By John Catalinotto
December 19, 2025

December 13. The U.S. Naval Death Fleet in the Caribbean escalated toward open war earlier this week by committing an act of piracy against a ship carrying oil from Venezuela to Cuba.

This escalation comes at a time when Congress is openly questioning the legality of the fleet’s unjustifiable attacks on small motorboats in the region, where it has murdered more than 85 people while destroying more than 20 boats since August.

Does the conflict among and within the ruling-class parties — the MAGA Republicans and the Democrats — create an opening that allows the antiwar and anti-imperialist movements and working-class parties to mobilize mass resistance to the war? This article will review the recent events in order to open a discussion of this question by evaluating the forces involved.

In mid-November, six Democratic Party members of the U.S. Congress, all veterans of the U.S. military or intelligence agencies, issued a video titled “Don’t Give Up the Ship.” Its message was that U.S. troops of all ranks have not only the right but the duty to refuse to obey illegal or unconstitutional orders. They said that “I was only following orders” would be no defense. The six also promised that they would “have the back” of troops who disobey illegal orders.

Disrupting the chain of command

This unanticipated defiance from Congress members woke up Trump, who on Truth Social charged them with sedition and invoked the death penalty, although the six had simply explained the law to the troops. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt attacked the six for disrupting the chain of command.

Two weeks later, a Nov. 28 Washington Post article exposed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s order last Sept. 2 to “Kill everyone.” Hegseth, who nominally runs the Pentagon — his Department of War Crimes — gave the order to Adm. Frank Bradley, who was in charge of the Caribbean fleet at that moment.

The first missile strike destroyed the motorboat, killed nine crew members and left two survivors hanging onto floating boat parts. A second strike killed them. Such a murder of helpless survivors is the exact example used in military field manuals to educate troops about what constitutes an illegal order.

Former military lawyers and Congress members from both parties have demanded that U.S. war crimes be investigated. This sharpens the conflict between Trump’s pro-fascist cabal and its ruling-class opposition, mainly Democrats. Starting from the top of the military chain of command, the primary war criminals are Trump, Hegseth and Adm. Bradley, in that order.

It shows the character of these bosses that Trump said he would not have wanted a second strike, Press Secretary Leavitt (speaking for Trump) said Hegseth gave the order, and Hegseth said he was not in the room when Bradley gave the order. In other words, each “boss” made his underling a scapegoat, just in case.

Apparently, Admiral Alvin Holsey, who announced he would resign his command of the fleet in October and finished 37 years of military service in the Navy on Dec. 12, had an intelligent assessment of the (lack of) character of his “superiors.”

Two sets of illegal orders

Trump has been issuing two sets of illegal orders, one to the fleet in the Caribbean Sea and one to National Guard units in the United States.

Trump’s extremely weak pretext for the summary executions at sea — his Big Lie — is that these boats bring dangerous drugs like fentanyl to the United States. Yet Trump pardoned and on Dec. 1 freed former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who in 2024 began serving a 45-year sentence in a U.S. prison for running a major drug cartel. So much for the “war on drugs.”

Let’s be real. Trump has targeted Venezuela for its political example of defending its sovereignty and for its oil reserves, the greatest in the world.

Trump has also ordered National Guard members into U.S. cities to give armed backup to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bounty hunters, who target anyone they think looks or sounds like they might be a migrant. The ICE thugs already face opposition from popular organizations and have used violence against the people. More such illegal violence seems inevitable.

Split in ruling circles

Right now, the Trump administration’s pro-fascist criminals wield the immediate threat against Venezuelans and against migrants — and all workers — in the U.S. But the anti-imperialist movement must also be aware that the Republican and Democratic parties both support imperialist wars fought in the interests of the wealthy ruling class.

The six Democratic Party Congress members who spoke out against war crimes themselves spent decades inside the imperialist state apparatus. They may oppose Trump only because they believe his tactics and style will accelerate the decline of U.S. hegemony by creating a disaster. With good reason, they might consider that Trump’s cabal is composed of money-grubbing swindlers and incompetents.

U.S. imperialist dominance worldwide is already in steep decline, especially since the 2008-2009 financial crisis and the successful growth of manufacturing in socialist China. U.S. hegemony now depends almost exclusively on military force and the primacy of the U.S. dollar, and both are challenged.

Trump has even retired organs of control like USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), which used the carrot and the stick. Trump abhors carrots. And by exposing the U.S. Armed Forces as a criminal machine of death and repression, abroad and at home, Trump may accelerate the U.S. decline. Or so his opponents argue.

Still, whatever their motivation, those in Congress who challenge Trump in these two areas create a space for the anti-imperialist movement to act.

Find the way. Offer support. Organize.

None of the six Democrats explicitly called for disrupting the chain of command, as Leavitt charged them with. But disrupting the chain of command is exactly what the antiwar movement must try to do.

The six Democrats have opened the question of soldiers obeying orders — or refusing to obey. It is up to the workers’ movement, antiwar movement and anti-imperialist movement to explore how to intervene to spread and organize resistance within the U.S. military. This must be done to stop U.S. aggression abroad and stop the repression of migrants and their supporters within U.S. borders. The movement must operate on the assumption that rank-and-file troops are workers in uniform, even in today’s professional military.

Since the troops were called into Los Angeles earlier this year to support roundups of migrants, some individual National Guard members have already refused to serve. And Senator Elissa Slotkin, one of the six Democrats and a former CIA official, said her office had received numerous calls from active duty troops and guards about what they could do to avoid committing crimes.

There are historical examples from the 1871 Paris Commune to the 1917 Russian Revolution to the 1974 Portuguese revolution when troops started to place their working-class interests ahead of their subservience to the rulers, and it became possible to organize resistance from within the armed forces to orders to slaughter people. It happened enough to speed the end of the war against Vietnam.

If the Trump administration raises the stakes — and the suffering — with a war of aggression against Venezuela, it can again involve U.S. youths in a war with similarities to the lengthy conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan or even Vietnam. If it sends troops into more cities to protect the mercenary ICE troops, it will put them into personal contact with the U.S. working class. The movement can and must reach U.S. troops and National Guard members with the message that they should — and even must — disobey orders and that the movement will defend them.

Trump said the six Democrats committed sedition. The antiwar movement must make the most of it.

Catalinotto is the author of “Turn the Guns Around: Mutinies, Soldier Revolts and Revolutions,” World View Forum, New York, 2017.