‘Tactical intervention’: Fears as US ramps up attacks on alleged drug boats
Donald Trump this week announced a major escalation against a volatile nation, with one expert warning nothing including “surgical intervention” is off the table.
While Donald Trump works to defuse the conflict in the Middle East, another nation is bracing for an “armed attack” from the US.
The US President confirmed this week he has authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela and warned he was considering land strikes on cartels in the South American nation in a major escalation in his war on drugs.
The US has already deployed warships off Venezuela and carried out at least five confirmed strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, killing 27 people, in recent weeks. According to Reuters, the US military carried out a sixth strike on Thursday.
“We are certainly looking at land now because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” Mr Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday, US time.
“We’ve had a couple of days where there isn’t a boat to be found. And that, I view that as a good thing, not a bad thing,” he added.
“Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 lives.”
Justifying his decision to authorise CIA action against Venezuela, Mr Trump claimed “they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America”.
“The other thing are drugs. We have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela.”
The string of recent strikes has further stoked tensions with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who Mr Trump has accused of heading the drug cartel ‘Cartel de Los Soles and has authorised a US$50 million bounty for his arrest on drug trafficking charges.
In response to the attacks, Mr Maduro – who has denied any role in drug trafficking – has announced military exercises and placed his country on alert.
In a message on the social network Telegram, Mr Maduro said he was mobilising the military, police and a civilian militia to defend Venezuela’s “mountains, coasts, schools, hospitals, factories and markets”.
‘Unprecedented amount of drugs’
The Trump administration has claimed the deadly strikes are necessary to protect the US from narcotics being smuggled into the country by drug cartels.
Mr Trump has had 13 cartels – including six in Mexico and two in Venezuela – designated as terrorist organisations since his return to the White House earlier this year.
Dr Cesar Alvarez, a lecturer in terrorism studies at Charles Sturt University and fellow of the Innovation and Development Foundation, told news.com.au there is currently an “unprecedented amount of drugs coming into the US, particularly cocaine”.
“We are in a situation that we have never seen before in terms of both the cultivation of coca crops as well as the production of cocaine. The most recent figures point to the situation in Colombia reaching more than 330,000 hectares of coca crops … that is larger than the entire ACT in Australia and probably twice the size of the metropolitan area of London, just covered with coca crops.”
Venezuela, which shares a border with Colombia, is a major transit country for cocaine shipments.
In a confidential memo to Congress earlier his month, the Trump administration declared the US is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and that members can be targeted as unlawful combatants.
“The President determined these cartels are non-state armed groups, designated them as terrorist organisations, and determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States,” the notice read.
Under Article II of the US Constitution, the President has the authority to use military force if it’s in the nation’s interest. However its Congress which has the power to declare war.
Many US senators and Representatives have argued Mr Trump needs to seek war powers authority from Capitol Hill before continuing any strikes.
Experts have also questioned the legality of using lethal force in foreign or international waters against suspects who have not been intercepted or questioned.
Democratic Representative Jim Himes said last week that White House had not shared legal justification for the attacks with Congress.
“They are illegal killings because the notion that the United States — and this is what the administration says is their justification — is involved in an armed conflict with any drug dealers, any Venezuelan drug dealers, is ludicrous,” Mr Himes told CBS. “It wouldn’t stand up in a single court of law.”
Six killed in latest confirmed strike
Mr Trump said six people were killed in the latest confirmed US strike on a boat off the coast of Venezuela on Tuesday.
Two fishermen from Trinidad and Tobago are among those believed to have been killed.
“Under my Standing Authorities as Commander-in-Chief, this morning, the Secretary of War, ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility — just off the Coast of Venezuela,” he wrote on Truth Social, alongside video footage of a vessel being engulfed in flames and smoke.
Mr Trump claimed “intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route”.
In a speech to the United Nations, Venezuela’s United Nations Ambassador Samuel Moncada described Tuesday’s attack as a “new set of extrajudicial executions” and called on the UN to investigate.
“There is a killer prowling the Caribbean,” he said, holding up a local newspaper including a story of the two fishermen from Trinidad and Tobago believed to have been killed.
“People from different countries … are suffering the effects of these massacres,” he said. “There is no justification at all … They are fabricating a war.”
His comments came days after he had earlier warned his nation faces a possible “armed attack” at an emergency meeting with the UN Security Council last week.
“The belligerent action and rhetoric of the US government objectively point to the fact that we are facing a situation in which it is rational to anticipate that in the very short term an armed attack is to be perpetrated against Venezuela,” he said.
Dr Alvarez said the strikes “tell us pressure is going to continue to be applied on the US and the Venezuelan regime” – which he believes Trump’s administration is pushing to change.
Mr Trump has previously said that he is not looking at regime change in Venezuela, while at the same time accusing Mr Maduro of stealing last year’s presidential election and being illegitimate.
“The (latest confirmed attack) tells us … these are not going to be sporadic strikes or responses. This is a systematic, continuous operation that the US government is willing to take until the regime comes down,” said Dr Alvarez.
He noted Tuesday’s strike was carried out after US-backed opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for leading peaceful resistance to Mr Maduro’s 12-year rule.
“(The administration is saying) they are going to continue to pursue all means in order to topple the Venezuelan regime and particularly Nicolas Maduro as the head of the regime.”
“The message they are also trying to send is that the US administration is fully committed to make sure that the flow of drugs that are continuously poisoning American citizens is going to come to a stop or at least taken to much more positive figures.”
Trump and Rubio’s ‘obsession’
Dr Alvarez believes efforts to force a regime change in Venezuela is not “not only President Trump’s obsession” but US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s “objective”.
“If there is a legacy that Marco Rubio is willing to leave behind once this administration is gone, it’s that Nicolas Maduro is no longer in power.
“This is one key strategic regional objective for the US administration and I would say the personal obsession of Marco Rubio,” he claimed.
Dr Alvarez said Mr Rubio, who was born in Florida and raised by Cuban immigrant parents, has been “looking very closely at maintaining the stability of the region” and “had a very strong voice about Latin American-related issues in the US Congress” during his time as a Senator.
“For the US administration, Latin America is in all senses a key region. Colombia (for example) is a key strategic partner in terms of security and also in trade and foreign investment,” he added.
Mr Rubio has long advocated for regime change and has deemed Mr Maduro to be illegitimate.
“For years, Maduro and his cronies have manipulated Venezuela’s electoral system to maintain their illegitimate grip on power,” he said in a statement in July.
“The United States will continue working with our partners to hold accountable the corrupt, criminal and illegitimate Maduro regime. Those who steal elections and use force to grasp power undermine America’s national security interests.”
A possible ‘surgical intervention’
As tensions continue to escalate between the US and Venezuela, Dr Alvarez believes boat strikes in the Caribbean are likely to increase.
In the long term, if the US administration continues to apply pressure, he predicts we could see “Nicolas Maduro fleeing the country, escaping, or coming to the table to sign or negotiate some sort of deal with a US administration”.
He also believes it’s possible the US could carry out a “very tactical, surgical intervention” to capture the Venezualan Presdient.
“Under this administration and having a look at the decisive actions of the US government, I think it is only logical not to discard the option that there will be a type of intervention in Venezuela. When? We don’t know. How? I don’t know. But I I think what is clear now is that we cannot take anything off the table.”
“If there is some sort of intervention on the ground, my estimated guess is that we would not see a large footprint, we will see something relatively small and again something very tactical,” he added.
If Venezuela attempted to move first and launch an armed attack on US soil, Dr Alvarez said “Maduro’s regime wouldn’t stand a chance”.
“The US response, you can only imagine how bad it would look like for the Venezuelan regime.”
When asked by reporters at the White House on Wednesday if he had given the CIA authority to “take out” Mr Maduro, Mr Trump replied: “That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given. Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer?”
Mr Maduro later criticised “coups d’etat orchestrated by the CIA”.
“No to regime change, which reminds us so much of the endless, failed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and so on,” he said in an address on Wednesday.
“Listen to me, no war, yes peace, the people United States,” he added.
As fears of a possible US military intervention or land attack grow, Dr Alvarez warned any such measures “would only add instability to a very delicate region in Latin America”.
“The region is still recovering from the pandemic. And obviously, like everyone else in the world, is trying to transition to the geopolitical instability and the uncertainty in global markets.”
“So, I believe an intervention or an escalation in the tensions between the US and Venezuela will not add favourably to any country in the region.”
But at the end of the day, he warned, “nothing is off the table”.
– With AFP
Originally published as ‘Tactical intervention’: Fears as US ramps up attacks on alleged drug boats
