The Cartels Replace Islamic Terrorists, As the Trump Administration Deploys Troops to Prepare for Regime Change in Venezuela

As the United States government deploys its military to the Caribbean Sea and Venezuela prepares for a potential invasion, the “no new wars” President Donald Trump is shaping up to be just as imperialistic as his predecessors (including himself during his first term). The latest maneuver to overthrow the Nicolas Maduro regime and capture Venezuelan oil resources is being concocted under the rhetoric that the South American nation is aiding and abetting drug cartels and needs to be eliminated to prevent the flow of drugs into the United States. Yes, drugs are bad, and so are the cartels that traffic them, but from a geopolitical standpoint, this is similar to using Islamic terrorism as an excuse to occupy the Middle East, or the threat of Russia in Ukraine or China in the South China Sea to increase military posturing in those areas. Every empire justifies its presence in foreign nations, and the United States bullying Venezuela is no different.

Back in February, the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) labeled Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) for their involvement in drug smuggling operations, human trafficking, and money laundering; and last month, this SDGT branding expanded to include the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), which is allegedly headed by Maduro and members of his government. The timing of the reclassification is suspicious because only a short time afterwards, the Trump administration started moving warships to threaten Maduro. From this, you can infer that the president was looking for a reason to invade Venezuela, and by manipulating the American people by arguing that there is this new threat that needs to be eliminated (when really the same cartels have been acting out for years, and there is nothing new to it), officials can easily march toward war.

Just as the first Trump administration indicted Maduro in 2020 and placed a $15 million bounty for anyone leading to his arrest, the second time around, the bounty for the Venezuelan leader’s narco-trafficking and alleged flooding the United States with fentanyl-laced cocaine has jumped to $50 million. Furthermore President Trump is deploying the USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham, and USS Sampson (Aegis guided-missile destroyers), as well as 4,000 Marines and Navy personnel and a submarine, P-8 spy planes, and warships, near the coast of Venezuela. In response to this bullying, Maduro has decided to mobilize 4.5 million militia members (a military body created by former President Hugo Chavez) to prepare the country for an invasion and ensure that “no empire will touch the sacred soil of Venezuela.” Some of these militiamen will be deployed to the Caribbean Sea, and it seems obvious that the Trump administration is setting up a trap so that some misunderstanding causes the Venezuelan military to accidentally fire the first shot, which will then cause the very justification that the president needs to invade (this type of political maneuvering is nothing new, as these tactics were used during the Mexican-American War, the American Civil War, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and the Vietnam War, and the September 11 Attacks). Americans will cheer on the war effort and rally around the flag to go fight in yet another country, when in reality, they are being manipulated into supporting a cause that never should have been.

The United States’ actions against Venezuela have been ongoing for years, and in addition to economic sanctions being placed against Venezuela in 2017, between 2017 and 2018, the first Trump administration sent officials to meet with Venezuelan rebel leaders in anticipation that it would send aid to back any future coup plots. Though this ended up going nowhere, the president went even further by undermining Maduro’s leadership and recognizing the rebel leader Juan Guaido as the legitimate president of the country. In addition to this, while the COVID-19 pandemic was distracting everyone, the United States Navy dispatched the largest military operation in that region since the 1989 invasion of Panama by sending ships off of the Venezuelan coast as a show of force to intimidate that nation. This came after a Venezuelan patrol boat collided with a Portuguese-flagged but Colombian-operated cruise ship because Maduro believed that it housed mercenaries ready to overthrow his government, and the Venezuelan government did later capture two American mercenaries that were part of a larger operation to stage a coup and kidnap Maduro. The failed coup was launched from Colombia, and several Americans were involved, though President Trump denied having participated (uh huh, right). One of the Americans who planned the attack was Antonio Sequea, who had been working with a Venezuelan general to recruit deserters of the Venezuelan military and secretly train them in Colombia (the Colombian government also denied knowing about this plot, but that is also unlikely).

President Trump’s first term attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government did not end when he took a four-year break from the Oval Office. In fact, President Joe Biden left his predecessor’s sanctions in place and continued to recognize Guaido, showing that the powers that be running the show from behind the scenes will use either political party to achieve their goals. In fact, Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the 2024 presidential results, arguing that the burden of proof is on Maduro to prove that the election was free and fair (not exactly how that works), and met with opposition leaders Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia and María Corina Machado to ensure that they knew the United States would find a way to assist in challenging the election. The Biden administration went even further by seizing Maduro’s Dassault 900 airplane (Venezuelan equivalent of Air Force One) in the Dominican Republic and flying it to Florida under the guise that the aircraft was illegally purchased in the United States through an attempt to evade sanctions.

And, of course, when Venezuela threatened to invade and occupy the oil-rich region of Essequibo, Guyana (a land that President Grover Cleveland attempted but failed to allow independent Venezuela to be granted over the British-occupied Guyana prior to the 1899 arbitration decision), the Biden administration jumped on the opportunity to conduct joint exercises and flight operations with Guyana to intimidate Venezuela. The policies did not change over the course of both Trump’s and Biden’s terms, but it goes even further when you consider that the United States has been attempting to overthrow the oil-rich South American nation since 2002 when President George W. Bush was in office.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has since released documents proving that President Bush was aware of the coup taking place, and since he wanted then-leader Hugo Chavez gone, he supposedly sat on the information and let the government be ousted for a full forty-eight hours. Although this does not prove conclusively that the United States government was actively involved (the CIA can deny involvement all that it wants, but it overthrows governments frequently), the United States funneled over $1 million between 1998 (during the Bill Clinton administration) and 2002 to Venezuelan opposition groups through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED is a non-governmental organization, or NGO, that is funded by the federal government). As I stated in my piece about the backlash (particularly from liberals and anti-Trumpers) to Elon Musk and Donald Trump slashing spending to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the method of transferring funds to NGOs so that the money cannot be traced easily and the federal government can deny involvement in plots is one of the oldest tricks in the regime change book. Therefore, the CIA denying that it was involved in the 2002 coup cannot really be believed. Plus, at the time, Bush administration officials lied and said that they knew nothing about it, but with the release of these declassified documents (which were heavily redacted and scrubbed of damning information), we now know with certainty that the United States government was aware of the coup as it was happening.

So, where does this leave us now? In addition to mobilizing troops in anticipation of an American strike, Maduro has asked China, which has been building an economic and technological partnership and engaging in oil deals with Venezuela for the last few years, to protect it from any violent move that the Trump administration may make in furthering the deployment of ships and troops to the Caribbean Sea. China’s ambassador to Venezuela, Lan Hu, has said in the past, “China and Venezuela are united in defending the rights and interests of developing countries in the face of US unilateral coercive measures, so as to build a more just and equitable multipolar world, based on mutual respect,” and China has condemned the United States’ aggressive policies toward Venezuela, including the most recent maneuvering of ships. Even current Colombian President Gustavo Petro and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have warned the United States against intervening in South America.

On the other side, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa and Paraguayan President Santiago Pena are signaling that they may be open to cooperation with the United States on going after Venezuelan cartels, while Argentinian President Javier Milei has also joined both countries and the United States in designating Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization. The Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, which is located just seven miles off of the coast of Venezuela, has agreed to host the United States military in its pursuits to target drug cartels and repel any potential Venezuelan invasion of Guyana, and Trinidadian Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has supported the Trump administration’s move to deploy troops into the region. Upon visiting Curacao almost two years ago, I discovered an American military base on the island, so although there has not been any indication of joint operations yet, not only is the island country included as part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (an American ally), but it is only about forty miles from Venezuela (about the distance that I drive to work one-way every day).

When Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was questioned about President Trump’s deployment of troops near Venezuela, she said that the administration is “prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice. The Maduro regime is not the legitimate government of Venezuela. It is a narco-terror cartel.” This vague piece of propaganda sort of sounds like the United States government may be preparing for a military strike on Venezuela. We can only hope that things do not escalate further, but given that President Trump has already broken many of his campaign promises and caved to globalist interests, it seems likely that we are headed down a dark path. If you do not want this war, be vocal about your opposition and persuade people that it is not in their best interests. The more people who speak out against this regime change operation, the less likely the government will be to engage in it.

Thank you for reading, and please check out my book, The Global Bully, and website.