In response to months of military expansion in the Caribbean, President Trump declared on Saturday that Venezuelan airspace had been “closed” without providing any further information. This caused tensions between Washington and Caracas.
Venezuela has accused the US of a “colonialist threat” in Latin America, as millions of people in the country remain on edge. Prior to this, President Nicolas Maduro had warned that Washington was using false information to justify military intervention in Venezuela.
Venezuela has been conducting regular drills over the past few weeks and has announced a large-scale mobilisation in preparation for any possible attack.
Since launching a number of strikes on alleged drug boats in early September, the Trump administration has massive naval assets deployed in the Southern Caribbean. Washington has not provided any proof that the targeted boats were involved in drug trafficking. In those attacks, at least 83 people have died.
Ramping up pressure on Maduro last week, Washington designated what is known among Venezuelans as the Cartel de los Soles, or Cartel of the Suns in English, as a “foreign terrorist organization”.
In a bid to combat drug trafficking, the Trump administration claims to be targeting Venezuela. However, political analysts and human rights observers warn Washington against laying the groundwork to unlawfully remove Maduro from power.
Will Trump then launch an offensive against Venezuela after it announces the end of its airspace? Can the US military action be legally justified? What is the cause of Trump’s hostile attitude toward Maduro?
Will the US go to war against Venezuela?
Trump has increased his rhetoric against Maduro, blaming Caracas for drug trafficking and the flow of Venezuelan immigrants, since taking office in January.
Within a few weeks into his second term, Trump nixed Venezuelan oil concessions granted by his predecessor, Joe Biden, imposed 25 percent tariffs on countries buying oil from Venezuela, and doubled the reward for the arrest of Maduro to $50m, designating him a “global terrorist leader”.
Trump’s administration deployed the world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R Ford, other warships, thousands of troops, and F-35 stealth jets to the Caribbean in recent weeks, as confirmation that he has authorized the CIA to conduct secret operations there.
Last Thursday, Trump said land strikes inside the country could come imminently.
Prior to the start of sanctions against Cartel de los Soles, Trump reportedly spoke with Maduro last week, according to reports from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
On November 25, Trump, on board Air Force One, was asked by reporters if he planned on speaking with Maduro. I might speak with him, I say. We’ll see. However, we’re talking about that with the various staffs. We might talk”, Trump told reporters.
When asked why he wanted to speak with a member of the “foreign terrorist organization,” he answered with a moral compass.
“If we can save lives, we can do things the easy way, that’s fine. And if we have to do it the hard way, that’s okay, too,” he said.
Can the US military action be legally justified?
The Trump administration’s military actions, in addition to international law, are in conflict with the US Constitution, according to critics. Rights observers and legal scholars have said the deadly boat strikes amount to “extrajudicial killing” and violation of human rights.
According to a report in The Washington Post, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered the military to kill every passenger on board a ship suspected of having drugs.
Hegseth has rejected allegations, calling the report “fake news”. He claimed that the “fabricated and inflammatory” report was intended to “discredit our incredible warriors fighting the homeland.”
The defence secretary has said the strikes in the Caribbean are “lawful”.
Meanwhile, the US Congress set forth an investigation into the incident on Saturday. “At this point, I would call them extrajudicial killings”, Republican Senator Rand Paul told Fox News Sunday in October.
Expert on US constitutional law, Bruce Fein, backed Paul.
“Trump is acting extra-constitutionally and committing murder”, said Fein, who served as associate deputy attorney general under Republican President Ronald Reagan.
Fein argued that only Congress has the authority to impose offensive military use, not to mention that Trump’s executive orders in this regard do not have legal authority. “The victims are engaged in warfare against the United States, except in Trump’s fantasyland – a page from George Orwell’s 1984”.
The Trump administration claims that this isn’t a war between two countries that necessitates congressional declaration, but rather a counterterrorism operation against a non-state actor by designating the Cartel de los Soles, which Washington now refers to as the Venezuelan state.
Cartel de los Soles emerged in the 1990s when Venezuelan generals and senior officers were investigated for drug trafficking and related crimes. It is not a cartel in Venezuela, but rather a frequent reference to military personnel engaged in corruption and other illegal activities.
What has the president of Venezuela said?
Caracas has denounced Trump’s announcement that effectively closed the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela.
Trump’s statement, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sought to “affect the sovereignty of]Venezuelan airspace, creating yet another extravagant, illegal, and unjustified aggression against the Venezuelan people.”
Meanwhile, Maduro, whose win in July’s election was not recognised by Washington, has called for peace, rejecting war, and advocated for harmony as he continues to appear frequently on state television broadcasts. No war, yes peace, forever, as Maduro put it in a mix of Spanish and English.
On November 15, Maduro invoked singer John Lennon’s peace anthem “Imagine” during a rally of supporters. As John Lennon once said, “Do everything for peace.” Imagine all the people”, he said.
Maduro later retorted the use of force or military threats and said, “Dialogue, call, yes. Peace, yes. No, not war. Never, never war”.
However, Maduro pledged to protect the nation from any “imperialist threat” last week as tensions continue to rise. He addressed a crowd at the Fuerte Tiuna military academy, in full martial dress, waving a sword that belonged to Simon Bolivar, Venezuela’s national hero.
What’s driving Trump’s hostile policy against Maduro?
According to foreign policy analysts, Trump’s aggressive actions toward the Venezuelan government are rooted in Caracas’s oil holdings, which are the largest proven reserves in the world, and establish US dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
Salvador Santino Regilme, a political scientist who leads the international relations programme at Leiden University, said Washington wants Venezuela to align firmly with US strategic preferences instead of China, Russia, or Iran.
In the 1970s, Venezuela was viewed as a trustworthy US ally during the Cold War. But when the founder of the governing United Socialist Party and former president, Hugo Chavez, was elected in 1998, relations with Washington began to sour.
Following a failed coup attempt in 2002, Chavez resigned from his position as president of the United States and fired US military advisers. He also pushed out US oil majors ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips after nationalising the oil sector, further straining the ties. Another US oil tycoon, Chevron, is still based in Venezuela.
Chavez was critical of the US involvement in Latin America and cultivated ties with regional left-leaning countries such as Cuba and Bolivia under former socialist President Evo Morales. Additionally, he improved communication between Russia and China regarding the economy.
After Maduro took over from Chavez in 2013, relations worsened. Trump supported Maduro’s political rivals during his first term, recognizing Juan Guaido as the interim president in 2019.
The US’s so-called “war on drugs” here functions as a political technology that strips alleged traffickers and small-boat crews of their humanity, argued Regilme, “so that lethal force and regime change look like law enforcement rather than war”.
Regilme cited the Trump administration’s use of Maduro’s state as a “criminal syndicate” to “delegitimise not just the regime but the entire political-economic model that resists this kind of restructuring.”
Adolfo Franco, a lawyer and Republican strategist, told Al Jazeera that while Trump has not explicitly laid out the next steps, he clearly wants regime change in Venezuela.
Everything is on the table for President Trump, according to the statement. The desire here, from my experience in government, is forcing Maduro to exit, either peacefully, which I think might be a tall order”, Franco said.
Because of the large number of forces and signals we’ve been sending to the region, he continued, “The negotiation part is challenging.” “I can’t imagine it being business as usual with Maduro running the Venezuelan government. That is not a table,”
Is Venezuela the main source of drugs going to the US, as Trump claims?
The Trump administration has promoted the idea that Venezuela is connected to “narco-terrorist” networks. But the fentanyl crisis that claims the most American lives has hardly any connection to Caracas.
Mexico is consistently cited by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Department of State as the country’s top producer of synthetic opioids using precursors from China, in particular the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels.
Venezuela does not even serve as a significant transit corridor for the drug that overwhelmingly enters the US through legal ports of entry, along the southwest land border rather than via the Caribbean maritime routes currently being targeted by the US Navy.
Venezuela appears to be a transit hub for cocaine, but it is not the main producer or the main trafficker.
Colombia remains the world’s leading cultivator of the drug. The majority of the cocaine that travels through Venezuela is exported to Europe.
In March 2020, the US estimated between 200 and 250 tonnes of cocaine were trafficked through Venezuela each year, representing 13 percent of the estimated global production.
The Trump administration’s attacks on the Caribbean have also been met with resistance from the US allies in Europe.
At a Group of Seven foreign ministers ‘ meeting in Canada’s Niagara region, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the strikes “violate international law” and were concerning France’s territories in the wider region.
Marco Rubio, the US’s top diplomat, was present. Before departing, he told reporters that drugs are also shipped via Venezuela to Europe, so the US should be thanked for killing the alleged smugglers.
Rubio claimed that the European Union does not have the authority to define what international law is. “They certainly don’t get to determine how the United States defends its national security”.
Colombia, which has a 2, 219km (1, 378-mile) border with Venezuela, has vehemently opposed US actions. Bogota already hosts millions of Venezuelan refugees who have fled the country due to a debilitating economic and political crisis.
Gustavo Petro, the president of left-wing Colombia, effectively ended security cooperation with the US following the boat strikes. He refused to recognize Maduro’s re-election in January.
Petro has described Trump as a “barbarian” who “wants to frighten us” in interviews in the US media. He referred to the US military’s expansion in the Caribbean as “unquestionably an aggression against Latin America.”
Brazil’s President Lula da Silva has taken a more diplomatic but equally firm stance, telling reporters in Johannesburg, South Africa, “no president of another country should make assumptions about what Venezuela … will be like”.
In televised remarks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the US strikes as “unacceptable” and said, “This is how lawless countries generally act, as well as those who consider themselves above the law.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping, in a late November letter to Maduro, reaffirmed the two nations as “intimate friends, dear brothers, and good partners”, saying “China resolutely opposes the meddling of external forces in Venezuela’s internal affairs under any pretext”.
Are Venezuela’s actions dividing Trump’s MAGA base?
Trump won back to power this year, rising in his campaign pledge to avoid “forever wars,” which appeared to be deeply in line with his Make America Great Again (MAGA) goals.
Many in his camp are sceptical of extended military engagements abroad, viewing them as costly distractions from domestic priorities and a drain on US resources. When the US bombed Iran earlier this year amid tensions between Tehran and Israel, that fear was at the center of the discussion.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the most vocal faces of MAGA, had a public falling-out with Trump over his administration’s focus on foreign conflicts at the expense of the pressing economic issues, including the cost-of-living crisis, facing Americans. She has since decided to leave the Congress.
However, some MAGA-aligned voices have backed pressuring Venezuela’s government by sanctions or low-scale operations amid public opinion against any military intervention in the country.
Rubio, who is also the country’s national security adviser, has pushed for a tough Venezuelan policy, which serves his supporters in Florida, where there are many Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants.
Confronting an “authoritarian socialist narco-regime” plays well domestically for Trump as well, said Regilme, the foreign policy expert, adding that it ties “together anticommunism, border security, and the promise to be tough on crime”.
A kinetic strike on Venezuela is both a real option and a bargaining tool, according to Regilme.
