Trump, in partnership with bipartisan figures, composes a hymn of imperialist unity

In moments when the present feels overwhelming and the future seems uncertain, I often look to the past for answers and a sense of grounding. I've come to understand that while history doesn't exactly repeat itself, it certainly rhymes, and US imperialism plays out like a bipartisan, agonizing symphony.

From Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election and the formation of his hawkish cabinet of billionaire allies, there has been a growing concern that things will get much worse for the world, particularly for Latin America, and anti-imperialist, oil-rich countries like Venezuela, given the Targeted administration's economic sanctions and support for coup attempts.

Is Trump worse than other US presidents or is he merely another (un)conventional evil president of a deeply evil empire that has always been a threat to humanity? Was his "maximum pressure" campaign against Venezuela an unprecedented depravity, or did he simply continue the murderous strategies established by his predecessors?

US society has always found its "human sacrifice" through different periods of history, whether a Democratic or Republican administration is in power. There will always be an "enemy," domestically and beyond its borders, to divert blame during challenging times, advance the empire's dominance, and protect its interests. And to defeat this "enemy," US presidents willingly play the same tune.

During the 1940s and 1950s, it was the persecution of left-wing people and a worldwide campaign spreading fear of communism, known as McCarthyism, to suppress any progressive movement domestically. The red scare agenda likewise extended abroad, with Washington propping up bloody dictatorships across South America, such as Pinochet in Chile and Somoza in Nicaragua. In 1962, President Kennedy imposed an economic blockade on revolutionary Cuba, causing an endless humanitarian crisis that has been renewed every year by every White House tenant.

In the early 2000s, during the George W. Bush presidency, 9/11 was used as an excuse to start the "Global War on Terror" with the US military invading and occupying Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. More than 4.5 million people died, and 38 million were displaced in a massive military campaign that destroyed several nations. US-backed terrorist organizations further destabilized the entire region, and wars based on lies that were a money-making machine for the US elite.

Washington identified another "enemy" in the early 2000s — Hugo Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. This was when the imperialist symphony resonated the most, as we see Democratic and Republican administrations imitating one another while pretending to be adversaries.

Just hours after the short-lived coup against Chávez in 2002, the Bush administration recognized Pedro Carmona as Venezuela's "interim president," appointed by the coup leaders. This story echoes the 2019 endorsement from the first Trump administration of Juan Guaidó's self-proclamation as "interim president."

Today, the trend continues with Joe Biden's Secretary of State Antony Blinken referring to former opposition candidate Edmundo González, who came second in the July 28 election, as "president-elect." This remark came amidst plans from the Venezuelan far-right to force González's assumption to power in January 2025.

The 2002 US-backed coup deepened Chávez's revolutionary project, and in 2004, he declared that the Bolivarian Revolution was anti-imperialist. In his 2006 epic speech at the UN General Assembly, Chávez called Bush "the devil" and exposed the US as a "false democracy of the elite" desperate to consolidate its "global dictatorship."

Under Chávez, social reforms reshaped Venezuelan society, marked by progressive legislation that returned land to the people and nationalized the oil industry. In 2007, the working-class people of Venezuela officially reclaimed the Orinoco Oil Belt, the largest oil deposits on the planet, from the decades-long grip of foreign companies. "Oil belongs to Venezuelans," Chávez proclaimed, a bold statement when the US relied heavily on Venezuelan oil and had enjoyed easy and cheap access to it while receiving a large share of the revenue through favorable contracts that benefited them at the expense of the Venezuelan state.

As Silvio Rodríguez sang, "the era was giving birth to a heart." An anti-imperialist heart of the people that took control of its natural resources, which was, of course, a war declaration for Washington, which responded with its usual song of sanctions, embargoes, and attempted coups.

The second Bush administration imposed sanctions against Venezuelan officials, an arms embargo based on made-up accusations of "narcoterrorism," and considered labeling Venezuela a threat to US interests. It was his Democratic successor Barack Obama who finally declared Venezuela an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to US national security and foreign policy in 2015.

Five years prior, Obama had begun significantly ramping up domestic crude production and reducing its reliance on Venezuelan oil for the immediate future, which left the field open for sanctions. When Trump arrived at the presidency in 2017, he grabbed the opportunity to target Venezuela with the "collective punishment" sanctions regime that his Republican and Democratic predecessors paved the way for.

A sequence of actions that reflect a coordinated effort to reach the bipartisan regime change goal: the infamous "maximum pressure" policy including financial sanctions (2017) and an export embargo (2019) on Venezuela's oil industry to strangle the country's main source of revenue, followed by a Cuba-style blanket ban on the entire Venezuelan economy in 2019.

Today, the US continues to impose sanctions on Venezuela, with possible exceptions made for securing oil supplies for the US and Europe after the imposition of sanctions on Russian oil destabilized the global energy market during the Ukraine conflict. Sanctions remain a bipartisan affair, with Trump merely being the one who got the job of implementing them.

Many people around the world will die and suffer tremendously under Trump, just as many did under Biden, Obama, and Bush because they are all in the same orchestra, playing the same chords. Trump may be evil, racist, and dangerous, but his hateful narrative against immigrants, especially Venezuelan immigrants, is simply a disruption of the status quo.

As independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone noted, Trump "won't do anything that wasn't already being done by those before him" and will continue to be done by those who follow. We, the "enemies" of the empire, must recognize that our struggle is against the entire imperialist system. It's time to challenge the bipartisan chorus of imperialism.

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