00:00We can welcome our International Affairs Editor, Philip Turrell.
00:04Philip, always nice to see you.
00:06So here we've just heard the U.S. is sending its largest aircraft carrier to Latin America.
00:12Does it really need to do that to fight boats accused of drug smuggling?
00:17It doesn't need a huge aircraft carrier to target small boats that are reportedly carrying drugs.
00:23And remember, many of those small boats don't have the capacity to sail all the way from Venezuela to the United States.
00:29So many are saying that this is a pretext that drugs is an excuse by the U.S. to station this ship in the region.
00:37There are already 6,000 U.S. Marines and sailors on eight warships already based in that area of the world.
00:46If this warship, when this warship gets there, it's going to take quite a while for it to turn up in the region.
00:51It will bring an extra four and a half thousand sailors with it, which will severely increase the number of U.S. Marines and sailors based in the region.
01:01Now, what some are saying is that this is a pretext for the U.S. to increase the intimidation tactics against the Venezuelan leader, Nicolas Maduro,
01:13with the idea in the back of their minds that what the U.S. really wants is regime change in Venezuela.
01:19This has been backed up by a report in the Washington Post newspaper that Marco Rubio, the U.S. Secretary of State, favours regime change,
01:28wants to get rid of Nicolas Maduro, who's always been a fly in the ointment for the United States ever since Donald Trump first came to power in 2017.
01:35He favours regime change.
01:37But Donald Trump hasn't made a final decision on that just yet.
01:41The speculation now is how far is the Trump administration willing to go with this?
01:47Will they start launching attacks?
01:49Will they start launching attacks within Venezuela itself to pinpoint what they say are drug cartels, drug organisations to prevent them from sending those drugs,
01:59cocaine, opioids, others to the United States or trying to obtain passage for those drugs to the United States?
02:05That is something that we don't know right now.
02:08But there have been pretty strong statements from Pete Hegseth, the Defence Secretary, saying,
02:17if you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like al-Qaeda.
02:23And I think that the arrival of the USS George Bush in the area is going to certainly increase that pressure on the Venezuelans
02:35to try to curtail some of those drugs from being smuggled out of the country.
02:41Now, Trump has famously said he's not asking Congress for permission here.
02:47So in that case, isn't the U.S. sort of behaving a little bit like a rogue state with all of this?
02:53Well, that is something also that has been discussed by many in the United States, both Republicans and Democrats.
03:00Trump has been asked about that. He said he's got no plans to ask Congress to issue a declaration of war against Venezuela
03:08or even Colombia against the drug cartels coming from those countries or reportedly coming from those countries.
03:15Remember, there's no evidence so far that that is what these ships were doing when they were tanked and hit by U.S. forces.
03:22He just says, well, we're going to go ahead and cure people, bringing drugs into our country.
03:27That's all that he wants to do. But lawmakers from both parties have expressed concern, saying they don't know how far this is intending to go.
03:36They don't know whether this could eventually lead to U.S. troops being sent in boots on the ground in Venezuela
03:42or in some other region of Latin America, and also fears about the fact that this could mean the U.S. is bogged down in a much bigger conflict in the long run.
03:52So there is a lot of concern about that. Coupled with this, there are a couple of other issues that are also interesting to draw up here.
04:00The first one is many are saying, look, Donald Trump, as I said before, has always had a very bad relationship with Nicola Maduro.
04:09He imposed sanctions on Venezuela when he first came into office in 2017.
04:13That seriously affected the export of oil from the from Venezuela elsewhere to the world.
04:22And there could be an aim by the U.S. to get hold of some of Venezuela's oil fields as a result of all of this.
04:29But the problem is that this is affecting many voters in the U.S.
04:33say, well, what about putting America first? There's a shutdown. We can't get money.
04:37Why is so much money being devoted and effort to Latin America?
04:40Well, we can't even make ends meet in the United States when it comes to the end of every month.
04:45Amen.
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04:52Amen.
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