The drums of war grow louder in the Caribbean. President Donald Trump may cast himself a peacemaker in far-flung climes, but the White House seems bent on using hard power to impose its will in the United States’ perceived neighborhood. In the path of the looming storm is Venezuela, whose autocratic regime under long-ruling President Nicolás Maduro is an explicit target of the Trump administration, which sees Maduro at the top of an illegitimate drug crime network it hopes to bring down. American warships and thousands of troops have been deployed to the Caribbean; an old military base in Puerto Rico has whirred to life with new arrivals of U.S. warplanes, drones and bombers. Trump has authorized the CIA to carry out unspecified covert operations within Venezuela. A succession of U.S. strikes have destroyed at least seven small boats off Venezuela’s coast, killing dozens of alleged narcotraffickers. Trump and his allies say they are certain of what they’re targeting. The devastated families of Trinidadian fishermen tell another story. The recent resignation of Adm. Alvin Holsey as head of the U.S. Southern Command, less than a year into a three-year appointment, is being read as an _expression_ of unease with the ongoing operations. Despite the White House’s claims, the Caribbean is not a significant thoroughfare for fentanyl or the vast majority of other illicit drugs entering the United States. Nor is Venezuela a major producer of illegal narcotics like some other South American countries, including neighboring Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Yet there’s an expectation that the campaign is going to intensify. “Trump has made clear his intentions to go beyond blowing up boats, saying ‘we’re going to stop them by land’ in Venezuela,” my colleagues reported earlier this week. “Several people familiar with internal administration deliberations said any initial land attack would probably be a targeted operation on alleged trafficker encampments or clandestine airstrips, rather than a direct attempt to unseat Maduro.” Driving the agenda is an unlikely alliance in the White House between two key Trump officials. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has agitated for years for tough action against Caracas and other left-wing autocracies in the region, appears to have won the internal argument within the administration over the best course of action, and is aligned with hard-right firebrand Trump adviser Stephen Miller, known for his own zeal for domestic crackdowns on U.S. inner cities and mass deportations of undocumented migrants. To make the case for their efforts, Trump officials have summoned the language of the War on Terror — the sprawling, generation-long, U.S. reaction to the attacks of 9/11 — to justify a revived War on Drugs, the multigenerational (and broadly unsuccessful) effort to defeat drug cartels abroad and root out drug crime at home. “These cartels are the al-Qaeda of the Western Hemisphere, using violence, murder and terrorism to impose their will, threaten our national security and poison our people,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wrote on social media. “The United States military will treat these organizations like the terrorists they are — they will be hunted, and killed, just like al-Qaeda.” The invocation of al-Qaeda has effectively underscored the administration’s attempts to shrug off standard processes of accountability and scrutiny, including the obligations of Congress to authorize war powers that have been steadily sidelined in the age of the War on Terror. It also brings to mind the lasting traumas unleashed by U.S. wars for regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan. “After nearly 25 years of the War on Terror, it should not be remotely surprising that an administration would reach for its authorizations and rhetoric,” wrote Spencer Ackerman, a longtime chronicler of that era’s abuses. “They work too well not to export. It doesn’t ultimately matter that whatever the U.S. unleashes upon Venezuela, or now potentially Colombia, will not have a formal connection to the War on Terror. Its template is all the connection necessary, particularly if elite opposition reverts to type and rolls over.” Analysts are skeptical of the administration’s gambit. “You just can’t call something war to give yourself war powers,” Claire Finkelstein, a professor of national security law at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Associated Press. “However frustrated we may be with the means and results of law enforcement efforts to combat the flow of drugs, it makes a mockery of international law to suggest we are in a non-international armed conflict with cartels.” Even former U.S. officials involved in the peak moments of the War on Terror are aghast. “We have the president using force against civilians — they may be breaking narcotics laws, they may be criminals — but he has simply killed them without due process, people who were not posing a threat against the United States,” John Bellinger, who served in President George W. Bush’s National Security Council, told Time magazine. “Either Trump does not know about international law, or he does not care.” John Yoo, the Bush-era official who wrote the notorious set of legal memorandums that suggested certain forms of torture carried out by the CIA on suspects could be legally permissible, warned of the questionable legality of much of what Trump is doing right now. “The White House has yet to provide compelling evidence in court or to Congress that drug cartels have become arms of the Venezuelan government,” he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “That showing is needed to justify not only the deportations … but also the naval attacks in the South American seas.” Undeterred, Trump confirmed to reporters that “land action” in Venezuela could be imminent. That could mean strikes on supposed cartel targets linked to the Maduro regime or redoubts belonging to the ELN, a Colombian guerrilla group that also participates in the trafficking of cocaine. Trump waved away questions of political process or strategy, saying just that he may have to go to Congress, which, he mused, would green-light his plans. “I don’t think we’re necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war,” he told reporters Thursday. “I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead.” |