00:00With this historic executive order I will sign today, we're formally classifying fentanyl as
00:05a weapon of mass destruction. Deadly fentanyl flooding into our country.
00:21It's a totally new thing to frame a drug, even a deadly drug like fentanyl,
00:29as a weapon of mass destruction. This is something that's been brewing for several years. There was
00:35a proposal back in 2022 from a number of state attorneys general to President Biden to designate
00:44fentanyl as a WMD and as part of a broader campaign to frame the scourge of opioids in the United
00:54States in military terms and presented as a military threat to Americans rather than a serious
01:00public health challenge.
01:04This is a piece of that broader effort by the administration to deploy the rhetoric and tools
01:24of counterterrorism and armed conflict to migration, to counter narcotics. How it's going to be used
01:33specifically, I don't think we know. The contrary to what the administration has said or suggested,
01:39fentanyl is not coming to the United States from Venezuela. It's not coming by sea. It's almost
01:45almost all that is coming from Mexico overland. And so the question is, okay, well, where, if at all,
01:52will the administration act against the supposed WMD? The executive order itself doesn't mention Mexico,
01:59and maybe the administration will leave open or preserve this false narrative that somehow
02:06fentanyl is coming from Venezuela.
02:08It doesn't necessitate any particular course of action, but it could be used as political
02:25justification down the road. If the United States were to launch attacks in Venezuela, the administration
02:32may falsely claim that it was targeting fentanyl in Venezuela as a supposed weapon mass destruction.
02:38Similarly, if the administration were to take direct military action in Mexico, it might also rely on this
02:44characterization of fentanyl as a weapon mass destruction. And this is all very reminiscent of
02:50the Bush administration using Iraq's supposed WMDs as the basis for going to war in that country in 2003.
03:02I think it's clearly the fentanyl comes from Mexico. We know that. It doesn't come from Venezuela. And yet, a lot of the
03:25buildup seems to be aimed at Venezuela, which I think has led many people to believe, as I do as well, that the real objective
03:34with Venezuela is to change the regime and to oust Maduro, Nicolás Maduro, from power.
03:41So these things kind of get kind of mixed together. There are a lot of conflicting messages. But I think this
03:48designation is just another step in the administration's approach to try to frame this as a real war. And that
04:01has implications in terms of the use of the military and just giving this more priority attention than
04:07perhaps we've seen before.
04:19The best that I can tell is that there is a hope, the big bet is that somehow this sustained pressure,
04:40intimidation campaign and authorization of the CIA and a variety of other steps, and this is sort of
04:48part of that, I think this fits in, this designation fits into that, will create panic within Venezuela,
04:58and that there will be so much pressure, that either Maduro will decide to leave, or that somebody
05:05internally will, will dislodge him, and that there would be a change in regime, and the administration
05:13could at that point declare victory. But again, not using any US troops on the ground,
05:28this is a radical departure and entirely unprecedented. The normal sort of traditional way to approach this
05:40is for the Coast Guard to interdict drug shipments, to seize the cocaine if it's carrying cocaine, to detain
05:52people that are on these boats, and then to try them in a court of law, and treat them as criminals,
05:59and not as terrorists. And this was done even in the first Trump administration.
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