“A criminal act of imperial aggression.”

On 2 January, US military forces launched an illegal and unprovoked military assault against Venezuela — bombing Fuerte Tiuna, La Carlota Air Base, the port of La Guaira, residential neighborhoods across Caracas, and military and civilian installations in the states of Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira. Missiles fired from US helicopters killed military personnel and civilians, left entire neighborhoods without power, and terrorized the Venezuelan people.

Hours later, President Donald Trump announced that US special forces "captured" President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores. The kidnapping of a sovereign head of state represents an act of imperial lawlessness with few precedents in history.

President Donald Trump has clearly articulated the imperial logic of this intervention — to seize control over Venezuela's natural resources and reassert US domination over the hemisphere. The "Trump corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine — applied in recent hours with violent force over the skies of Caracas — is the single greatest threat to peace and prosperity that the Americas confront today.

This armed attack on Venezuela is not an isolated event. It is the next step in the United States' campaign of regime change that stretches from Caracas to Havana — and an attack on the very principle of sovereign equality and the prospects for the Zone of Peace once established by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. This renewed declaration of impunity from Washington is a threat to all nations around the world.

In this moment of clear, acute, and mounting violence against the people of Venezuela, silence is complicity.

The Progressive International calls upon political parties, trade unions, social movements, and civil society organizations across the world to act with urgency and determination. We urge — and commit to collaborate with all efforts to develop — coordinated actions, worker strikes, and assemblies that promise to halt these acts of wanton aggression.

The Progressive International stands in solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution, with the people of Venezuela, and with all those in the region who refuse a future defined by foreign domination and imperial plunder. We enter 2026 with a renewed commitment to the struggle for a world in which peace is secured by social justice; not by force, but by sovereign self-determination.

Photograph: Fire at Fuerte Tiuna, Venezuela's largest military complex. Luis Jaimes/AFP/Getty Images