Donald Trump has been an outspoken supporter of military intervention against Venezuela since his first term in the Oval Office. Now, after he spent his energy on trying to turn the U.S. into a military state and alienating allies with inexplicably high tariffs, Trump finally got around to trying and laid the groundwork for it.
Fake Concerns and “Heinous Crimes”
Trump and his administration put a lot of effort into creating a narrative of Venezuela as a country that is fueling America’s drug crisis. Their stance is that Venezuela’s current government, led by President Nicolás Maduro, is protecting drug cartels and helping their narcotics trafficking. Due to his great “concern,” Trump deployed warships near the country’s coast and executed several attacks on Venezuelan ships.
The first attack came in early September, when a U.S. warship attacked a boat and killed 11 people. According to Trump, the vessel was operated by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and carried drugs towards the United States. While he shared a video of the operation, Venezuela’s officials stated that they believed it was made using artificial intelligence. On 15 September, the U.S. military sank another ship allegedly operated by “extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narco-terrorists.” Just before the news broke about it, Maduro spoke to reporters and branded the first attack as a “heinous crime.”
Obsession with Oil is Trendy Again
Underneath Trump’s wish to protect Americans from drugs coming from Venezuela is a longtime obsession with the country’s oil. According to estimates, Venezuela has the largest oil reserve in the world. Trump already admitted that the goal of the U.S.-backed coup in Venezuela in 2019 was this valuable resource. During a rally in 2023, he said that “we would have taken it over; we would have gotten to all that oil; it would have been right next door.” Maduro also believes that the goal of Trump’s recent operations is “regime change for oil.”
One thing that supports this is the lack of evidence for claims that Venezuela is a drug haven. According to Pino Arlacchi, former head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the country doesn’t play a significant, if any, role in the global drug production and trafficking. There is no reported cultivation of cocoa leaves or cannabis, while only 5% of cocaine from Colombia, which produced or traded 2,370 tons of drugs in 2018, passes through Venezuela. Fentanyl, which represents a much bigger issue in the U.S., is neither produced nor traded in the country.
Everything is on the Table with Trump
The thing that makes Trump dangerous is that you never know what he might do next. He could realize that what he’s doing doesn’t make sense and tone down his rhetoric. Or, he could escalate things with a military intervention in Venezuela. According to the man himself, “we’ll see what happens.”
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