Recently, the White House officially designated two Venezuelan groups—the ‘Cartel of the Suns’ and the ‘Tren de Aragua’—as global terrorist organizations. The declared objective of President Donald Trump is to destroy these cartels and all drug trafficking organizations.
The Dilemma and the Promise
This new directive places us at a dangerous crossroads with three possible paths, none of which lead to a stable and democratic Venezuela in the end. The Pentagon might be planning an invasion, but I am certain that no one has a clear exit strategy. Historically, this lack of strategy has bogged down the US in military adventures around the globe.
Key Questions and Answers
- What is the true objective of the US in Venezuela? This question remains unanswered, as the current focus is on dismantling drug cartels.
- What motivates Trump? The driving force behind his actions is not explicitly stated.
The Problem and the Promise
The central issue is that this new directive places us at a dangerous crossroads with three possible paths, none of which lead to a stable and democratic Venezuela in the end. The Pentagon might be planning an invasion, but I am certain that no one has a clear exit strategy. Historically, this lack of strategy has bogged down the US in military adventures around the globe.
Possible Scenarios
- Is this a plan for regime change?
- Is the deployment of US naval force intended to capture Nicolas Maduro, similar to Noriega in Panama?
- Is this a plan for a surgical strike against corrupt officials?
- Is this a pretext for a large-scale invasion to achieve regime change?
- Or is it merely a narrative strategy to ‘appear firm’ without actual actions?
The Promise: A More Intelligent Strategy
It’s crucial to explore why each of these prioritized military approaches is a trap destined for failure. More importantly, I will present a more intelligent strategy that could weaken drug trafficking networks and build a safer future for the entire Latin American region.
Why the Current Path is a Trap
What if a ‘surgical strike’ to capture Nicolas Maduro fails? The interlocking rings system, copied by Venezuelans from Fidel Castro in Cuba and originally from the Soviet concentric rings system, makes it clear that targeting a few leaders only creates an illusion of victory. This illusion, however, is short-lived.
These concentric rings protect the regime because if one leader falls, they all do. This is why they mutually protect each other.
In the past, the US would remove a satrap and replace him with another. Then, they’d boast about their ‘son of a bitch,’ claiming he was ‘our son of a bitch.’ The evidence that such methods no longer work is evident in what happened 20 years ago in Iraq.
US interventions on the continent have historically demonstrated that they only create power vacuums, allowing criminal organizations to fill them quickly with their own satraps and ‘sons of bitches.’
Trump might be considering how some extraditions could serve as ‘trophies’ for him. However, beware, because such actions will only eliminate the symptom, not the disease. The real risk is that criminal structures will remain intact, which is precisely what everyone wants Trump to change.
If the US is going to intervene, it should do so effectively and leave things well-settled upon departure. The days of swapping military coup leaders chosen by Washington are over, and they’ve never left anything positive behind.
It would be criminal to waste money, time, and effort for no real change.
Imagine the streets of Caracas, now add Humvees from the US army and picture the capital city of Venezuela in ruins. Imagine the headlines on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post: “The full-scale invasion of Venezuela resulted in disaster”…
The other risk is equally complex because military victory can quickly turn into a political catastrophe, as it did in Iraq.
As President Petro of Colombia recently declared, “The US is wrong if they believe invading Venezuela will solve their problem.” “They’re dragging Colombia into the same situation as Syria,” he said. Following President Petro’s line, let’s be realistic. If there is an open invasion, Trump might find himself occupying a impoverished country with broken institutions, just like in Iraq 20 years ago. This would trigger a bloody insurgency, destabilize the entire region, and draw Colombia into a broader conflict without guarantees of a democratic transition.
Closing the Current Chapter and Opening the Next
What if Marco Rubio, as National Security Advisor, is using military threats as a ruse? If not, it’s essential to change strategy radically, or else we’re merely providing the Maduro regime with a powerful weapon to mock the US, Trump, and Rubio.
The current evidence suggests that this apparent ruse—“The wolf is coming, the wolf is coming”—is only enabling Maduro to gather allies both within and outside Venezuela against the common ‘imperialist’ enemy.
The worst part is that this ‘strategy’ allows Maduro to justify his own repression and human rights violations as legitimate defense of Venezuelan sovereignty. We’ve seen this movie too many times.
The continual speculation about when Trump will attack has consequences. This uncertainty is not fostering solidarity against Maduro; instead, it’s causing international fatigue, consolidating the dictatorship—exactly the opposite of what Trump, Pam Bondi, and Pete Hegseth described as the intended outcome in Venezuela.
A More Intelligent Strategy
The focus should be on corruption and corrupt officials, along with those who support them, not just the cartels. The idea is to target the true foundation of cartels—their corrupt relationship with government and legal economies.
Designating cartels as ‘International Terrorist Organizations’ was to close money laundering valves, pursue those who assist cartels in survival, and clean their money, sell them supplies, and protect their vehicles.
The real approach is to identify, pursue, and punish those who supply arms, vehicles, tires, phones, and computers to cartels.
Combat Actions
Instead of drones and special forces, the US should fund prosecutors, financial investigators, witness protection programs, and a free press. The goal is to make collusion with crime too risky to be profitable.
Building Real Security from Scratch
The reality is that US soldiers are ‘scarecrows’ in a territory they don’t understand. True security is always local.
The action is for the US to invest in what genuinely ensures community security: professional police forces, an effective judicial system, secure prisons, and community trust.
Venezuela and Mexico, like Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s, need help addressing the fundamental causes of crime, such as poverty and inequality.
The hardest part is that it would force Washington to rethink policies generating the enormous profits from illicit drug trade.
Our own US policies of drug prohibition create artificial scarcity and astronomical profitability for these substances. We created the violent market we now struggle against.
All of the above pertains to Venezuela, but if you replace names and apply this reasoning to Mexico, you wouldn’t be surprised that the problems and alternative paths presented here fit perfectly.
For all these reasons, I assert that invading Venezuela at this moment without a clear entry and exit strategy would be a monumental mistake.
