Business & Economics
Trump Orders Total Oil Blockade on Venezuela as Rubio Brands Maduro Regime a Narco-Terror Ally
Between 19–20 Dec 2025 Washington moved an aircraft-carrier strike group and thousands of troops into the Caribbean and announced a "total blockade" on sanctioned Venezuelan oil tankers, while President Trump said he "doesn’t rule out" war and Secretary of State Marco Rubio vowed to forcibly change Caracas’s status quo.
Focusing Facts
- Deployment: several thousand U.S. troops, an aircraft carrier, warships and fighter jets arrived off Venezuela’s coast in mid-Dec 2025, according to Pentagon briefings and Reuters (19 Dec 2025).
- Rubio’s 2-hour State Department press conference on 19 Dec 2025 labeled Venezuela’s government “illegitimate,” accused it of partnering with Hezbollah and Tren de Aragua, and promised to enforce a blockade on all sanctioned oil tankers.
- U.S. forces intercepted a second merchant vessel in international waters near Venezuela on 20 Dec 2025, days after seizing the tanker “Skipper” tied to Iranian trade.
Context
Washington has invoked the logic of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine before— most famously during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis naval “quarantine” and the 1989 ouster of Manuel Noriega in Panama— but this is the first outright oil blockade in the hemisphere since the 1941 U.S. embargo on Japan. The immediate move fits two longer arcs: 1) the post-9/11 practice of re-labeling criminal cartels as terrorist groups to expand presidential war powers, and 2) the 21st-century re-nationalisation of energy flows as great-power leverage. By treating a mid-level petro-state as both narco-terror hub and geopolitical proxy, Washington is testing how far it can act unilaterally without congressional war authorization or multilateral cover— a stress point for the U.S. constitutional order and for norms on freedom of navigation. Whether this escalates into armed intervention or fizzles like past sanctions drives, it signals that the U.S. is prepared to police its near abroad with force in an era of multipolar contestation; historians a century hence may view December 2025 as the moment the Monroe Doctrine was rebooted for the energy-terror age.
Perspectives
Right leaning US media
e.g., Fox News, PJ Media — They applaud Rubio and Trump’s aggressive strategy—blockades, terror designations and possible strikes—as the only way to stop Venezuela’s narco-terrorist regime from menacing U.S. security. By foregrounding cartel links and praising Republican leadership, they downplay questions about civilian deaths, congressional authority and wider regional destabilisation that their audiences might find inconvenient.
International media from the Global South
e.g., CNA, TRT World, Tempo — They cast Washington’s military buildup and talk of war as a dangerous escalation that revives the Monroe-Doctrine and could breach international law. Their coverage often foregrounds U.S. imperial motives and potential war crimes, which can eclipse Venezuela’s documented human-rights abuses and narcotics ties.