By Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein

A Venezuelan international relations expert, Rodriguez Gelfenstein was previously Director of the International Relations of the Presidency of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, his country’s ambassador to Nicaragua and an advisor for international politics for TeleSUR. He published this article — a synopsis of some major U.S. military interventions and the false pretexts used to justify them, ending with a current campaign against Venezuelan migrants — on June 4, 2025. Translation: John Catalinotto

The course of history has clearly demonstrated that in order to pursue its interventionist and militaristic agenda, the United States has sought subterfuge and fabricated false evidence that has been proven false by history itself or has been exposed as such. The manipulation of evidence in order to gain favorable support from public opinion in the country in the first instance, and from the world as a global support for destabilizing excesses, has been a constant feature of U.S. foreign policy since it became involved in world affairs in the development of its imperialist policy at the end of the 19th century.

A few examples from different moments in the 20th century and the present day show the continuity of the false arguments constructed for this purpose.

The battleship Maine in 1898

In 1898, Cuba was in the process of fighting for its political independence from Spain. Economically, the United States controlled the island’s main properties and was the leading buyer of Cuban sugar. Under these conditions, it took advantage of the weakness of the colonial government to meddle in the internal affairs of the Caribbean island, “supporting” independence activists with the hidden intention of provoking a war against Spain and seizing its colonial possessions, leaving Cuba within its sphere of influence.

In early 1898, President McKinley sent the battleship Maine to the port of Havana to “protect” the interests of Americans on the island who might be affected by the struggle of the Cuban independence fighters. This action was endorsed in the United States through propaganda and media manipulation by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, owners and publishers of two of the main media outlets and well-known defenders of imperialist ideas.

On Feb. 15, 1898, under “strange” circumstances, the Maine exploded off the coast of Havana, killing 260 officers and crew of the 355 on board. This prompted an immediate complaint from the United States to Spain, holding it responsible for what had happened. (Subsequent investigations revealed that the Spanish had nothing to do with it; it is believed that it was an internal explosion due to the amount of explosives inside the ship.)

Hearst and Pulitzer took it upon themselves to manipulate this event with the aim of gaining public support for the U.S. government to wage war against Spain, which they achieved when the Washington administration sent an ultimatum — almost a declaration of war — to Madrid, forcing it to initiate hostilities. This conflict, known as the Spanish-Cuban-American War, gave the United States the opportunity to intervene, in the face of the imminent victory of the Cuban patriots, to produce a media-driven independence that was later legalized through the Platt Amendment, which allowed blatant U.S. interference in Cuba for 60 years.

Philippines 1898

The Philippines was another of Washington’s spoils of war. The U.S. government was influenced by the theories of Alfred Mahan, who argued that the United States, as the great nation it was, should expand beyond its borders and join the race between the great European powers “to occupy all the vacant places on earth.”

Before the events surrounding the battleship Maine, and knowing that, like in Cuba, there were groups in the Philippines promoting independence, the U.S. government decided to recruit one of their leaders, Emilio Aguinaldo, and initially turn him into one of their allies. The U.S. fleet destroyed the Spanish Navy, but still did not have territorial control, so the U.S. transferred Aguinaldo (who was in exile) from Hong Kong to the Philippines to organize a Filipino army that, together with U.S. soldiers, would take Manila and expel the Spanish once and for all.

With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in December 1898, Spain ceded sovereignty over the Philippines to the United States. [Soon the U.S. was to carry out a brutal war against the Philippine government and occupation of the country.]

Pearl Harbor 1941

On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan attacked and destroyed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaiʻi, sinking 18 ships, including five battleships, with a death toll of 3,435 military personnel and civilians. The U.S. made this event the justification for the United States’s formal entry to World War II. It is rarely mentioned, however, that before this event U.S.-Japan bilateral relations were already very tense, not because of Japan’s imperialist actions in China, but because of the measures that the United States had unilaterally adopted against the Japanese Empire. [The U.S. imposed economic and military sanctions on Japan.]

U.S. Navy intelligence services had been aware of the possibility of an attack on the naval base several days before it took place. Radar in Hawaiʻi detected the Japanese planes, but the high command did nothing to prevent the attack, allowing it to happen. The consequence of this was that U.S. public opinion was unified in favor of participating in the war, leading Congress to approve the Declaration of War against Japan, which in turn prompted Germany and Italy to declare war on the United States. This all allowed the growth and strengthening of the U.S. industrial machine and turned that country into the world’s leading military power.

The Gulf of Tonkin, Vietnam, August 1964

The Gulf of Tonkin is located off the coast of what was formerly known as North Vietnam [the part of Vietnam that won independence from French imperialism in 1954]. Popular support in South Vietnam for Ho Chi Minh’s ideas and principles grew considerably, to the point of threatening the stability of the pro-U.S. regime, which was rejected by the majority of Vietnamese living in the South. 

Faced with this situation, the U.S. government decided to intervene directly in the conflict. In early August 1964, the U.S. used a series of events in the Gulf of Tonkin to “justify” this military intervention, accusing North Vietnam of launching a torpedo attack on the USS Maddox destroyer when, according to official information, it was on a routine mission in international waters on Aug. 2, 1964.

Two days later, the North Vietnamese government was again accused of attempting to torpedo the destroyer USS Turner Joy. This lie, which U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of State Robert McNamara told the U.S. public, served as the main argument for the escalation of the conflict and the increase in the direct presence of U.S. troops in the region. With the approval of Congress, President Johnson was granted “the power to take whatever military measures he deemed necessary in Southeast Asia.”

Grenada 1983

On March 13, 1979, revolutionary leader Maurice Bishop and his New Jewel Movement seized power in Grenada, establishing a new government that did not have the backing of the United States. Washington began to exert pressure by freezing all international loans in order to create a political climate conducive to weakening the popular movement.

In October 1983, a military conspiracy led by Grenada’s Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard succeeded in overthrowing Bishop, placing him under house arrest and subsequently assassinating him. This sparked a social uprising on the island that led to U.S. intervention in Grenada [on Oct. 25, 1983]. President Ronald Reagan informed the public that because of the coup in Grenada, the lives of a group of U.S. students studying medicine on the island were in danger, making the presence of U.S. troops necessary.

Some 7,000 U.S. soldiers were sent to fight the forces loyal to Bishop, which in numerical terms did not exceed 2,000 combatants, including volunteer Cuban workers who were doing construction work on the island.

U.S. historian Howard Zinn asserted that a former CIA officer had confessed to him that “the real reason for the invasion was an opportunity for the United States (which wanted to overcome the feeling of defeat in Vietnam) to show that it was a powerful nation.” [The U.S. had just suffered a blow to its intervention force in Lebanon when an explosion killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French troops on Oct. 23, 1983.]

Iraq 2003

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in which the United States was struck for the first time [since 1812] on its own soil, President George W. Bush immediately declared the “war on terrorism,” stating that, “We must not make distinctions between terrorists and the countries that harbor terrorists.” With the backing of Congress, his administration had carte blanche to carry out military actions anywhere in the world.

Bush was presented with a historic moment and the “perfect” opportunity to continue and fulfill the long-standing imperial desire to destroy the Iraqi government under the false pretext that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction — nuclear, biological and chemical — and that it was one of the nations that harbored and “protected” terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, named as “responsible” for the attack on the Twin Towers.

Thus, without a formal declaration of war, the United States began the war against Iraq on March 20, 2003, after Congress granted the government such authority without the approval of the United Nations Security Council. Subsequent investigations clearly demonstrated that such weapons of mass destruction did not exist and that it was all an argument concocted by intelligence agencies to justify the aggression and occupation of the Arab country.

Libya 2011

Washington always treated Libya as a “country suspected of supporting terrorism,” and its leader Moammar Gadhafi was such an enemy of the United States that President Barack Obama publicly expressed his intention to “get rid” of the Libyan leader.

In February 2011, a series of demonstrations began in the city of Benghazi demanding greater freedom of expression, apparently inspired by what had happened months earlier in Egypt and Tunisia — events dubbed the Arab Spring. In Libya, these demonstrations gradually degenerated into acts of violence, with Western media outlets and the Qatari television network Al Jazeera waging a strong and manipulative media campaign to blame Gadhafi.

This opened the process of destabilization in Libya, which led to the intervention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the overthrow of Gadhafi’s government [and the murder of Gadhafi]. Without presenting any evidence, the United States accused the “Libyan regime” of murdering thousands of citizens who were demanding greater democracy and encouraged the rebels to form a parallel government.

Venezuela 2025

In March 2015, President Barack Obama (Democrat) declared that Venezuela was “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” This decision has remained unchanged during the administrations of his successors, Donald Trump (Republican) and Joe Biden (Democrat).

Trump’s return to the White House has brought with it the contradictions among the various tendencies swarming within the administration. These differences have been present regarding U.S. policy toward Venezuela. The “shake-ups” among neoconservatives, outsiders, personal friends of the president and MAGAs (uninhibited followers of Trump’s slogan “make America great again”) are present in every foreign policy decision made by the orange-faced president, allowing the omnipresence of neoconservatives epitomized by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Latin America policy.

The secretary of state, whom Trump calls “little Marco,” acts out of his visceral hatred of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. It is impossible to analyze Rubio’s irrationality in political terms, given that his resentment, rancor and animosity toward these three countries go beyond any consideration. Excluded from decisions on the most relevant foreign policy issues, the neoconservatives have unleashed all their fury against Havana, Managua and Caracas.

As has been customary in U.S. foreign policy, on this occasion the Trump administration has brandished false documents to argue about an alleged relationship between the Venezuelan government and the now defunct criminal group “Tren de Aragua.” [Aragua Train] To this end, they have resorted to the Enemy Alien Act of 1798, which establishes that a foreign combatant can be deported without trial when the United States is at war with another state.

Trump had to prove that the Tren de Aragua was an organization directed by the Venezuelan state. However, Federal Judge Fernando Rodríguez, who incidentally was appointed to the position by Trump himself, ruled against the request, arguing that the application of this law was illegal, since it only applies when the nation is facing an organized attack, which is not the case. The truth is that the Trump administration’s hatred of Venezuela has been used as an argument to deport U.S. residents to El Salvador without due process.

It has been reported that there have been internal debates within Trump’s cabinet based on information handled by intelligence agencies that have verified that there is no relationship between the Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government. However, the FBI — acting alone — has “proved” the opposite. This was confirmed by Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in a recent interview, where she stated that the issue was discussed internally.

Gabbard defended the measure, basing her defense on the FBI report. In the same interview, she admitted that information from those meetings was being leaked to the press, including on this issue of Venezuela.

The intelligence agencies’ report, known unofficially to the press, states that: “While the climate of permissiveness allows the Tren de Aragua to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with the Tren de Aragua and does not direct its movements and operations in the United States.”

The issue of the Tren de Aragua had already yielded positive results for Trump during his election campaign after a video showing “armed criminals” beating residents of a building in Colorado went viral. To this should be added the case of a nursing student who was brutally murdered by an “illegal” Venezuelan, which also made front-page news in all U.S. media. This incident was used by Trump to portray the United States as a victim of migrant murderers and rapists.

From then on, Trump has believed it useful to use the Tren de Aragua as a catchphrase against Biden, whom he accused of maintaining an open-door policy on immigration while promising to carry out mass deportations once elected president, which became his first and most important campaign promise. It became so central that Biden had to stop border crossings at the last minute to try to stem the drain of votes his party was suffering.

Just as it served him then, Trump is now seeking to use the migrant issue again to counteract the failure of his promise of mass deportations, the real background to the problem. Let’s see. According to official figures from the Trump administration itself, there are around 30 million [undocumented residents] in the United States. The president has vowed to deport at least 1 million this year, but so far in his term, he has only expelled about 53,250 people (as of mid-May). These figures could even be inflated, given that the Trump administration stopped publishing monthly figures.

Trump has said that his priority is to deport criminals, but according to official data obtained by NBC, half of those deported have no record to support that status, and more than half of those currently detained have no charges against them. Even so, last year alone, the government reported that it had identified half a million [undocumented] migrants with criminal convictions. At this rate, the goal of 1 million is laughable. Trump could barely deport around 100,000 per year, although some dare to predict that it could be 500,000, which is still a failure.

The truth is that Trump’s current figures are well below the deportations that occurred under previous Democratic administrations. According to the Washington Post, Obama deported some 400,000 people a year, more than Trump could deport now. Biden’s figures are even higher, reaching almost 700,000 in 2024.

Following the tradition of his interventionist policy, Trump must resort to lies to justify his actions. A public opinion like that of the United States, dumbed down by the media that extols the idea of a “chosen nation,” is easily manipulated and controlled by those in power. The disguise of his policy, which serves to hide its dehumanization, is part of the DNA of its privileged political class and of the 1% who truly hold power. But to sustain its rule, it always needs justifications.

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