Trump’s conflict with ‘narco-terrorists’ could be a prelude to war with Venezuela

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00:00Not since the Cuban Missile Crisis has the United States stationed so many military assets in the

00:08Caribbean, and President Donald Trump says he has given the green light for the CIA to carry out

00:15covert operations within the country. All of this while Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro

00:21lambasts the military buildup, saying the U.S. is trying to institute a regime change,

00:27while also touting his country's extensive supply of Russian-made anti-aircraft weapons.

00:34So, is the U.S. going to war with Venezuela? Maybe.

00:41First, let's set the table a little bit and talk about how we got here. A couple of months into his

00:47second term, President Trump declared several Central and South American drug cartels as

00:53foreign terrorist organizations. He later said the U.S. is in armed conflict with the cartels

00:59and classified cartel members as unlawful combatants. Essentially, Trump is using the

01:06same authority to target the drug cartels that Presidents Bush and Obama relied on to go after

01:12Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Mark Timnitsky is a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council

01:17and explains the legal framework on which the White House is relying.

01:22There are two important documents. The first is the United Nations Charter, where an Article 2,

01:29Section 4 of the United Nations Charter more or less says that if countries feel threatened or they

01:34feel like they're being provoked, they are able to resort to using force and even call upon their

01:41military for self-defense purposes. And the second is the United States Constitution, which says that

01:47the U.S. president is the commander in chief of the armed forces in the United States. Those

01:53individuals in the current administration believe that the interpretation of this war against the

01:59cartels, the defending of the United States from drug trafficking and these illegal activities is a way of

02:07protecting the United States. The U.S. has several destroyers and amphibious assault ships already in

02:13the Caribbean. The forward carrier strike group is steaming toward the region as well. There are some

02:19F-35Bs on Puerto Rico and the U.S. recently sent a pair of bombers to fly around the area. So from a

02:27manpower and resources standpoint, it's about the same size force that was in the Red Sea defending Israel

02:34from Iranian and Houthi attacks over the summer. Up to this point in the conflict though, all of the

02:41U.S. strikes were on targets at sea. But President Trump now says strikes on land are on the way.

02:47The Venezuelan government is not a legitimate military threat to the United States. It has not

02:54been and it is not currently. Abby Hall is an associate professor of economics at the University

03:00of Tampa. She's also an expert in U.S. military intervention in Latin America. I think that you

03:06have a few different things going on. So it is a way for the administration to attempt to appear

03:12really tough on drugs and on illegal immigration without really burning any additional political

03:20capital. There's not friendly relations between Washington, D.C. and Caracas. There hasn't been for

03:26a very long time. And so there's really little political cost to taking a hard stance against the

03:32Maduro regime. I think probably the bigger thing or something else that we could consider is the

03:38relationship between the Venezuelan government and China and Russia. So you have the regime that is

03:45allowing China and Russia to drill in the Oriental River, which is providing a significant source of

03:51crude oil for both of those countries. And so for the perspective or from the perspective of the U.S.,

03:57disrupting or dismantling the Venezuelan regime, having a more friendly regime to the U.S. could

04:03certainly cause a shift in geopolitical dynamics between Russia, China and its kind of foothold in

04:11South America. J. Michael Waller is a former CIA asset and current national security expert.

04:18He agrees the actions the U.S. are taking against Venezuela are about much more than stopping drugs.

04:24If you go back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, President Monroe was the last of the Founding

04:31Fathers. And he set up this doctrine that the United States would stand by the republics,

04:36the new republics of the Western Hemisphere, to protect them and to work with them against

04:43the foreign empires coming in and taking them over. They had just won their independence.

04:49It wasn't a map for American imperialism, for American invasion.

04:52But in the case of Venezuela, it's very key because Venezuela has surrendered its sovereignty

04:57to communist China. It has brought in the Russians. It has brought in the Iranian regime.

05:03And they're not there just to do business or to assist with whatever they assist with. I mean,

05:07they brought in Hezbollah under Iranian tutelage. So these are foreign extra hemispheric powers that

05:14have come in to cause trouble aimed at us.

05:16Like from the designation standpoint and using that classification to reclassify from criminal

05:24cartel to terrorist cartel, does that designation, I mean, in your mind, is the Trump administration

05:31trying to use that same legal argument and say the Maduro regime, since it did not win the last,

05:38at least one, probably two elections fairly, since it's a illegitimate government, then it, you know,

05:46the normal rules don't apply. Do you see where I'm kind of going? Like, is the Maduro regime the head of the

05:52terrorist organization? And therefore, the U.S. can strike the Maduro regime legally because it's a terrorist

06:00organization and not a government, like a legitimate government at that point?

06:04That's a pretty fair approximation of what the reasoning is. Secretary of State Rubio has been thinking about this

06:11for years, since he was a senator. And Trump was faced with the issue of Venezuela in his first term, where he

06:18de-recognized the Maduro government and gave recognition to the elected opposition government. So we don't have

06:25diplomatic relations with the Maduro regime. So we can recognize it for anything we wish. So since we don't recognize it as

06:31the regime, we meaning the United States government, we're looking at it as a terrorist cartel that has

06:40taken over the powers of a state. Under the law, this is allowed. So we're going after that terrorist cartel

06:46that's controlling a country. And as such, your War Powers Act and so forth may not apply.

06:52The U.S. has not yet launched any strikes on land in Venezuelan territory. For that matter,

06:58all the strikes at sea were in international waters as well. President Maduro tried to make

07:05several agreements with President Trump to end the tensions, but none of those agreements included

07:11the dismantling of the Venezuelan government, which is likely why Trump refused them.

07:17So while it's still unclear whether the U.S. and Venezuela will ultimately go to war,

07:22the message to other nations is crystal clear. The United States is taking a renewed interest

07:29in keeping adverse actors out of the Caribbean. For more reporting like this,

07:34download the Straight Arrow News app today.

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