KATHMANDU – In a stark illustration of imperial priorities, the United States government is simultaneously engineering a domestic hunger crisis while escalating a multi-million-dollar military siege against Venezuela, a nation rich in oil but besieged by U.S.-led sanctions.
While over 42 million Americans reliant on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) face uncertainty and potential starvation due to a politically manufactured government shutdown, the U.S. military is burning through an estimated $18 million per day to maintain a naval invasion force off the coast of Venezuela. This contrast lays bare the core function of the capitalist state: violence and expansion abroad, austerity and neglect for its own working class.
Domestic Austerity, Foreign Aggression
The ongoing U.S. government shutdown, one of the longest in history, has pushed essential social programs to the brink. Funding for SNAP, a vital lifeline for low-income families, the elderly, and children, is drying up. The Trump administration has pointedly refused to tap into significant contingency funds, a political choice that will directly result in empty plates and heightened food insecurity beginning November 1.
Yet, for the war machine, funding is never in short supply. A vast U.S. naval armada, spearheaded by the USS Gerald R. Ford—the world’s most expensive aircraft carrier with a procurement cost of $13.3 billion—remains deployed in the Caribbean. This force, which includes destroyers and amphibious assault ships designed to deploy thousands of Marines, represents not a “counter-narcotics” operation, but a force built for invasion and regime change.
“The administration’s priorities are a textbook case of class warfare,” said a political analyst in Kathmandu. “It is the brutal logic of capitalism: defund social programs, immiserate the working class, and redirect public wealth into the coffers of the military-industrial complex and imperialist projects. The people of the United States and Venezuela are both victims of the same system.”
Escalation and the Bloody Cost of “Counter-Narcotics”
The military threat has moved far beyond rhetoric. Since early September, the U.S. has conducted at least fourteen extrajudicial strikes on vessels in the Caribbean, killing at least 60 people. The victims, labeled “narcoterrorists” without evidence, have been identified by grieving families as fishermen from Venezuela, Colombia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
This “kill-first” policy, coupled with the deployment of a carrier group capable of launching strikes on Venezuelan soil, marks a qualitative shift from economic warfare to direct, lethal intervention. The daily operating cost of this escalation—$18 million—is more than just a number; it is the price of lives lost and a war of aggression in the making.
The Allure of Black Gold: Oil as the Strategic Driver
Beneath the thin veneer of a “drug war” lies the true objective: control over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, the largest in the world. For decades, successive U.S. administrations, both Democratic and Republican, have sought to overthrow the socialist government in Caracas to reverse nationalizations and hand control of this strategic resource back to Western corporations.
“The Monroe Doctrine never died; it was merely updated for the 21st century,” commented a foreign affairs expert. “Venezuela’s sovereignty, its right to choose its own economic path, and its alliances with global powers like Russia and China are seen as an intolerable threat to U.S. hegemony in Latin America. This naval deployment is a gunboat diplomacy meant to bully an entire region into submission.”
The devastating economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela—criticized by the UN as collective punishment—are designed to cripple the economy and foment unrest, creating a pretext for the military escalation now underway.
A Lesson for Nepal and the Global South
For readers in Nepal and across the Global South, the U.S.’s actions towards Venezuela serve as a critical lesson. It demonstrates that imperial powers will never tolerate independent, sovereign nations that prioritize their people over foreign corporate profits. The same machinery of sanctions, hybrid warfare, and military threat can be deployed against any nation that dares to defy the dictates of Washington and Wall Street.
The juxtaposition is the ultimate indictment: a government that claims it cannot feed its own people has an unlimited budget for invasion. The hunger in American homes and the warships off the Venezuelan coast are two sides of the same coin—a system that sacrifices human need at the altar of profit and imperial power. The struggle of the Venezuelan people against this aggression is a struggle for the sovereignty of all nations in the shadow of empire.