The United States Trump administration formally designated the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization today — ramping up pressure against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who the U.S. says is leading the group that allegedly traffics illicit drugs into the U.S.
Experts dispute this characterization of the group, which is more of a loose network of corrupt military officials in Venezuela, and with limited impact on the U.S. drug market, instead the move widely understood to be aimed at pressuring Maduro. (Reuters, Washington Post)
The U.S. is poised to launch a new phase of Venezuela-related operations in the coming days, Reuters reported on Saturday. Two of the four U.S. officials quoted anonymously in the piece said covert operations would likely be the first part of the new action against Maduro.
Two U.S. officials told Reuters the options under consideration included attempting to overthrow Maduro.
The Washington Post reported a planned leaflet drop over Caracas, reminding people of the $50 million bounty on Nicolás Maduro’s head in a psychological operation designed to further pressure him and timed to coincide with his 63rd birthday, yesterday. “Dropping leaflets ahead of a potential military operation is a standard psychological warfare tactic designed to demoralize and intimidate the enemy,” according to the Washington Post.
The Federal Aviation Administration warned pilots on Friday “to exercise caution” when flying over Venezuelan airspace “due to the worsening security situation and heightened military activity” in or around the country, reports the Washington Post.
On Sunday a FOX News correspondent reported that foreign diplomatic staff in Venezuela had evacuated the country ahead of a US military operation that would remove Maduro from power. This turned out to be fake according to Pirate Wire Services.
In fact, all these stories are part of “a series of intentional leaks, planted news stories (one of which turned out to be false), and public statements by US politicians in DC have been clearly coordinated around Monday’s formal designation of the Venezuelan government as a foreign terror organization,” writes Joshua Collins in Pirate Wire Services. “Is all the noise a sign of an imminent military operation? Or are all the leaks and announcements merely psy-ops designed to pressure Maduro? Or are they a sign of division within the Trump administration?”
U.S. warships positioned near the Venezuelan coast in locations far from Caribbean drug-smuggling routes suggest “that the buildup is focused more on a pressure campaign against Venezuela than on the counternarcotics operation the Trump administration says it’s waging,” according to the New York Times.
For weeks, the US has used the so-called “war on drugs” to justify its escalating military presence in the region — the Guardian reviews how, over the last three months the U.S. has carried out strikes killing 83 people, in what the UN and rights groups have called extrajudicial executions.
More Venezuela
“Trump and his top White House aides pushed for lethal strikes on Western Hemisphere drug traffickers almost as soon as they took office in January, and in the past 10 months have repeatedly steamrolled or sidestepped government lawyers who questioned whether the provocative policy was legal,” reports the Washington Post based interviews with nearly two dozen current and former officials.
“Ultimately, Trump’s actions in and around Venezuela are best understood as a new phase in the “war on terror” – an ongoing tragedy that has already had deadly consequences for millions – though now with even fewer guardrails. The bottom line: Venezuela is not just some chess piece in an abstract game of geopolitics, and we are doing a disservice to humanity if we let war hawks in government and media spin it this way,” writes Daniel Mendiola in the Guardian.
Hardship in Venezuela is such that there is a level of support for a violent end to Nicolás Maduro’s regime, as long as it is swift, writes Phil Gunsen in Foreign Affairs. But Maduro’s fall would likely alter the balance of power that keeps nonstate armed groups, including Colombian guerrillas and criminal gangs, in check.
“As Juan González, a former top adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden’s on Latin America, has noted, conditions in Venezuela are ripe for protracted low-intensity warfare. This could make Venezuela look more like Colombia or Mexico, rife with selective assassinations, bombings, and occasional street battles, yet lacking the kind of stable elected government that exists in Bogotá or Mexico City,” writes Gunsen. But “…if the Trump administration declined to contribute significant U.S. ground forces to Venezuela, an incoming opposition government would be reliant on the same generals it now accuses of running drug cartels to survive.” (Foreign Affairs)
Trump has accused some Democrats of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR” after a group of lawmakers posted a video on X urging members of the military and intelligence community to disobey any orders they perceive to be illegal. (Washington Post)
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