Trump's Venezuela Interference: Why American Empire Never Changed (And What Jesus Might Say About It)

From the War on Drugs to oil extraction, one theologian explains why we should be deeply skeptical of Trump's intervention and America's long history of interference in Latin America

I’m not an expert on Venezuela. I won’t pretend to understand the nuances of what’s going on there. I have much of the same information that has been available to mainstream society. I have no secret insider knowledge and my PhD scholarship is mostly unrelated in all its primary concerns with the subject. Nonetheless, there are several reasons why we should all be deeply suspicious, concerned, and vocal about President Trump’s geopolitical interventions in Venezuela, including the removal of their president (who I have no interest in defending).

First, it must be said that viewing Trump’s posture as fighting authoritarianism must be one of the most hypocritical things we have seen in a long time. Trump has been undermining our democracy consistently in his second term, with little resistance (and mostly with support) from the Republican led Congress and the conservative majority Supreme Court. Trump is a neo-fascist authoritarian leader. This selective concern for defending democracy can’t be taken seriously, which ought to raise red flags.

Along those lines, the most blatant reason Trump has given for his actions, including his support for breaking international law and having our military commit war crimes (we are looking at you Hegseth), is the purported claim that they are stopping drug trafficking. I believe that drugs are moving out of Venezuela, though I recently read that they originate in Colombia and that most of these drugs are actually going to Europe. I haven’t fact-checked this. In some ways, the truthfulness of the claim matters little to me. If drugs are coming out of Venezuela, our nation should respond to the concern under accountability from the United Nations. The truth is that our nation has a long history of using drugs as a justification for war. As a Black man, I know this all too well. It would be good to remember that the ‘War on Drugs’ in the United States was a strategic ploy to undermine Black freedom struggle, devastating Black families for decades, undermining our public health, and targeting Black men in particular (but definitely not limited to us) for racial and gender based profiling, incarceration, and ongoing discrimination because one must check the box. So, yeah, I might be just a tad suspicious when the Government uses violent war-like tactics under the guise of an international war on drugs. If history tells us anything, it is often employed as a weapon for the distraction of the masses and the destruction of people deemed disposable.

But of course, for me, the most obvious reason why I can’t take the Trump administration’s public justification at face value is that Venezuela has one of the world’s largest oil reserves. Trump has eroded every effort to shift our nation towards more green practices that begin to move us towards a sustainable future and a livable planet for generations to come. Instead, he has doubled down on 20th-century methods of extraction of natural resources to fuel everything. This will require ongoing plunder practices, which have been a long habit of the American empire long before Trump ever set foot in office. But if you follow the money and his political and economic vision for the nation, the road leads to an unquenchable need for more oil. So I’m a skeptic of his stated reasoning.

Lastly, it is worth remembering that the United States government has a long history of troubling intervention in Latin American countries. Our government has a long record of coups, covert military strikes, and invasions in Latin America. In the past, the government has backed several hard-right dictators in several Latin American countries for our political and economic purposes. From that perspective, Trump’s activity is not discontinuous with historical American practices; it is thoroughly in continuity with American imperial habits. This is America. And it has been funded by American taxes. It might be worth noting that the current Congress increased the military budget even more, so it is even closer to 1 trillion dollars. Rev. Dr. spoke courageously about this pattern, well before it became the unstrained beast it currently is, prophetically saying that “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” (Beyond Vietnam)

I’m not an expert, but we have enough basic information to be skeptics at minimum, and outright resistors when taken all together. But of course, if we take it all seriously, it’s not just Trump. The entire United States government is indicted. And, even if we are unaware, we are all complicit with the taxes we pay, and through any support of the politicians (Republican and Democrat) who continue to support them. Not to mention the mainstream news that frequently normalizes, understates, and refuses to make plain the troubling behavior of our nation. As a follower of Jesus, shaped by the consciousness of the prophetic stream of the Black Church (think Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ella Baker, William Barber, etc.), as well as the radical discipleship wing of Anabaptism, I am compelled to take the risks of faith by speaking up against these trends and being a skeptic to American imperial motives in the present. At the same time, I do not and will not defend President Nicolas Maduro or those who are indeed trafficking drugs. But the United States would do well to develop a public theology at this moment grounded in listening to Jesus: “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5, NRSVue) But empires don’t follow Jesus; they exist to “steal, kill, and destroy.”