"We Are Living in a Time of Monsters"

By the Morning Star (UK)

Monday, January 5, 2026

No readers of these pages need reminding that US President Donald Trump does not broker genuine peace deals. Every decision Trump makes is centred around personal profit, delusional self-aggrandisement or both.

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, amounting to at least 303 billion barrels, mostly heavy crude. That is all that needs to be said about the motivation behind the. recent US attack and abduction of that country’s president, Nicolas Maduro and his wife. Indeed, Trump already said it himself on Saturday.

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies — the biggest any-where in the world — go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure,the oil infrastructure,” Trump said at a press conference held at Mar-a-Lago.

“We’re going to run the country,” he said. “We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela.”

Controversial 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner and Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who had called for Maduro’s overthrow, must be disappointed. Trump, who revels in revenge and perhaps smarting at the Nobel win he thought he deserved, said at the press conference that Machado “doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country.”

Venezuela is not the only country currently in Trump’s crosshairs. He has also said he would attack Iran again if those currently protesting against the government there are killed.

But a quick glance at the world’s oil reserves could yield a very different reason. Iran has the fourth largest at almost 158bn barrels, behind Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Canada.

Gaza represents an attractive real estate proposition to the Trump family, along with some handy fossil fuel resources. Ukraine could be forced into submission in exchange for a minerals deal.

It comes as no surprise then that the peace deal Trump claims to have struck between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda, allegedly to end the genocide there, is just the latest US minerals grab.

And another instance of craven nepotism. Just as Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s greedy eyes have been focused on Gaza under the false guise of peace-brokering there, so the chief architect of the DRC-Rwanda Accord was the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany, Lebanese-American businessman Massad Boulos. “Everybody’s going to make a lot of money,” Trump announced revealingly when the Congo deal was consummated in Washington

Donald Trump’s unprovoked attack on Venezuela and his kidnapping of its President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, to face trumped-up drug-trafficking charges in New York, are an outrage against international law and the sovereignty of nation states. They confirm that the undisguised seizure of other countries’ resources is to be the new normal for the outlaw regime in Washington — and, in line with its National Security Strategy published in November, that it will act to break every government in Latin America that pursues an independent foreign or domestic policy.

Trump’s accusations that the Venezuelan state is involved in drug-trafficking — which have already led to the murder of well over 100 seafarers on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific — have been levelled too at the Mexican government, and Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro.

While bragging about his plans for Venezuela on Saturday Trump indicated that socialist Cuba is also something “we’ll end up talking about,” while his rants about Venezuela having “stolen” (that is, taken into public ownership) oil reserves that had been exploited by US corporations logically put any country that wants control of its natural resources on Washington’s menu.

Since Keir Starmer, along with an array of sycophantic European leaders and much of the British media, have trouble recognising them, we should clarify a few points.

The US claim that it can abduct the president of another country in a “policing operation” to try him on its soil is incompatible with the system of independent states on. which the United Nations is based. It thrusts a dagger into the heart of the international order designed after the defeat of fascism in World War II, and it’s meant to.

The nonsense about Maduro trafficking drugs is a lie. Trump doesn’t bother to hide his real motive, the seizure of Venezuelan oil. He announced in his press conference on Maduro’s abduction that US companies would enter Venezuela and take back control of its oil sector. He also claimed the United States would “run” the country for the time being — though it is important to note the Bolivarian government is still in place, with Maduro’s Vice-President Delcy Rodriguez taking interim control. It needs solidarity and support against the enormous pressure — already including threats of renewed US military assault — to knuckle under and submit to US diktats. Now is not the time for self-indulgent rehearsals of criticisms of the Venezuelan government’s alleged failings, as if attempting to steer a socialist course while facing relentless economic warfare from the most powerful country on Earth were ever likely to be straightforward.

Indeed, the Nobel committee who tried to delegitimize Venezuela’s government by promoting opposition leader Maria Machado — whom Trump now admits has no popular support in Venezuela, and is therefore not part of his plans— have helped pave the way for this assault on democracy and international law, as has a media that can’t mention the country without the prefix “authoritarian,” a fine criticism from a Britain where mass round-ups of peaceful protesters are now routine. If New York’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani can condemn Trump’s offence against international law without relativising it, we should demand the same here.

At the same time, unity against this lawlessness is needed to put maximum pressure on our rulers to break with the United States and its new world disorder, including through diplomatic protest, demanding Maduro’s release and return home and withdrawal from the anyway disadvantageous and unratified trade deal with Trump.

Just as Venezuela’s revolution needs solidarity, not carping criticisms, at a moment of existential crisis, purity tests over who has taken what position on it or other countries are a distraction from the needs of the hour. There is potential to reach beyond the activist left on this issue.

Join the Downing Street protest for Venezuela if you can. Build the British peace movement. We are living in a time of monsters.