By *Jomo Sanga Thomas
(“Plain Talk” Oct. 10, 2025)
The breaking news that the Trump regime has asked the Grenadian government for permission to place military assets on the island is a dangerous escalation of American regime change operations in our Caribbean. On Monday, news broke that Trump ordered his envoy to end all discussions with the leaders of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The decision to halt diplomatic efforts is further evidence that Washington is intensifying its pressure on the revolutionary leaders in Caracas.
America’s pressure on Grenada to house military assets stems from an essential development in Colombia, Venezuela’s neighbour. And that is the growing rift between President Gustavo Petro and Washington. President Petro recently called for an international military brigade to fight Israel and stop the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Trump cancelled his visa, which is a violation of international law regarding diplomatic relations.
More importantly, President Petro withdrew Colombia from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), criticising the militaristic logic that, he said, has supported crimes against humanity. “We do not belong to NATO. We are not from the North Atlantic. We are from the South Atlantic, and our land is called the Caribbean. What are we doing there? These are drastic measures, but I think they must be taken now.”
These announcements are a setback to America’s military plans. Thus, the attempt to ensnare Grenada into his unholy alliance against Venezuela.
Last August, Kamla Harris Bessesar, Trinidad and Tobago’s reactionary prime minister, had already signalled her support for Trump’s aggression on Venezuela. Guyana’s neoliberal President, Irfaan Ali, whose country has a century-long territorial dispute with Venezuela over who owns the oil-rich Essequibo region, and whose People’s Progressive Party removed its commitment to socialism from the party constitution in May 2024, also pledged support for America’s aggressive actions.
Like the United States, both leaders pledge their unswerving commitment to fighting drug cartels and the transhipment of drugs across regional borders to the US and Europe. Informed sources say that the alleged efforts to combat and stem alleged drug transhipment from Venezuela are a ruse to manufacture consent for the removal of President Maduro and the installation of a more pliant leader who will kowtow to American dictates and allow for the exploitation of Venezuela’s enormous resources, especially oil.
President Trump had long cast a greedy eye on Venezuela’s oil. Regime change in Caracas was high on the White House agenda during his first term. In January 2022, John Bolton, the arch-reactionary and Trump’s former National Security advisor, admitted on CNN he “helped plan coups d’état in Venezuela and other places”. Trump has also publicly salivated on his desires to turn Venezuela into a vassal state and have American companies dominate its economy.
The allegations against President Maduro and other high government officials are belied by both the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), America’s drug-fighting agency. According to the UNODC, Venezuela has consolidated its position over the past 15 years as a territory free of coca leaf cultivation, marijuana and cocaine processing. The epicentre of activity remains in the Andean countries (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia), but production is concentrated in Colombia.
Further, the DEA 2024 report did not mention Venezuela as a drug haven. Colombia was identified as the primary source of cocaine seized by the US. About 84% of the cocaine seized in the US was found to be originating from Colombian coca.
A classified assessment by the US National Intelligence Council released in April repeatedly stated that there was no evidence of coordination between Tren de Aragua and any senior leaders in the Maduro administration.
Yet Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, an anti-Cuba emigre, are determined to liquidate the Bolivarian leadership because the American ruling circles see the government in Caracas as a bulwark of support for the Cuban Revolution, which has faced serious problems as a result of the criminal blockage and sabotage of its economy, which Washington is ramping up.
The attempts to tarnish the leadership of the Bolivarian Revolution are two-fold. Firstly, they tried and failed to overthrow President Chavez in 2002 after he won a democratic election in 1998. After the opposition won the legislative elections in 2017 and Maduro was elected in 2018, they hoisted the virtually unknown Juan Guido as president of the republic. Those attempts, along with John Bolton’s coup plotting, also failed.
The drug smuggling smear/charge comes from an often-used playbook. It was used in Vietnam to oust the South Vietnamese leadership in the 1960s, whom Washington had soured on. Then in 1999, the Americans employed the same tactic against Manaul Noriega, the spy who collaborated with the CIA to kill Omar Torrijos, the left-wing leader who fought mightily to regain Panamanian sovereignty over the Panama Canal.
Noriega, used, abused, then discarded by his American paymasters, was imprisoned in the US for drug trafficking, then sent to prison in France and later returned to jail in the US, where he died.
For over a century, Venezuela, with the world’s largest known oil reserves, has exploited its resources to benefit foreign corporations and the local elite. Millions of people are mired in poverty and squalor. After President Chávez was elected, a shift in emphasis occurred in the South American republic. The country’s riches were spent for the first time on alleviating the object conditions of the people. Health care and education became free. Millions of homes were built for the poor and middle classes.
The Americans would have none of it. They have made the Venezuelan economy scream, thus impoverishing millions and forcing them to leave. They charged that the leadership of the Bolivarian Republic was undemocratic. Now they claim President Maduro and his other leaders are narcotraffickers. It is long past time for people to see through the lies and demand the right of all states to independence, sovereignty, and non-interference in their internal affairs.
*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
The opinions presented in this content belong to the author and may not necessarily reflect the perspectives or editorial stance of iWitness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].
Jomo presents a compelling and critically important indictment of US foreign policy, connecting current events to a long and damning historical pattern. Jomo’s argument is powerfully anchored by the strategic move to quote American officials like John Bolton, who openly admitted to planning coups, thereby stripping away the diplomatic pretense and revealing the raw intent of regime change. By juxtaposing this admission with the proven falsity of the drug trafficking allegations—using the US government’s own DEA and UN reports as evidence—Jomo successfully frames the current justification as a cynical “ruse.” This methodical dismantling of the official narrative exposes a deeper, more familiar motive: the control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, which is rightly identified as the underlying constant in a century of exploitative relations.
This article’s profound strength lies in its unflinching anti-imperialist perspective, which correctly frames the struggle as one of sovereignty versus subjugation. Thomas correctly situates the threat not as an isolated issue for Venezuela, but as a regional crisis for the Caribbean, exemplified by the attempt to “ensnare Grenada” into a military alliance. His use of Colombian President Petro’s withdrawal from NATO—and the powerful question, “What are we doing there?”—resonates as a clarion call for Caribbean self-determination against an encroaching foreign power. This framing elevates the piece from a simple critique of one policy to a vital defense of the fundamental principles of international law: independence, sovereignty, and non-interference for all nations, regardless of their size or political alignment.
Ultimately, this piece serves as an essential corrective to mainstream discourse, courageously speaking truth to power by naming the exploitation of resources as the central aim and the suffering of the Venezuelan people as its direct cost. He reminds readers that before the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuela’s oil wealth served foreign corporations and a local elite, while the masses lived in poverty. The current campaign of economic strangulation and military pressure is, therefore, correctly portrayed as a punishment for a nation that dared to use its own resources for the benefit of its own people. In doing so, Jomo issues a vital call for collective awareness and resistance against a dangerous and immoral politics of regime change by the USA that has brought instability and suffering to the region for generations. Remember Haiti.
Ex bus driver Maduro is a tyrannical illegitimate leader because he lost the 2024 election.
Average Venezuelans are far worse off today than they were before socialist Chavez was elected in 1999.
America needs to free Venezuela by any means possible from the tyrannical rule of these nasty socialists.
By the way, Jomo, haven’t you ever heard of the God-ordained notion of American Manifest Destiny (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny)?
Here it is, 2025, and the blindness and shortsightedness is still among some Caribbean leaders. Any Caribbean leader who cooperate with this orange cockroach from the north, should be heavily sanctioned or kicked out of all regional bodies. Simply as that!