Murder in the Caribbean: How should we interpret the dramatic escalation in US policy towards Venezuela?

First published at NLR Sidecar.

‘We blew it up. And we’ll do it again’. ‘I don’t give a shit what you call it.’ These words, of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance, respectively, refer to the first of five US bombings of boats in international waters near Venezuela in the last month, which have reportedly killed twenty-seven people overall. Washington claims the boats were carrying drugs destined for US shores but has offered no proof; evidence indicates those killed in the first bombing, on 2 September, may have been fishermen. The operation has been accompanied by a buildup of US military force in the Caribbean, including eight surface warships, a squadron of F-35s, a nuclear attack submarine and over 10,000 troops. Trump has labelled Maduro’s government a ‘narco-terror cartel’, and reports indicate that attempts to reach a diplomatic agreement were cut off by the US administration a week ago. On 9 October, the Venezuelan government requested an emergency session of the UN National Security Council, citing ‘mounting threats’ and the expectation of an imminent ‘armed attack’ on the country. How should we interpret this dramatic escalation in US policy?

Washington has long viewed Latin America as its ‘backyard’, as famously articulated in the 1823 Monroe doctrine, which warned European powers to leave the region to the US — not, of course, to Latin Americans themselves. Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the US repeatedly interfered in Latin American affairs. Amongst the most notorious recent instances — where US involvement ran the gamut from behind-the-scenes support and political backing to direct intervention — are the 1954 coup against Guatemala’s Jacobo Arbenz, the 1973 coup against Chile’s Salvador Allende, the 1989 invasion of Panama (which, as many have noted, has striking parallels with Trump’s current actions against Venezuela), the overthrow of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991 and 2004, and the 2009 coup in Honduras.

Venezuela, however, has faced more US attempts to engineer regime change than any other Latin American country in the last twenty-five years. Washington’s obsession with this goal began a few years after Hugo Chávez’s 1998 election — it supported numerous efforts to remove him from office, including a 2002 military coup and the 2002-2003 oil lock-out hitting the country’s most important industry. Both the Bush and Obama administrations funnelled millions to the opposition, including the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado; the prize committee ignored Machado’s decades-long advocacy for the violent removal of Venezuela’s leaders, as well as support for the recent assassinations. Washington’s support for the opposition continued after Chávez’s death in 2013 and the election of his chosen successor, Nicolás Maduro. Obama backed an often-violent protest wave in 2014 that left an estimated 43 dead, and Maduro faced another wave of at-times violent US-backed opposition protest in 2017.

In 2015 Obama declared Venezuela to be an ‘extraordinary and unusual threat to US national security’, a charge so ludicrous it was rejected by Venezuelan opposition leaders when it was initially announced. Yet this was used to justify the imposition of US sanctions, which contributed decisively to the decimation of Venezuela’s economy. As Francisco Rodriguez shows in The Collapse of Venezuela, though government policies were a major reason for Venezuela’s economic collapse, it was the sanctions that made recovery all but impossible. Antipathy to the regime then rose to a new level during the first Trump administration, which applied a policy of ‘maximum pressure’ to topple Maduro. In addition to punishing sanctions — which were now applied to Venezuela’s oil industry — Trump backed Juan Guaidó’s farcical self-declaration as president in January 2019. Over the next few years Guaidó’s supporters called for a US-led humanitarian intervention, vocally supported US economic coercion (as did most of the opposition leadership), exhorted the military to rise up against Maduro, and financed Operation Gideon, a spectacularly inept maritime invasion of Venezuela in May 2020 by US-backed mercenaries, who survived only after being rescued by Venezuelan fishermen and then turned over to the state.

Trump’s recent actions should therefore be understood as part of a longstanding pattern of US aggression towards the Bolivarian-socialist regime. Yet there are also notable distinctions. For one, the administration has effectively discarded the rhetorical cover of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’, long employed — even during Trump’s first term – as a fig leaf for belligerence against Venezuela. Along with this, there was a greater emphasis on the appearance of multilateralism — Guaidó’s ‘interim presidency’ for instance was supported by dozens of countries around the world. Though Argentina, Paraguay and Peru are all aligned behind the US, and Abinader’s Dominican Republic has participated in joint operations in the Caribbean, the current administration appears to view international backing more as an afterthought. Washington’s supervision of the region has always been exercised on a spectrum of force and consent, and so far, the Trump administration is clearly inclined more towards the former — the direction of travel may be towards what Ranajit Guha referred to as ‘dominance without hegemony’.

Trump’s second term has been marked by an undisguised penchant for brute power. This can be seen in the way he has sought to use trade policy to compel countries to bend to his will, as in the case of the 50% tariffs levied against Brazil for the offence of putting Bolsonaro on trial. See too, inter alia, his renaming of the Department of Defense as the Department of War, his deployment of the national guard, his pursuit of political enemies through the courts, his refusal to feign unity following Charlie Kirk’s murder (with Trump responding to Erica Kirk’s statement that she forgives her husband’s killer: ‘I hate my enemies’). The bombing of Venezuelan boats fits this pattern. The only justification provided for the extra-judicial killings is the need to combat the ill-defined bogeyman of the narco-terrorist, a category conjoining the war on drugs and war on terror, but the Trump administration has not provided any evidence to support the accusation. As Miguel Tinker-Salas argues, it has acted as judge, jury, and executioner. The message conveyed by the administration’s murder of non-combatants is ‘we will do whatever we want, whenever we want and we have no need to explain or justify ourselves to anyone’.

The operation appears to be in line with the new National Security Strategy, soon to be published, which is said to call for a refocusing on hemispheric security — with an emphasis on relations with Latin America, migration and drug cartels. The idea that the boat bombings will have any significant impact on the flow of drugs to the US however is far-fetched, for the simple reason that the vast majority of drugs arriving from Latin America come through the Eastern Pacific corridor, not the Caribbean. It should also be noted that while Venezuela is a transit route for an estimated 10-13% of global cocaine (per US agencies), it provides none of the fentanyl that accounts for 70% of US drug deaths. The Trump administration’s claim that Maduro is the head of the Cartel de los Soles, is equally implausible; experts on organized crime in Venezuela deny such a cartel even exists.

If the US is not bombing Venezuelan boats to stop drugs, then why is it doing so? One factor is Rubio’s attempt to assert himself vis-à-vis other members of Trump’s inner circle. The Secretary of State’s obsession with removing Maduro can be traced to his background in South Florida politics, and the crucial role hard-right anti-communist Venezuelan and Cuban exiles have played there for decades. There are other significant figures within Trump’s inner circle who share his position, including CIA director John Ratcliffe and Stephen Miller. As Greg Grandin notes, Rubio’s hawkish stance towards Venezuela contrasts with that of Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell, who has advocated striking deals with Maduro. According to a recent New York Times article, Grenell succeeded in securing extraordinary concessions, including an arrangement that would have given US corporations significant control over Venezuela’s resources, including its oil. Trump, however, has rejected the deal, and by all accounts Rubio’s hard-line position is currently favoured.

There may also be a range of domestic incentives in play. Conflict with Venezuela would provide a rationale for use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans, as the administration has been attempting to do. If a military back-and-forth were to take place, the courts would likely take a more favourable view, thus allowing Venezuelans to be deported on the grounds that they pose a national security threat. Such a conflict would also divert attention from other areas where Trump is vulnerable, such as the Epstein files, which have bedevilled him for months, and look likely to explode in the wake of Adelita Grijalva’s victory in Arizona’s special election. This gives Democrats in the House of Representatives enough votes to force the Trump administration to release the remaining files; though so far Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has refused to swear Grijalva into her seat (Grijalva has threatened legal action).

Maduro maintains that the offensive in the Caribbean is part of a renewed effort for regime change. Trump has publicly denied this, but there are signs he is taking the idea seriously. Reports indicate US plans for military action within Venezuela are underway. Airstrikes on mainland targets — a major escalation — could ostensibly begin within weeks, and Trump has authorized the CIA to undertake covert action in the country. The possibility that the President will suddenly reverse course cannot be ruled out, given his history of capriciousness, and of washing his hands of operations that aren’t proceeding smoothly. Whether or not there is a coherent plan to topple Maduro, it seems clear that the administration hopes to provoke him into a response. Thus far, he has not taken the bait. Beyond a mobilization of popular militias, Venezuela’s military response has been restricted to the flight of two armed F-16s over a US Navy ship in the Southern Caribbean. With the threat of a US intervention, questions about Venezuela’s military preparedness have grown. Much is unknown, but recent articles in military-focused US outlets suggest Venezuela’s defences, while uneven, nevertheless pose a significant obstacle. To date, it appears that US aggression has strengthened Maduro domestically. Consider, for instance, the statement by Venezuela’s Communist Party, fiercely critical of Maduro — viewing his government as authoritarian, illegitimate and anti-worker — which states that in the event of a US invasion the party’s stance would undergo a ‘radical shift’ in the name of defending Venezuela’s sovereignty.

For now, the Trump administration looks set to continue with its policy of blowing up Venezuelan boats. Congressional attempts to obstruct this have thus far proved unsuccessful: a vote was forced on Ilhan Omar’s War Powers Resolution to End Unauthorized Hostilities in Venezuela, but lost by three votes. For the most part opposition from the Democrats has been on procedural grounds, encapsulated by Michigan Senator Ellisa Slotkin, who complained that ‘if the Trump administration wants to be at war against a terrorist organization, they should come to Congress, notify us, and seek our approval’, adding that ‘ I actually have no real problem going against cartels’. Internationally, leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the boat bombings an ‘act of tyranny’, and at the UN Security Council meeting on 10 October, Russia and China strongly condemned Trump’s actions; other diplomats, from Europe and Africa, were careful not to express criticism. Whether war is on the horizon remains an open question, but Caracas has good reason to fear the worst.