Last week, the U.S. bombed the sovereign nation of Venezuela, killing over 100 civilians and kidnapping the President, Nicolás Maduro. Since then, Trump and other forces in his fascist regime have been on a rampage: threatening to attack and asserting his right to dominate, control and invade any country anywhere—without any legal constraint. But while Trump sounds like a madman, this is not just madness. They are laying out their fascist strategy to remake the world in the interests of a fascist America more able to contend with who they see as their main imperialist rival, China. 

In a world of intense cutthroat competition between nuclear armed powers, Trump's fascist military moves and attempts to bully countries and whole regions of the world hold the extreme danger of spiraling out into nuclear confrontation, which really could lead to the extinction of humanity.

In this article we are going to cover Trump's outrageous threats, the fascist justification, strategy and dynamics behind them, the accelerating drive towards global conflict—and where the interests of humanity do, and do not, lie.  (Go here for this week's article on “Why Trump Says Greenland Is Essential for American Strategic Interests.”)

"If we don't do it the easy way, we're going to do it the hard way."

Since last Saturday, Trump has threatened Cuba and Colombia, threatened land strikes in Mexico, and threatened to attack Iran. He has repeated the openly gangster threat to invade Greenland: "We are going to do something on Greenland whether they like it or not because if we don't do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland.... If we don't do it the easy way, we're gonna do it the hard way."

This is not just a threat on Greenland, but a threat on longtime American allies in NATO (Greenland is controlled by the European imperialist country Denmark).¹ This kind of military threat on European allies is unprecedented and, if the big European powers don't just capitulate to Trump's demand for Greenland (which they very well might), it could either lead to war or the dissolution of NATO.

Similar to Trump's argument in defending the assault on Venezuela, Trump's key advisor and fascist ghoul, Stephen Miller, argued in an interview on CNN:

The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere.... We're a superpower. And under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. It is absurd that we would allow a nation in our own backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries, but not to us, to hoard weapons for our adversaries, to be able to be positioned as an asset against the United States rather than on behalf of the United States.

Miller didn't spell this out, but in speaking of U.S. "adversaries," he was talking about China, which purchased more—perhaps much more—than half of Venezuelan oil and overall, over the past decade, has enormously increased its trade, investment and aid in Latin America. 

Trump Restrained Only by His Fascist "Morality"

This remaking of the global order involves shredding any pretense to international law, breaking up old alliances and much more violently and forcefully asserting the U.S. right and ability to dominate the Western Hemisphere and the whole world. 

The revolutionary leader Bob Avakian described this powerfully in a social media message last spring: 

Fascism is a qualitatively different way that this system enforces its rule over people. 

Trump fascism is a regime that openly and aggressively strips away basic rights and blatantly declares that there is no rule of law and due process of law other than what it dictates, and that raw destructive power is what must rule in the international arena, without even the pretense of adherence to international law or concern about the sovereignty, or even the right to exist, of less powerful peoples and countries.

In a New York Times interview last week, Trump himself made this shockingly plain. Here was the exchange:

Reporter 1: Do you see any checks on your power on the world stage?

TRUMP: Yeah. There's one thing. My own morality. My own mind. That's the only thing that can stop me.

Reporter 2: Not international law?

TRUMP: I don't need international law. I'm not looking to hurt people.

Pause on that for a minute: the only check on Trump is his "own morality" and his "own mind." Leave aside the fact there can be no justice without the rule of law—whoever is in power. But this is the cold, calculating Trump who lies like breathing. Trump who hates Black and Brown people, and "foreigners," and demeans them as "animals, criminals and rapists who are poisoning the blood of our country." Trump—completely lacking in compassion and empathy who revels in the suffering of those he sees as weak or a "stain and a drain" on society and who has led a movement to meme-ify hatred and gleefully celebrate vicious racist cruelty. Trump who openly fantasizes about executing his opponents, reveling in revenge and retribution. Trump at the helm of a lunatic force of millions who think he has been appointed by god to rescue America as a white Christian nation violently dominating the world. 

And when Trump says, "I'm not looking to hurt people," in his sick mind, he means this. Because he does not consider those he has already hurt—and all the millions he intends to hurt—as "people." Trump does not see the immigrants and women, LGBT people, those who oppose him, and the billions from "shithole" countries as human.

This is an illegitimate, fascist morality: one that the millions of decent people need to recognize, and come together to defeat!

A Strategy for a Fascist America Dominating the Planet

There is a view, on the part of the fascist section of the ruling class, that the whole global alignment coming out of World War 2 has become a fetter, an obstacle, to full U.S. global domination now being challenged by a rising China. This previous order involved the U.S. sitting atop strategic alliances with Europe, dominating the world with a thin cover of abiding by "international law," or acting in the "name of democracy." 

The truth is that American domination has meant more intensified exploitation of the people of the world and the environment through globalized networks of sweatshops, mines, and farmlands, all serving the needs of empire. The U.S. has violently enforced this plunder through the slaughter of millions of people since World War 2—from Korea to Vietnam, Indonesia, Haiti and Latin America, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other countries. The widespread destruction from this, combined with intensified climate change, has forced millions from their homes and homelands.

But this was done with high-minded lies and working with allies.

The fascists are tearing all this up, and aiming to impose a different strategy and vision. One that deals with what they see as existential challenges to America's rule. This is spelled out in the National Security Statement released last December.

As part of this, Trump, Miller and the rest have been touting Trump's version of the "Monroe Doctrine." This refers to a doctrine issued by President Monroe in 1823. Monroe declared the entire Western Hemisphere as the U.S. "sphere of influence," warning European powers to keep out. This wasn't an empty policy. Since then, the U.S. has intervened in South and Central America at least 100 times—through invasions, CIA coups, training death squads, and more. This has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and endless misery for the people of those countries. (For an extensive list of these interventions, go here.)

Now, the fascists are feeling extreme urgency to more tightly control the whole of the Western Hemisphere both to roll back China's ability to operate in the region, and to shore up a regional foundation from which to contend with China. In the press conference which announced the invasion of Venezuela, Trump threatened: "Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again."

But all this will not be easy. While these fascists can accomplish a great deal through force and violence, they do not have everything in control and the future is extremely uncertain and dangerous. 

Ramping Up America's Deadly War Machine

At the same time as Trump is threatening the world, he announced a proposal to increase the military budget by 50 percent—from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion! This is attempting to deal with a major strategic problem faced by U.S. imperialism: despite the U.S.'s military might, it has an outdated, bureaucratic and relatively slow "military industrial base" in contrast to China. China spends less than a quarter of what the U.S. spends on its military, but has hundreds of thousands more soldiers, and in some ways, a more technologically advanced and much faster-paced military apparatus. In an interview last year, the fascist "Secretary of War" Pete Hegseth said that in the last 10-15 years, "the Pentagon has a perfect record in all of its war games against China... we lose every time."

To deal with this, Hegseth announced an attempt to remake the whole process of American weapons building. He said last fall, "We're not building for peace time. We are pivoting the Pentagon and our industrial base to a wartime footing." 

Combined with the military preparations, there is the ideological component. Hegseth is working to forge a fully fascist military cohered around open white supremacy, the macho degradation of women and hatred of LGBT people, and America first threats of violent domination—with a license to openly commit war crimes and crimes against humanity, pledging their allegiance to the fascist tyrant above all else. But this, too, is full of contradiction for these fascists in a military made up of almost half Black, Latino and other people of color and 17 percent women. They are very far along in their agenda, but here again, the fascists do not have this all sewn up. (To read more about these changes in the military, go here, here and here.)

The Democrats: Denouncing Trump Within the Confines of U.S. Imperialism

There have been some individual Democrats who have called out the illegality of Trump's open violation of international and domestic law. Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Trump's kidnapping of Maduro was "clearly illegal under international law." 

But the main leading Democratic Party politicians have only criticized Trump for not getting congressional approval. Hakeem Jeffries, leader of the House Democrats, started his statement by saying, "Nicolas Maduro is a criminal and authoritarian dictator who has oppressed the people of Venezuela for years. He is not the legitimate head of government." After a full paragraph along these lines, Jeffries acted as if the problem was that Trump didn't have a good enough plan for "what's next," and finally went on to critique the way Trump illegally stepped around Congress.

Unmentioned in these statements is that the biggest criminal and illegitimate head of government in the world right now is the fascist head of the world's #1 global oppressor: Donald Trump, who has no fucking right to invade countries and steal their resources like a rampaging vampire.

The biggest cries of concern have to do with the fact that Trump's moves could give a green light to China and Russia to do the same kind of thing. After critiquing the illegality of what Trump did, Himes argued, "So what China and Russia just learned is that the beacon of liberty and rule of law in the world [sic] has now green lighted snatch-and-grab operations in Estonia, in Taiwan, wherever Xi and Putin decide they want to go next."²

But all those concerns are confined within the terms of what serves this monstrous, blood-soaked system—the same system that's given rise to this fascism.

Feverish Competition and Contention Driven by This System of Capitalism-Imperialism

These dangerous moves on the part of the fascist section of the rulers are not just driven by greed, or unhinged fascist lunacy, but by the underlying driving dynamics of a system of capitalism-imperialism. In his 2018 talk, Why We Need an Actual Revolution and How We Can Really Make Revolution, Bob Avakian gave life to the "expand or die" dynamics of this:

...we live in a grossly lopsided world—a world where a few dozen billionaires have as much wealth as the poorer half of humanity, and a small number of ruling classes, in a small number of countries, dominate, oppress, and control the destiny of the masses of humanity, with consequences that are already terrible and could before long become catastrophic. And, in everything that I have been shining a light on—regarding the world we live in, under the domination of capitalism-imperialism—we are seeing the consequences of a system based on the private appropriation, by competing centers of capital, of wealth that is socially produced through networks of production involving vast numbers—ultimately billions—of people all over the globe, who are forced to work in relations of production and conditions that exploit and dehumanize them. It is not simply greed that drives these capitalists to constantly seek out ways to more ruthlessly exploit people—it is the fact that, if they do not do this, or if some other capitalists do it more successfully (that is, even more ruthlessly), then they will face the prospect of not just falling behind but actually going under, eaten up by other capitalist sharks. It is the private appropriation of socially produced wealth, and the anarchy—the feverish competition and contention—that results from this, which ultimately underlies and drives all the horrors that are concentrated in the “5 STOPS”³ and the conditions to which the masses of humanity are subjected.

"This system is completely absurd—criminally, monstrously absurd—and completely outmoded"

From all this, we can see that the top oppressors are willing to risk all of life on earth in jockeying for position to be the world's #1 exploiter. This is utter insanity. Especially when it's the case that all the technology and knowledge that goes to building machines of death and networks of exploitation could be unfettered to meet human need—if we had a radically different system. 

The sharp divides among the rulers of this system and their inability to rule in the ways that masses of people in the U.S. have been conditioned to accept makes this a rare time when revolution—real revolution to bring that radically different system into being—is more possible. Right now, more than "normal times," the utter illegitimacy of this system is hanging out for all to see. But people need to be challenged to confront the system that is driving this, and raise their sights to the fact that we don't have to live this way:

This system is completely absurd—criminally, monstrously absurd—and completely outmoded: long past its expiration date, past the time when it can lead to anything positive for humanity—and, on the contrary, it stands as the direct barrier to the emancipation of humanity from all this madness, atrocity, and unnecessary suffering. The rise of fascism, in many other countries as well as in the U.S. itself, is a glaring sign of the thoroughly outmoded nature of this system and the heightened danger it poses to humanity as a whole.

We are now at the point where it is more and more urgently necessary to move beyond this whole monstrous system—beyond a situation where people are forced to struggle just for individual survival, with everyone compelled to be in competition and conflict with others, and the masses of people everywhere are chained down by outmoded oppressive relations, while the future, and the very existence, of humanity is increasingly endangered.

And it is possible now to move beyond all this.

A whole different way of living is possible: a whole different way to organize society, with a radically different economic foundation and political system, emancipating relations among people and an uplifting culture—all of this oriented to meeting the basic needs and fulfilling the highest interests of the masses of people. This is set forth, in both a sweeping and concrete way, in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have written. Summaries of basic points in this Constitution—shining a light on the truly emancipating way we could be living—are laid out in the Declaration WE NEED AND WE DEMAND: A WHOLE NEW WAY TO LIVE, A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT SYSTEM. (This Declaration, as well as the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, is available at revcom.us.)

—from Bob Avakian, 2025: A New Year—Profound New Challenges—And a Profoundly Positive Way Forward in the Face of Very Real Horror

In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!

This Whole System is Rotten and Illegitimate! We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, a Fundamentally Different System!