Venezuela

No one ever tucked themselves up in bed to read a government document – at least not in the expectation of enjoying it. The standard format is one of hundreds of pages of impenetrable jargon yielding no more than nuggets of significant ideas. The Trump administration has admirably cut through that tendency to produce a National Security Strategy (NSS) that is worth reading: a coherent outlining of America’s strategic intentions on the world stage. Originally composed by Michael Anton, a brilliant mind who is sadly leaving the State Department, the document concisely lays out a Trumpian vision of America’s role in the 21st century.

The aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford and three warships have been sent to the Caribbean, where they are joining a dozen Navy warships already off the coast of Venezuela, in an unprecedented show of military force. President Trump and his administration are taking aim at the administration of Nicolas Maduro, over his alleged role in the drug trade which presents a national security threat to the United States. It’s clear that if the US succeeds in destabilizing and displacing President Maduro’s regime, it would be a blow to the region’s drug traffickers. What is less known is that it would also hit Iran. Venezuela has long served as a launchpad for Iranian operations to establish a foothold in South America.

President Trump has assembled the largest naval force in the Caribbean since the Cold War. How will it be used? Is he considering an attack on Venezuela to overthrow the Maduro regime? Will he pursue the drug cartels by attacking them in Venezuela? Or will the President simply continue America’s counter-drug operations at sea? With all of these possibilities there is the hope that the Maduro regime will collapse under the pressure of America’s military might. At present, the United States is countering the flow of illegal drugs by sinking suspected drug-carrying boats off the coast of Venezuela. The effort is in its 11th week and has led to at least 21 vessels being destroyed.

Venezuela has been on tenterhooks for weeks, waiting as the United States gathers an armada of warships. The world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, looks likely to arrive in the Caribbean from the Mediterranean early next week to join the assortment of destroyers, frigates, amphibious assault vessels and a nuclear-powered submarine.  No one seems to know exactly what this magnificent display of American naval firepower is all about. Has it been sent to destroy the cocaine smuggling networks in Venezuela, or topple President Nicolás Maduro, the egregious leader of that poor country? Or is its purpose to remind the Latin American region that the US under Donald Trump could come in guns a-blazing whenever it wants?

President Trump is being misled into a regime-change war close to home. Few Americans nowadays find much to celebrate in the Iraq War or the intervention that overthrew Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. Regimes were successfully changed both times, but what came after the dictators’ downfall was civil war, regional instability and mass-migration flows that exported many of those nations’ troubles to their neighbors. Now the Trump administration wants to do to Venezuela’s despot, Nicolás Maduro, what George W. Bush did to Saddam Hussein and Barack Obama did to Gaddafi. That will predictably do to the Americas – including the US – what the War on Terror did to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Why would Donald Trump make such a mistake?

President Trump’s undeclared war on Latin America’s drug smugglers escalated dramatically on Tuesday when US air strikes destroyed four more boats allegedly carrying narcotics – this time in the eastern Pacific Ocean 400 miles south of the Mexican coastal city of Acapulco.At least fourteen crew members died in the attacks, and one was rescued alive by the Mexican navy, bringing the total number killed by the US campaign in the last two months to 57.Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum condemned the attacks as a violation of international law, and said Mexico’s ambassador in Washington would lodge a protest and demand an explanation from US officials.The latest strikes were personally authorized by Trump and announced by War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

While much of the pushback from the right wing to Donald Trump’s international hawkishness has come from voices focused on the Middle East, and feared potential for wider wars prompted by support for Israel, the actual test of a break within the Republican coalition on foreign policy disputes could come over the president’s stepped up focus on Venezuela.The most recent development, with Trump issuing a rare public acknowledgement that he has authorized covert CIA actions on land. “I authorized for two reasons, really,” he explained this week. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America. And the other thing are drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.

I was fourteen when I clambered onto a boulder along Caracas’s Francisco Fajardo highway – what people called Piedra de la Libertad, the Liberty Rock – and spoke out about a government that had just ignored a referendum. “Tyranny” was more than a buzzword. To my astonishment, a woman I didn’t yet know – María Corina – helped me climb it. With her megaphone, I spoke of unifying, as a sea of flags from rival parties fluttered before me.Many dismissed her then. A woman who once called Chávez a “thief” to his face – too brash, too ideological, too direct for the choreography of Venezuelan politics. The old hands said she could never reach the people; she lacked the soothing tones, the feigned humility, the convenient ambiguity that defined our politicians.