I had planned on my first Weather Vane article of the spring semester to address the December revelations regarding the Epstein files and the potential implications for Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. Both of these men who served multiple terms as the leader of the free world are largely responsible for the Overton Window shift towards the neoliberal Washington consensus that exists today.
However, the writing that had been on the wall for some time now in Venezuela finally came to a boiling point. On Jan. 3, the Trump regime ordered the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in the dead of night. This came on the heels of at least 35 strikes according to reporting from PBS on fishing boats and confiscations of oil tankers in recent months.
Perhaps this action was perfectly timed in order to shift attention away from the aforementioned Epstein revelations, instead placing the media crosshairs on Maduro and Flores. Reporting from the BBC suggests that the couple is being charged with drug trafficking alongside US-Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) designated cartels.
Let me be very clear here: Maduro and Flores weren’t trafficking drugs. Just last month, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was in fact charged and convicted of drug trafficking.
Why Venezuela? Venezuela has been the target of United States imperialism for decades, due to its bountiful natural resources of oil and gold. Most importantly, the nation is guilty of the crime of wanting to have sovereignty over their use. The keen US imperialism history nerds will know that Iranian leader Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown by the CIA because he refused to give up control of the country’s oil to Britain and its Western superpower friends,
The capture of Maduro and Flores might as well be a carbon copy of the 1953 coup in Iran. When you are part of the periphery in the eyes of the Western powers, you have something they need even if it doesn’t belong to them. If you dare try to take control of your own destiny, Uncle Sam will do everything he can to prevent it, even if it means sacrificing his commitment to liberty and justice for all.
There is a long history of United States involvement in regime change around the globe, so much so that I cannot list them all here under the 600-word count. For a deeper understanding of why and how these types of actions happen, I recommend the phenomenal book “The Jakarta Method” by Vincent Bevins.
The case being brought against Maduro is outrageous, to be blunt. The Cartel de los Soles “enterprise” (the claim has now been dropped by the Justice Department according to a recent New York Times report) that is being alleged to have trafficked drugs with his assistance didn’t show up in a 2025 United Nations (UN) report on international drugs and crime. In fact, in this same UN report, Venezuela was listed as a marginal threat at the very most.
Venezuela is being targeted by Uncle Sam because it dares to exert sovereignty over its own destiny. The United States clearly violated the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force against a sovereign state. I fully condemn the United States terror campaign against the Venezuelan people. I refuse to condemn Maduro; this is a continuation of the imperialist ambitions of a dying empire, one that was quicker to target a foreign leader on baseless claims than known Epstein affiliates that once held or currently hold positions of power in their own country.