The Great Narco Pretext: Trump Readies for Regime Change in Venezuela

Since the start of September, the Trump administration has busied itself with striking boats in international waters stemming from Venezuelan and possibly Colombian waters.  Their mortal offence: allegedly carrying narcotics cargo destined for consumers in the United States.  A few days following the first strike on September 2, President Donald Trump stated in a War Powers Resolution notification to Congress that the action was one of “self-defense” motivated by “the inability or unwillingness of some states in the region to address the continuing threat to United States persons and interests emanating from their territories” 

In early October, a presidential notice was issued deeming those killed in such strikes on suspicion of drug smuggling “unlawful combatants”.  The notice to Congress advanced an anaemic excuse to justify murder instead of arrest, an echo of previous, elastic rationales used by administrations to justify an enlargement of executive war powers: “based on the cumulative effects of these hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United States and friendly foreign nations, the president determined that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations.”  The US had “reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations.”

The document amounted to an arrogation of extraordinary wartime powers to combat drug cartels, treating the trafficking of illicit narcotics to an armed assault on US citizens.  Geoffrey S. Corn, a former judge advocate general lawyer, thought it a most adventurous move, given that drug cartels were not engaged in “hostilities”.  “This is not stretching the envelope,” he told The New York Times.  “This is shredding it.  This is tearing it apart.”  

In the kingdom of alternative legal realities, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly articulated the position in an email: “the president acted in line with the law of armed conflict to protect our country from those trying to bring deadly poison to our shores, and he is delivering on his promise to take on the cartels and eliminate these national security threats from murdering more Americans.”

The number of possible international law violations are far from negligible.  Michael Schmitt lists a few in Just Security.  Most obvious is the physical violation of a State’s sovereignty, which can take place through interfering with its “inherently governmental functions” comprising such matters as law enforcement.  To also authorise kinetic operations in another State’s territory can amount to wrongful intervention in its international affairs.  Last, though not least, is that using force in this context may be unlawful, violating Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and customary law.

Nothing in this cooked up scheme adds up.  If the intention is to curb overdoses on US soil from drug use, flow of fentanyl would be the object of the exercise.  But fentanyl hails from Mexico, not South America.  The broader agenda is a more traditional one: the assertion of the imperium’s control over countries in the Americas, eliminating regimes deemed unfriendly to Washington’s interests.   Narcotics has become the throbbing pretext, with Trump accusing Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro of being the leader of the drug trafficking organisation Cartel of the Suns.  He is also accused of using the dark offices of the Tren de Aragua prison gang to conduct “irregular warfare” against the United States, despite countering claims by the intelligence community that the gang is not under Maduro’s control.  (The reaffirmation of the initial intelligence assessment by the National Intelligence Council led to the sacking of its acting director, Michael Collins.)  

In 2020, the first Trump administration offered a reward of up to US$15 million for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Maduro.  Two more increases to the bounty followed, the latest on August 7 being US$50 million following the sanctioning of the Cartel of the Suns by the Department of Treasury as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.  “As leader of Cartel of the Suns,” declares the State Department in its notice of reward, “Maduro is the first target in the history of the Narcotics Rewards Program with a reward offer exceeding $25 million.”

Trump, in one of his moments of sharp frankness, concedes that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been authorised to conduct covert lethal operations on Venezuelan soil and more broadly through the Caribbean in a presidential finding.  “We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea well under control,” he told reporters hours after the secret authorisation was revealed.  

In explaining his shoddy reasons, Trump cited Venezuela’s emptying of its “prisons into the United States of America” and the issue of drugs.  “We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea, so you get to see that, but we’re going to stop them by land also.”

To the finding can be added a bulking military presence in the region: eight surface warships and a submarine in the Caribbean, 10,000 US troops, largely garrisoned at bases in Puerto Rico, with a contingent of Marines equipped with amphibious assault boats.  In the meantime, the recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado, salivates at the prospect of regime change with muscular intervention from Washington.  The pieces are being moved into place, and the self-proclaimed peace maker in the White House is readying for war.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com