https://themilitant.com/2025/
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U.S. Navy photo/Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Alyssa JoyU.S. aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, world’s largest warship, entered Caribbean Nov. 11. Washington is deploying force of warboats, bombers, troops to assert U.S. rulers’ power.The U.S. War Department announced Nov. 10 its forces attacked and sank two more boats, killing six people, off the shore of Venezuela, claiming they are targeting “narco-terrorists.” This brings the total to 76 people killed in 19 deadly attacks.
Washington is using its economic, military and political weight to strengthen its dominant position throughout the Western Hemisphere, and in particular the reach of U.S. oil and natural gas monopolies. As part of this, Washington is seeking to topple President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, regain control of the country’s vast oil and natural gas resources, and use them as leverage against its competitors, especially Beijing.
It is also part of the U.S. rulers’ decadeslong economic war against Cuba’s socialist revolution.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled through the region in March pressuring Caribbean governments to cease using Venezuela’s PetroCaribe program to buy oil. Established in 2005, PetroCaribe had become a major supplier of oil to 14 Caribbean nations at lower rates. Members paid between 5% and 50% of the market price upfront, and the remainder over several decades at 1% interest.
Historically victims of high oil prices and unfavorable financing imposed by imperialist banks and oil monopolies, many Caribbean and Central American governments embraced PetroCaribe. It cut costs and lessened their economic and political dependence on Washington.
The program earned the Venezuelan governments of Hugo Chávez and his successor, Maduro, political support from participating nations. The White House accuses Caracas of “extorting” these countries, while offering no real alternative.
Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the U.S. capitalist rulers have imposed crippling sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry. In 2019 under the Joseph Biden administration the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Petroleos de Venezuela, SA, the country’s state-owned company known as PDVSA, and banned all purchases of Venezuelan oil, including from third countries.
While the PetroCaribe program has been largely suspended, due to Washington’s sanctions causing a major decline of Venezuela’s oil industry, Caribbean governments denounced Washington’s actions, saying they were being forced to spend much more on oil. “We in the Caribbean are suffering immensely,” Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit told a July 2023 meeting of Caricom, a regional trade bloc.
‘Huge opportunity’ for U.S. bosses
The U.S. capitalist rulers are jockeying to turn the discovery and development of large new reserves of oil and natural gas in Guyana and Suriname into a profit bonanza for them, and to deal blows to their competitors. At the same time, White House officials present this expansion as “a huge opportunity for the Caribbean.”
While these imperialist vultures circle, however, many of the region’s nations, whiplashed by world market oil prices and credit conditions imposed by imperialist financial institutions, cannot afford to buy.
The majority of Caribbean countries rely on imported diesel and fuel oil for 90% of their electricity. Energy prices for individual consumers are among the steepest in the world, more than double the high rate in the U.S. today.
Meanwhile, all the major oil monopolists — from ExxonMobil and Chevron to China National Offshore Oil Corporation — are flocking to invest billions in Guyana and Suriname. They’re looking to rob the region’s natural resources and then profit off selling them back to the people there.
The growing U.S. naval armada deployed off the coasts of Venezuela is intended to step up the pressure on the Maduro government, either for deep concessions or his overthrow. It also sends a message to Beijing, Moscow and Tehran that their trade and financial dealings with Caracas are not acceptable to Washington.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/
Venezuela exports oil to China
Facing biting U.S. sanctions that closed down markets to Caracas, as much as 70% of Venezuela’s oil exports were sold to China between 2023 and 2025. Trade relations between Beijing and Caracas, however, have not been a “balanced” partnership, to say the least. Caracas built up a $50 billion debt to Beijing, whose rulers expect to be repaid with oil shipments at discounted prices.
China has become more than just a crucial market for Venezuela’s oil, but also a major stakeholder in joint oil ventures there.
All this weakens Caracas’ already strained foreign currency earnings, 53% of which comes from PDVSA.
The U.S. rulers’ latest moves to overthrow the Venezuelan government have won an ally in neighboring Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar. She has been a vociferous supporter of the U.S. naval deployment and deadly attacks in the Caribbean, which her counterparts in Caricom have opposed.
As a reward, the U.S. government green-lighted three-way talks between Shell, Trinidad’s government and PDVSA to negotiate the development of the Dragon gas field in Venezuelan waters. Caracas called off the talks Oct. 27 after the USS Gravely, a destroyer fitted with guided missiles, docked in Trinidad to conduct joint exercises with that country’s navy. Persad-Bissessar “has decided to join the warmongering agenda of the United States,” Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said on national television.
The use of tariffs, so-called free trade agreements, sanctions, or crude political threats and military might is aimed at achieving the best position for the U.S. rulers to drain the surplus value produced by workers and small farmers into their own pockets.
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