Hello, you're very welcome to Long Reeds, a Jacobin podcast where we look in depth of political topics and thinkers.

My name's Daniel Finn on the Features editor here at Jacobin, and I'll be presenting the show.

This is a special episode of Long Reeds, coming after this week's previous episode on Western Sahara.

It's now two weeks since the US attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro.

Donald Trump and Marco Rubio made explicit threats to countries like Colombia and Cuba in the aftermath,

washed down with the usual fantasies about drug trafficking.

Colombia is very sick too, run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States.

And he's not going to be doing it very long, let me tell you.

What does that mean? He's not going to be doing it very long.

He's not doing it very long. He has cocaine mills and cocaine factories.

He's not going to be doing it very long.

So there will be an operation by the US in the movement?

It sounds good to me.

From a security standpoint, so yeah, look, I've lived in Havana and I was in the government.

I'd be concerned, at least, a little bit.

I spoke with Tony Wood about what the attack on Venezuela means for the Latin American left.

How have left-wing governments and parties been reacting?

And what are the long-term implications going to be?

Tony is a professor of Latin American history at the University of Colorado Boulder.

He's a regular contributor to publications like the New Left Review,

the London Review of Books, and Jacobin.

He's also the author of two books about Chechnya and Russia under Vladimir Putin.

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