FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dec. 16, 2025
Media Contact: Melissa Garriga | [email protected]
Trump’s Naval Blockade Against Venezuela Is An Act Of War
CODEPINK condemns in the strongest terms Donald Trump’s statement on Venezuela as a reckless escalation that amounts to an open threat of war, collective punishment, and resource theft. Claiming that Venezuela is “surrounded by the largest armada ever assembled” and promising a “shock like nothing they have ever seen” is an explicit threat of force designed to compel submission. Announcing a “total and complete blockade” of Venezuelan oil tankers is, under international law, an act of war.
Trump’s assertion that Venezuela must “return” oil, land, and other assets to the United States exposes the true objective of this aggression. Venezuela did not steal anything from the United States. What Trump describes as “theft” is Venezuela’s lawful assertion of sovereignty over its own natural resources and its refusal to allow U.S. corporations to control its economy. The claim that Venezuelan oil or land belongs to the United States reflects Trump’s neocolonial corollary to the Monroe Doctrine: that U.S. power equals ownership and Latin America is reduced to a zone of extraction and control.
Designating the Venezuelan government as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” is a dangerous abuse of power intended to bypass Congress, erase due process, and manufacture legal cover for military action. This escalation is compounded by Trump’s grotesque decision to designate fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction,” a deliberate resurrection of the WMD framework used to justify the Iraq war, all the while knowing that no fentanyl comes from Venezuela.
Trump’s attempt to link Venezuela to drug trafficking, human trafficking, and crime in the United States is equally dishonest. Migration is being weaponized to justify foreign aggression, while the role of U.S. sanctions in driving economic hardship and displacement is deliberately ignored. Smearing an entire population to sell war is both racist and dangerous.
The reality Trump omits is that the United States has already seized Venezuelan assets, frozen billions of dollars abroad, and taken control of Venezuelan-owned companies such as CITGO. Sanctions have blocked access to food, medicine, fuel, and revenue, causing widespread suffering.
This escalation comes precisely because sanctions have failed to force submission, the Trump administration is moving toward a full-blown blockade and an even tighter economic strangulation, using mass deprivation and starvation as weapons of war. This is warfare by other means, mirroring the same logic used by Israel in Palestine: cutting off fuel, food, medicine, and revenue to make life unlivable.
That is why this should concern everyone, not only those focused on Venezuela. The same illegal tools, propaganda frames, and dehumanization tactics are being used to justify genocide in Palestine, endless war in the Middle East, and the expansion of a global war economy rooted in colonial domination. An attack on Venezuelan sovereignty is part of the same imperial system that sacrifices human life and the planet for power and profit.
VENEZUELA IS NOT U.S. PROPERTY. Its oil does not belong to Washington. Its land is not a bargaining chip. And its people do not owe their sovereignty to any empire.
A blockade, a terrorist designation, and a military buildup are steps toward war. Congress must act immediately to stop this escalation, and the international community must reject this lawless threat.
Hands off Venezuela!
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