US ‘war on drugs’ is just another regime change attempt

The United States is once again targeting Venezuela, in Washington’s long quest for regime change in the country.

What the Trump administration falsely claims is a war against so-called Venezuelan drug smugglers, has seen the extrajudicial killings of 21 Venezuelans in the past few weeks. US troops, aircraft and warships have been moved near Venezuelan waters, which some fear indicates a coming US war on the country.

The US military made several separate attacks over the course of the past month on boats US President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have claimed were carrying drugs “enroute to poison Americans”. Neither Trump nor Hegseth provided any evidence or the specific locations of the incidents.

One would think that the legally appropriate way to deal with drug traffickers (if that is in fact what the Venezuelans were to begin with) would be to arrest them and put them on trial. Instead, the men were killed on sight, apparently with missiles that also conveniently destroyed all the evidence. Trump’s justification was to claim they were “extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists” and that they “POSE A THREAT to U.S. National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital U.S. Interests.”

To sum it up, we have extrajudicial assassinations in international waters, without congressional approval.

Furthermore, on September 12, 18 armed US personnel from the US Navy destroyer USS Jason Dunham boarded and occupied a local tuna fishing vessel Carmen Rosa for 8 hours in Venezuelan waters, in yet another direct provocation of Caracas.

In addition to the criminality of these acts, the whole pretext is simply phony. Aside from the fact that Washington has a very long track record of flimsy pretexts for attempted regime changes around the world, and in Latin America in particular, the irony about this particular accusation against Venezuela is that it is well known that the US has an equally long history of drug running.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has rejected Trump’s accusations, and said Venezuela has eliminated all major drug-trafficking operations on its soil, and vanquished prominent gangs, including the Tren de Aragua.

According to Pino Arlacchi, during his time as head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the areas he travelled frequently to were Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil, “but never to Venezuela. There was simply no need.”

He maintains that, contrary to the Trump administration’s accusations (“geopolitically motivated slander”), the Venezuelan government’s “collaboration in the fight against drug trafficking was among the best in South America, rivaled only by Cuba’s impeccable record.”

According to Arlacchi, “Colombia produces over 70% of the world’s cocaine. Peru and Bolivia cover most of the remaining 30%,” further noting that the routes for reaching the American and European markets are via the Pacific to Asia, through the eastern Caribbean towards Europe and overland through Central America towards the US.
“Geographically, Venezuela is disadvantaged for all three main routes, as it borders the South Atlantic. Criminal logistics mean that Venezuela plays only a marginal role in the grand theater of international narcotrafficking.”

US War buildup around Venezuela

Chas Freeman, a respected former US diplomat who served the State Department in various capacities over 30 years, said in a recent interview that the current Trump administration’s actions are “part of a longstanding 21st century effort to overthrow the government of Venezuela.”

“Very clearly the Trump administration, and I think Marco Rubio in particular, are trying very hard to engineer regime change in Caracas.”

In August, the US announced a $50 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Maduro (keeping in mind the US earlier this year removed the much smaller $10 million bounty on known al-Qaeda/ISIS terrorist Abu Mohammed al-Joolani, aka Ahmed al-Sharaa, the so-called “president” of Syria with the blood of countless civilians on his hands).

Under the war-on-drugs pretext, the Trump administration with its newly dubbed Department of War has moved five (of 10 planned) US F-35 aircraft to Puerto Rico, following the relocation of at least eight naval vessels, one nuclear-powered submarine, and an estimated 4,000 troops to the region.

In response, Venezuelans continue to mobilize against the US threats, with a 4.5 million-person-strong people’s militia. This is in addition to the 95,000 to 150,000 active members of the Venezuelan army.

A long track of regime change attempts

The decades-long US meddling in Venezuela has never been about human rights, drugs or whatever the current US-endorsed “legitimate president” of Venezuela says. It has always been about subjugating the country and controlling its resources, especially its massive crude oil reserves.

In his first term, in 2019, Trump not only backed the wildly unpopular grinning puppet Juan Guaido as “interim president” in President Maduro’s Venezuela, but the US administration also carried out a series of sabotage operations in the country in its attempt to sway popular opinion towards Guaido.

It failed spectacularly. I was in Venezuela at the time and saw the outcome of what the Venezuela government called US sabotage on its electrical grid, causing a country-wide power outage for six days. Subsequent physical attacks on the electrical grid, including arson, caused more outages.

US media claimed Venezuela was in a state of chaos, that there was no food available, and that President Nicolas Maduro had no popular support base.

As I wrote back then, I arrived three days into the outage, and aside from darkened buildings, emptier streets than usual, and, in subsequent days, long lines at water dispensaries and ATMs, I saw no instability. Instead, I saw and learned of Venezuelans working together to get through the effects of the power outage, with ample food in supermarkets and street markets I visited, including in the poorest barrios.

I also saw massive rallies of support for Maduro and against US interference in Venezuela. Many of those participating were from Caracas’ poorest communities, Afro-descendant Venezuelans that are not given a voice by corporate media but who articulated to me very clearly their understanding of the US interests in destabilizing Venezuela.

Chas Freeman calls the US objectives in Venezuela a misreading of Venezuelan politics.

“The fact is that there is a 4.5 million man armed militia in Venezuela which has been mobilized against a possible invasion or a coup attempt. You don’t have a 4.5 million man militia armed if you’re not confident of your position in power and your authority.”

This latest foolishly-concocted, criminal, attempt to destabilize the country is likely to fail as resoundingly as the previous ones. But as in the previous interventions, the US will once more, without remorse, cause the deaths of Venezuelan civilians. It already has.