist struggles.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.