COMMENTARY The U.S. military strike on a suspected Venezuelan narco-boat raises the question: is Trump eyeing Nicolás Maduro in the same ill-fated way George W. Bush once eyed Saddam Hussein?
A couple weeks ago I urged President Donald Trump not to send the U.S. military into Latin America to fight drug cartels, another macho itch he seems eager to scratch.
I’m happy to say that, so far, he’s listened to me. (Yeah, Laura Loomer passes my commentaries on to him.)
But oh, you say, didn’t I see this week’s U.S. military strike on what the President says was a drug-laden boat speeding out of Venezuela across the Caribbean headed for America? Didn’t I hear the operation killed 11 members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang?
Yes, I did. And while that use of yanqui martial might was certainly a rare, and seriously questionable, approach to drug interdiction, it was not the boots-on-the-ground deployment of soldiers-as-narco-cops that Latin America-watchers like myself were (and still are) warning against in countries like Venezuela.
Legal experts are debating whether Trump’s obliteration of the vessel — even if it was being skippered by mobsters he’s labeled as terrorists — violated international law. And we should indeed be concerned about that.
Even so, what equally concerns me is whether Trump intends to stop short of what we’ll call the Venvasion — the outright U.S. invasion of Venezuela that so many Venezuelan exiles in South Florida dream Trump’s going to order any day now to topple the country’s brutal socialist dictatorship.
READ MORE: Soldiers aren't drug cops, President Trump. Don't send them into Latin America's narco wars
For now, he appears content to order the surgical, drone-style blow, an approach that constitutes the difference between, say, taking out the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, as the U.S. did back in 2020, and sending the Marines into Tehran.
The former option (usually) avoids actual war, while the latter hurls the U.S. into conflicts that it (usually) wins — but then (usually) loses in the aftermath, when it has to take ownership of the hot mess it just overran.
Like Iraq.
Small victories like the vaporization of a narco-cigarette boat in the Caribbean could create big Iraq-style, expat-fueled temptations for Trump in Venezuela.
What worries me is that small victories like this week’s vaporization of a narco-cigarette boat out on the Caribbean could create big temptations for Trump inside Venezuela — the kind that so often lead to Iraq-style quagmire.
That anxiety is especially warranted because Trump has designated the globally despised regime of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro as a drug-trafficking terrorist organization that's “invading” the U.S.
$50 million bounty
It’s reminiscent of how the George W. Bush administration designated Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as a weapons-of-mass-destruction monster who had to be removed.
Granted, while it turned out Hussein did not have WMD in his attic, Maduro likely merits the drug-trafficking indictment he faces in the U.S., not to mention the $50 million bounty that’s been slapped on his head.
Still, my big fear is that drugs will become the Venezuelan WMD — the reason a U.S. administration eventually seizes on to take an ill-fated regime-change leap.
Let’s not forget the Bush administration was poked and prodded to that leap by Iraqi expat leaders like Ahmad Chalabi — and that there are more than a few Ahmad Chalabis in the Venezuelan diaspora here (or have you not heard Spanish-language radio in Miami lately?) braying for the Trump administration to land amphibious war vessels on the beaches at La Guaira.
But, those Venezuelan expats will argue, that’s exactly what the U.S. did in 1989 when it invaded Panama to oust the drug-dealing dictator Manuel Noriega.
True enough. Here’s what’s also true enough:
Panama’s size and population are a fraction of Venezuela’s. What’s more, at that time the U.S. still controlled the Panama Canal, meaning we had some semblance of an administrative and security presence there, which made the invasion less of a jump into nation-building quicksand.
Taking out Maduro, by contrast, would likely mean jumping into a dystopian tar pit of, well, take your pick:
Wrecked economic infrastructure.
Guerrilla resistance by regime loyalists, like the street enforcers known as colectivos or the left-wing Colombian guerrillas who’ve leached into Venezuela.
Incredibly diverse geography that’s great for eco-tourism but lousy for military occupation.
And, despite the popularity of opposition leader María Corina Machado, political chaos — a vortex where everybody and their abuela will think they should be the next presidente.
Small strikes will keep that expat dream of a Venvasion alive — and help Trump salvage his standing with expats upset about his callous deportations of Venezuelans.
But the big strike could produce a nightmare.
