THE United States has sent warships, including nuclear-powered ones, to the Venezuelan coast. The American government announced on November 15, 2025 that it is dispatching to the international waters off Venezuela the warships: USS San Antonio, USS Iwo Jima and USS Fort Lauderdale. They are carrying 4,500 US service members, including 2,200 Marines. The fleet had departed from Norfolk, Virginia and Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
They are expected to be in position by this Sunday, August 31, 2025. The mass media also reported that the USS Newport News, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine and the USS Lake Erie, a guided missile cruiser, are also being sent.
These are perhaps the last steps in the US decision to invade Venezuela and change its elected government by force.
The decision is an expression of the American frustration that its internal collaborators in Venezuela have been unable to effect a change of government through the ballot box since the December 6, 1998 electoral victory of President Hugo Chavez.
The US had previously accused President Nicolas Maduro of being a dictator. But when he continued winning elections, which could not be written off, it turned to clothing him in the borrowed regalia of a drug warlord. It is under this excuse it wants to invade Venezuela. It reminds me of the child-like excuses the Israeli regime makes for bombing babies in incubators. Basically, that their beds are on Hamas command centres.
To prepare the ground for the drug claim, which like many claims of the US are not backed with facts, the Americans declared Maduro wanted. They placed a price tag of $25 million on him. Then on August 7, 2025, the US Departments of State and Justice doubled the reward for anybody who can betray Maduro.
In reaction, the Maduro government mobilised 15,000 troops to the border with Colombia, through which American mercenaries had previously invaded Venezuela. Maduro told the world: “This week I am going to activate a special plan to guarantee coverage with more than 4.5 million militiamen throughout the national territory. Militias prepared, activated, and armed …We will defend our seas, our skies, and our lands. … No empire will touch the sacred soil of Venezuela, nor should it touch the sacred soil of South America.”
The Trump administration had, from its first term, set out to destroy Venezuela. President Trump had on May 21, 2018, issued an Executive Order, which it stated was “ to prevent the Maduro regime from conducting ‘fire sales’, liquidating Venezuela’s critical assets—assets the country will need to rebuild its economy”. He added that the money he was seizing belongs to Venezuelans, so the Order was to “prevent the Maduro regime from selling or collateralising certain Venezuelan financial assets, and to prohibit the regime from earning money from the sale of certain entities of the Venezuelan government.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the US also prevented Venezuela from purchasing needed medicines and food. When it sent its special envoy, Ambassador Alex Saab, to buy food from Iran, the Americans on June 12, 2020 got him abducted in Cape Verde and flew him to their territory. Venezuela had to engage in a prisoner exchange to free its ambassador. In July 2025, Venezuela was forced to release ten convicted Americans in a prisoner swap to free 300 Venezuelan migrants expelled from US to El Salvador. One of those the US secured his freedom was the infamous Dahud Hanid Ortiz, who was serving a 30-year jail sentence for the murder of three persons in Spain before fleeing to Venezuela, where he was apprehended and jailed. The US Department of State was to hail Trump for getting people like Ortiz out of jail. It declared in a July 18, 2025 statement: “It is unacceptable that Venezuelan regime representatives arrested and jailed US national under highly questionable circumstances and without proper due process.” Incredible!
Rubio also plays the drug card and claims that mining in Venezuela affects the environment.
But let no one be deceived. The reason the US wants to invade Venezuela is neither to advance democracy nor to stop drug trade. It is essential that Venezuela, with 303 billion barrels, has the world’s largest oil reserves, and the American establishment can no longer wait to lay its hands on such huge wealth. World leaders who would carry out genocide to take over Gaza with the hope of turning it into prime property, will stop at nothing to seize the huge Venezuelan oil and gas reserves, even if they have to exterminate the people.
Humanity has a stake in defending Venezuela because if the world had stood by Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland when Nazi Germany invaded them, we might have been saved what became the Second World War. If humanity had united to stop the fascist takeover of Spain in 1939, it might have checkmated the fascists in Italy and Germany and saved us the horrors of World War II. But when bullies are appeased, rather than being stopped, they become emboldened.
I do not doubt that if the US is allowed to overrun Venezuela, it will later attack countries like Cuba, and who knows, its allies like Canada. It will follow the path Israel is treading: obliterate Gaza, exterminate the Palestinians in both Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, then invade Lebanon and Syria.
If the world had stood up against the German extermination of the Namibians in 1904, humanity might have been saved the horrors of the Holocaust. Equally, since many powerful countries, especially in the West are bystanders in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, humanity might have to pay for it with more genocides.
Back in 1939, the world had only one Adolf Hitler, today, we have more than one, including Benjamin Netanyahu in the Middle East.
We cannot allow our lives to be ruled by wars. In fact, we have a duty to help those whose leadership rely on wars. For instance, since the Second World War, which was said to end all wars, the US has invaded over 50 countries. Israel has in its 77-year existence being at war or on war footing.
The world today is in disarray, and diplomacy has taken a back seat. The powerful are trampling on the weak, and the defenceless are being sent out of the world.
Despite brigands having the upper hand today, decent humanity needs to take a stand. We can begin to do that by defending those being bullied. We need to stand by Venezuela and defend its people, otherwise, the rest of us will not be safe.
As Angela Davis warned: “If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you in the night.
*Lakemfa writes from Abuja