Intro
Trump is pulling us to the precipice of unprovoked war with Venezuela, yet there is little conversation about it. We need to have our eyes on it before it goes any further. Here’s why you should care about this topic: UW-Madison is financially complicit in bankrolling the US imperialist aggression against Venezuela, and we must demand divestment to stop this violence.
Context
Since September, the US has carried out at least 22 military strikes against vessels and killed 87 people that it has baselessly claimed were transporting drugs from Venezuela. Additionally, the US seized one Venezuelan oil tanker last week with threats to seize more, amounting to an act of piracy, and announced a “blockade” on oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela as of this week. These actions represent a military escalation by the US to choke the economy of Venezuela, already battered for years by a US embargo.
Over the same time frame, the US has deployed spy planes, a variety of warships, and its largest aircraft carrier to the Caribbean. It is also upgrading a formerly-abandoned military base in Puerto Rico through which thousands of troops are flowing, evoking a myriad of concerns from Puerto Rican locals and reaffirming the colonial relation of Puerto Rico as a military outpost to project US imperialism in the Caribbean.
Trump alleges that Venezuela is a narcoterrorist state, that President Maduro runs international drug gangs, a claim which has been ceaselessly debunked as Venezuela is not in fact a major exporter of illicit drugs. The narcoterrorism label is merely a thin pretext to manufacture consent for military escalation, with Trump openly floating prospects of armed invasions, covert operations, and regime change. Additionally, this violence could spill over into neighboring Colombia, another country which Trump has issued threats to. The leadership in both Venezuela and Colombia reject US hegemony and imperialism, drawing Trump’s ire.
It’s important to highlight the role of imperialism here. The US continues to undermine countries across the globe for strategic gain; Venezuela and the rest of Latin America are no exception. The past two decades document a bipartisan history of imperialist aggression against Venezuela through various means. The attacks on Venezuelan oil not only deprive Venezuela of a crucial source of export income, but also manufacture energy instability for Cuba as well, a major consumer of Venezuelan oil. Like Venezuela, Cuba has also been under an embargo for decades due to US aggression, crippling its ability to get basic necessities from other countries.
Neither the anticommunist nor narcoterrorist justifications for US intervention are new to Latin America, nor is Trump’s and the CIA’s hypocritical support for drug traffickers when it suits them. Trump’s current belligerence is not an isolated case. Imperialism is often at its most pernicious not when it sends thousands of troops into military conflict, but when it operates invisibly without our notice. Keep this in mind: the US has always been imperialist; Trump represents a more belligerent strain of it.
Why you should care
Beyond the fact that we should all care for the well being of all people, it is our responsibility as residents of the aggressor country to voice our solidarity with Venezuelans and Latin Americans in opposition to this aggression. It is even more so our obligation as the UW community to adopt this stance because our university has financial investments which profit from this violence.
Students and many others have been calling for UW divestment for decades, most recently with a focus on divestment from the genocide in Palestine. Our Board of Regents are investing hundreds of millions of dollars into weapons manufacturers like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, oil giants like Chevron and Exxon, and surveillance technologies like Palantir and Elbit Systems. They do so through BlackRock index funds, namely the MSCI ACWI fund. The demands for divestment not only advance the Palestinian cause, but also that of Sudan, of environmental justice, of tribal sovereignty, and of the immigrants and Native Americans under militarized surveillance. Divestment is an intensely intersectional issue.
It should come as no surprise, then, that many of these companies also stand to benefit from US aggression towards Venezuela. The arms manufacturers are already benefitting, but oil giants and tourism developers may also benefit from this colonial subjugation. María Corina Machado, the US-backed far-right pick for president of Venezuela, has openly called for US military intervention and revealed her intentions for a $1.7 trillion project to privatize state-run industry for foreign capital in areas such as oil, gas, gold, and tourism. This would allow extractive industries to exploit the labor and natural resources of Venezuela. It is our obligation, then, to divest our university from the companies facilitating and profiting from this colonial project.
Moving forward
If we want to earnestly resist these injustices, we need anti-imperialism; we need to develop a stance opposed to political and economic domination of other peoples. UW-Madison has a long history with anti-imperialist social movements, including the antiwar and anti-apartheid movements in solidarity with Vietnam and South Africa respectively. We must carry on this tradition by calling on UW to divest itself from imperialist aggression against Palestine, Venezuela, Sudan, and all the others.
It is not enough to say that Trump’s attacks are illegal or that they should’ve been approved by Congress. Those are relevant and useful observations, but without deeper analysis they can obscure the fact that imperialism also operates through many legal mechanisms while exploiting and dominating people abroad. We need to move further than the “No Kings” pro-democracy script and embrace anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism; our moment demands it. Demand divestment and disclosure of investments from UW-Madison. Join organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA). Start reading groups with your friends discussing anticolonial writers like Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire. Form unions to build collective power. Trump is taking us to the precipice of war, and we need to be prepared.
Editor’s note: Letters to the Editor and open letters reflect the opinions, concerns and views of University of Wisconsin-Madison students and community. As such, the information presented may or may not be accurate. Letters to the Editor and open letters do not reflect the editorial views or opinions of The Daily Cardinal
